Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
CrossFit Games Programming Breakdown - E.364
The evolution of CrossFit Games programming tells us everything about what elite fitness truly means. In our deep dive into the 2025 CrossFit Games workouts, we uncover how traditional movements executed at extraordinary levels continue to define the sport's pinnacle.
This breakdown reveals fascinating patterns: running dominated as the most programmed movement (appearing three times), while foundational gymnastics elements like toe-to-bar, handstand walks, and bar muscle-ups created appropriate tests without relying on exotic skills. The weightlifting components showcased remarkable strength standards – numerous men squatting over 500 pounds and women exceeding 300 pounds, often after completing grueling previous events.
What stands out most is the time domain distribution, with 67% of events lasting under 10 minutes and only one true endurance test. This pattern has remained consistent throughout CrossFit Games history (62% historically falling into the short time domain), suggesting that the ability to repeatedly perform at extreme intensity levels throughout a weekend defines elite fitness as much as any single capacity.
The programming brilliance shines in workouts like "Running Isabel," where the perfect combination of running and snatches created just the right challenge, with athletes making strategic decisions about when to break sets while battling visible hypoxia. Similarly, the "Albany Grip Trip" combined 2000 meters of running with 60 heavy deadlifts and 550 feet of handstand walking – a combination that would seem impossible to most, yet was completed in around 11 minutes by top competitors.
For CrossFit enthusiasts at any level, the takeaway is clear: mastery of fundamentals across varied time domains is the path to fitness excellence. Even at the highest levels, it's not about specialization in exotic skills, but rather expressing basic movements with extraordinary intensity, efficiency, and capacity.
Ready to elevate your own training? Follow Misfit Athletics programming at Strivee or Fitter through the link in our bio.
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We're all misfits. Alright, you big, big bunch of misfits, you're a scrappy little misfit, just like me.
Speaker 2:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever seen either podcast. On today's episode we are going to do a full breakdown of the 2025 CrossFit Games programming. Plenty to say about all kinds of different things relating to the programming, but, as usual, before we get started, a little bit of housekeeping and life chat. Housekeeping, very straightforward. We are in phase zero right now, doing our baseline testing for Misfit Athletics, for our competitors, and you can get that programming at Strivee or Fitter. Hit to the link in bio on our Instagram page to get signed up for any of our programs. We are right smack in the middle of a affiliate programming phase right now. A lot of quote unquote fun days are happening out in the gym Disagree, and there's some fun ones upcoming.
Speaker 2:I don't know if it fits my schedule. But that burpee c2 bike piece I'm really scared of the burpees.
Speaker 1:Even mark you see a text thread mark.
Speaker 2:Even mark came out of the woodwork for that one yeah, yeah um I don't know, if I don't know if, mark, if you're going to be able, if you're listening to this, if you're going to be able to catch up after those later rounds of burpees.
Speaker 1:But we shall see, and I'm not talking about catch up to me, by the way, that's not a very high standard to hold yourself to. That's all right. He was thinking Heinz catch up anyway. So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:So yeah, teammisfitcom, click on the sign up now button. You can wad or stream fit. I think that's about it. If you want a t-shirt, go to sharpen the axe. Gocom, fucking buy one, do it hunter life chat what's up?
Speaker 1:man, not much. Uh, I don't really have a whole lot that's enticing in any way to uh a podcast listener because I didn't play golf very much this weekend, which I know everybody's usually just waiting on the edge of their seats for they skip directly to my life chat to hear about golf. But wasn't a whole lot of that that happened over the weekend.
Speaker 2:It does turn out that Any personal fitness chat what's that? Anything going on in the personal fitness realm, stuff you've been doing in the gym, any fucking nasty boys You've been fucking skipping stuff. You've been all in.
Speaker 1:No, I've been, yeah, I've been skipping stuff as needed for sure, cherry picking the hard workouts? No, maybe a relevant conversation topic is trying to. I'm still trying to figure out my like week routine and schedule as far as like training goes.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:My current plight is that I don't want to work out on the weekend, mostly because I don't want to come into the gym unless I don't have to on the weekend. And if I do have to come into the gym on the weekend it's usually for work and I probably don't want to stick around for additional time to work out. So it's like okay, well, you've got Monday through Friday to work out. It can usually by Wednesday. Wednesday I can say like I'll do Wednesday and then I need a rest day. The problem is is that I'll do Wednesday, I'll need a rest day on Thursday and then, by the time Friday rolls around, either I'm still sore or I'm like the motivation is maybe a little low.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:So last Friday I I to say I mailed it in would be like I, that's a pretty I did like I scaled the power clean weight. I did gymnastics, kipping chin over bar pull-ups instead of chest to bar pull-ups, which is like not to downplay the idea of scaling, or just you know, thrott needed, but that's been like multiple months of just like I'm probably only getting, like legitimately, three really, really solid training days, one less than optimal one. Why not rest Wednesdays? Yeah, I mean, that's a great question.
Speaker 2:And then why not go for a jog on Saturday or Sunday?
Speaker 1:So I have been like all when I came. I mean a lot of the times. Saturday, sunday is just like I. I got a four hour round of golf that I play at some point on that day and then other things, you know, dedicating another hour to supplemental exercises like take it or leave it, sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I did get back from, like some, a weekend with friends, so it was kind of a degenerate on, definitely Saturday, mostly Friday, and got myself some hill sprints. My apartment complex sits on top of a hill that is just conveniently about a one minutes hard run from bottom to top, so that is a good hill.
Speaker 2:I know that is a very good hill.
Speaker 1:Very bad hill but yeah. I mean, you're all very valid points. A lot of that is just like I'm in the gym all day on Wednesday, so like I feel like I need to take a break and like go work out or something like that. I just need to. Yeah, it's just been like the. I think I have not optimized for like training Monday through Friday. Super well.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, my suggestion would be a step goal on Wednesday, not because you need a step goal, but because it can take you out of the gym, so you could like a walking step goal. Yeah, like you know, hey, I'm going to get 12 or 15,000 steps today and that will probably scratch that itch enough, get me out of the gym enough and have me kind of ready to go. If I take a rest day and I know that I'm going to have a tough time doing a zone two, I set like 10, 20, 30 minute walks throughout the day and that definitely makes a difference.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, the did. I did take your advice and do. I've done a couple of like zone one sessions.
Speaker 2:So just like lower intensity.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, it's just a yeah, it's a combination of like a little bit of a motivation thing. It's like I don't really want to sit on a machine for 50 minutes, 40 minutes. Whatever this class workout is going to take me 20 total minutes, you know. Third, 10 minutes to warm up, 15 minutes to execute that sort of thing. Sometimes it's like, ah, this class workout looks like it looks fun. Like my my affiliate athlete brain says like oh, do that workout, it looks fun. Having seeing the program, knowing what's coming up, makes that a little bit easier. But ultimately it's like, yeah, I'm just, my fucking goose is cooked by thursday and then motivation on Friday is low.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I want to get my work done and get out of work, if I can, while the sun is still out. At 8 pm, my schedule is the opposite.
Speaker 2:It's changing, which is good, but I'm more like I have during nap time, Saturday and Sunday, a window to like get whatever I want in for training.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it could be a long zone too. It could be, you know, whatever, whatever style of training that I want. Um, I was the the uh morning guy with Carter for two years, um, and just switched, so I just basically don't have time to do my job and I found that me working at night which I've been doing is like I'm just not really there in the same way, like I think my like cortisol, blood sugar, my natural rhythms, like there's something really weird about like I feel like I feel like nothing is happening in my brain first thing in the morning, yeah, and you would think that that means it would be harder to work, but for someone with ADD, it's actually nice for the noise to be turned down.
Speaker 2:And it happens for like a couple hours in the morning. And I can fucking cook from like 6 am to 8 am Work so yeah, yeah. So on the exercise side, I found that getting home by five o'clock like a true cool down and like not rushing, I really I don't. I can't take the three 30 class as often anymore, Like it just really does not work for me.
Speaker 2:So like do I start taking some 9am classes? And like when I was younger I didn't like working out in the morning because my scores were worse. And like fuck now.
Speaker 1:Right, yeah, like I really don't care.
Speaker 2:So I'm going to start experimenting with that a little bit and see how that goes, and then part of the other. Like the other thing with it can be like when I work out, like later in the afternoon or the evening, I'm also kind of cooked after. So I have this idea in my head that, like, if I train at nine then I'm not going to be as productive at like 10 or 11. But I don't think that's actually true.
Speaker 1:For me, the earlier in the day that I work out, the better my overall day is, and I would include going in, as you know, as early as, like the occasional time, I'll take a 6.15 class, which I haven't done in a little while and probably should. I'm like a marginally tough at in the morning when I train. If I train in the evening dude I got, I'm fucking like.
Speaker 2:I know that I'm there for like every movement in a crossfit workout is a checkbox. Yeah, you get this done. If you have an expectation, you're gonna be mad so I just like like I'm, I'm done at that point. Yeah, when I came in, last Friday to.
Speaker 1:It's the the like personal schedule thing is just like a tough thing, cause it's like any any day that it makes sense for me to come in early in the morning. I'm either. I was either at the gym like eight hours ago.
Speaker 2:Sure.
Speaker 1:Like you know, I get home late the night before I eat dinner at 830 or 9 pm, which is terrible, like I hate that and then to like have to wake up and either like if I go to the gym and work out, I'm not, I'm going to miss breakfast because I'm not going to go home eat, come back in time to coach, and then like, similarly, like if I have the time to work out in the morning, like I probably am going to be at the gym until seven, eight o'clock that night. So it's like now this is a super long day that I just doesn't kind of interest me. But yeah, I just need to.
Speaker 2:I'm jealous of people that have a fucking tote bag with all three meals in it.
Speaker 1:How do?
Speaker 2:they do that I know I would never happen to me.
Speaker 1:I don't fucking eat dinner here and I'm like part of me is like why don't I do that? And it's there's like, well, you could meal prep. I like to cook. I do like the down regulation at night of going home and preparing a meal. It's more enjoyable, that's for sure. And I understand there are people who don't like to cook, and like man maybe, if maybe I need to start not liking to cook because I could eat like between classes at the end of the night and that might open me up in the morning to be more flexible.
Speaker 1:But yeah, I don't know, it's just like.
Speaker 2:Also moments like tried to meal prep for multiple meals for like a, like a an actual stretch of time. It is a crazy amount of food like when I meal prep so done. I fucking I'm that shit's gone quicker than I expect. Yeah, the the work, the amount of work that you do and you're meal prepping. You're fucking get this pot on and that pot on and you're checking on this and you're checking on that, and then three days later it's all gone. You're like how the hell did I even do that?
Speaker 1:yeah, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna make this as efficient as possible.
Speaker 2:Pours, pours chicken into crock pot hits high four walks away, and it's like that's why I need that flat top, so I can knock out like 40 chicken breasts dude, yeah, yeah, blackstone, or just a yeah.
Speaker 1:That would be sick, because like yeah, traeger's great, but it takes seven hours to turn on yeah, um, that's just and it's honestly like those, like it's those situations or that I'm like thinking about where it's like huh, it's if it's, if it's like this hard for me to get motivated to go to the gym like four or five days a week, as opposed to like two or three yeah and like I've been doing it for a long time and it's my job and I work literally steps away from the ability to go exercise and the motivation is still, like, occasionally difficult to come by.
Speaker 1:it puts in perspective like the parent like the parent who's got like two kids is, you know, works a desk job for you know, a legitimate eight hours and then, like, has to try to find time to go to the gym and also do all those other things and I've got half of those responsibilities and the motivation is still can be tough to come by. So it just puts in perspective someone who's like, hey, man, get off my back for only being in the gym twice this week.
Speaker 2:Sure yeah, that's hard to reconcile, though Like for me. I have, like I have to set very clear lines of what my priorities are and like that is probably gone from, like you know, priority two or three to like priority five and I'm okay with it, but the like expectations is part of the issue that you put on yourself.
Speaker 1:Sure.
Speaker 2:Like I have a significant amount of workouts where I have an expectation going in and it does not pan out the way that I want it to, and it still bothers me more than it should. Right, I know that showing up as a business owner, husband, father, doing all these things is my priority and it kind of has to be. But why the fuck can't I hold my paces on this bitch work piece? Yeah, like it makes me want to quit the workout when it's hard for sure myself to do.
Speaker 1:I can't do this. What the fuck am I doing here at all?
Speaker 2:exactly, yeah, yeah which is so like backwards and asinine, and not the advice that I would give other people, which is why yeah, exactly, that's why people need fucking coaches.
Speaker 1:Throw that out there even coaches need coaches like exactly yep, yep, yep, true, true, that's the fitness, fitness where we're at right now yep, indeed, all right.
Speaker 2:So I have a a quick little life chat.
Speaker 2:I mean, I was going to talk about my new schedule and trying to figure out when I was going to train, so we kind of had the same one okay, got it and intertwined there so yeah, uh, I did not go to the crossfit games for the first time in like 15 years something fucking wild like that and it made me think of of two reasons why I wanted to address it, the first one being like it's not like a political statement. We have to travel so much now with world fitness project and all the different. I don't even know what they're called sanction, sanctionals, semifinals, regionals in-person Super regionals, exactly Community Cup.
Speaker 2:So it didn't have really anything to do with like a political thing. It's like, hey, I want to stay home with my son and my wife and not travel as much. But that also makes you think of like last year, like what happened at the games last year. And just so you guys know, I've actually tried to record this solo in the past and have not been able to do it, so I'll attempt to do my best.
Speaker 2:Right now I use WhatsApp for some remote coaching and I haven't talked to enough people on there for the bottom row of WhatsApp to still be my conversation with Laza. So I see it every single day, which you know like. I think that's kind of a good thing. You know what I mean when you're trying to make sure that you honor and remember somebody and on certain days it is, you know, a little upsetting. You know to have that there and you know you go back into that headspace. Everything that went down last year was challenging for me, I think, on a different level than certain people, than kind of fans of the sport trying to parse out what it means and what happened and all that.
Speaker 2:I considered him a friend. I talked with him fairly regularly and it's kind of funny. There's the joke of like, at my funeral, don't say that I lit up the room Everyone says that at every funeral because I just wasn't that person and I can identify with that being a little bit more of like a wallflower in social situations. But people should know that he was an incredibly unique and special individual, just based on something that, like. I'm fascinated with that. I call range the things there's. There's usually, when you're gravitating towards a person, there's usually a reason why. It's a particular attribute. It's something that they do. Oftentimes it's something that they can do that you cannot do, and he held multiple versions of those things that I think would normally be in competition with one another. The way that he spoke about his family and spoke about his brother and spoke about the people that he had made connections with in, spoke about his brother and spoke about the people that he had made connections with in the community very open and vulnerable and just like a very passionate, kind individual and he was also a like absurdly tenacious competitor. Like the way that he could switch those things on and off blew my mind. And I'm not like. I'm not the kind of like he brought out in me me. I told him that I was like. The way that you are with your brother is just like I've never seen that type of relationship. It's like prototype big brother looking after their little brother, going over and kissing him on top of the head after an event, just checking in on my relationship when I was coaching Luca just absolutely incredible.
Speaker 2:And then when he was looking for a new coach. We had a conversation about like hey, where do you think I'm at right now in my career? What could I get better at? So I put together this document and I don't remember exactly what I had in there for like cause. His goal was to stand on top of the podium. I don't remember exactly what I had in there, but it was like fifth, third, first, or something like that. And he immediately responded and was like fuck off, your way off, I'll be on the podium, that like right away. And it was just like. It was just like the perfect, like it was. It was this like challenge, was just like the perfect, like it was. It was this like challenge sent to him immediately, even though he asked for that information immediately, was like fuck off like I will be here,
Speaker 2:so I did not not go to the games for that reason in particular. But I also, you know, like the idea of it just not being brought up again, considering who he was as an individual and the impact that he had on other people and the example that he set in a bunch of different ways, is something that I will personally never forget Just such a kind of striking individual in those ways. And I've crossed paths with a lot of people that have one or the other of those attributes and can honestly say I don't think I've ever met someone that held just that idea of being like a, like a, almost like a warrior and then like having like a softness to them, which is really cool.
Speaker 2:So yeah something that I've I've wanted to say for for about a year and tried to record it and kind of wasn't able to and have had some space in between and, um, yeah, man, just uh, that was a, that was a rough experience, obviously significantly more more rough for for other people, but uh, something that I don't want to just not bring up and not talk about. Yeah, should be remembered for sure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I I only interacted with him a couple of times in the in the athlete area, obviously the year I guess the year prior, I don't think it was two years before that but yeah, I think that, like 2022, yeah, that like, uh, almost almost like a like a shepherd type archetype, that's the big big brother. Like you said, the big brother vibe, a like a level of maturity about him, that was like the right combination of like I'm a competitive athlete and like I can turn that on and really get after it and really like dive into that side of that side of him, while also, like you said, kind of having that like he can, he can pull that mask down a little bit and have just a very normal conversation with, again someone like me who's not particularly close to him, like we're just kind of interacting in the back area as misfit coach and athlete. But it was very like just a very like friendly, like two, just two bros having a conversation sort of thing for someone of his caliber and just like he's. Also, how old was he? Mid-20s, mid-20, yeah, like that's what I assumed.
Speaker 1:It's super, like mature, kind of beyond, beyond years to a certain extent, whether it's a cultural thing or just like. That's just how he was. Uh, he was just a very just, not, not, not the kind of guy you obviously don't wish that sort of thing upon anybody, but like the last type of person, you were like god fuck, like, why does that? Why does that happen to that kind of guy? Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just the, the, not not something to joke about, but the joke of how people are remembered. And it's like there are, there are people who are truly at that level of like. You know, the, the, the taken too soon, is such a fucking understatement. Yeah, absolutely, In terms of of what terms of what I sort of witnessed?
Speaker 1:with him.
Speaker 2:All right, let's talk about something that matters significantly less the programming at the 2025 CrossFit Games. I would like people to go to gamescrossfitcom and just pull the workouts up. One of the things that we've done in the past is sit here and fucking read workouts take up 12 hours of the things that we've done in the past is sit here and fucking read workouts, take up 12 hours of the conversation and it's literally just us reading.
Speaker 1:So I hope we don't do that.
Speaker 2:So basically what I've done here and I'll clean this up and maybe make a graphic out of it if people are interested but what I've done here is I think it would probably need to be a separate episode. But, like, what would I do with this information to prepare someone for the crossfit games? But this is how I break things apart um, to try and write the best program for someone that's prepping for a specific event and I don't know if you remember last year hunter, but I went like full nerd mode on every data point that I could find from the crossfit games history yeah um to write pages.
Speaker 2:Uh prep for 2024 and there was a noticeable difference in in her and her. You know what she was able to do, and one of the things that we did was was really dissect time domains and energy systems and what they're attacking, because there are for those people that think that crossfit is like random and kind of all over the place, the crossfit games are something kind of specific when you really take a look. Um, so like, if we want to, we could start with the movement. So, basically broken up into monostructural gymnastics and weightlifting, you're kind of I tried to do hunter Hunter, some of the nomenclature that everyone knows versus ours when it comes to this. So basically, I have it broken up into again MGW, but then how often did it come up? And then how often does it come up in relation to previous years?
Speaker 2:So, for monostructural, we have running three times rowing, double under crossover, skier, burpee box, jump over C2 bike, burpee box, jump over again and echo bike. Out of those movements, the run row, burpee box, jump over and echo bike are like guaranteed every year. So like, when we're looking at that, we're looking at our movement tracker of, okay, what goes into this Metcon? Like, how much like dedicated bitch work are we going to do monostructural conditioning? Are we going to do related to these things, like if you go to the movement tracker, since 2019, they've ran 23 times in the second movement on that list is thrusters at eight times. So like is like something that is you know really you know,
Speaker 2:like okay, like that shouldn't even be in green related to those other things. It should have its own fucking category. So we're going from maybe running one to two times a week to like it's kind of mandatory to have three days a week of running spaced out hopefully by you know, 48 hours, roughly something like that. But like logging your miles in each energy system is so fucking important related to this. So if that isn't part of a program leading into something like this, it just doesn't make sense that include things like running.
Speaker 1:Isabel shuttle, run like run like 10 rounds of run legless rope climb.
Speaker 2:I don't always I don't always do it. If I feel like it's a transition, I won't do it, but I did include the running was really important in running Isabel, which was cool to see. Yeah, so it's five by 200 feet, it's a thousand feet. I don't think I've ever written a thousand feet for volume in my tracker but that was there.
Speaker 2:So if I feel like something is a throwaway, I'm probably like I won't even, I won't even necessarily put it on there and then from there, the only one that that is sort of just common is the skier. Like if I go to, if I go to the movements here, where's the ski? Ski has been programmed one, two, three, four, five years in a row. So you start to have that trend of like I'm going in and it's like, okay, so it's not up there necessarily with running, but five years in a row is a serious trend. How is my athlete on the skier Right?
Speaker 2:And that's kind of a polarizing machine. I know a lot of people who are great at it and I know a lot of people that suck at it and I don't know that many people that are like decent at it. It's, it's a machine that that needs to be trained if you're not necessarily good at it. And then, if I had to guess, the echo bike is is got to be up there on that. So that's, that's the basically the second most programmed of the monostructure.
Speaker 1:So much at the semi-finals level exactly right.
Speaker 2:So that's that's where we would continue to back this out of. We see it at the crossfit games, we see it at semi-finals, so we know that there is a larger like. If we're looking at programming for people that just follow the program, if you have any possibility of making it to another sort of part of the season, that has to be a big part of it, and that's another one that's super polarizing. It's a very unique machine given the resistance level on it. You know you can't adjust the damper, that of thing, and you know talk about logging your miles, logging your meters, whatever.
Speaker 1:That machine requires attention like it's really hard to get better at the echo bike in a short period of time if it's not just like beginners gains and in like all of the time domain and therefore energy systems that it requires, like we see it in sprints, right with the like, with the like bike, the you know power snatch echo bike. Last year, sprinty, like it's a little bit, what was it in this year?
Speaker 2:It almost feels like doing the endurance work on.
Speaker 2:It almost always feels like testing versus training, because you can't you get into a rough spot early and then it feels kind of the same the whole time you're using it, whereas you know you're on a run and your rpe is kind of slowly increasing as you go. You have to mentally prepare for that. The echo bike is unique in that if you, if you looked at someone's heart rate graph of like them running versus the echo bike, it's like this is not the same yeah, really, in a particular training piece yeah, the movement that comes up, but not very often, is the obviously the double under crossover.
Speaker 2:So that's just the kind of movement where it's like, hey, there was enough time.
Speaker 2:I think people wondered whether it would come back, because I think that was a boss programmed thing it was so good to see, I think, just a progression on athletes, you know, sort of improving on something, and I guarantee you it's fallen off a lot of movement trackers. You have a couple years where something doesn't show up, people don't practice it, and I think that's why they, for the, for the sake of the show, gave them the warning that it was going to be incoming. Yeah, that's like a week or two for a high level athlete to figure something like that out, sure.
Speaker 1:How much of that do you think was a like progression in the sport? Is it like a theatrical thing? Is it a? Is it like, hey, this happens to be the first like non you know first CrossFit workout of the games. Sure, let's throw a, throw something fucking cool out there. I am glad, like you know you can say what you want about it, but it's really the only like you know kind of like movement that's slightly off the beaten path in the programming this year. Everything else are things that we've seen. We talked about kind of the nature of this year being very much, very kind of traditional crossfit.
Speaker 2:Yep, and it's like yeah the, I actually don't think if the program, if the programming is in a vacuum and it's like, yeah, the, I actually don't think if the program, if the programming is in a vacuum and it's siloed and it's not for anyone, then you could talk about it. But whether it's we would say, cheese dick, pardon my French whether it's cheese dick or not to me relies almost solely on the execution. So the programmer needs to know what's possible, cause I would, I would say, over-programming an event with a traditional movement is just as dumb as programming, a skill that people can't do.
Speaker 2:So that's the way that I look at it and, honestly, for the most part, pretty impressed. And then one of the questions on the live stream of us talking about the events was whether I was surprised or not that some of the athletes still can't really do them. And that brings in this conversation about NARPs and CrossFit. Right Like there are, we've worked with athletes who have a work capacity that'll fucking melt your eyeballs. You just can't believe how fit they are. And then either due to certain genetics or, a lot of times, just the lack of ability to like suck at something and be okay with it, like that's oftentimes what it is. But narps can't do movements like that. And there are some narps in crossfit I'm not saying that like it's like fixed, like you can't overcome something like that, but you can tell when you look out there like I bet that person's probably good that kid played sports growing up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like that kid played sports for a long time. Jason Hopper played high level something right? Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2:So that's how I think about that. And then something that was new to me today. Honestly, like if you had quizzed me on it, I don't think I would have been 100% certain, but the C2 bike showed up for the first time ever for individuals and thinking about the amount of volume that people do on that machine and it's essentially never been programmed is interesting right, dude, don't get me started on the C2 bike.
Speaker 1:I I get, I get itchy thinking about it. My affiliate light bulb, yeah, burns out. I have to replace it like once a day yeah, I was surprised when you told me that too and then, thinking back, I was like the only immediately thought went to the killer cage in whatever 2010, 2011, where they had the, the, basically a peloton like a watt bike that was sick, those things.
Speaker 2:I remember we, we wanted one and they were like a trillion dollars. Yeah, you go to that website. It's like the tour tank what.
Speaker 1:It is surprising, though, and I'd be curious to know if it just like, if there's a reason that the, the echo bike, is leveraged so much harder over that machine. Is it something silly, like a, like a sponsorship, like a sure?
Speaker 2:financial. Yeah, I mean assault. They use the rower, obviously, use the assault bike a ton, but yeah, the only. What was the runner.
Speaker 1:Do you know what brand the runner they used on for Albany group trip? Yeah, so.
Speaker 2:Rogue has a partnered runner with Woodway Woodway. Okay, yeah, so the original, the Woodway Curve. And if I remember correctly, that was the company that sued someone in the space because they had a patent. So I don't know if it was assaults or if Rogue had tried to make one or what the deal was, but there was some drama related to that and the times were definitely slower than you would expect, for like if they were just running outside that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:But, as a lot of people know, that's that's a unique stimulus and pairing it with a deadlift is a sassy sassy decision to make. Having to pull the treadmill with that All right. So gymnastics in terms of the kind of no doubters we have the toe to bar, handstand walk, chest to bar, pull up, bar muscle up. Really cool thing about that is goes back to what you said about the echo bike, but tenfold is those are movements that we all got to be good at right, you got to be good at them if you want to do well in your affiliate class.
Speaker 2:the local throwdown, the open, you know every single thing and having a level of a relatability I think is important for people to watch and understand, kind of what's going on there. So those are things that are programmed at the games basically every single year the pegboard deficit, handstand pushup not necessarily the deficit, but the pegboard, the handstand pushup and the rope climb. Some variation of those things are programmed most of the time. So I have those in yellow. Those would be quote unquote common.
Speaker 1:Like rope climbs. I'm surprised that's not green.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's only green if you combine rope climb, legless and seated. Seated if you make it one category. But it actually doesn't come up as often as I just think there are so many iconic rope climb moments in games history yeah, for sure, that's like one of those like I don't know what, like mandela effect, like oh yeah, they do. Rope like rope climbs three times a year and then you go back and look and that's not the case. That was, that was one of the more surprising things when I first started the movement tracker.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I feel like you just always see some variant of it. It only comes up, you know, once a games, but it's like right thick rope. Is it tall, is it legless, is it seated?
Speaker 2:and then our ben program, but not that often. List is just wall walks. Second time it's been in there, um thrown into the programming as a buy-in. I'm guessing they wanted more shoulder fatigue in that workout. And why don't you make them fucking start the workout with 20, 20?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean we talk a lot about how it's like. It's very much it seems like this year. I think maybe one thing that did stand out as like a little bit more balance between pushing and pulling versus what we've seen more recently, which is a shitload of gymnastics, pulling, pull up, bar muscle up. They got a pretty good dose, whether it was five.
Speaker 1:I don't think it's necessary to test people with like a hundred foot handstand walk with a triple pirouette backflip in the middle to 86 freestanding handstand pushups like we can still just like a hundred pound dumbbell on a single side overhead great handstand walk, great overhead lunge, great like. Yeah, there are a lot of traditional movements that can do the same thing as like right that to induce that kind of shoulder fatigue, the wall walks like.
Speaker 1:I always wonder how much intention from like, because I could see there, you could see that there's a little bit of like. If you know when quarterfinals was a thing, it's like if we saw the movement in the open, we're probably not going to see it in quarterfinals. When you go from quarters to semis, like the difference might be the fact that like, hey, the heavy lift it's not, you're not going to do the same heavy lift that you did in quarters, that you do at semifinals or online, whatever. I do wonder how much Castro looks at like, okay, we did wall walks in the open and therefore, like you know, we kind of covered that movement at some point from the open to the games is obviously a big leap. But you wonder how much like thought goes into like what we did do this movement at this level and this level for this year, like we don't need to include it in the programming at the highest level this season yeah, the the one thing that he's always done.
Speaker 2:That, I think is incredibly important, especially since crossfit hasn't controlled every programmed workout in the season is. When you look at this list, the things that stick out are the, you know, the yoke and the single dumbbell, shoulder overhead and the double under crossovers. But almost every movement that's in here is very traditional CrossFit and is essentially just put into a test in a way that makes it appropriate for games athletes. So we have these competitions, whether they're affiliated with CrossFit in any way or not, where things are just so fucking over-programmed it's like a circus show, that kind of thing, and it's like no, we got toes to bar hands to walking, chest to bar pull-ups, bar muscle-ups, squat cleans, front squats, deadlifts, snatch thruster, like we have all these movements. We have running and rowing and skiing. We just have all of these things that are in there. So in my mind, part of it is creating more context for more individuals to be like yeah, you didn't like those sets of four wall walks, huh, watch these guys do 20 in a minute 40.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean, that sort of thing. So.
Speaker 2:I definitely. You can tell from the first two levels of programming. So it'd be open this year. It'd be open to an affiliate semifinal. That, what you're saying, is definitely a thing right. Like we've done bar muscle ups. Now it's probably ring like that sort of thing, but bringing that context back around for a wider stage when you can still have a good test. I think does a lot for the sport and tells a better story.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that like, especially in a time when the games are becoming so like so far separated from the affiliate relative to what it used to be and the like athletes training you know less, less with like your regular everyday gym goers and more like truly as independent competitive athletes, seeing programming where the green movements that we have here like run row, bike burpee super often, toes to bar, chest to bar bar, muscle up, handstand, walk super often we get to weightlifting next it's like snatch, thruster, deadlift, like some of the just the most foundational movements that you see in crossfit hopefully tells like the affiliate level athlete or maybe even the aspiring competitor, just how like, how necessary and important it is to be really fucking tight at just the most basic movements and just to have capacity in them in like every different time domain, movement combination, all that shit so much less about.
Speaker 1:You know you know we've got I always pick on the deficit handstand, pushup, but like the debt you know I need to do my seated legless backflip, rope climbs and triple unders to be ready for the CrossFit games and it's like like wrong bitch, run Like you need to run Uh-huh, yeah, yep, you've got six miles, and then the next day you got a 2,000 meters.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Lovely.
Speaker 2:All right Weightlifting modality. So for our, basically every year, the complex was squat, clean and front squat. Those are both very often programmed Deadlift, snatch, thruster, beautiful, right, like. Those are the. Those are our movements almost every year, most of the time common. Whatever you want to call that category is the yoke, definitely a like preferred simple strongman element that just usually, I don't know there hasn't been a yoke, there's and maybe there shouldn't be, but there hasn't been a yoke focused workout. It's very much like like hey, we want to like. So going dark. You got the 50 cal echo buy-in, then the 100 foot yoke carry into the handstand push-ups. I just kind of want to fuck with your midline and get your heart rate up a little bit more for this yeah, I want you to you know, like move the load, the long distance, like a very like like
Speaker 2:visual representation of that concept and then our like not that often, but have been in the games single dumbbell shoulder to overhead, back squat for the lift and then overhead walking lunges. So, again, like you, one of the things that happens is people get fixated on these particular elements and I've told this story before. But, like having a conversation with other coaches at the games after 2022, just because they faced a different direction and their handstand push-up and did a different version of jump rope, they were like we, back to the drawing board, we got to change everything and it's like we predicted, uh, at like, an 89 success rate of the movements in time domains.
Speaker 1:No, like what what they turn the other way with the bath water yeah.
Speaker 2:You don't remember that from back in the day where you were cool as fuck If you could face the wall into your strict dance and pushups. So people get locked in on those things because they're the like, the things that pop out. But only seeing you know a few of those red things that are in there, I think is is a good thing. It's what we want, sure? Um, let's talk about time domains. I don't know if you want to take the lead on this Hunter, just like we've got the. I did the first and last and then, if you scroll down, I did the average finish time for each one. Um, I don't know how we want to particularly speak about it, but definitely something that's interesting yeah, I mean I think that like the big, without just reading the chart here what I'm seeing is like I guess, I guess maybe the averages are probably.
Speaker 1:It's weird because like so, for example, the so going dark which has that the handstand push-up 50 cal bike 100 foot yoke 30. Handstand push-up 100 foot yoke 30. Handstand pushup 100 foot yoke 50. Cow bike 40. For the women the spread from first to last is 30. Deficit handstand pushups wide right. It's like fastest woman is 8.51, slowest woman is I'm assuming that was a 15 minute time cap. I don't remember but time cap at 15 minutes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, one thing that was cool is they had different time caps for men and women, which I think was important. Yeah, that's smart.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yeah, I mean what we, I think generally what and we can talk about. This is like there there's two outliers, not outliers, but, like you know, run, row, run, row run. That's obviously the long one in the 50 minute timeframe for for men and women. The next longest workout is Albany grip, trip, run, deadlift, handstand, walk, and then everything else is essentially say 11 minutes or shorter, like on average. So yeah, I mean we talked about this.
Speaker 1:Almost every workout is 10 minutes or less. Every workout is 10 minutes or less and like, so I've got like I've got two. There's I'll go two primary reasons that I think this is the case. First off and I talk about we talk about this anytime that we say like you know the mass. We talked about this a little bit last year with the masters. I think the masters last year was like hopefully this is far enough away, but it's like that was a. That was bad. That was just poor programming in my opinion. That's like the longest somebody worked out was 18 minutes or something for a crossfit games.
Speaker 1:It sounds like and some people did that workout in like 12 minutes the long yeah if, like and I've heard some, heard some rumors that, masters, you're going to be running more than 5 000 meters at a time, which is great, but there's the, there's the element of one. It's like is it a crossfit methodology thing that it's like, hey, run row, bike, swim hard and fast, like, keep workouts short and intense. The majority of your training should be in that short to medium time domain, with, like, a very high level of intensity. And ultimately, we only need to really test one singular aerobic event with the context of like. Well, this is, you know, a dozen, 10 events spread out over the course of three days. It is, by kind of definition and endurance sport and having, you know, doing all of that work over the that a period of time is like that's, that's like borderline an event in itself. Like you, you shake out one one more 30 to 45 minute event is probably not going to move the leaderboard around all that much, depending on on what it is. So is it a methodology thing or is it? And I'm starting to wonder, like, because, looking at the events, so if I like, I would, I think a fun, like if you're a nerd about programming would be to like take these events and reprogram them for your affiliate by making the weights appropriate and making you know, potentially, the the reps appropriate. But what I kind of noticed is like I wouldn't need to change the volume of the events very much. Every everything is like a reasonable, like within, like extraordinarily reasonable, like kind of sure, like yeah, within in volume, like the year, the covid year, when it was like atalanta, like hundred, fucking 800 ring muscle ups, 36, 000 pistols, a million handstand push-ups, whatever it's like that's inaccessible, that's like your borderline, just testing, like the like how long somebody's muscles are going to last before they explode at the highest level.
Speaker 1:Like there gets to a point where it's like I can't, we can't just keep adding rounds, adding volume to the workouts for these guys because they're so fucking fit that they can handle it. We have to lean a little bit more on the intensity side of things. And like that, the argument there is like well, what? Just stick a machine in there, like just add a machine to lengthen out the workout. And then the question it would be like well, are we just adding a machine solely for the purpose of lengthening the workout or is it like no, this is, this is actually a well-rounded test across the.
Speaker 1:You know the the 10,. What 10 events? Yeah, 10 events over the course of the. Know the the 10. What 10 events? Yeah, 10 events over the course of the the weekend. And like there, there's not a single workout in here where, like, an individual movement has like an egregious volume. If you know, if you were to again scale it appropriately for your, for your training, maybe, maybe like hey, the deadlifts, 60 super, super heavy deadlifts and 500 feet of handstand walking, but again, like that gets scaled to, you know, 60 deadlifts is not unheard of by any means at really any level in CrossFit.
Speaker 2:So and honestly, that was more of like in that specific event, that was more of like a strategic element, Like did you run slower and go right to the barbell?
Speaker 1:Sure, you spent by far the least amount of time slow transition and then a bigger set like it wasn't.
Speaker 2:I think it had ramifications. The fact that you did it fucked other things up, but it wasn't, even though it looks egregious. I mean, that's a fucking axle bar like 60 deadlifts at 350 on an axle bar. Is that's no joke, right? Yeah, talk about yeah, but like you alluded to, it's like on wednesday the.
Speaker 1:The running makes the deadlifting more difficult. The axle bar blows your grip up, which makes handstand walking more difficult. So it wasn't like we're testing the deadlift here. It's like, yeah, it's just an element used at an appropriate weight, volume and intensity for, you know, the fittest people on earth. Sure, for the affiliate's like, that's a beefy day where it's like, you know, five rounds with 10 deadlifts at you know, maybe 275 on like a right we're going to get after it today sort of weight.
Speaker 1:So the point, the whole point being in that like, yeah, the, the, there are two kind of one very long, one medium to long workout in the Albany grip trip, everything else being 11 minutes and shorter. It is 11 minutes and shorter, but there's also a pretty nice like spread of you've got your running, isabel, obviously in that really short sprinty time domain. There's a three to four minute, there's a five to six minute, a seven to eight minute, sort of so like we do have the spread covered. Well, it would be a cool question to just hear, like Castro's thoughts on, like what is the actual justification for only the one long event? And I'm not even advocating for more of them. It's just we see it time and time again, where, like, the majority of workouts are in that short to medium time domain, is it a methodology thing?
Speaker 1:Is it a volume for the athlete thing? Is it just like a, is it? A logistic, thing, what it?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the for me, there's three things that come to mind. The first one is for the viewer right, Like how often is he chopping a workout down and removing the fluff that you referenced that could make it longer to just have the workout showcase what it is that we are intending to showcase. The second piece is these are almost all medium duration workouts for everyone else, and that's interesting because the idea of CrossFit and there's a bunch of stuff from old school CrossFit baked into of CrossFit and like there's a bunch of stuff from like old school CrossFit baked into the CrossFit games that stays there, and the idea of like this amount of works take takes you this long. Watch this shit. This is crazy.
Speaker 2:It only takes them eight minutes to do this, and this is like a 19 minute workout, right, like that kind of thing. So I think that's part of it. And then the one thing that I've never done when I've gone through this is like I put the copy of the timing breakdown in here as well and, shocker, like we have, if you don't include the lift, 67% of the events are 10 minutes or less. The historical average is 62%. The medium is at 11%. Historical reference there is 21%, and then because there were less events at the games this year, that's part of it, but 22% were quote unquote long, and I think if you did the averages out, that would basically be the same.
Speaker 2:The thing that I don't know is in 2020, in 2022, they did two workouts, each over 30 minutes, and my question would be did that do anything to the leaderboard? Because that's got to be part of it, right? Like, do we need to insert this? If we're going to get the same results? Is it necessary to either pile on the volume or X, y, z? So I think that's kind of interesting that they've only done that twice.
Speaker 1:What were the two long ones in 2022? That was Boz's year.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was. That's the other one. The helmets, the bike, toto bar. Is that right Bike to work? Yeah, yep, there was bike to work.
Speaker 1:And then there are the capitals, the other Right.
Speaker 2:Um, and we've talked about this a ton, but if you're a new listener, the question is you don't you should force the athletes to be ready to do two of those or three of those. You don't need to program them every year. You need to program them enough that they prepare themselves for it. Yeah, If if, if the trends just keep doing the same thing over and over and there's no nuance, that's kind of boring.
Speaker 1:It's also 13 events that year, versus 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
Speaker 2:And I wondered, with less events, if it would skew in the other direction. And it didn't.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think there's probably a logistical element to that as well, especially with the 2020 year, where it's like I only have to worry about 10 people, like I can do whatever the fuck we want.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there were bookends of like hey, go run however many miles, and then jokes on five slash 10k and then atalanta is that fucking bookend.
Speaker 2:that's not gonna be a final in an arena. That would be terrible, be such a bad idea. So, yeah, the the part of the reason why I included this in the breakdown and and as part of the context of the reason why I included this in the breakdown and as part of the context of the podcast, is we typically spread out the time domains that we're looking for more often throughout the year, so you're going to see a fairly even mix of short, medium and long in relation to each different sort of like. We got mechons, we got pitch work, we've got intervals, that sort of thing, and it's relevant until the games and then it's kind of not.
Speaker 2:And your ability to continue to do the kind of work and the kind of intensity that is required in an elite level 10 minute or less test is something that needs to be practiced. Your ability to go do that again, we break things into double sessions or triple sessions and we're telling the athletes that they got to warm up and cool down in training each time that they go do that. That is a skill in and of itself, whether you're only developing energy systems or mentally getting yourself the ability to get back to that place and what sort of recovery tools you need to do to be able to do that. So now basically just want to go through the events, talk about them, a little bit kind of one by one.
Speaker 2:So run, roll, run the. The nuance here as a coach is kind of fascinating because, like, what is your athlete's athlete IQ? Where are they at in their career? Is this their first games event that they're ever going to do? So their adrenaline's through the fucking roof they run a 28 minute four mile seven minute miles from the beginning.
Speaker 2:Come on, say it with me, and then they don't. Because you feel good, man, I mean they were. It was 57 degrees out, probably a little bit of a breeze, I thought, and and who knows how long the actual runs were. So I could be just off in that regard. But I thought the women should have averaged about two minutes less, whereas the men thought were going to be. I thought the men were going to be between 46 and 54. So pretty close there. And then I thought the women, um, would average around 54 minutes. Um, and honestly they were slower than I expected. Partially, like when you take out Kringle and to me, um, so that's definitely part of it there. But, um, you typically see an endurance events. The women are going to be running roughly seven minute miles and rowing at like a two, oh, five. But again, the nuance of like, how do you warm up for this? How do you make sure you're pacing in the way that you need to? You're not buying into the idea that you feel better than you thought you would until the final two miles, that sort of thing. So definitely a good test.
Speaker 2:We had a little bit of a joke internally here that some of the advice by the announcers was to put the damper up and have a lower stroke rate. It's like not only is that bad advice in general, for this event specifically, it's terrible, and they were saying it while the people that were way ahead and then pulled further ahead had a way higher stroke rate than everybody else. You could see it visually, and part of it's just people trying to get chris riled up, um, our our resident rowing coach. So I just thought that that was fucking like. Okay, that's excellent advice, and I actually didn't hear them say it. Someone else did so. If they didn't say it, then well, crossfit games announcers.
Speaker 1:Giving bad advice to the general fitness community is just kind of like that's just part of the crossfit game script. It's let's make sure we give horrendous advice just based on what athletes are doing.
Speaker 2:The funny thing, too is I watch it and there are like parts of it that are nuanced where I'm like I can't believe they said that. And then I'm also like who knows what I would say if you forced me to speak for X amount of hours a day right Like they, but, god willing, you've got like at least a little bit of experience to know that.
Speaker 1:that question they do a very good job, yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:So I'm like I do the live stream and I'm like, hey guys, am I supposed to be talking right now? And I like give myself the time to like cook up the thoughts that I have.
Speaker 2:So yeah there's not, you know thoughts that I have. So, yeah, there's not, you know, obviously it's a. It's a 50 minute test. It's a good test. It was really cool to watch roman pass jeff and then on the on the row and then jeff said afterwards he didn't think he was going to be able to catch him and almost gave up and sort of conceded to second. And then, as they, they hit the turnaround for their final mile and he just flew past him, which is like that. You gotta fucking dig at that point to be able to do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, what's more kind of neat for me to look at is just like the average time, and then just doing a little bit of reverse math to say like yeah and I don't know if you know the answer like what, what the average row pace was, because then you can just a little bit more easily extract, like the average mile pace.
Speaker 1:But a dude rows at 150, they do their 3K at 150, and that might be a little conservative. That puts them at an 11 minute, an 11 minute 3K and for the average dude who takes 51 minutes to do this workout, that leaves you with 40 minutes to do six miles and just the quick math there is like got it. So top men would run six minute miles and row at a 140.
Speaker 2:And they were 16 seconds off, which includes getting in and out of the rower and that start where it was based on your open finish, which was funny because Tia was buried in the back.
Speaker 1:That's incredible and had to sprint past everybody, yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so six minute mile and 140 on the rower for 46 minutes that's.
Speaker 1:That's the context of a you know, a lower level athlete, affiliate athlete, whatever needs to hear it's like yeah, I know you're stoked on those 130 400 meter repeats, I'm gonna need you to do 24 of them for an hour yeah, and snack on the 3k row in the middle of it all right, uh, event two all crossed up.
Speaker 2:This one ended up at the highest level, which I fucking love, being a total bar workout. This was a. Are you going to break, which almost everyone did on the second set of 30? And are you going to break strategically? Are you going to break because you are forced to, because you could tell the difference between someone dropping down and jumping back up and then like shit, like that was too many toes to bar.
Speaker 2:It's like two sets of 30, like come on, you know, like not not too bad, what are their hip flexors feel like after you know, run, row, run, like that kind of thing. So I enjoyed that, that part of it. You could tell that it was. One of the things that you could tell about most of these workouts is the ability to write a workout and then test it and then figure out what was missing and put it in and that sort of deals. Um, that was something that, at the highest level, you love to see the shiny movements be removed as, like, we're all going to do these in a very similar amount of time, sans like outliers. This is a fucking toe-to-bar workout like what?
Speaker 1:that's pretty nuts. Yeah, it's a weird workout. We've seen the single dumbbell shouldered overhead like that's a little bit of a wow factor with the weight, but there's just not that many reps and we've seen them move that thing. I would have guessed that the wall walk had a greater effect on that, but it didn't, and I think the volume of crossovers was low enough that lots of different strategies allowed an athlete to get through 20 of them relatively quickly, and I'm glad that's not. It's like it can be. I'm glad it was a. It would be a movement where it's like if you can't do it, you're going to find yourself at the bottom, but if, as long as you can do it, like you can get yourself in the hunt in other ways, sure.
Speaker 1:Right, I think that's how a weird movement like that should be kind of like presented.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the only real snafu of the weekend was the climbing couplet. So we had the pegboard and then the complex with the squat clean and the front squat. Something was going on with-.
Speaker 1:Someone WD-40'd lane five again, yeah.
Speaker 2:The data that got put onto Reddit was very inconclusive, yeah, so I will kind of put that out there. It was clear, though, that, for some reason, certain ones were either drying faster or were slicker. There was something different about them, and the proof of that is if tia can't do something, something's up right yeah right, like is that?
Speaker 2:that's the. That's the. Like, wait a minute. Like because I won't lie, we were doing the, we were doing the live stream and when the women started out the way that they did and he won and it was 15 minute time cap and it's not the kind of thing where basically, there was like four minutes of work in that, in that workout or five minutes of work so it's like, okay, what are the other 10 minutes?
Speaker 2:So you can fucking guess what the other 10 minutes are. So that was one where it was kind of disappointing, because I like the fact that we get 10 pegboard climbs so it's not like fast Twitch guy or girl can fly up, you know, because like the person who won that workout and put on the most of his show was Fisa Goffey, who stayed just balled up the whole time like 90 degree angle at the knee and at the elbow, up and down, like really locked into this great position, um, and then you just had to wonder, you didn't really know what was going on with certain athletes. Like again, t is the one where it's like, okay, something's up here, because like there are other athletes who are good at pegboard climbs and who are also notorious for having meltdowns in the middle of workouts, like who knows, like that sort of thing. But it just didn't end up being like what it probably could have been.
Speaker 2:Like it would have been cool to see someone have to decide going into the two and going into the one when they were going to go back up the shining moments, though, we're watching the people move those barbells and barbells. Honestly, that would have buried people in previous years, be such an afterthought and not only an afterthought, but like there were athletes who, like, took way too long to pick it up, just based on like perception, and then smoked the barbell and it's like your workout could have been 40 seconds faster if you had just known that you can clean 205 or 305.
Speaker 2:If you had just known that you can clean 205 or 305. But like seeing them attack that barbell was just like another moment of like. This is the progression, this is the thing. So I would say probably the worst event of the weekend, but not for like. It was probably tested, it was probably programmed in the way that it should have been, but something weird was going on with the venue, with the equipment, with the like. I can't imagine they wanted it to be shown. Yeah.
Speaker 1:I imagine it went that way in testing. It's literally something going to be something as dumb, as like where were the fucking pegboards stored before they got installed? Or like just dumb shit like that which sucks um right and the teams went before, so were they all you know?
Speaker 2:just lube it up for someone exactly, yeah so you hate to see stuff like that, but it's it's kind of part of the thing. It's like like something that's been dealt with in the past. You know, with the sleds and all that. That is one thing from the movement tracker no sleds, crazy. Yeah, like that is one thing from the movement tracker.
Speaker 1:No sleds, crazy yeah.
Speaker 2:Like, like, there's also the opposite movement tracker right, like, oh my God, what did they not put in there?
Speaker 1:Yeah, a little less, not as much like strong man.
Speaker 2:I feel like there's usually a I think it's got to do with the fact that it's three day.
Speaker 1:Yeah no, sandbag no.
Speaker 2:No GHD sit-ups.
Speaker 1:Farmers carry just the yoke sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Yep, thankfully no freestanding handstand push-ups. All right, my favorite workout of the weekend Albany grip trip. I just love a disgusting time domain MGW triplet that puts everyone on notice, like whether you're a CrossFitter or honestly. This to me is more like look at this shit that we can do, that you fucking couch potatoes can't do, right, yeah, there's a lot of people out in the gym that can run pretty hard for 400s, pick up a heavy barbell and get upside down in some form or fashion, and that is when you separate yourself from the crossfit community fucking awesome like it's such a cool thing that we have 150 people that get upside down Like, yeah, that's awesome.
Speaker 2:So it was fucking, it was gnarly. It was really well programmed. It was definitely like, uh, like there was some strategy and, like, knowing yourself, I think the strategies had to be varied for different people. Like I love handstand walking, I love running, I, I love deadlifting. All those things are like like there were a few people that loved all three, clearly, but like, all of those things present these different challenges based on what you're good at and what you're not good at. Um, so it was just cool to see like, is the first person off the runner going to be the first person to get back? They added the 50 feet extra 50 feet to the final round, which was definitely a thing. There were some people that went all 50 feet in a row. Most people had to kick down, whereas the rest of the workout they were doing a lot of it as 50 and 50, but like really kind of flirting with threshold and maybe racing another person. So I would say that was my favorite, my favorite workout of the weekend.
Speaker 2:I just like uh, I like, uh. I don't like to do them, but I like a like a, just a no man's land time domain with those types of.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'd say it's my also my favorite event more because of just like it's just a fucking classic CrossFit triplet five rounds for time, three movements. One one of them is a 400 meter run barbell movement gymnat like exact mgw. Like you said, I was also like I was, I was watching, I caught a little bit of this event, the one it's such a small thing, but one thing I watched that I was like, that was kind of just like encompassed, how impressive it was, was like the lat. I was watching the heat, a men's heat, and it was like the last handful of athletes finish or they were on their last round and a bunch of athletes had to go to singles on the, on the deadlift yeah but just how fucking easily a dude like hinged forward after a mile and a quarter of running and 60, 50 or 50 some odd other deadlifts, just muscle, fucks that barbell just to just stands it up.
Speaker 1:It's like I can't do any touch and go because my grips fucked, my hamstrings are fucked, but I will just like bend over and just stand this thing up like it's a broomstick.
Speaker 1:It was fucking wild and it was just like a like how it's crazy to see like the progress in that. I remember you know, remember how how many years ago was it that three by three rounds of seven deadlifts at four, oh, five at you know, at I don't, was that regionals or whatever. It was like ridiculous. And now we're doing we've got 60 deadlifts at 350 pounds, which might as well be closer to like three, 75, 400 with that axle bar and just yeah, just watching.
Speaker 2:This one's a hat tip to the people who pay attention. Not many people watching that event are going to understand. They just see the three separate things happening and they see a race and it's like watching your favorite sport with someone who likes the sport but doesn't like participate or something like that. Like the there's, there is a hat tip in there of like dude, 60 deads at 350, slash 220 with an axle bar and 550 feet of handstand walking. Oh, this must be a super long workout. Also, 2000 meters of running. It's basically medium. That's what they're up to these days, right? Like holy shit, this is just nuts to watch one rep max back squat. There was some impressive shit going on. Did you see colton's 570?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, yeah, I I. What I saw was a leaderboard where, like 20th place and above was like a 480 back squat for the men and like a, you know, 300, 280, 290 for the women. That's absurd to like the, the four, the 575 is like that. I mean that the, the number of men who squatted over 500, the number of women who squatted over 300, that that's insane. Like we're bordering on, like I'm preparing for a power lifting meet and these dudes are do, these guys and girls are doing this?
Speaker 1:you know, halfway through, having just done 60 deadlifts at 350, the find find me a power lifter, an olympic weight lifter who can, who can match that, do anything even remotely similar to just just the albany grip trip workout and then put that kind of weight on their back and actually squat it as well as some of these athletes did. It was just it's so dumb, but the yeah, I mean we're like I still want to see that, I still want that. Uh, did they? They did the five the mile, the one mile in the one rep max back. I want them to redo that workout. I need to see that five minute mile, 500 pound back squat in like one event.
Speaker 2:You could extrapolate it. They've never done it, but you could extrapolate it from last year to this year Because they did the mile last year?
Speaker 1:Was it last year that they did the mile and did they do the back squat as well, or was it just the mile?
Speaker 2:Nope, just the mile and then the only other times back squat's been in there is in the total. I think Ricky was right around five minutes, but that was it, it's just that's so dumb.
Speaker 1:It is I had that leaderboard pulled up with weight.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, that was fun. I honestly probably the most frustrated that I was as a coach, with either the athletes going rogue or their coach giving them asinine advice. One of the worst strategic elements of the sport is not only having to deal with the fact that your athletes hate it when you tell them to lift heavy at competitions, but then the coach is either acquiescing to that or giving just really bad advice. It was just really annoying seeing some of the jumps that took place. It was like easy money for other athletes to jump one to five spots through being smart. But I mean that's like athlete IQ.
Speaker 2:Obviously we talk about it enough. It's part of it.
Speaker 1:Do you think that's more a function of like not being able to see what other athletes are lifting, or just like just poor strategy?
Speaker 2:No, it's just the thing they knew. They had all fucking day to wait in between and they could see previous heats and the coaches knew where certain people were at Like. One of the people that would have done like top five-ish did a 60 pound jump for his last lift and failed it.
Speaker 1:What, what the fuck is that?
Speaker 2:Like, if you can lift that much, why didn't you do full five in the last round instead of 470 or whatever the fuck it was? It's crazy. All right, so the next two. We got throttle up and hammer down these sort of back to back. I don't think that note is correct. It says starting seven minutes after IE six, but it definitely wasn't a seven minute gap. Maybe they meant at the seven minute mark.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was going to say probably seven minute cap and then starting at seven Probably what that was Probably starting. Seven minutes after event six starts.
Speaker 2:So it would make the yep, yep. So this one was kind of your classic Sprinterville, but you know it's at the game. So they got to do it back to back and they got to add a weight vest to one of them, that sort of thing. I will admit when I'm wrong. I thought when I saw the boxes laid out I thought it all and the fatigue of it all was there to the point where it really helped tell the story of the event and like where people were at, but like when they were kind of fresh in the first one and because they looked weird doing burpee box jump overs with vests, like you can see the vest kind of flying up as they jumped.
Speaker 2:I was like, eh, do we need this? But then I kind of understood. It kind of made sense after that. And if you suck at bar muscle ups at that level you're going to be in big trouble. The capacity of some people on that movement is so silly and it's just like the most stark contrast between I'm good at bar muscle ups and I'm not.
Speaker 1:I did like super, super fast math on, like the timing of that one and I was like minute and a half bike, two and a half, three and a half to get through the bar muscle ups four and a half five, six minute, like six minute workout and then it's like 417, 509. It's like Jesus Christ, like different, yeah, that like totally different game.
Speaker 2:We saw it last year. They did the back to back to finish with the kind of similar thruster and I think it was like thruster and chest to bar and then thruster and bar muscle up with the back-to-back thing, and we used to see if someone was going to win the event they were going to do the like. Call it the james newberry of like. I'll take first in this one and last in the next one and it'll get me more points, and then you see people at the top of both, and I mean just the expression of like.
Speaker 2:In a vacuum I can do this thing, but hey, guess what? I can also rest for two minutes and go do it all over again, even though I was at threshold, like, truly at the end of what I could do. It's just like another huge thing of like, wow, the progressions there. But also you could program that at almost any level 35 cal bike, 28 bar muscle ups, 24 box jump overs even more so for the first one If you remove that vest like. And then you can again give people, if you dare to give them context of what these people are up to compared to what they're up to.
Speaker 2:Right Going dark. We've talked about it a lot over the last few years the obsession with the pulling gymnastics not having as much shoulder to overhead, not having as much handstand push-up volume, that sort of thing. The balance was definitely more there this year, I think. I think I counted five to three on the gymnastics side, which normally you get you know if you can even call handstand walking, yeah um, can you?
Speaker 2:handstand walking is isn't really the same thing. There are definitely athletes out there that are very good at handstand walking and not the greatest at handstand push-ups. So if you sort of looked at those two things, this was one where I think I've two, made two main thoughts on this, or maybe three. One I think they were finally okay with. We're going to make the fans watch them get stuck.
Speaker 2:I think they very much knew that this is going to take a while and the funny thing is I'm talking two to three minutes for some athletes.
Speaker 2:So like oh my God, but you just normally don't see. I think someone said Austin Hatfield joked that he was going to go unbroken on the handstand pushups Spoiler. He very much did not, not even close, had to go to singles. But like you just don't see people like that standing around, especially on a gymnastics movement. So that's kind of part of it. The other thing is because of the movement tracker, because of the lack of pressing, like that ends up creating a trend of people not training that thing as much. So you don't have the prowess of the like person who's unbelievable at muscle ups, legless rope climbs, more of these. Like there aren't as many people that are able to do that. So the people who did really?
Speaker 2:well in that movement very much seemed like outliers and it wasn't maybe directly as correlated to fitness as potentially some of the other movements were Like. There were some people on the you know more mid tier leaderboard that were closer to the top on that one and then kind of vice versa, you had a really high level athlete. Struggle with that one which is kind of a good thing.
Speaker 1:I think it's appropriate and necessary, like it just makes it. It's very much a test, right. It's like, is that a good training piece? Probably not right. Like to get somebody stuck. I'd rather get somebody to build the confidence in multiple rounds and stuff. And we're not we're talking about two different things here. But like 30 reps with the parallettes, it's like you can either do this or you can't, and I would rather see, like this kind of lower volume. Obviously 30 in the middle of a workout's pretty egregious or like is pretty steep, but like relative to like. I'd rather see that than the like. What do they do with the? It's like chest to bar handstand pushup with a vest. I would rather see, I would rather see the deficit personally than a million kipping handstand pushups or or even even strict handstand push-ups like I'd rather see quarter extremity like that really.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly that quarter extremity thing. We can test the overhead strength and stability which I think they did in other movements, like the dumbbell shouldered overhead, the handstand walk, thruster rope, climb overhead, lunge, that sort of thing. And yeah, I think it's. Whether it was intentional to like force people to just watch these athletes stare at the wall doesn't really matter. The purpose is to find the fittest person and it's like this is where we see that big spread of like. This workout takes anywhere from eight to 14 minutes at the highest level, nine to nine minutes for the fastest and almost twice as long for the slowest if we had let them finish. And again, it's just a it's, it's a reminder that it's a test. It's like can you do it? Here's a large enough number that I'm going to know if you can bullshit your way through this movement, or if it's just like nah, you just you ran out of stamina and like you're going to pay for it on the leaderboard.
Speaker 2:So if you want to feel bad about your echo bike, go do the math on the back half of that workout and how fast people did that. There were some absurd times and they had the. I don't know if you saw Hunter. They had the calorie counter in it. They this year.
Speaker 1:I saw the digital rep counters. Did they do it for the calories too? Did they connect to the monitor? That's sick.
Speaker 2:I don't know if there were lanes where you could be far enough away that, like one, would get in the way of the other in terms of your eye line.
Speaker 2:But like the people who were next to each other, who were competing for certain spots, were definitely like. It was funny to see people on the C2 bikes were looking at each other's monitors, which has been something that's happened for years. But having the calorie counter there in knowing okay, so I just did this gross 10 minute workout and turns out we're within one or two calories of each other and we got 10 left like having to go to that place. That was the one where people were like like truly tripping and falling, going over the like finish mat. So it's cool. Like you, you had that. Like the person who was the first to the yoke never did well in the workout, which was funny, but part of that was probably them being like I suck at handstand pushups.
Speaker 1:I better get my ass down there. I gotta do something right. Get my ass over there. You're going to fucking punt it.
Speaker 2:And, but then you do for everyone. You get that. You get the back down and like, okay, this is now actually an echo bike workout. It's like separate workouts within one, which made it, I think, a little bit more digestible for people to watch running isabel the most obvious one to me that it was tested and tweaked. It was fucking perfect. Yeah, it was so good watching people like the body language and the like hypoxia like of them running in the later rounds was perfect, gorgeous, and it was the right weight.
Speaker 2:It was the right reps it. There is still that phenomenon, though, that I've never been fit enough to to understand, of the like I can do 29 of these easy, but I can't do 30. I don't fuck.
Speaker 2:I've never understood that people who, like like it happened with the overhead walking lunge just cruising and then dropping it as they go, like what is that? Is it like stressed out about? Can I or can I finish this? Like just the kind of thing where you're like fraser's not putting that, fucking, like that, he's not failing that right like that sort of thing?
Speaker 2:or is it like you let off the gas because you can see the? I want to know what it is because I've never understood Like you failed the final thruster. You did all of the other ones it never looked like you were going to fail.
Speaker 1:It was a 29 rep max, not a 30 rep max. What is that?
Speaker 2:I don't know, I don't get it, but anyways, fascinating and definitely helped tell the story of like. We haven't talked really much at all about individuals in this told the story of the progression of Jason Hopper, because him bursting onto the scene the year that he beat Medeiros in his first year at semifinals was like holy shit, like who is this guy? Where did this guy come from? And then you know ups and downs and changes throughout his career. It was very clear that he sometimes didn't make the greatest decisions on the floor and then also very clear that he carried whatever emotion he had from the previous event positive or negative with him into the next one.
Speaker 2:So he I don't know if you saw went to failure and was like, basically, you know whatever first, second, third, fourth in the workout, yeah, with the leader's jersey on, going into the final. So it's like is the narrative here? We go again Like is he going to fuck up the final, like that sort of thing, yeah, and then to see him know, knowing he did not need to win the final, drop the barbell during the lunge and like take a moment and then finish like I don't know that a previous version of him would have done that and like.
Speaker 2:People have reached out to me and been like were you shocked that he won? And it's like well, no, I mean, I don't know if you were one of the people. Do you remember being at that gym and seeing him do his like recovery row, like a 135?
Speaker 1:before the games one year oh my dear, like he's.
Speaker 2:He's definitely one of the ones where, like I don't think the conversation about professional athletes really fits the bill. And cross everyone wants to know. Like could, fucking you know, randy moss win the crossfit games, whatever? Yeah, like choose your athlete. He's the version of like clearly some absurd genetics, but like has enough of the right mix of fast twitch, slow twitch. You know he was a wide receiver at clemson, like you know, one of the best football schools in the country so like that level of an athlete but then also has sort of this side of things.
Speaker 2:But for me it's such an unknown when you know someone is struggling on the mental side and the execution side to know right yeah, like you always feel like holy shit.
Speaker 2:The sky's the fucking limit. But like you could also see them self-sabotage in perpetuity or quit at some point because they're like I don't understand what's happening to me, why am I not winning, like that kind of things? Yeah, that the precision of how shitty running isabel was started to help develop that narrative. That then showed people and probably showed him personally that like it doesn't get any bigger than that. Yeah, going into the final other people in striking distance with the leader's jersey and then in the workout that we're going to talk about now, just execute top to bottom the way that you need to.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that workout sucks. That's such a nice that that is a well like, like you said, tested.
Speaker 2:Oh, I assuming it was people thought it was too light tested.
Speaker 1:No, that's so good.
Speaker 2:Fucking run harder like god damn it sure the problem run and also placed in the exact right part of the weekend, right sure yeah the amount of fucking fatigue to all of the shit that you need, including your essential.
Speaker 1:Yeah I think you gotta just you gotta assume castro was like what is the maximum weight? That is always touch and go. Yeah, that also forces people that to run hard. You do that at 185. That's a. That's a regionals 2014 recovery jog between legless rope climbs right, you do 135. It's like barbells borderline, negligible for these guys. It's like there's a sweet spot, like we got to find it. Is it 100 feet? Is it 200 feet? Is it 300 feet? Whatever it is obviously some logistical limitations, but like and just in that, in that that time domain, that three minute, two to three minute time domain, is just like, like that, that hypoxia, that leg pump feeling and it's just like you love to see two within a second of 10 spots.
Speaker 2:That workout's not going to be done faster than two and a half minutes. That's about the line. Yeah, so seeing a 235 and a 237 is just like that person had to have been unwell yeah, what was inside, what was in that person's blood when they finished that?
Speaker 1:yeah, so I called your. Let me stick this needle in your quad.
Speaker 2:Tell me what's happening all right, uh, yeah, seriously, the finale thrusters. Rope climbs overhead walking lunges. We got to bring it up. We got to talk about it again. Some of the rope climb technique was appalling.
Speaker 1:You'd all misfit Chim Portland members to appear, put on a fucking clinic. Put on the yeah, come on. Put on the clinic. We're going to show every crossfit game.
Speaker 2:So there was an athlete at our training camp in Philly that was doing something on the rope that I thought I had never seen before, and then now I see it everywhere. It's like the first time you see a Tesla and then every car that you I don't know. It's weird, so. So what they do is they have a beautiful footlock and then they get into this, they bring their hips to the rope, but they're in this like almost ass to grass squat.
Speaker 2:So their knees are like and then they go hand over hand, because typically when you see someone pulling too much and going hand over hand, foothold is trash right, like that's typically what you see. And there are some people who so the correct way would be to also stand up when you bring your hips. And there's some people that do the hybrid version, which is less egregious, where they go hand over hand while they're doing the right thing with their legs. We don't want that, but like that's a nice gray area of you're doing pretty well in so many fucking athletes whether it's fatigue of the weekend or that's just the way that they do them but like really, really good athletes were doing that and it's like dude, you gotta go. Like that front rack at this point becomes a grip element Like everyone's everyone knows what. Like having to deal with that and some version of some variation of Fran feels like. And the beautiful element of this is Olivia Kersetter jumped two spots to be on the podium with just gorgeous rope climbs yeah.
Speaker 2:Like in every way. So one of the things that you get at a high level is the athletes that do it, and less pulls Right and while from a technical standpoint, a lot of it looks right, it's going to really going to just going to gas people out. And hers were like like almost exactly a 90 degree angle between her femur and her torso, like like not getting that knee all the way to the chest, not having to have that, like not getting that knee all the way to the chest, not having to have that. And then stand hand-hand, like 90 degrees, stand up hand-hand and just every single time. And there were other athletes that were doing it, but that to me was like because you could see Tia doing the squatty version.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm looking at her right now.
Speaker 2:And the view is of both of them. And it's like no offense to Olivia olivia I mean at her age coming in third at the crossfit games and her trajectory is just incredible. So hats off to her for everything that she did over the course of the weekend. How much she's improving. But tia would and should probably beat her in that workout, I mean that's that's right up her alley, like I guess everything's right.
Speaker 2:But just see, like that's why she had to slow down and maybe she was doing a victory lap, like that's one of the things we never know, and those. But like she looked like she was hurting a little bit, sure, and olivia just kept doing what you're supposed to do on the rope and there just shouldn't be. You saw it on the deficit handstand push-ups, but like, again, those don't come up as often.
Speaker 1:It shouldn't be low hanging fruit on traditional movements at that level, right so, yeah, you'd think he should be doing this climbing higher way, zeus, 18 feet, okay, yeah like everybody needed extra pull. You don't get really a jump off those crash pads.
Speaker 2:That was one thing with Hopper is like he knew how to use his length.
Speaker 1:I think it was a three-pole climb for him. That takes a huge advantage for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, Paced really well, so really cool. Final Loved the 100-foot overhead walking lunge. I love seeing someone do that unbroken at that point in the weekend. I know it's not necessary and not even necessarily like the right thing to do in the workout, but man, there were a few people who just put that fucking thing over their head. I don't know what it is. Danielle Brandon with overhead lunges she looked like she was running People were wobbling one step at a time, gather steps. She was boom, boom, boom, boom just passing people at a speed that made absolutely no sense. So cool Final really rude to go.
Speaker 2:Ascending rep scheme 21 thrusters at one, 35 and seven rope climbs Definitely a good way to end the weekend, and another one where you're just like come on. The average times on this are nine and 11 minutes.
Speaker 2:Let's kick the clock back you know, four or five years and have people do this and times. None of that would look the same. So like. That's one of the reasons why I like can't quit this like thing in this sport and what I do is so much related to like. How do they keep getting this much better like, and of course we're following along with how much better they're getting and trying to get our athletes you know that much better and you know page just keeps getting better year over year and we're trying to do that for everybody else. But it's just still blows my mind, even though it's the intention of what we're doing. You'd think that the ceiling would be lower, but it's clearly not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hope they keep doing events or maybe even include more of them that allow the casual viewer to have some sort of appreciation for like the difficulty here. I think that's one of my biggest gripes about the games in general is that it's just so. It's so difficult for an average everyday person to tune in and have any concept of what's going on, like you can even even a back squat. It's like it's hard to put into context how impressive the fact that you know more than 10 women or more than 10 men had a 500 pound back squat and were also running six and a half minute miles, not but a day earlier, squatting 350 pounds, over 20 of them squatting 200 pounds or 300 pounds or more. It'd be cool that I like the events. That gives the everyday person some context. The one mile runs, the easy example.
Speaker 1:But yeah when you see like that's the and that's the easiest one for me to look at too. It's like the one rep max back squat and in some you know something like isabel which has context compared to, you know the entire. Like we're gonna do isabel at the affiliate here in a few weeks and like fuck a tooth. I feel like I'd be pretty happy with a 235 isabel at 135 without the thousand meters of running and these guys are, you know, most. Most affiliate athletes are going to lose to the games. Athletes in the running, heavier version, um, and just having context for the progress of those athletes is really fucking cool.
Speaker 2:I used to still like when, when we would do certain variations of them, or people would watch the games and we would do them when someone would be going, I would call out so and so is done now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would do that. Congratulations to you just finished. It's like great. I have three rounds to go in this five round workout.
Speaker 2:I'm still on the 20 wall walks. I'm on the buy-in. Is that similar? Yes, so kind of full circle. Coming back to the beginning, and I honestly don't even think I said this at the beginning.
Speaker 2:Now that I think of it, I haven't really enjoyed watching CrossFit in the past and I'm going to give some context to that because that may sound weird. When I don't have one of my athletes in it, I struggle to watch it as a sport, but I think the context was always really important. So, like I was viewing it as I don't care about this because I don't have someone in it, and I really enjoyed watching these games, um, basically from start to finish. And I think it was because I told myself this is what you do, this is your job. There's a lot of context in this in terms of programming, strategy, mindset, all of that stuff is on full display here. So you need to watch it to gather that information, and I think that's why I potentially enjoyed it when I wouldn't have in the past. But also maybe it was just a little bit more enjoyable to watch potentially than previous years. I'd have to go back and sort of look at that stuff to audit it a little bit. So it's a weird time for CrossFit and for the sport in general.
Speaker 2:But I think what just took place is a step in the right direction for repair of some of those things, because it sounds like the atmosphere was pretty cool, the programming was good, a lot of young blood in the sport, a lot of you know kind of unknown names to a lot of people, and like you kind of got to feel like you have that bright future right. Like if at any point in a sport like I don't know if this, you know, maybe happens in golf. Because like sometimes I look at the leaderboard and I'm like fucking, whatever, lee westwood and sergio garcia are still like what is this? What am I looking at right now? Sure, so like it's cool to see those things and then having parody on the men's side is awesome. Like you really don't know who's gonna win. Like you really felt like there were like six or seven of them that had a chance when it comes to that.
Speaker 2:No, I have not addressed the fact that I said no one could beat Jeff. He didn't look great, he didn't. I wonder if too many eggs in the wrong basket, too much competing so far this year. I wonder. I wonder what the? And he doesn't strike me as the kind of guy who's going to give anyone a fucking narrative about anything. I don't think he's going to tell us.
Speaker 1:Out of the gate hot, but like his whole thing was he was like the strongest guy.
Speaker 2:He won the total 2020.
Speaker 1:And his hips looked weird in the back squat.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'd be curious to watch his back squat at the ranch because he looked very imbalanced, like he was squatting to one side.
Speaker 1:Why did Roman do so bad in running Isabel?
Speaker 2:And obviously like whatever. What's that?
Speaker 1:I didn't sorry. I'm just looking through the leaderboard general kind of scores. I said why did Roman do so bad at running?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I, yeah. I mean, you wonder a lot of it has to do with, like someone who thought they were going to do really well overall sitting in whatever it is, a certain place, like does that have to do with it? You saw some people definitely just like, definitely, like people who just did not attack that correctly they went way too hot and it always showed up in the sixth round of snatches, which was funny.
Speaker 1:Fifth round of snatches yeah, uh, weird year for sure, I think, for the same reason that CrossFit itself is a little bit lost right now. I think it's the same thing applies to the games and frazier and tia and thank. Probably probably everybody in crossfit, including the athletes, should be thankful that tia was there, having like that storyline still alive and well for her and to like unsurprisingly, you know, win yet I personally like the parody better.
Speaker 2:I like it because, because, I think the narrative of the men in a lot of ways was like there didn't used to be 10 people who could do this, and now there are yeah and maybe it's not.
Speaker 1:Maybe it's not so much the fact that it's tight, it's that there's just there's. There's no story behind. I don't know any of these athletes I knew rich you don't really pay attention to it either. That's true but I, but I like, yeah, okay, fair enough. I think I feel like I've heard the narrative more of just like there is no, like we need. There needs to be a, there's needs to be a superhero like t is the superhero.
Speaker 1:Right now there's no yeah, there's just no, there's no equivalent. I feel like it's the same thing when, like you're, when your local team, like when the trying to think about a most recent example in new england, when, like you know, we had a, we had a sports team that was just so maybe it was the red socks like when they finally, like, won a couple world series and then just like we just fell off the map. Or when, tom, maybe brady brady's probably the easiest example when brady left, it's like yeah, I just don't fucking care about the patriot.
Speaker 1:I'm like a. I'm like a the epitome of a fair weather football fan. And it was like if Brady's throwing like I'm watching.
Speaker 1:And it's easy to say when it's the, you know, maybe the best player to have ever played, but it's like there's something that drags even like the least, the smallest football fan to go watch. Like something outstanding happen and like when that went away it was like you think I'm going to stop. I'm going to tune in, I'm going to find that illegal stream and flip on the Patriots game. No, brady's not playing. Who am I watching? Like I have no reason to watch.
Speaker 2:The part of it that I would agree with is where the narratives and the storytelling is coming from is very segmented. It's coming from all these different places and I said this to to erica and page on the live stream, like I the customer behavior of. When hq released a video back in the day, everyone watched it. It was the fucking talk of the town and they finally listened and brought them back.
Speaker 2:And I don't it was I don't fucking care, like, and I want to and I want to watch them and like I should probably, if I'm gonna be like guys, you got to make these fucking videos, but like it's been so long that it's like not part of my kind of wore off to watch it and now you basically have the like really dedicated fans are going to different places honestly based on like, like, potentially on like a political view or like who they are as a person.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they have different narratives that are kind of there. So that part of it I would agree with it. There isn't like a consolidated voice necessarily of what's going on, and one of the issues was like our version of that was supposed to be Adler. He doesn't want to. I don't think he wants to do any media. I think he's fucking interested in that. So luckily, the guy who won had a narrative about him that then went away and has since come back. Essentially.
Speaker 2:So it could be the start of that, but like people can't wrap their minds around why Medeiros didn't just take over and win like eight in a row you know it's like a really weird, like it should be a good thing that a different person wins every year but at the same time, like dynasties and those stories, like people like you're saying, really latch on to that stuff.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I watched a 30 for 30 on when Wayne Gretzky got traded from Edmonton to Los Angeles. Talk about a dynasty and just fucking meltdown. So crazy Great. I didn't really know all the context in the background to that, but that was a. That was a super interesting story. I've watched so many YouTube videos about like, like the.
Speaker 2:There's one about when he got traded to the blues and how much of a psycho egomaniac the guy was who was running that team. Yeah, really fascinating. Total, total side tangent. If you, if you give wayne gretzky zero goals in his career, he is the all still the all-time points leader in NHL history what does that many assists?
Speaker 1:he has that many assists, nuts, yeah yeah, zero goals.
Speaker 2:Still more points than everyone. That's so fucked that's hilarious so crazy yep. Well, people are wondering if the same thing's about to happen, because if mcdavid says you guys aren't like, you can't just give me leon, like I need like a team but like if they, they're, this is damned if you do, damned if you don't like.
Speaker 2:It happens in sports where the team's like, no, we're not trading this person at the trade deadline and then they sign somewhere else the next year and they get nothing, yeah so yeah, that's interesting. It's funny you hear him talk about edmonton. He's like they're like what do you like about it? He's like uh, it's like a month out of the year where you're warm sounds like he really fucking loves it, really selling it there. Send him on down to la repeat the cycle.
Speaker 1:That would be fucking insane it would it would, I'll say, of all the places to go, especially now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that would be all right, yeah, that's, uh, an hour and 52 minutes of crossfit games. A little programming recap there I want to do this. Might need to be a separate video, but I do want to like show people, like I wonder, tell me, send me a DM, talk about this in Telegram, whatever. If I showed you guys how I would use this to program, can I get like 200 views? You know what I mean? Like what's worth it for me to sit down and screen share and show you guys what I would do with this information kind of content that I've always wanted to do, but it felt like it's definitely niche.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're already niche enough, yeah maybe I'll just do it for myself. So, yeah, nice, uh nice long podcast about the games and how we look at these things and all that good stuff. I'm sure we'll get back to our regularly scheduled programming next week. Anything else? Hunter Negative Did we do it?
Speaker 1:See ya.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. Please head to the link in bio on our Instagram to get signed up for our programs on Strivee or Fitter. If you're looking for affiliate programming, you can head to teammisfitcom. Click on the sign up now button and you get two weeks for free at PushPress, sugarwad or StreamFit. See you next week Later.
Speaker 1:Biggest bunch of misfits I ever seen either.