Brian Friend (00:00):
They’re a competition. <laugh>,
Sevan Matossian (00:01):
No shit that, yeah.
Brian Friend (00:03):
Wow. Like personalities in the space.
Sevan Matossian (00:05):
Yeah. So in, so in April, oh, were you like, Hey, I don’t really smoke weed anymore. I don’t really do that. I was just like,
Brian Friend (00:12):
I just sent a, a laughing face.
Sevan Matossian (00:14):
Yeah. Ha ha. Yeah.
Brian Friend (00:17):
Let ’em wonder <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (00:19):
How are they late? They are late. Um, start the show, Hillary. Yeah. He actually, Hillard could have done that. Yeah. Cuz you’re not doing your part Hiller. Um, my power went out here and, uh, yeah. Did you nap after our show today, Brian?
Brian Friend (00:40):
No time.
Sevan Matossian (00:41):
Did you nap after our show today JR. Yes. Did you really nap today? No. Absolutely not. I wish I could take a nap. Caleb. Caleb, did you nap? Yeah, I woke up just now the power’s back on. My wife’s gone. I’m like, what happened? She’s like, dude, you were out. Excuse me. Uh, the quarter finals are here. I don’t wanna beat a dead horse, but I listened to this podcast with, uh, Adrian and Chase, and if you go some of this, uh, oh, not you, sporty Beth, uh, post bar,
Adrian Bozman (01:17):
Get
Sevan Matossian (01:17):
A pr if you go to the, uh, 41 minute mark,
Adrian Bozman (01:21):
Five or six minutes left and switch this in my opinion. Um, but an easy way to think about it is basically the regions that have more athletes,
Sevan Matossian (01:30):
Adrian Bozman says an easy way to understand the worldwide rankings.
Adrian Bozman (01:35):
My top 100 would be more likely to get more spots awarded for their qualifying games
Sevan Matossian (01:40):
Position. The more people that get into that worldwide rankings top 100, uh, in your region, the more people you will have go to the CrossFit games. So let me say that one more time. The more people in the worldwide ranking top 100 in your region, the more people that you will have eligible for qualifying to the games outta your region. And I just want to emphasize that the way you get the vast majority of points to be in that top 100 is people you’ve already had who’ve attended the CrossFit games. Meaning that, without stating that what Adrian just said, it is completely outta context because there are regions that have haven’t represented in the past at the CrossFit games, and you will not be represented at the CrossFit games because to get enough points to go to the CrossFit games, you had to have already been at the CrossFit games. And one of those regions is Africa. I just just wanna be super duper fucking clear about that. It it’s weird to, uh, it’s, it’s weird to mention, um, things out of, out of, uh, context. We have the, we have the
Brian Friend (02:55):
Don’t look at the Burning House. Just look at the hedges.
Sevan Matossian (02:58):
Yeah. Okay, fine. I know I told myself to be cool. Be cool Debbie. Be cool. And I am excited. And, and when I heard ’em talking about the layout for the quarter finals this year, I am really excited. I think it’s cool that they gave the layouts first. Have they ever done that before?
Brian Friend (03:10):
Yes. Yep.
Sevan Matossian (03:11):
Yeah. Well, this, I guess this is the closest I’ve ever been, or I don’t remember, but I think it’s really cool. Do you guys like this? They, they, they put out the layouts and they let us kind of, uh, pontificate on, on what, what the future could hold.
JR Howell (03:22):
Yeah. I mean, as fun as it is, just to guess what we think the open workouts would be. I think it would be even more fun if we got floor plans. Some would say maybe the open would be more fun without floor plans at all.
Sevan Matossian (03:34):
Oh, is that what Brian says?
Brian Friend (03:37):
Oh, not Adrian address. Adrian addressed that on the podcast this morning as well to some degree.
JR Howell (03:42):
Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think getting the floor plans a few days before, I mean, there’s possibilities are endless, but you see some things like you see a rower and you know, you’re probably not gonna be using it for lateral burpees.
Sevan Matossian (03:57):
You could be doing it for you, you could be using it for sumo deadlift, hypo. Hey, this is a very interesting, uh, Barry Ulner dollar 99 donation for jr’s lipstick. You know what I was thinking, Barry, is when they made that crash crucible shirt, they put a picture of JR on there and you know, in Photoshop how you grab the pen to match a color, will they fucking match that writing to the color of, uh, the affiliate owner’s lips? And now, you know, j MCC Ander cracked the code for the, uh, color. What
Brian Friend (04:26):
A gr a great joke that
Sevan Matossian (04:27):
Was. Thank you. Thank
Brian Friend (04:29):
<laugh>. Thank you.
Sevan Matossian (04:32):
Uh, JR loves his look at JR. Flexes a little bit. Stop looking at my lips. Stop looking at my lips. Oh yeah. Floor pa floor floor plans, uh, cor bono floor plans equal, uh, anxiety. Let’s fucking go. So I, I can’t read you JR are we, do we like, do you like the floor PA plans?
JR Howell (04:49):
Yeah, I love that they give ’em to us.
Sevan Matossian (04:50):
Okay, good.
JR Howell (04:51):
Makes it a lot easier for me to start taping the floor a few days before all the athletes that walk in and expect the floors to be taped and cameras to be set up and clocks to be ready to go.
Sevan Matossian (05:01):
What about the athlete side of you? That’s the, uh, kind of the affiliate owner side of you? Uh, what about the athlete inside of you?
JR Howell (05:07):
Oh yeah. I think if you’re an intelligent athlete or hopefully you have intelligent coaches, you’re able to at least maybe put some final touches on what you think possibly movement combinations could be that are coming out and it just gives you a little bit more peace of mind, a little bit more confidence going in.
Sevan Matossian (05:22):
Uh, Mr. Friend,
Brian Friend (05:25):
I just look, I, I like Jr’s idea of, you know, what would it look like to just drop the floor plan for each open workout on the Monday before that week of the open. I think that might be a cool thing to try.
Sevan Matossian (05:36):
Uh, so, so and, and then on Thursday show the workout. Yeah.
Brian Friend (05:40):
Same pattern that they have for quarter finals. Just do it week by week for the open. I think that would be a fun way to, I mean, if you just drop a dumbbell on a, a jump rope on Monday before 23.1, a lot of people would be like, oh, dumbbell on jump rope. I could probably do that.
Sevan Matossian (05:54):
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Okay. I like it. Uh, next year I think we’re gonna see it next year. Makes it makes sense. Would there be any reason why they No,
Brian Friend (06:01):
No, no, no, no. Not, yeah, because they never do the ideas that we talk about one year after. It’s always two or three years after.
Sevan Matossian (06:07):
Okay. Okay. Okay. Two or three years. Um, there is something else he says interesting in the podcast that I wanna, um, make sure I point out. Um, w the, the pundits have been taking some shots at CrossFit in regards to the fact that they’re, they’re bragging that they have 110,000 new, um, people sign up for the open, but only like 20 or 30,000 more than last year. So that they basically, they’ve lost 80,000 people. But what Adrian also did say in that podcast was, was that they had the biggest uh, uh, re-sign up.
Brian Friend (06:40):
He calls ’em repeats. I think what he means is that the new people from last year that did it again this year, like there was the biggest return on first timers doing it a second time this year than, or a bigger one than there usually is. I think that’s what he meant by that. Yeah,
JR Howell (06:52):
I think so too. Returning registrants,
Sevan Matossian (06:54):
First time registrants or just registrants?
Brian Friend (06:56):
Just second page. I, I, I inferred from what he said that he meant second time, meaning LA 2022 was there first and the percentage of 2022 rookies that re-signed up in 2023 was higher than the normal rate
JR Howell (07:08):
Retained participants.
Sevan Matossian (07:10):
Okay. Interesting. Okay. So really I can’t do anything with that. Okay. All right. Fine. Nevermind. Forget that I, I I I take back my, uh, compliment. Um, okay. Oh
Brian Friend (07:21):
No. You could say, uh, that’s a good thing.
Sevan Matossian (07:24):
Well, it is, but it’s not as good as I thought it was
Brian Friend (07:27):
<laugh>. Okay.
Sevan Matossian (07:28):
Uh, um, okay. Uh, should we just dig right in? Start just looking at the floor plans? Or actually before we do that, gimme an idea of what’s going on, when, what gimme the layout here of, of what happens and, uh, who’s going? It’s, it’s the, the top 10%.
JR Howell (07:43):
Yeah. So it’s, it’s the top 10% after the open. But, you know, looking back on the open briefly, I think Brian had mentioned his Open elite status and I think a lot of people responded with some questions about what, what’s, what’s the criteria to be an open elite. And I think he, he made a couple posts recently on his Instagram about it, if you
Sevan Matossian (08:02):
Wanna pull up, okay. You wanna start there? Okay, let’s do that. I c and I couldn’t understand the post. It was over my head. It was like, uh, Twitter talk to me. I was like, oh shit, I need this explained in way more words. Okay.
Brian Friend (08:12):
Hence the picture of you I just sent to the group of us.
Sevan Matossian (08:15):
Ah, okay. <laugh>, uh, we are a Brian friend CrossFit Instagram. There’s a beautiful black and white graphic of the beautiful, uh, Jeffrey Adler and the even more beautiful Brook Wells. It says the Open 2021 to 2023 Elite. And then Brian writes the Open Elite. What if I told you that over the last three seasons of open tests, there are only one man and one woman who meet the minimum requirements to be considered the open elite. So now we’re all wondering what is what, what is the open elite we need that defined? Uh, thank you to Vons Shin, uh, for, uh, the awesome graphic to help depict, uh, this three year study. Uh, take your time scrolling through. Oh, geez. He doesn’t, he sound like a, like a old person at a, uh, like at an aquarium or something, or a, uh, a museum.
Brian Friend (09:02):
Yeah. I should have put on my Paul McBeth polo and tucked it in for that part.
Sevan Matossian (09:06):
<laugh>, this is at your local, uh, American History Museum. Uh, take your time scrolling through if this is a topic of interest, I appreciate, uh, appreciate how impressive it is to make this list even one year that there are very few who find a way to qualify twice in a row. And that only these two have managed to, to do, I
Brian Friend (09:25):
Should just say to meet,
Sevan Matossian (09:27):
Have managed to meet the threshold for every single open test. Oh, you have the same, um, you have the same, uh, spell checker, uh, proofreader that CrossFit Games uses. That’s cool. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Oh my goodness. And Brooke Wells, uh, commented on your post.
Brian Friend (09:43):
She did,
Sevan Matossian (09:44):
Yeah.
Brian Friend (09:45):
And, uh, yeah, so, and this is something that I started doing a while ago, I think probably have you scroll to the right, you’ll see this like the thresholds that I came up with for 2021. And you see the, in bold there, the number of athletes that met the requirement. So 134 is the low end, uh, for the women in 21.2, that means you had to be 134 or better in the world to qualify for that workout. And then, uh, 242 on that same workout is the upper threshold for the men. And it’s, it’s, I mean, I should, it is just, this is just me basically, uh, ma just ma picking it, picking those numbers based on the results from those workouts. And so I’m looking for, I
Sevan Matossian (10:27):
Need more help than that. Like what, how, how did you get this
Brian Friend (10:31):
<laugh>? It is a, I mean, basically what I’m telling you is it’s somewhat arbitrary, but I’m looking for like a br a, a benchmark or a threshold of time reps or weight that is, you know, what I consider to be elite. Like there’s a, you know, and it has to be a, you have to cut it off somewhere. I usually just cut it off at whole numbers. So in some cases people miss this qualification by a couple pounds or a couple seconds or a couple reps in one workout. But I don’t look at any athletes before I do that. I just look at the leaderboards and I say, oh, look, you know, there’s, uh, 11, you know, whatever it says, nine at nine minutes, and that’s 173. And that’s right in the threshold. It’s a nice round number. So that’s what we’re gonna set the mark at for 21.3.
Sevan Matossian (11:12):
Okay. Gi uh, gimme a second here. So this is, uh, from two years ago. This is, uh, 2021. If we, theoretically, if we went to the leaderboard right now, we would look at, um, the time, uh, 1330 and all the time
Brian Friend (11:26):
To the right. One page, one, one slide. If you scroll to the right, you’ll see that for 2021, there was a, a group of athletes that met all four thresholds, those 10 men and those 14 women. And those are, and the left is a corresponding open rake. So those are the only ones that made the, the, the met the threshold for all of the marks in 2021. And in 2021 we had the barbell complex. So that strength illuminated a lot of people.
Sevan Matossian (11:55):
Okay. Go, go back a slide again. I just, just to be, just to be clear. So all those names we just saw, those 38 names of men and women’s names, they all had, uh, 21.1. They were under 13 minutes and 30 seconds. 21.2, they were under 10 minutes and 30 seconds. 21.3, they were under nine minutes. And same
Brian Friend (12:14):
21.4, he made an error here and he addressed it in the comments, but it should be the lift. And it was 300 pounds and 200 pounds where the benchmarks were men and women respectively.
Sevan Matossian (12:23):
Okay. And wow. Okay. And how did you do, so Brian, if I went to 21.1 on the leaderboard and I went to 1330, there’d be 164 names, uh, above,
Brian Friend (12:33):
Yes.
Sevan Matossian (12:34):
Oh, okay. Interesting. Okay. Wow. So many more women. Um,
Brian Friend (12:40):
It’s always gonna be, there are always gonna be more women that meet the T or at least for now, are gonna be more women that meet these thresholds than men because of the thing that I regularly remind you of, which is just that there’s greater depth of field. So it’s harder to be elite amongst the men’s division than the women’s division.
Sevan Matossian (12:55):
God, I still need to, I feel like I need to know how you came up with these times.
Brian Friend (13:00):
It’s not that important.
Sevan Matossian (13:02):
Okay.
Brian Friend (13:03):
But anyway, if you scroll through, there’s, if
Sevan Matossian (13:05):
You, if you want Bri, so it’s, if you want Brian friend to think you’re elite,
Brian Friend (13:09):
I mean, look, I’m, like I said, I’m not considering any athlete’s performance in making these, I’m just looking and seeing what did the best in the world do. And about 150 were able to do this, this, or this.
Sevan Matossian (13:18):
Ah, I see. Okay. Okay. Okay. And would I see those patterns right away if I went to the board or I’d be like, okay, he chose everyone.
Brian Friend (13:26):
Yeah. Now the, now the interesting thing here is these look like smaller numbers in terms of you had to be better to do ’em in in 20, uh, 22. But if you scroll to the right, they’re actually, uh, uh, similar to even, uh, actually a substantially more people who met those thresholds or marks. Um, and it’s interesting, it was really interesting to me doing that because a lot of people thought that the 2022 open was like catered to the non elites. Like there was just very basic things that you had to do. But it turns out that the best in the world were also the best in the world at that. And there were quite a few who qualified that year, but not that many that qualified two years in a row.
Sevan Matossian (14:01):
What’s it, what’s the um, the turquoise?
Brian Friend (14:05):
Hmm. I just see, I think the turquoise are the ones who made it to, uh, who qualified twice. Um,
Sevan Matossian (14:15):
Okay. So ma
Brian Friend (14:16):
That might, but I think that, I’m not sure you got the color colors perfectly here at the bottom there, it tells you who the ones were that qualified between 2021 and 2022 in the black.
Sevan Matossian (14:27):
And, and, and I see Phil tunes on there. You didn’t boot him. It’s very nice of you. Oh, he
Brian Friend (14:31):
Didn’t, you didn’t found any drug test during in the open.
Sevan Matossian (14:35):
And who is, uh, 29 on the women’s side? This is Valentina Magdi
Brian Friend (14:40):
Mag Otti. She competed in Dubai this year. CrossFitter from Italy.
Sevan Matossian (14:44):
She good?
Brian Friend (14:47):
Did you get on this list one time? You’re pretty good.
Sevan Matossian (14:49):
Uh, number 15, Addison, uh, Des Rossier. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, who’s that? She
Brian Friend (14:54):
Competes on a team frequently.
Sevan Matossian (14:57):
Number four. Lo Lori Clem Clement. Do I know
Brian Friend (15:00):
Her? Yeah. We’ve talked about her before. A master’s age athlete excels at the body weight, open style workouts.
Sevan Matossian (15:06):
All right. Uh, number 15 on the men. Nicholas Anna, uh, Polski.
Brian Friend (15:11):
Yeah. I competed on a team that year as well.
Sevan Matossian (15:14):
And then the rest of these guys are almost all, uh, individual, right? Number six, Victor, uh, Lu.
Brian Friend (15:20):
Yeah, we’ve talked, we talked about him a lot last year when he is chewing well during the open. So yeah, very high level. And if you keep scrolling to the right, you’ll see the 2023 qualifiers. Uh, there’s less than 2022. Again, the lift eliminates a lot. Those are the thresholds. And I get was pretty generous with the lifting on this one, but it still eliminated a lot of people. Uh, Emma Carey, for example. Um, and then, you know, there was a, there were few, very few people who qualified at all this year. And then of those people there were obviously less that qualified two years in a row and only one and one that qualified three years in a row.
Sevan Matossian (15:53):
Uh, let me see the list for 2023. Scroll over one more. And, and why so few this year? Which one did you, which, which, which number did you pick that that that screwed so many people?
Brian Friend (16:07):
I mean, even fourth place worldwide. Tyler Christal didn’t make the list. It was very difficult on the men’s side, especially, almost everyone was eliminated, not even because of the lift, but because of either 23.1 or 23.2 a.
Sevan Matossian (16:21):
Interesting. Okay. And, and, and the only two that were all three years are Brook Wells and Jeffrey Adler.
Brian Friend (16:27):
Yeah. And I put all of their stats at the end of this slide cause I just, you know, I think it’s like, it’s pretty cool to, uh, to, you know, to, to perform this well consistently amongst the worldwide population on basically a random collection of tests.
Sevan Matossian (16:42):
Um, uh, blink three times if you’re okay. Uh, JR. And Caleb, uh, Jr’s like a Cobra when he strikes he’s deadly. Oh, I thought you were gonna say he’s like a Cobra. He doesn’t have eyelids.
JR Howell (16:52):
No, I was just, I was thinking about how impressive it was that Brooke was the only one that’s on this list and she was doing it welcoming back from a major injury.
Brian Friend (17:01):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. That is incredible. And, and, uh, just in case was wondering Ma O’Brien barely missed on one of the tests from like, maybe by 20 seconds or something in 2021. And Tia, if not pregnant also likely would, qual would’ve qualified for this. But, you know, circumstances are what they are and neither one of ’em did.
Sevan Matossian (17:20):
I didn’t see Maderas on any of these lists.
Brian Friend (17:23):
Generally doesn’t perform very well on the open relative to live major live competitions.
Sevan Matossian (17:28):
Uh, is Vener on any of these lists?
Brian Friend (17:30):
Nope.
Sevan Matossian (17:31):
Um, and and how do you choose whether you’re gonna go with Jeffrey or Jeff?
Brian Friend (17:35):
I don’t know.
Sevan Matossian (17:36):
Okay. Alright. Cool. Uh, and it’s gonna be sent something we’re gonna be seeing on, uh, did have you done this before?
Brian Friend (17:44):
I did write an article about it a couple years ago. I had done one, I think for 1920 and 21. And there were a few more athletes that made it across all three years maybe. Oh, there was only one male at that time. I think there were three women.
Sevan Matossian (17:58):
I’m gonna, I’m gonna do my own elite.
JR Howell (18:00):
18, 19 and 20 would be cool. Cause this was the last three years. There were five weeks.
Brian Friend (18:04):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Sevan Matossian (18:08):
You think there would be upheaval, but
Brian Friend (18:09):
Rich. But Rich, I mean, rich makes it made it almost every year. He just didn’t make it this year because of the lift.
Sevan Matossian (18:15):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. Alright. Uh, okay. Uh, anything else? Um, before we talk about what’s happened, what, what’s happened in the season? Uh, where and where we’re going, like kind of where we’re at?
Brian Friend (18:31):
I think, I think we’re good.
Sevan Matossian (18:32):
All right. Uh, so everyone knows the CrossFit Open goes, or the CrossFit games goes from the open to the quarterfinals to the semi-finals to the games. Last year there was a stop, uh, um, between semi-finals and the games that was called the, uh, last Chance Qualifier. I believe that is gone. Is that correct?
JR Howell (18:52):
That’s correct.
Sevan Matossian (18:53):
And so right now we just finished the open. Uh, the, one of the cool things about CrossFit, it is, uh, super duper low barrier of entry. Everyone in the world could enter. It’s a massive net. It’s not like the Olympics. There’s no politics involved that hurt to say that. And, uh, uh, anyone can enter you pay your 20 bucks and you do it. And so we got all the scores, uh, we got all the rankings, and we know that out of those 300,000 and obviously there’s different categories, we’re just talking about individual right now, correct? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, individual men, individual women, yep. That every, everyone is, uh, able to enter. And so we, uh, take the top 10%. Um, how, how many people were there? How many women and how many men were there in the individual? Do we know a total or do we know quarterfinals? Do we know either of those numbers? I guess we could figure out do we know how many people, like
JR Howell (19:41):
How many invites were sent out or how many people
Sevan Matossian (19:43):
Were sent? Yeah. Like how, how many men in the world qualified for the, uh, quarter finals?
Brian Friend (19:48):
Oh, uh, I don’t know if the worldwide, I’m sure Halpin has the worldwide, I just have it by region here in front of me.
Sevan Matossian (19:55):
Okay.
Brian Friend (19:55):
Um, but it’s,
Sevan Matossian (19:57):
Do you have, do you have a rough number for the men and rough number for the women? Is it like 20,000 in each?
Brian Friend (20:01):
Yeah, it’s like 18 to 19,000. It’s probably 19,000 for the men, substantially less for the women.
Sevan Matossian (20:07):
Okay. To
Brian Friend (20:08):
11.
Sevan Matossian (20:09):
So basically
Brian Friend (20:10):
Maybe like, maybe like 19 and 15,000.
Sevan Matossian (20:13):
Okay. So if you’re in that top 10% of the open, uh, w uh, so that, that would be that 190,000 men entered and 150,000 women, they take the top 10%. And now where are we? What happens? Did these people get an email saying you have now qualified for the quarter finals?
Brian Friend (20:31):
Yeah, I think emails were sent out at some point today. And
Sevan Matossian (20:35):
Today. Is that what you said? I think
JR Howell (20:36):
They were sent out. Yeah. I think they were sent out yesterday when the floor planes came out.
Sevan Matossian (20:39):
Did you get one JR. Shit,
Brian Friend (20:41):
I thought, I still thought it was Monday. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (20:43):
Okay. And, and everyone gets the same one. All the men, all the women. Doesn’t matter how good you are, how bad you are, if you made it into that, you got an email.
JR Howell (20:51):
Yeah. And it doesn’t matter if you’re gonna be competing team like Adrian said on there, you know, they’re not, they’re not gonna sift through and just not send to people that they know are already gonna be on team. If, if they wanna sign up and do the test, they’re gonna be factored in, you know, from all angles. And then also too, like masters and teens. So if you were good enough to qualify on the individual side for quarter finals, they don’t take into account your age either.
Sevan Matossian (21:18):
Okay.
JR Howell (21:19):
At least for the masters. Brian, I don’t know if that’s true for teens, if they’re even allowed to do that or not.
Brian Friend (21:23):
16, 17. Yes. Okay.
Sevan Matossian (21:27):
Okay, here we go. Top 10% of athletes, 25% for the teams. Let me see if they got the numbers here. Thank you Justin. I’m scrolling down now. Uh, it looks like the quarter finals is going to be three days long. Uh, five workouts. Uh, one or two workouts are due every 24 hours. Uh, teams in age group have two days and, and four workouts.
Brian Friend (21:52):
And those will not be this week. Those will be in the subsequent weeks coming up.
JR Howell (21:58):
Yeah. Teams and age groupers have four tests instead of five.
Sevan Matossian (22:04):
Oh, it’s an interesting, they have the individual broken down here.
Brian Friend (22:08):
Yeah, that’s what I was looking at. Um, to do the quick math. I didn’t see the total number, but just did a little mental math.
Sevan Matossian (22:18):
It’s time I get a haircut. Uh, did, did Tia qualify?
Brian Friend (22:24):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative>
Sevan Matossian (22:26):
Crazy. I wonder if she does. It
Brian Friend (22:31):
Seems like she’s probably going to,
Sevan Matossian (22:34):
Uh, uh, Fergie says Tia is a saint. Okay. Uh, so now, so this happened. So just so the, so we, they gave an equipment list a few months ago, so we know all the equipment that’s gonna be used
Brian Friend (22:49):
Up until the, it could potentially be used,
Sevan Matossian (22:51):
Potentially be used. Um, and equipment could be used twice, right? Just because we saw in the open doesn’t mean we ch we crossed it off the list and Yeah.
Brian Friend (22:58):
And we speculated it. That might be the case because there were some elements that were included in the open that were not, not, there were, the volume was very low, like a double unders, for example.
Sevan Matossian (23:09):
And, and then, and then the, and then now the floor plans were released and the actual workouts will start to begin to be released on this Thursday, March 16th.
Brian Friend (23:21):
Well, I think at this point we’re expecting all of them to be released on Thursday. Yeah.
JR Howell (23:26):
They’ll all be released on Thursday at 12th Pacific. And the first window, 24 hour window will be Thursday to Friday. And at that time, they’ll have to have tests one and two scores submitted. But that doesn’t mean that they may have not already done test 3, 3, 4, and five. So each 24 hour window, they have two scores due, two scores due, and then the last 24 hour window, they have one score they have to submit, but the order at which they do them is still kind of left up to the athlete.
Sevan Matossian (24:01):
So, so on the 16th, we think,
Brian Friend (24:03):
We think that that’s the case there, there were indications earlier in the year that that might not be the case and that they would release the workouts two at a time, 24 hours, two more, 24 hours, one more, which I thought would’ve been a positive change. There’s still the potential that they will release all the workouts, but they might do something like give a password and the password might, passwords for the workouts might only be released at specific times. So they might say, here are all five workouts, the password for workout one is, uh, Johnny and the password workout two is a tree. And you will tell you the passwords for workout three and 4 24 hours from now. And they, and if they did something like that, they could still potentially force them to be done in a specific order, which I think some people are in favor of and some people are not in favor of,
Sevan Matossian (24:49):
But we don’t know. So, so if we’re, if what JR is saying is correct and they release all the workouts on the 16th, then you’re saying that there is a chance that someone could do, uh, workout number five and three and submit those that basically you just have to at least submit to on the 16th?
Brian Friend (25:05):
Yes. Someone So, you know, for example, uh,
Sevan Matossian (25:08):
Oh, we
Brian Friend (25:08):
Don’t know. Let’s say that I’m going outta town on Friday evening and I’m just like, well, I ha I don’t have, I’m not gonna be around this, uh, Sunday, Saturday, Sunday to do any workouts. So I’m just gonna do ’em all from Thursday when I get ’em until Friday before I leave. I’ll submit one and two when I have to. And the others, I’ve already have ’em done and I’ll submit ’em when they’re due.
Sevan Matossian (25:27):
Interesting. And, and will they be reviewing these, um, in, in real time? So let’s say you do workouts on the 16th and they tell you, Hey, uh, you know, in your deadlifts you weren’t standing up all the way. Um, will you have a chance to redo it?
JR Howell (25:45):
Yeah, you could have a chance. And that’s, uh, a point that’s usually driven home in the last couple years, like by Adrian and others, that hey, the sooner you get your scores in the leaderboard is blind. So the, the, the sooner you get your scores in and you upload videos if there are any issues or you have any questions, there’s still time. But if you wait until the deadline is approaching, there’s not a whole lot they can do as far as saying, oh yeah, actually we couldn’t see you completely in the frame, or all of your G H D wasn’t in the frame and this is gonna be an invalid video,
Sevan Matossian (26:20):
Would you, uh, I’m guessing then the recommendation is, is like, Hey, if you’re gonna submit videos, submit them early and submit them to YouTube so that if people are gonna talk shit, they’ll, if people see you doing fucked up shit, they’ll bring attention to it. Don’t be afraid.
JR Howell (26:34):
Well, I know in the past when
Sevan Matossian (26:35):
You submit,
JR Howell (26:37):
Yeah, there’s just a place for you to post a, you know, for you to copy a link to the video, doesn’t matter if it’s private or public. So can, you can go ahead and do it when you submit the score or you can wait for them to ask for a video. Right. But chances are, if you’re planning on making it, you should just submit the, the video when you submit the score.
Sevan Matossian (26:52):
I guess my thing is, is you could submit a video and they could not have time to check it, and then they check it after it closes.
Brian Friend (27:00):
Yeah. I don’t think that there’s any guarantee that they’ll, that they’ll look at it ahead of time and, and honestly, they’re not gonna look at a majority of the participants videos anyway. But if you have a time that’s competitive to win, then they might look at it. Um, but again, there’s no prize money in the, in the quarter finals. There’s nothing that you, you know, in the open, the top five people plus the winner every week get paid out something. So there’s like a reason for them to review those videos. And quite frankly, it doesn’t matter if you’re the best score on all five workouts and you’re Justin Maderas, there’s still not any re real reason for them to review your video. Like, it’s like Yeah, whatever. He’s going to, we know he is going to semi-finals or whatever.
Sevan Matossian (27:38):
The only reason would be to, if they were catching flack from the outside.
Brian Friend (27:41):
Well, the, so the, here’s, here’s the thing. And I spoke about this, um, oh, I know I didn’t speak about it here actually, but I was, I have been having
Sevan Matossian (27:48):
This. Oh, Brian. Oh, Brian. Oh, Brian, what? I was getting his podcast confused.
Brian Friend (27:54):
Wow. I mean, we were on for three hours this morning, so I would say
Sevan Matossian (27:56):
You’re getting your pot with your, with those Oh, oh, I’m sorry, Brian, your picture’s break. Oh, we lost Brian. Oh, there he is. Back for a second.
Brian Friend (28:04):
Uh, thank you for humbling me. Savan <laugh>, I was talking about this with some people earlier and the fact that for the open it, it’s, you know, outside of the top fi the money winners, it’s not very relevant for the elite athletes because making it to quarterfinals is an afterthought. And for those people, honestly, making it to semi-finals is an afterthought as well. For the bottom 70, 80% of the open, the quarterfinals is also irrelevant because they have no chance to make it. But there’s a group of people, maybe like, let’s say the 20,000 men made it so, you know, 5,000 on either side of that. Like a group of 10,000 men that don’t know when they enter the open, if they’re good enough to make it or not. And that’s the population that CrossFit has to ask a question of themselves, do we care about these people?
(28:51):
Because those are the people that care the most about the open because it is the make or break for them of, if they get to meet their goal for the year, which is making quarter finals. I know for a fact that there are people that are going, that are registered for quarter finals that, that did zero open workouts. They didn’t even do ’em, they just put scores in there, were competitive enough to make the cut, and no one asked for their videos and no one asked to check ’em, and they’re going to do the quarter finals.
Sevan Matossian (29:14):
It’s, wow,
Brian Friend (29:15):
It’s, it’s embarrassing from a personal perspective that people would do that, but it’s also embarrassing from an organizational perspective that people could get away with it. How,
Sevan Matossian (29:23):
Let, lemme just say this real quick. In their defense, there’s no way of stopping that.
Brian Friend (29:27):
There’s no way of stopping it. And so it completely delegitimizes the advancing process of the quarter finals, you know, because I’m trying to make it, and I wasn’t good enough this year, but I know that there’s people that may or may not be better than me that just put in bullshit scores to make it through. And no one’s holding ’em accountable to that.
Sevan Matossian (29:46):
But there is no way to hold them accountable. That’s the problem. It’s not, that’s not CrossFit’s fault. I mean, well,
Brian Friend (29:51):
CrossFit needs to reevaluate if that’s something that they want to be, uh, condoning or supporting or encouraging,
Sevan Matossian (29:57):
Well, they would’ve to change the whole, whole entry per.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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