Misfit Podcast
Misfit Athletics provides information and programming to competitive Crossfit athletes of all levels.
Misfit Podcast
WFP: The Fitness Battle in Indy - E.353
What happens when an entirely new fitness competition bursts onto the scene with high production values and a roster of elite athletes? We take you inside the inaugural World Fitness Project (WFP) event in Indianapolis for a comprehensive, no-holds-barred review of this potentially game-changing addition to the competitive fitness landscape.
Drawing from firsthand experience at the event, we dissect everything from the competition programming to production quality, athlete treatment, and media access. The verdict? Surprisingly smooth operations for a first-time event, with punctual heats, excellent warm-up spaces, and professional staff that created a positive athlete experience throughout. The programming leaned heavily toward pulling gymnastics with a preference for shorter time domains—a consistent thread that's emerging across competitive fitness.
What stood out most was the incredible closeness of the field. The fitness level demonstrated was so uniform that athletes were separated by mere seconds, with dramatic moments like the men's leader dropping to fourth place on the final event due to a single missed lunge. This speaks volumes about how the sport has evolved, where formerly "outlier" performances have become the standard across entire fields of elite competitors.
But the bigger question looms: can events like this capture the casual fan? Despite excellent execution, attendance appeared moderate, particularly on Friday and Sunday. We explore the challenge of explaining "what this is" to potential spectators outside the fitness community bubble and discuss what might be needed for long-term growth in a crowded competition landscape.
Whether you're curious about alternatives to the CrossFit Games or simply interested in the evolution of competitive fitness, this episode offers valuable insights into what may be the future of the sport. Have you watched any WFP events? Let us know your thoughts on how these newer competitions compare to established formats!
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Good morning, misfits. You are tuning into another episode of the Misfit Podcast. On today's episode we will be recapping World Fitness Project, event 1. I thought it would be cool to dig into this from the perspective of maybe like a review. You know, there's like the ambiguity of what this thing is and how it's going to go and whether it's going to stick around. So I figured we'd start with basically just jumping into how the event was and then Hunter and I can break down the programming and all that good stuff. Before we get into that, as usual, housekeeping and life chat.
Speaker 2:Misfit affiliate Cortez phase has started. This is week one. If you're already on it, you know what happened yesterday. Hunter, I don't know if you participated yesterday. If that was as as as fun, maybe we, maybe that's part of life chat. Um, as expected, but we've you know every once in a while. You got the, you got the uh member that wants a little extra juice and they got a whole gallon of juice yesterday. So, um, you can head to team misfitcom. No, the workout. Yeah, there's no need to talk about anything other than the workout. You can go to teammisfitcom and click on sign up now. You will get a two-week free trial at your choice of StreamFit, pushpress or SugarWad. Also, misfit Athletics off-season block two gets started Monday, may 26th. The next episode of this podcast will be a deep dive into that and if you want to get started a little bit early, you can head to the link in bio on our social media, click your way through to Fitter and get signed up with a free trial. Gentlemen live chat what's good?
Speaker 3:Hello.
Speaker 1:I really think I need a new putter, if I'm being completely honest with you.
Speaker 2:That's what it is, dude. The weight's off, the balance is off.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm not rolling the rock like we need to to get that handicap down. So, yeah, that's probably the most impress or most pressing thing happening. I am still in, uh pretty deep mortal combat with amazon. I did receive a response to one of my 18 emails. Um, it's good, hit right. It was a yeah, it was a canned response from sarah, um, who it's unclear exactly who works for amazon and what they do, uh, but there seems to be a a pretty, a pretty large, uh separation between whoever works in call centers, um, whoever works in a warehouse and then everybody else. But, yeah, amazon is rapidly becoming my Well, I already hate it. You can change my mind. I know I'm an important customer, amazon, you could change my mind.
Speaker 2:Amazon. I'm pretty sure he's just requesting to use your website.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm literally just asking to give you money, but due to, like the, an exquisite, why don't you just pretend you're?
Speaker 2:taking the high road though Hunter, and be like I am boycotting Amazon because they ruin small business and like you'd be part of the solution.
Speaker 1:Just boycott Amazon because you have to I mean, I mean, it's, it's, it's getting to that point, but I feel like such a fucking hipster dipshit. No, I'm a, I'm a good capitalist. Like give me my products at a, at a, at an affordable rate, and delivered to my door, and you, fucking twat waffles are just preventing, like a perfectly normal customer from using your website. And it's like, well, we can't track the hackers who hack into amazon accounts. Like those guys are good to go. But like man, you and that that order history of face lotion and golf gloves. Like it was just that one day that you decided to order 12 playstation controllers and an apple watch and then request $15,000 of refunds. Like we knew you were up to something. When, after those, all those orders were placed over the last like five to ten years with minimal returns, like really just begs the question, like who the fuck works for amazon and why are you so wildly incompetent? But we've got that. Um definitely need a new putter and, as of yesterday, apparently I'm a weightlifter now.
Speaker 2:Um, because the the snatching in that fucking workout was the tell, the tell the people what that workout was, so most of them will know what was that workout 1200 meter run.
Speaker 1:21 power snatches 800 meter run. 15 snatches 400 meter run. Nine snatches 200 meter run. Six snatches 135 95, six snatches 135, 95. So 54 snatches a little north of a mile and a half of running. But man, that 800 meter run I was clocking in at like no better than a two minute 400 meter pace and that's generous. It's probably plugging away at like a 215 to get started, 215, 230.
Speaker 2:Welcome to the other side, big boy.
Speaker 1:I can give you.
Speaker 2:I can give you two to three minute four hundreds, all day yeah.
Speaker 1:I was happy to come in and have to do a bunch of snatches, which is a very weird day for me.
Speaker 2:What do you think Is it? Is it just the, the product of the workout Cause? Like, obviously, what happens to your heart rate with 135 singles over and over? You, just, you, just don't want, you don't want to go push yeah, on the pavement you couldn't.
Speaker 1:I was like one of the members asked like what the run pace was and I was like do your first 1200 at like a comfortable but opening workout pace and then, good news, once you finish your 21 snatches you can't run the crossfit gods will tell you how fast you're gonna run, uh you will not have a choice.
Speaker 1:Uh, and that was the. That was the case. My, yeah, my one. My average heart rate was 176, which, to be honest, seemed a little bit low. Uh, max heart rate was 187, which also seemed a little bit low and my yeah, my legs were just lead going that 800. My life. I was like thinking of myself on that 800.
Speaker 1:I had so much time to contemplate life. I was like I'm just prepping for murph with these two and a half minute 400s that I'm pulling you're not going gonna get away with like leverage and pulling for very long in a workout like that.
Speaker 2:So you start to watch and you see people hit this level of like triple extension, like it's a fucking still shot of miko salo in 2007 like head tilted back and it's like, yeah, you do that 50 times yeah that like aggressive jump and quad extension. That'll mess you up, especially if you go pound the pavement afterwards yeah, well, confirmed it did.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it was a excellent tone setter for the uh day one of the new team misfit affiliate or misfit affiliate training phase jim looked like they're having a lot more fun out there today today, like when I when I walked in. Yeah, yeah yeah, some, some see it's all about balance, yeah it is all about balance, and then we'll be right back to fucking your day up on thursday yeah, seb what's up boys, uh, a little tired.
Speaker 3:god got in at uh like 3.20 last night from my drive from Indianapolis. So, feeling it today, today's, I feel like I'm hungover, but I don't drink.
Speaker 2:And then I also feel like I heard you had a sip of a cider at a party. Oh, the light of the yeah, sorry.
Speaker 3:I had a quarter quarter sip of a cider Somebody wanted me to try and it was fine. I'm not a beer drinker, so it was all right. But yeah, today I'm definitely feeling it.
Speaker 1:Was Drew the one who wanted you to try that.
Speaker 3:Say that again. No, it wasn't me. No, it wasn't Drew. Drew saw me.
Speaker 2:It was past 9 pm, so I wasn't there, yeah.
Speaker 3:Drew was in bed, but yeah, so I wasn't there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Drew was in bed.
Speaker 3:But yes, I think just drink plenty of fluids today and then maybe go for a quick run just to flush the body out and get the cobwebs out of here.
Speaker 2:How does the body know that it's not sleeping in its own bed? In its own bed, like? I know that there's a lot of factors, but there to me, I believe that there is something else, some sort of like I'm, you know, maybe like evolutionary biology, like I'm not in my cave, I'm somewhere else. I need to have like a like, a different level of alertness on, because I travel enough where I don't get wrapped up in, like when I travel with my wife, she's like did you, could, you couldn't hear the air conditioner turning on and off, or this pillow or these sheets, and it's like if I did that everywhere I traveled, I would lose my mind. So I'm just I don't care.
Speaker 1:Headphones and a face mask, though. Right, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:But like I don't even. I've just gotten to the point where I don't fucking care, Like, if I can do that, basically, if I can have the like sensory portion, I'll be fine. If the bed's a little soft, bed's a little firm, Like. The pillows in the Airbnb were weird as hell. They felt like they were blown up with air. Um, but I just like last night, just HRV right back up, Like like just being in my own bed. I don't know what it is. There's definitely something there with the nervous system. You just don't I don't quite get the same recovery scores, that sort of thing, and part of it's probably like eat a little bit later. Um, typically when you're traveling, there's a lot of factors, but I believe that there's something at play with the nervous system, with the way that you can rest when you're not home. It's kind of the same way that your body's doesn't let you take like a complete evacuation until you get home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was my immediate thought. I was like well, well, like your body knows, when it's near a familiar toilet, that's for us it's crazy.
Speaker 2:No time we're fucking live here, yeah yeah, yeah, um, I watched the first seven episodes of a show called mob land yesterday, um, and it's basically, it's new, it's basically just tom hardy being tom hardy, but I love tom hardy, he's a, he's a like enforcer fixer for the for the mob in london, um, and it's just. I mean it's it's not like good cinema, but it's it's just. There's something about I'm enough of a meathead that I can get pulled into a show like this and you could tell right off the bat like it starts out with him like negotiating at, for some reason, gangsters are in, um, the kitchen of a restaurant negotiating, um, so it starts off with that and, yeah, exactly starts up with that and some guns, and it's just like, yeah, I can, I can watch seven 35 minute episodes of this today, for sure 100.
Speaker 3:So if you like watching tom hardy.
Speaker 1:Being tom hardy uh watch mob land his, is his natural accent, like that just super thick, like well, I don't know, even know what it is. It brit, is it english, is it?
Speaker 2:irish I, if I had to guess he's uh like somewhere from around london. Yeah, if I had to guess I could be wrong. Let's see where's tom hardy from yeah, he's from london.
Speaker 2:So he's from a, a suburb of london, and they obviously have all the different like dialects in those in those different areas. Um, but he's also known as one of the the best at manipulating his voice as well. So I don't know in the show if that's his actual accent or if that's like okay, he's from you know this family, like blah, blah, blah, that sort of thing, but uh have either of you seen? Uh, peaky blinders yes, okay, hunter, you got to see this ai overview.
Speaker 1:He describes himself as a posh, middle class twat love that just because he's not like lower class myself that way yeah I fucking love that.
Speaker 2:That's so good. I have seen peaky blinders and I have it like I go to the, the places that like review different things, and almost every season has like a high score. Um, but I have it like saved to go back to because I only watched. I don't remember if I even watched the whole season, but I liked it and I don't know why I stopped watching it and then I was always shocked that they made they just kept making seasons. Like how many seasons are there?
Speaker 3:like six or seven.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, girlfriend have you season two right now, but when? Just when you said like mob like uk he.
Speaker 2:He showed up. I don't know what season he he starts coming in at, but I did see a little bit with him.
Speaker 1:Okay, so he's in there right now. That's why I was asking he's like and his accent.
Speaker 2:It is like oh, his accent's wild.
Speaker 1:I'm not a caption, yeah I'm not like a caption guy, like I prefer to watch shows without the captions. It irritates the hell out of me. But um, there've been a few times where I'm like I I think I need to like I've no, I, I have the cap, I have the captions on on mob land.
Speaker 2:Fuck yeah, there's enough. There's enough of it. And I've actually gotten used to it a little bit because, like maya will come downstairs when carter's sleeping, be like, can you turn that down a little? And I'm like, fuck, I can't hear this shit so I'll turn the. It's mostly because of the amazing discrepancy between when they play music or when they blow things up in shows where you're just like you can't hear anything and then yeah, so, um, if you're a meathead and love tom hardy, watch watch mob land.
Speaker 2:Good, good little binge worthy show for sure.
Speaker 3:And he also has a really good show called uh, taboo Uh, and they're coming out with a second season next year. It's been in hiatus for like seven, eight years. It's about the East India British trading company. So super sick Shit. I haven't, I haven't even heard of that shit. I haven't, I've never heard of that. Yeah, it was on effects back in the day. Damn, I'll put up, love it all right.
Speaker 2:So seven I went to we'll call it greater indianapolis. Um that, that might be a, that might be a one. One way to open this conversation, um the uh world fitness project. Their first event um was in westfield, indiana I believe that was the town that it was in, seb, like 30, 40 minutes north of indianapolis. Um, luckily that area traffic wasn't crazy.
Speaker 2:So like I don't know like one of the one of the things here. So so I'll I'll actually backtrack a little bit. Um, like I said in the intro, I want to give like an honest um opinion of all this, and I can tell you right now that the only team that I play for is, uh, misfit athletics. So I don't like love, her love or hate every individual thing that crossfit hq does or the world fitness project, crossfit games. Versus this, versus that, I don't really give a fuck. Um, when it comes to the the you know, choosing sides of things like that, I like to just sort of um do what's best for us and our athletes. So, um, if, if there's any hope for like hater porn, that's not really how that's gonna go. Um, but one of the things that um, most of the stuff in this episode is going to be positive um we had a really good experience.
Speaker 2:I think they're open to feedback, which is good, um, but one of the things that people asked right off the bat, when they knew that I was going or knew that I went, was how many people were there? Um, and you just wonder if Northern Indiana is the kind of place where they can help grow the sport from a spectator standpoint. Um, so that would be one thing where, like, I don't know a damn thing about events from the perspective of, like, choosing a venue and how far in advance you need to do that sort of thing and all of that stuff that gets taken into consideration. I'm guessing an arena in, you know, a city is probably 10 times as expensive as as a place like this. Um, so the venue was really nice, the area was nice, um, no issues there. But the the the question becomes over a long enough time horizon, are we going to end up with enough fans, not only to facilitate the sport from a financial perspective, but, just like some of those, some of the most special moments that we've seen at competitions are because of the crowd really being into it and getting excited about certain parts of it.
Speaker 2:So I heard they sold 1500 tickets. I don't know where that number came from. I don't know if it's real. And then Seb, you might be able to talk to this. I never took a left, I never saw the other competition floor, I never saw vendor village. There could have been more people there than I sort of interpreted, um, but there I would say Saturday, the, the attendance was decent, um, but Friday and Sunday were kind of eh, I don't know if you'd agree with that kind of eh yeah, I don't know if you'd agree with that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think that's a fair assessment. Uh, the other side where vendor village was, and was that the challenger series on the opposite side was going on, or whatever? No, the challengers are the outs, right? Yeah?
Speaker 2:community teams and maybe masters.
Speaker 3:Okay, yeah, so that side was equally as as big as the where the competition floor in the athlete warm-up area was. Uh, but you know I I wouldn't say there was a lot of people on that side. Vendor Village was rather small, but that place was awesome, it was massive, it was crazy yeah really nice facility for sure.
Speaker 2:So yeah, I didn't make an exact list of all the things here, but one of the things that I can do is sort of take you through my personal experience. So we checked in and had briefing on Thursday. Honestly, that was pretty straightforward. I know that the athletes were happy with the way that they were treated. It didn't take up too much time. I would say minimal hiccups related to it being their very first event. You could tell that they hired the right people that already knew how to do a lot of this stuff, hadn't had to take the mic in front of a large group of people.
Speaker 2:Um, there were a few things there and then the. The dude who, uh, was in charge of the lights um, we can get into that a little bit seb from your perspective, but the dude who was in charge of the lights, um, when an in-depth like explanation of when the lights were going to change colors and they like changed them as he was explaining it. I don't know that that was entirely necessary, maybe for the first event, just to show the athletes, like you know, the lights turn green when you're gonna go, or they turn red at standby or whatever it is. Um, so that part kind of cracked me up a little bit and then so, hunter, you'll like this. There was the original standard for the one rep max shoulder to overhead was if the bar was over 225, 155, that they had to drop it from overhead to the ground. Just guessing, you know, like we saw Ben Smith tore his knee up, bringing the bar back down into the front rack, that sort of thing.
Speaker 1:So I guess it's safety related which ended up out of like just freestanding racks in the middle.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're out of freestanding racks and the athletes essentially found a loophole during the briefing and then they changed it. But we endured 10 minutes of questions related to where do I put the plates after I strip them off to put it back in the rack? Like, when do I have to have clips on? If I do re-rack it, what happens? Like you tell me I can't re-rack it, what if I do? So they were like it's a no rep.
Speaker 2:And the athletes were like raise their hand. They're like okay, but we like to basically warm up out there. So who cares? Like I'm going to put warm up out there, so who cares? Like I'm gonna put 275 on and 315 on and whatever, and I'm gonna re-rack it and put it in because I don't want to strip the weights off and whatever. And they were like, okay, you can do it. And then it was like well, we've literally just like nullified the safety protocol here, um, so they ended up emailing and being like it will not be a no rep, um, but you're not allowed to clean and put it back in the rack over 225, 155, so if you do drop that, you do have to strip the weight down. Um, that sort of thing, which I mean an athlete probably would do that anyways, like they're not gonna. They're not gonna do a 300 pound clean out there, um, but that that part was funny. The questions were blowing my mind they were.
Speaker 1:I was dying. Standard athlete briefing oh, dude it was bad um.
Speaker 2:So going through all of that stuff, very straightforward I would say no issues there. Um, going into the competition on day one, you know things just ran smooth, like like there's no, there's no like big narrative to have in relation to the scheduling and whatnot. Just because they did a good job, right, they gave, they gave them their, their warning. You know they corralled 15 minutes early. They were on time the whole time. There was never a heat before that fucked up and they ended up pushing things. So this was every single day, every single heat, including challengers and pros were good to go and that's a. That's not an easy thing to do when you have like like I believe they the rumor is that the production team is from wwe um that's shooting it, so you're also dealing with that right like if they're not ready, then that gets pushed um. So they've definitely done like the due diligence on again who to hire, who to partner with that sort of thing.
Speaker 2:Um, warm-up area was huge, gigantic, like you could run close to four hundreds if you wanted to, just by running a lap around the kind of the inside of that area. So good places for for the athletes to hang out. Um would have been nice if there were a few more, like like one of the things, they basically just had rowers and c2 bikes back there. There were like three, two or three echo bikes I think, probably because they were being used in the other area. So it'd be good to have um. You know, I don't know if they'll ever buy the ski ergs I think it's probably like a programming equipment thing, um. But if they do, it'd be nice to have the ski ergs and the echo bikes back there. But that's, that's kind of nitpicking a little bit. Um, I don't. I didn't hear much about the judging seb. Did you hear any rumblings about the judging? I know that there was an issue with um james sprague on doing the like hand tap past the handstand walk line, maybe yeah, I mean it was very minimal, though I feel like it's it's part of the what happens like no, it's like a no news is good news, sort of a thing like I don't have a ton to
Speaker 3:report on, because it just seemed fine yeah, and I I feel like someone's bound to. You know, get something wrong in a comp, but it definitely they've sorted it out.
Speaker 2:Programming it doesn't really lend itself to being like itself to being, like, overly difficult to judge and like, remain consistent. Yeah, yeah, I mean, the biggest thing was the double dumbbell lunges towards the end, that was the and that wasn't the judges, that was just the athletes deciding. I think probably six athletes tried to go unbroken instead of going 25 feet and 25 feet, and one was successful. So, um, yeah, I mean, I don't know, I feel like I, I, I wanted to have more to say, but it's almost boring. Um, because there isn't a lot to say. Which is a is a good thing. Um, when we get into the programming, if you did or didn't watch or see, there's a 10 round workout, one legless rope climb, one regular rope climb, and then you'd run down, move the Oak 50 feet, run back. Um, I think that they need a more tactile version of showing where the athletes are, um, in that workout specifically. So they had the? Um, like the little flip boards that you'd have at like scoring, like a, you know, a kid's basketball game or volleyball or whatever. So they had those in front of the rig. But if you were lined up with the rig, or a little bit close, you wouldn't be able to see where somebody was at and, like the, the, the yoke was either on one side or the other, so that gave you some portion of it. But obviously if somebody gets lapped in a workout like that, then you can't really tell. Um, so I think if they want to, they're definitely trying to put on a show. You know, with the lights, with the way that they have the floor set up. Um, I think they need something a little bit better for events like that, if they're going to do that, to really show where athletes are at.
Speaker 2:And then this is about as nitpicky as it gets. But the font on these scores and the timing was so small on all of the production that you couldn't tell what happened. And I remember seeing chandler across the room with his face like on the tv, and chandler like needs like prescription. He only like wears prescription glasses at all times. Um, so I like was making fun of him.
Speaker 2:And then I went over and I was like dude, you gotta bury your face into this tv to see what the times are. And that translated to me asking people in the crowd like, what does that say? Because they had the jumbotron with like the four-sided thing and you couldn't read it. Now, maybe it's because it was white and green. Like there might be a way through color to like darken the background a little bit. But I think they got to fix the graphics related to that because, like, stuff like that does matter. It's silly and it's small, but when you go out there, like 9 32 versus 8 32, when you're screaming at your athletes, like very big difference between those two things yeah, I mean I think that's like that.
Speaker 1:I mean first event, so obviously hopefully they they fix that. But I think that was like a huge that's an issue with. That's always been with crossfit too.
Speaker 1:It's like not not specifically like font size and color on a screen, but it's yeah tracking where the athlete is um yeah, I think right just one of the biggest issues with this like type of sporting event, uh, and from like a spectator perspective where, like we, you want to get obviously get more people like physically watching the event, but if you're not going to have them physically watching and there's going to be it looks like there is a pretty robust live stream schedule. It's like people have to know what's going on. Like the sporting event is just a story, right, and that's why, like our traditional sporting events are, are pretty straightforward, easy to follow, right.
Speaker 1:It's like yeah here's like put the puck in the net, put the ball in the goal, get the football over the line. It's like a very straightforward goal and like you can turn on the television to any major broadcast and pause it and within 10 seconds, know exactly what's going on. Like who's's winning, which direction are we going? Like you know, like how much time is left. All is no, narrative there is and therefore like there's nothing to watch. It's like I don't know I'm. I'm watching people run. I'm not watching a race, I'm watching people run in circles and like lift things and for a spectator.
Speaker 1:Perspective like that won't do it, um, that won't do it for the crossfit games. That won't do it for the world fitness project, so like, yeah, that that's pretty tough.
Speaker 2:So you can see right there, literally you can see how. Even if that was on the Jumbotron, that would be tough to read right, even just a little bit of like a background.
Speaker 2:And they did have that on some, but it was still too small and the way that they did it was the number in there for most events was reps remaining um. So that's how they showed where certain people were, which was again fine. I didn't. I didn't have any issue with that, but the the viewer is just not going to have the context that certain people are those numbers probably don't mean a lot to them, unless there's like nothing right.
Speaker 2:So like that part of it, I think, is something that they're going to have to figure out a little bit better, both with the graphics and then with the cues of sort of how they show it out on the floor. Now, one thing that's interesting about it is there were no what I call circumstantial qualifiers. So the 20 people on both sides that they invited have were it was basically an equation of their success in the sport over a certain period of time. So basically all earned, all should be there, um, and then the challengers all qualified through a qualifier where, like, your circumstance just didn't really come into play right, like I'm from Africa, so I get the invite, or Asia or whatever. So the field was pushed very close together. But in an instance where that's not the case or they come up with an event that has a longer, you know sort of gap between first and last, that is going to make this even worse.
Speaker 2:Adler does a running event with everybody else. Oh my god, in, I believe. Hunter, it was the third round. He made it to the turnaround point. Third round out of five. He made it to the turnaround point on the run, before anyone was outside.
Speaker 3:That's how far ahead he was.
Speaker 2:It was fucking wild and it was funny too, because he had just talked about how he was gassed from online semi-finals, didn't feel like himself. It's like you guys are in deep shit if this is this guy not feeling he actually didn't end up winning the competition. But um, yeah, um, so, hunter, I don't know, seb, if you got any opinions, uh, from kind of the media side. Hunter, I don't know if you've got any questions before we dive into the, you know the, the programming side.
Speaker 1:No, I mean sorry. Well, no, I'll just this is both of you Like? The only reference point that I have for this is CrossFit games on, like online streams, like compare it, compare it to that, both I qualitatively and like was there, is there a major difference? Like how was the? And I also didn't see a stream, or they have. We have like sean woodland and tommy marquez commentating like do we have a good? Is it like a? At least?
Speaker 2:it was gabby. It was gabby, gabby. Magala was was there because she was supposed to be one of the pros and then I don't know who's the like. Who was the number one guy, seb, do you know?
Speaker 3:no, is it Shaitan? Tommy was it Tommy? Tommy was there, and then I let me find out who the other uh guy in the booth was but from what I heard, the live stream was great.
Speaker 2:Again, they paid a lot of money for it. It's funny. If you went to the YouTube, it was a five-second video telling you to go to their website because they host it on their actual website and all of the comments on the YouTube were like fuck you, what the fuck is this?
Speaker 3:I'm like gosh you can't go to World.
Speaker 2:It's still free. You're just going to type it into your browser. It's free, you're just gonna type it into your browser. It's not a big deal. Um, I would say that it ran smoother than the crossfit games and they did a really good job with like the like. The music was good, the lighting was really good, but you can't just say that that was the case because the scale was smaller in the atmosphere semi-final, right.
Speaker 1:It's probably more comparable to like a crossfit, like a semi-final event, right yeah?
Speaker 2:um ran way better than almost every semi-final, although I do have to give a shout out. The dude who runs syndicate does a fantastic job. Like that. Competition always, like, blows me away with how well that's run. Um, but again, in terms of scale, when you're not dealing with as many people coming in and out, it's kind of hard to say that it's a one-to-one comparison, right, because it's harder to deal with thousands and thousands and thousands of people. You know what I mean. Like, like, are there going to be complaints about the food, about you know all of these different things? It's easier to execute, I think, probably with less people, but you know there's, there's more, there's typically more issues at the games was it?
Speaker 1:was it different than crossfit semifinals, like? Uh, yeah, yeah, yeah can we tell this is just a, a, you know, a baby, a baby of the crossfit games yeah, I mean it literally was just a crossfit competition like yeah, it's a, it's 100, a crossfit event, but you can tell that they are.
Speaker 2:One of the narratives I heard was that we're not testing for the fittest on earth, we're kind of trying to put on a show. So there was an element of that for sure, with the lighting, with the you know, the smoke machine that the athlete runs out through. And they had, you know, the professional sports intros. They were, you know, announcing themselves and and that sort of thing they had. You know they did professional sports intros. They were, you know, announcing themselves and and that sort of thing they had. You know, they did a lot of media, you know, within just the few days before with the athletes and all of that stuff was like up on the Jumbotron and everything like that. So, um, I think probably, uh, a higher level of of showmanship was there. Um, especially for it being event one, like that kind of thing.
Speaker 2:Um, so they definitely put on a show, um, and I mean, there's there's people out there saying it was unsafe for them to be lifting in the dark and dumb shit like that. Like, although I will say the danny spiegel thing was kind of rough, so she, she was trying to to, I think, be the first person to ever put 300 overhead that I've heard of for a female in a competition, and this is another standard that I thought was amazing. You the usual. If you take it out of the rack before the eight minutes, you can take your fucking time and do the jerk they were like. You cannot go over the two minute reset mark for part b, like you can't unrack it. Stand there for two minutes and one second and then jerk it, I'm doing it.
Speaker 2:I got. I want to see this. That's. That's the complex in the next misfit, jim portland. It's unrack. Two minute front rack hold one split jerk yes, it'd be the most riveting competition um, but they turned the lights off basically to show that the event was over and she had 300 pounds in the front rack. There was basically no lights on um, so the part of it where they had the spotlights on them a lot of people were hating on that.
Speaker 2:No, she's 295. Um, before that, and it's funny, all the athletes were like danny, come on 300. And it's like, well, you, none of you can do 295, but giving her shit for that. Um, so that, yeah, people were making fun of the spotlights or saying that it was unsafe or whatever. I did not get that vibe but the the lights out. They're gonna have to fix that. Like, hey, if you're gonna tell them, I don't think. I don't think whoever made the rule and the lighting coordinator were on the same guy. We're not in the same we're not on the same page there?
Speaker 2:yeah, because like obviously you can.
Speaker 2:I mean, you can do a split jerk with a little just a little bit of lighting, but you'd want to be able to see it and it just doesn't seem like the safest thing in the world to ask someone to split. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, and that's definitely one of the things that they're like hanging their hat on is that this is going to be safer than the games. So, seb, you did media there, that is, a third party. Media is such a huge part of this equation from an entertainment perspective for the athletes to be able to promote themselves, for the programming, programming partners to to want to continue to go back and put the money into it. So what was it like from your perspective, media wise?
Speaker 3:yeah, uh, just I wanted to add, jeremy austin was with tommy marquez in the booth, that for for the broadcast. But, um, honestly, man, this is has been the first time I've been to a media room where, like they took care of the media people like you know, like as prestigious as it is to go to the games like you're fighting for like uh outlets and trying to get like your stuff to charge, like here they were, the room they they gave us was like double the size of the amount of people that they had. So you had plenty of time to like have your stuff. So from that perspective, that was like five stars. Um, then we just had freedom to roam wherever, except that vip area, right, but so that was really cool.
Speaker 3:Cool usually, uh, for like the crossfit crossfit semifinals, um, like I remember when we did the one in Orlando and then the one out in the West Coast, at those convention centers, like you only have like very limited access on the floor and otherwise you have to shoot from the stands, but from a vantage point, like we had a lot of freedom and you know they, the people, were super, super chill and accommodating and, yeah, man, everybody seemed to be having a good time, which was kind of the theme of that event. It was laid back, everybody just took care of business and yeah, I have no complaints. I'm looking forward to the next one.
Speaker 2:Only feedback that I heard from a few people was that when you can only shoot on one side, um that there can be an issue with whether your athlete you get lucky in your athlete is in lane one versus lane nine or 10. Um, cause they had the media pit on one side, essentially, and then the VIP area on the other side. Is that just a matter of like, get yourself the right lens, or is it more actual perspective of it's hard to shoot, like from this angle, on this athlete?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I think like, if, if you're on that media side, like the last uh event that page did, she was in lane two and it's like you can get like the crispiest of shots because you're literally like five, five feet away from her Right and it's like you can get like the crispiest of shots because you're literally like five feet away from her, but then, but it's like you're always going to be restricted on lane assignments because, like, unless you're like the media of the event, you're not going to really be able to roam around like the 360 of the competition floor.
Speaker 3:So you learn to work with it. And then you know I got some great shots of Paige where it's just like it's a, it's a cool, just like vantage point of like her being the only one on the competition floor, like running towards the finish line. So you make do with what you got and you did. You were able to get to the stands and take shots of finish line, which is that was pretty great. Normally there's comps that you, you like some sometimes rogue I know I was your access drew, I mean yeah, easy, super easy.
Speaker 2:I got to, got to be in the in the warm-up area. They they had certain parts of it blocked off for athletes to be able to like go relax, um, that sort of thing, and I can't tell you whether I was supposed to be back there or not, but I had to get my steps in. So I was walking laps while page was doing sweat checks and there was no, I think. I think one of the things that some people don't realize is that the rules that get put in place over time happen not because the event organizers are dicks. It's because people are, and they, they, you know accost athletes. You know what I mean. They ask rich froning for a piggyback ride while he's, you know, doing a warm-up or whatever. And it's like coaches doing certain things, media people going places where they're not supposed to like that sort of deal. So, right now, not a lot of rule breakers.
Speaker 2:The good thing is, everyone who's back there has been there before. Um, so I think that that's probably helpful. Um, but yeah, no issues. No issues on my end. I mean, I would basically just like there was a area, but it was far away and it was funny because I would just go walk like right down to the barricade and watch, and like day three, some of the coaches were like why the fuck do you tell me about this area? Like I've been up in the coaches thing in the rafters and I was like oh, I don't know, I didn't even. I didn't even know that was there. Why would I want to go up there?
Speaker 2:That doesn't make any sense. I just walked over and watched like sorry Sometimes, like sorry, sometimes, being aloof of finer details uh works out in your favor. Um, so yeah, the the I thought I'd have. I thought I'd have more, um, in terms of my like quote-unquote review, but just not as much there because it went pretty smooth um review all of the gymnastics pulling movements in the programming I made some comments.
Speaker 2:I made some comments to some people. Um, yeah, we can talk about the, we can talk about the pulling gymnastics um dominating crossfit events.
Speaker 2:Once again program the event will murad is the competition director and, as far as I know, he doesn't really share any of it with anyone because of the leaks that are always happening within crossfit. I think one of the things they're trying to not have that happen. Um, yeah, more, more pulling gymnastics. Um, surprise, surprise. What I can say, hunter, is we left the muscle endurance stimulus behind in a very this was a very gassy.
Speaker 1:This was super fucking gassy maybe that first I mean that first one's gassy as fuck, but I guess could be classified as like a cardio type thing by us, but that I mean yeah, so so we can jump into the, we can jump into the programming.
Speaker 2:Now, hunter, I've dissected these from from every possible angle, so you can kind of take the reins a little bit and we can talk through it and you can comment or question or whatever you want me to read the workout.
Speaker 1:You want me to just want me to sure yeah yeah, yeah, yeah first one six rounds for time.
Speaker 3:Five rounds for time, 600 meter run, six muscle-ups, six snatches, 165, 115 for the pro division um looks like ah, fuck that sucks balls, that's uh I heard I gotta imagine that's an unbroken most most athletes are unbroken touch and go and just that's 3k.
Speaker 1:3k for time, with some nuisance movements.
Speaker 2:Most athletes were singles until round five. Just as like a pacer like a drop and reset on the barbell. But rounds four and five were the decider of whether you could hang Sad running.
Speaker 2:I imagine, yeah, and the comment that I'll make about the pro women, the top heat, their first 600 was like right around two minutes and I had page trying to hold there three, three heat. So it opened with heat one being the challengers and then pro, pro, but then it reset. So if you were a challenger and you got yourself up into the top 10, then you know you were there sort of a deal. So after day one it was, it was mixed in that way, um, and I mean I had page, you know, in the workout timer, like between 230 and 245 for that run. So when they came in around two minutes I was like oh, boy here, boy, here we go. And you could tell.
Speaker 1:You made it sound like it's an out and back.
Speaker 2:So they ran. They basically used the floor as the like, as the big loop, but you ran outside to a turnaround point, came back in through the other side and just did the thing where if you were in lane one, you got to start right there, sort of a deal. So you basically ran down. If you're watching on YouTube, you ran down this side, you went outside, ran down and back and then entered on the other side, um, to complete the loop so that everybody's, everybody's stuff was the was the same Um, but man, the. The running was from the top athletes was so impressive. They were running so hard the entire workout, Like the second. They got done their snatches. They were like sprinting back through the rig.
Speaker 1:I mean you have to based on just just the time of each individual movement, like it's twice, twice as much running as the other two things, so that bad boy was no joke.
Speaker 2:It's twice as much running as the other two things. So that bad boy was no joke, that one was very much a tone setter and you could tell that it really fucked with the athletes like that kind of thing, and you know how I feel about that.
Speaker 2:I like to do that in event one, like always, just to let people know what's going on. It happens at our stuff, it happens at the purple mountain throw down. I thought that the first workout at mayhem was awesome for that reason, um, and there's just something to like. You got to be able to recover after that, right, like it's not just executing.
Speaker 1:You then got to demand is exactly zero for sure. Oh, luckily you have a nice, easy eight, six, four, two, 20 sandbag cleans of the 200 to follow that. So eight six, four, two sandbag, two shoulder over shoulder two shoulder two shoulder 30 ghd sit-ups and a 100 foot handstand walk after each round, including after no, I'm guessing.
Speaker 2:Oh not 90 and 90 and 300 in terms of volume probably more oh, you know what I didn't bring up? Hunter we, this is this. This will tell you guys um. You'll always know how long someone's been doing crossfit.
Speaker 1:Based on this conversation, no ghd standard on the hips no standard oh, like as far as where the pad can go.
Speaker 2:Uh-huh.
Speaker 1:So people got the pads around their Achilles tendon just fucking bend and snapping. Are they sitting on top of the pad and just bending?
Speaker 2:They're sitting in front of the pad.
Speaker 1:Yeah, oh, ouch, the athletes with longer arms don't even have to, they don't sit up.
Speaker 3:It's crazy.
Speaker 2:Oh, like Jason Hopper, and then I think maybe it was Danielle Branden. Like I'm trying to visualize who it was, but it was. Basically they can get their knees high enough that it's a straight line from their knee to their hip, to their shoulder, to their hand. So if you can visualize that, and then when they come back up they're so close to where their feet go in that they don't even have to sit up.
Speaker 1:So it's that person Like reaching underneath and around the person that cheats at Matt sit-ups, that doesn't sit up.
Speaker 2:That's what they were doing. So, yeah, that was like the hot topic in the back, for sure. And and the thing is like, I know I can understand what they're doing. So the example would be this one. And then they said they don't care what you do with the double dumbbell, have them touch, hold them together, like do the movement, basically like that kind of thing. So I can understand.
Speaker 2:You mean, yeah, so I can understand why you would have standards like that kind of thing. So I can understand. You mean, yeah, so I can understand why you would have standards like that, like do this and do this, and that's that's what it is. Because I mean, you talk about like crossfit standard, like what is a hip? Like like is your entire fucking pelvis, like you know what I mean, like, like that kind of thing. So, um, ambiguity in a standard is very bad and I don't know that they're gonna be able to. I mean, people's butts are short, tall, fat, skinny, wide, narrow, like I don't know. I just don't know how they're gonna do it. Um, I do have a solution stop programming that movement yeah, it's fucking stupid it's such a dumb fucking movement.
Speaker 1:It's such a dumb movement to put in competition. I would say I can l1 hunter, can l3 hunter, can justify the functionality of it, but sure, what a fucking dumb movement for competition. And you want to talk about? Like fans, not like I, can at least like relate to a 300, 600 meter run. I might even be able to, if I'm a casual fan, I might even be able to like reconcile what a 200 pound sandbag might feel like. I have no fucking idea what a ghd is or does, or why it's hard or what it's supposed to do from a competition standpoint.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think what's happening is they're holding on to the idea that it was and I'm speaking more to HQ but they're holding on to the idea that it was like one of the things from the beginning. Yeah, it was a, it was a accessory movement. Right, it was a strength accessory a accessory movement right strength, accessory movement where you were trying to like pull yourself up with your hamstrings, like in your hip you know what I mean like the way that they told you to snap your knee to pull yourself back up.
Speaker 1:Like that it's like dude, we're not doing that anymore.
Speaker 2:The athletes are going to figure out how to gamify it, they should.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with with doing it that way that's I mean if people thought you were a loser if you did kipping handstand push-ups back in the day, right, like if diane came up and it was like you're gonna kip those fucking, like were you scaling, like that kind of thing. And now it's like you know, people not only kip handstand push-ups, they have figured out a way to be able to do 70 of them in a row, like like that kind of thing. So I don't blame the athletes at all, um, but one thing that I know is I'm gonna have to, like we're gonna have to make content on this. We're gonna have to teach people how to do the.
Speaker 1:The ghd sit, the new ghd sit up, because they'll lose if they don't take your ghd, bring it over to the dumpster, get a nice flat back setup position and lift how to fix your ghd setup yeah, I mean that just looks like a classic, just fucking midline thrashing that you're gonna see at every level of crossfit competition.
Speaker 1:I think we talked about this on a podcast, but, like once every two weeks, dot com will just haze the fuck out of you and your midline, whether it's obvious or less obvious, like a front squat and a toe to bar thing, or, more obvious, like a fucking ghd handstand walk look at yella go back to that line cold go back, third row big guy, all the way to the left, watch this, watch his butt.
Speaker 2:They're not sitting up.
Speaker 1:It's not even a setup it's not a setup um I'm developing my glutes and my hams for sure.
Speaker 2:uh, one thing that was cool about this that I like from a meathead perspective is the athletes that crash and burn got like rewarded for it. They just got enough of a lead and it was descending reps and they were able to hold on highest level. You would see a little bit more strategic, like in the athlete that basically did eight fast, 30 fast, 50 feet fast down, was ahead by quite a bit and it just seemed like it was hard for people to catch up. Um, so I think that got overpaced a little bit by by some athletes, which is kind of crazy to say that they're doing sandbag cleans that fast these days, but they are event three six rounds for time eight.
Speaker 1:Pull up six. Chest to bar four.
Speaker 2:Bar muscle up eight, six, four front squats at rounds one through four were eight front squats and then round five was six, round six was four and the weights increased on round five and six a little bit of repetitiveness with this rep scheme will more add.
Speaker 1:We really like six, really like 600 meters, six snatches, six muscle-ups, eight, six, four, two, eight, six, four, two, six rounds. Let's, uh, we can mix that up a little bit next time, but um, uh, um, uh. So obvious question how many athletes are hold it turning this into a 18 rep bar pull complex at? Any point in the workout.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, I think that, I think that was the trap. I think that was like the the gymnastics felt sort of inconsequential because the athletes did them the way that they should have. Basically, um, I think it was yeah, I think it was intentionally a trap. Definitely on the men's side, you saw a decent amount of of like eight and six and then coming down fucking barbell to start eight reps two 45, one 70.
Speaker 2:Yeah, what's funny, though, is it was a bit of the like haves and have nots, like it was. It was, it looked light for at least half of the people, but there were just other people who and it's funny, cause like one minute seems like an eternity out on the competition floor for a spectator and it's absolutely nothing for a competitor but there was a lot of the like oh, I've been done for a month and I'm gonna come back over and cheer you on sort of a thing happening with those final barbells, um, but, like I don't know, you're at a competition, you're not gonna get any damn points down near the bottom, so you have to try to keep up through those first four rounds, right, like what's the, what's the alternative, that sort of thing. So I think that's what happens. I think it gets exacerbated, and then you're in, like way, way over your head because you didn't, you know, quote, unquote run your own race. Um, and then you arrived at a 265, a 285 barbell so that cat, what's the cap you?
Speaker 1:you have in here 10 minutes but I see on some of the leaderboard like 11 and change weird 12 minute cap.
Speaker 1:Maybe just a copy yeah, they must have changed it I only see one, a couple of caps, like it must have been a 12 minute cap, but I mean fucking, I'll snap through a two minute round of that right quick, don't worry about that. Um, yeah, I mean looks like a obviously a gymnastic movement, sneaky front squat, metabolic demand, so that probably towed the line a little bit on the gas muscle overload element. But I am seeing, I'm sure we can summarize with this, but like, looks like the longest somebody worked out was like 19 and a half minutes. Oh, I guess I see danny spiegel still chugging along at 23 and change on that first one, but 2020 she punted that workout.
Speaker 2:She was not.
Speaker 1:She was not huffing it yeah, um yeah, a lot of in that just kind of middle time domain sort of thing yeah, yeah, the.
Speaker 2:the one thing that I will say is the six rounder took longer than I thought it was going to and the athlete sentiment in the back was during testing it hurt the most.
Speaker 1:I like grip, upper body and then front rack, like a static front rack position with a metabolically demanding squat. Oh, fuck, yeah, that's like I'm going to do these squats. I dropped the bar and I just got punched in the gut and the wind knocked out of me. That's what that looks like. It felt like.
Speaker 2:I liked the transitions too. They had a lot of. They had a decent chunk of space between movements in a lot of instances, um, and it added definitely an extra element to a lot of the workouts. Having to run all the way back across the competition floor to get back to the rig, like that kind of thing. You could tell there was a decent amount of that in play. They did a good job of finishing workouts on the opposite side of the floor, so they had basically rig and then a chunk of like, typically the like, first four rounds and then the middle and then the last two rounds would be at the end, um, so when they could do it that way, they did, which was nice, um, but yeah, that one, that one looked pretty gnarly for sure event four part a one rep max jerk in eight minutes.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit long.
Speaker 2:These were only 50 points. I'm going to throw that out there as a critique. I didn't like that. I don't If that's the test of and I mean they did test strength. So maybe I'm overthinking it a little bit. But I don't love the 50 and 50 50. I think those should be 100 points each sure one rep max jerk in eight minutes.
Speaker 1:Rest for two minutes and then for time or hold the bar in the front rack or hold the bar in the front rack and then jerk at the 10 minute mark. Recommended strategy then 25, 2015 for men, 18, 15, 12 for women, echo, bite calories and then a 50 foot sled push after each with ascending rep scheme.
Speaker 2:So seb get me the uh top men's heat. Get me the top men's heat um finishing this workout. If you can, what?
Speaker 1:was the? While you're doing that step? What was the? How many of these events were? What was day one? Day one was friday and two events. Two events per day two, two, two yeah okay, that's kind of weird. A 10 minute well, I'm guessing 12 minute time cap. So saturday is a 12 minute workout and a 16 minute workout where one of those where more than half of that is a one lift and then a six minute burner it's like three minutes too, by the way yeah, so that's kind of an interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah man, saturday as well, just a, or sunday as well, I guess a little the.
Speaker 2:The part b was really well programmed.
Speaker 1:You could tell that it was tested and that the weights were appropriate for, because it was like what sleds did they use and how many carpets got rolled up underneath the sleds when they were being pushed?
Speaker 2:they did turf, luckily. Um, they had turf in the middle, so there were no issues there. I think the floor is probably turf in general and that they. The other stuff was put on top of it, so they had turf. They had the dog sleds, so like the four posts, so when you pushed it down like and, and you came back, you can push it back, um, for the next round. Um, just like every like, no one stopped with the sled but also, basically, no one ran with the sled. That's how you know that that's programmed properly.
Speaker 1:Good.
Speaker 2:Yep, um yeah. So I just wanted the the live stream. I just wanted to see the live stream the yeah, seb. I just wanted to see the live stream the dudes finishing the workout. It was very entertaining. This would be day, two, evening. This would be pro, I don't know.
Speaker 1:How many 400-pound jerks were there?
Speaker 2:Well, funny thing is Jack Farlow and Tudor Magda were in the challenger division so they went like 417 and like I think I think Jack had the had the top and Tola jerked 415 to win in the pro division and Farlow did 417 in the challenger. What a fucking. You imagine you go out there. You're in the challenger. What a fucking. You imagine you go out there, you're in the challenger division, you're up and coming, you hit like 340 and you're celebrating and jack farlow is next to you. He jerks 417 pounds.
Speaker 3:Yeah here we go.
Speaker 2:That's the finish right there, seb. Just the run across that one's decent. Oh yeah, dallin.
Speaker 3:Sasquatch.
Speaker 2:Looks like he's got a couple of brownies baking in the oven there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean that one looks exactly like I would expect that to making some real athletic people not look so athletic yeah, all right, sunday, that's interesting, pretty consistent. Let's see same weight, same weight ascending rep scheme for event three same weight. The sled weight didn't change, did it? Okay, okay so the oh, go ahead, no, go ahead, no you're good.
Speaker 2:I was just gonna say that they had the different weights on the front squat one and they had to change their own barbell from round five to six got it.
Speaker 1:Uh okay, sunday event one 10 rounds for time. One legless rope climb, one leg assisted rope climb, and then a 50 foot yoke carry 445 for the gents, 315 for the ladies. And then an LOL 20-pound reduction for the challenger division, only 20 pounds less for those guys.
Speaker 2:Hunter based on equipment. Two of the events were identical for pro women and challenger men.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that was fantastic yeah yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's, one of the athletes was complaining about it and I was like dude, you're in a division with jack and tutor, you want those weights to be as low as possible?
Speaker 1:yeah yeah, looks like a fun kind of beefed up version of the that old regionals 10 rounder of.
Speaker 2:Like the shuttle run, rope climb thing which is probably an event that will morad took first place in, so you can understand basically just sprinting back and forth.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was around will morad time too, yeah, uh, yeah, anything, anything unique about this guy Down and back 50 feet all the way down. So, yeah, that's what was cool is almost all of these were.
Speaker 2:They're two 25-foot sections so you would carry the in round one. You ran all the way down, carried the yoke back and then by the time you got to round 10, you carried the yoke back and then by the time you got to round 10 you carried the yoke to the end, so you each time had the extra 50 foot transition built in in one direction or the other. So that part of it was cool. Again, the way that they set up the floor um, I like this little nerdy, but like I liked that if you did not climb the rope properly after you're legless, it was obvious the difference between the athletes who were climbing it efficiently and the ones who weren't.
Speaker 2:Um, and I got that on full display right off the bat in the. It's actually this, this division right here, the challenger division, um, tutor magda was was putting on a fucking clinic in seb. If you can go back to like round one or round two, the beginning of this um, and you have the, the camera on tutor, just to watch him do a legless into a um, yeah, right there watch this.
Speaker 2:This was like clockwork.
Speaker 2:Every single time to down, watch the efficiency, just kaboom kaboom up and it was every round and like that, honestly, was one of his like not as clean as the other ones, just from a technique standpoint, and you could just tell that if someone jumped up and they were dangling trying to get their foot in place, or if they were going for that second one and again, like just that moment too long of like that, like hanging knee crunch you know what I mean like you get your knee up nice and high and you're just like flailing trying to get the rope there. Um, I actually wonder how much of that is because athletes don't cut their rope at their affiliate. It is so much easier to get that second and third pull with the rope on the ground than it is with the rope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just the weight of the rope makes it so much easier to lock your feet in instead of you're worried about that thing flying away from you. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that was one part of it that I thought was cool was just that the efficiency there really told the story of the workout, because the fitness level is so high now that everyone jogged or ran pretty hard in the transitions and did the yoke easily unbroken. So it was like how quickly can you be done with your rope?
Speaker 1:climbs was really more the separator on that one last one, pretty classic kind of finishing descending rep scheme and with those double dumbbell overhead lunges.
Speaker 2:So 40 slash 30, calorie row 30 burpees over the block question mark yeah, those ballistics blocks that rogue does for the burpees, those like composite things. You remember that from the games last year. They've done it a few times. They're like 12 inches tall, yeah, yeah okay, so super wide and like box facing it literally is just a, literally just a burpee over it would be like a burpee over it would be like a burpee over a barbell, if a barbell was 12 inches tall.
Speaker 1:Yeah 20 thrusters and then a 50 foot double dumbbell overhead walking lunge. I'm guessing the thrusters and lunges were with 70s, both correct?
Speaker 2:yep, nice easy set of thrusters into some lunges the mind fuck for the athletes on this one is that the second set of lunges was easier than the first set of lunges for a lot of them, because coming off of thrusters is harder than coming off of a set of lunges. So it's like that's. Yeah, that's what I mean, and part of it could be because they rested so damn long because it was in their head and that's why it was easier my immediate thought is like my arms just can't hold these fucks overhead yeah yeah huh.
Speaker 2:So that put on a show to end the weekend. Like adler fell from first to fourth, I believe, fell off the podium completely, just from literally like a single lunge, like if he had made it over the line. You gotta love how that works like you could never convince an athlete that they should do an extra lunge, but athletes can't do the last one of anything. It blows my mind. It's like I just did a thousand of these, but a thousand and one is exactly too many yeah like I was just and and don't know.
Speaker 2:Obviously you kind of slow down and you're looking for the line and there's probably things that make that the case, but it definitely added some some drama to the weekend Cause. Again, like a lot of athletes tried to not a lot, but like a decent chunk of athletes tried to go straight through unbroken athletes tried to go straight through unbroken and it's like sometimes you forget this is event six of six at you know 48 out of 10 rpe. Like it's not the same as I grab those babies in my gym and go lunge them for 50 feet yeah, um, yeah, all right, my, I'll just like give me, I'll get.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna give my like very brief, uninformed review and then you give yours. Um, obviously heavy on the gymnastics pulling, very little on the gymnastics pushing we've talked a lot about that. Um, I don't know that. I would say it's like there's a good dose of like loading to it, not a lot, not much, you know nothing, light, I don't know the. The sled is like a little bit unique because it's like, well, it says it's a couple hundred pounds but it's, you know, based on the way they're moving it. The stimulus is a little bit different. But you know know, 70 pound dumbbells, 450 pound yoke, 200 pound sandbags, 70 pound dumbbells, 285 pound front squats Um, definitely, obviously. So there's obviously a loading component, a lot of gymnastics pulling. And then again, like the time domain on these, um, I don't know if it's a problem. Like you know, traditional CrossFit methodology is, you know, keep, you know, predominantly those workouts on the shorter middle time domain. And we know that, like, from a testing perspective, like testing too many very short workouts skews the, you know, the leaderboard.
Speaker 1:Testing too many very long workouts skews the leaderboard right um, I wonder how much like that sort of thing impacts like viewability of of events and of the sport, because, on the one like if a bunch of them are long yeah, like, is it so?
Speaker 1:like, on the one hand, it's like if we have a lot of short, sprinty events, that might be easier for spectators to get behind.
Speaker 1:But if, like, am I going to pay money to go and then travel to a venue to watch three minutes of fitness at a time and I'm just going to watch that over and over for six, seven, seven heats of varying different like fitness levels?
Speaker 1:On the other hand, a longer workout, it's like, well, if I'm a paying spectator, like maybe I feel like I get my money's worth, but, like we know like how boring a long event can be, especially it's like five rounds for time. It's like, okay, I saw around one, I saw around two, and if you don't have the a nuanced perspective as a coach or like as an athlete who is like can can understand what the athletes are going through and what's happening. Like you know, there's a viewability element there for your casual spectator, or I guess maybe there's a lack of viewability element for a spectator. So, um, I think that that's like just my to kind of like go back to the original, like you were talking about the selling tickets and whatnot, like what needs to happen in order for people to become interested enough to physically bring themselves to an event and watch something like like crossfit, like fitness, I think general question.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I I think there's the only thing that I've talked to people that did not go, that are not coaches, and I think the casual fan is what is currently missing from this.
Speaker 2:And when you do everything, like when you have this big budget to put something on and you're like we're going to be athletes first, we're going to make sure that this and this and this happens, and that the media is super high quality, that leaves behind the swath of the casual fan, like they don't.
Speaker 2:I don't think that they were reached like right before this happened, because people were like we kind of knew it was happening, but like what is it so like when you, you could say that some of the stuff is either like too exclusive, because if you want to do an activation at a gym, you literally have to travel to Indianapolis to go there and to show up. If you quote unquote, overproduce the media, all of it, it's not going to connect with certain people on social media. They're going to want stuff that's a little bit more grassroots, that speaks to them a little bit. So I've been told by certain casual CrossFit fans that it was like, oh, I didn't even really know what was going on or what was happening, and that does matter, and then that takes time for people to sort of wrap their mind around it.
Speaker 2:But so I think that matters for sure. I think that you have to find a way to capture the casual fan, because that's the only way you're going to achieve like actual numbers and have this thing be like, like the longevity of it be there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I think like a question for the world fitness project too is like well, again, like, if the we have to, they have if they're, if it's going to survive, it has to reach that. Like it can't just reach CrossFitters, because there's a finite number of CrossFitters and there is a far smaller number of CrossFitters who are going to like, pay attention to the competitive side, and an even smaller number that are going to physically attend, based mostly on geographic location. But if I'm a casual fan, like and I see like world fitness project is coming to my city, like I walk past a venue and it says friday, world fitness project, like, and then somebody's like well, what is that? What's what's world fitness projects answer like, what is it like? How do I explain in a very short legally unable to say that but, even, but, even.
Speaker 1:Take it a step further. It's like oh well, what's, what's crossfit?
Speaker 1:sure like yeah, and if the distinction is like well, we're not trying to find the fittest on earth, we're trying to put on a show. It's like I think they have to be able to answer the question of like we prioritize people over profit, integrity over shortcuts, genuine achievement over empty. Like our goal is to foster a competitive landscape that values hard work, dedication, spirit of sport. That sounds amazing, but like again, I don't know what that like. Well, what do I want to go watch this? Like I don't know what that like. Well, what do?
Speaker 3:I want to go watch this. Like I don't, I don't know, yeah, like what?
Speaker 1:are what are we showcasing here? And that's not to obviously disrespect the athletes, because they're phenomenal, but like, there's a very small number of people in the world that know those athletes are phenomenal and they all exist in the CrossFit space and so, like, you know what is what's the? It's just that's a. That's a tricky problem that they'll have to solve.
Speaker 3:For sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, like when you look at the winner on the men's side, I'm gonna tell you how long he worked out, for this is normally how I do this 15 minutes, seven minutes, seven minutes, three minutes, three minutes, seven minutes, seven minutes, three minutes, three minutes, seven minutes, five minutes. So one medium, five short. Now, that was not the case for most of the athletes. There was more mediums. There was one long, that's for damn sure um 15, 53 on that workout. Adler was all the way down to like 15 and like sub three minute rounds on that workout is fucked up yeah like, like a lot of people's like, go run, go run 3600 meters.
Speaker 2:Ask a, ask a gym goer to go run 3600 meters in 15 minutes and 30 seconds um. But like, not to mention 36 muscle-ups and 36 snatches, or 30 and 30 30, 30 so, yeah, I mean that's.
Speaker 2:You asked a good question, hunter, because for me, from a programming perspective, I'm gonna need something around or north of 20 minutes and hopefully sometimes, like you would hope, at the championship in copenhagen, that they're doing a 30 plus minute workout, right, um, the pulling gymnastics thing, like we're going to, we're going to turn blue at some point with this.
Speaker 2:It just is what it is now and we prepare our athletes for it. That's for damn sure, just like we prepare our athletes for, you know, the, the, the CrossFit season, having way more machines in it than it used to, like that kind of thing. That's just us going there. Um, but yeah, the, I guess it really kind of comes down to what they're trying to accomplish. That does matter. Um, did they intend to have all the workout, five of the workouts, be seven to, or three to seven minutes? I don't know. I don't know the answer to that, or maybe it was just like wow, the progression of the sport is so fucked up iterations and like the venue and space sure when you get that number of divisions, like there's a time they also promise not to beat the shit out of the athletes.
Speaker 2:That was one part of it. Like we're going to try to program strategically so that we find the fittest person here, but like we don't want you to have to have. Like, if the sport evolves and we have five or six tour spots per year, like you just get annihilated and have to take a month off every time you compete. Like that's not going to be sustainable. So, um, yeah, that'd be an interesting question to ask. Like you've got, you know you've got these time caps, but that's not necessarily what the actual workout is like. Is it a good thing that the top performers, you know, five minutes under the time cap and then the the bottom one is not? Um, so those are more be questions for their end, but in my mind it's like I like to see more of a blend.
Speaker 1:You can ask those at every CrossFit competition, right? It's like, not like that's unique to this event? Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:All right. Final thoughts the I keep saying this over and over, I've said it in different contexts, but the level of the playing field is so mind-blowing at these events and continues to be, and I've always equated it to will the snowboarders ever stop adding 180 to 360 degrees of turning in the air? And the answer to that question so far has been no. Like the people are doing 1600s and shit, when the 900 used to be a big deal. Um, the the way that it's progressing and the way that athletes are catching up to other athletes. Like we used to just have these outliers. You know that like it wasn't possible to catch them, and now they're. You know it's coming down to the best athlete there dropped the dumbbells and slit to fourth place. Like that's a good thing for the sport, that's the kind of thing that you want.
Speaker 2:So, um, I'm just I gotta tip my cap to the athletes, to all the, all the coaches out there, to the community, because it's one of the reasons why I somehow still maintain that like we should be doing this and we should be involved in the competitive landscape, because the athletes are like answering like the bell, like they're, they're putting themselves out there, they're training in the way that they do, they're progressing in the way that they do and it's absolutely fucking crazy to watch. So, um, that's my, my silver lining to just like we now have two leagues and we have the season changes all the time and we have all of these things that were like up against when it comes to, you know, from like a business perspective, um, but the athletes keep getting so much better at like a rapid pace, and it's pretty fucking cool to watch.
Speaker 1:Guys got any final thoughts.
Speaker 3:Good job WFP.
Speaker 2:Seb sent me a Slack message at 3 20 AM.
Speaker 3:I'm home.
Speaker 2:Text dad, you're home're home. Yeah, I was like. Hey, I was like don't text me.
Speaker 3:In the morning I'm like I'm I'm gonna probably try to sleep in before the podcast.
Speaker 1:I'm destroyed yeah, uh, I mean I hope that world fitness project leverages some of the seemingly uh large budget to market and get some, get some folks to watch. I know just like as a former mildly competitive athlete. Um, it's always so much more fun and more enticing if you're a competitor to do your thing in front of people. It's nothing, nothing quite like having a having a full stadium um of spectators like supporting you. And while the crossfit community is outstanding and like the, the level of connectedness that each spectator has with the athlete is probably significantly greater than my connection is with connorDavid watching the Edmonton Oilers. Like there is something to be said about fact that the athletes are, are bought like unequivocally the fittest human beings on the planet. Like I'll take that to the bank, um, but like people we gotta watch, like people gotta see it and you can't necessarily buy that either, which you could five.
Speaker 2:I don't know how long the like true creator economy has been a thing, but it's been a little while now where, like, you can fucking run ads till you're blue in the face and get no return on that. People want value first, like like the. It's so funny. You watch the like.
Speaker 2:I doubt that many people that are listening to this watch this kind of stuff, but you watch the YouTube videos and the people that are successful with it and they're like never, ever, try to sell a product. Get as many eyeballs on you as you possibly can and provide value and they'll go find what it is that you do. So I think the people with money get like confused in these moments because it's like, well, we did this and this and this and we paid for this ad and we did whatever and it didn't necessarily pan out like to be what we wanted it to. And maybe, maybe the, maybe the money could go towards hiring the right people, um, that know how to do that, know how to get eyeballs on and provide value and stuff like that. But, um, it's like it's still survival of the fittest, it's still free market economy, capitalism, but it's like almost not. It's this like cool version of like. Do you entertain me like I? We have no attention spans left and if you can hold my attention, I will eventually give you money.
Speaker 2:Right yeah, so that part of it's, that part of it's interesting and we'll we'll see if they can figure out that side, because it was like talking to people outside of the bubble that we were in on the weekend. There was just this part of like.
Speaker 3:I don't know what's going on.
Speaker 2:Like, and I'm the kind of person who probably should or would so like. That's probably where they need to figure out that outreach piece did we do it fuck you, amazon.
Speaker 1:All right, carry on we get demonetized.
Speaker 2:Thank you for tuning into another episode of the misfit podcast don't. Next week we'll be doing a deep dive into Hatchet, off-season 2, off-season Block 2, I should say that, iscom, click on the sign up now button um get two weeks for free of the affiliate program from stream, fit, sugar, wad or push press. See you next week later.