Sevan Matossian (00:00):
And, oh, no. Yeah, I’m stressed for her. Hey, uh, bam. We’re live, Mike Halpin, Caleb Beaver. Uh, we are taking, um, name recommendations for Caleb’s, uh, child, um, and, uh, Mr. Brian Friend in the house today. Uh, today we are going to explore, discuss, um, thing to explore Uhoh. I heard that
Brian Friend (00:27):
That was me. How,
Sevan Matossian (00:28):
Uh, explore, discuss the, the, uh, the future, the present, the past, not in that order of what it takes to get to the CrossFit games with, in regards to, um, worldwide rankings and, um, strength of field numbers. And more specifically, I think what can be done to fix the current situation so that Africans can attend. No, not that I’m off a little bit.
Brian Friend (00:57):
We’ll see what we can do.
Sevan Matossian (00:58):
Okay. Uh, so, uh, hi. Hi, everyone. Uh, everyone knows who these guys are. Um,
Brian Friend (01:04):
While you were late, I put it to the, uh, audience to try to guess why you were late.
Sevan Matossian (01:08):
Oh, okay. Fantastic. Uh, any, any, um, my, any, any good guesses?
Brian Friend (01:14):
Well, and one person paid $5 to guess.
Sevan Matossian (01:17):
Oh, Savon is late because he had to put his shopping cart away. Oh. You know what’s crazy about the whole shopping cart thing? <laugh>. God, I have to just always, I’ve just been eating my words now for day after day after day. So today I went to the supermarket, and as I’m coming out, uh, you know, that little sidewalk that runs in front of supermarkets, you know what I mean? Where all the carts are, and they, they have like wood for sale and like tomato plants if they’re in season. And then like a huge thing of the watermelons, or, you know what I’m talking about that area. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>. And, and I’m, and, and there’s a narrow spot there between like the carts
Brian Friend (01:48):
In certain centuries of the world that is the supermarket.
Sevan Matossian (01:51):
Right, right. Good. Very good point. Uh, as I’m, I’m, as I’m walking down there with my boys in between the shopping carts and like a pillar that holds the roof off of, of the shopping cart, and some lady who’s, who’s probably 52 my age, but, uh, moves like she’s 112, puts her cart horizontally and blocks the sidewalk and walks away like, son of a bitch, <laugh>, that serves me. Right. I’m the guy who’s like, professing not to put your carts away. And some lady, I mean, just clear as day blocks my kids and I from walking down a sidewalk,
Brian Friend (02:22):
This was an unplanned salon, but that, who is the person who donated that five bucks?
Sevan Matossian (02:26):
Uh, Nick, uh, wad, zombie, Nick Nicholas, uh, the guy. This is the guy who made, uh, this card right here of Ben, uh, Ben Smith. Hmm. It’s for sale.
Brian Friend (02:35):
This is my sixth podcast with you this week.
Sevan Matossian (02:39):
Wow.
Brian Friend (02:40):
And the only way I’ve gotten through it is the, is the wa zombie cards. I’m drawing power from them.
Sevan Matossian (02:45):
Oh, that’s incredible. Because I drain you or because the, the subjects are so taxing or both?
Brian Friend (02:50):
It’s a combination of things. I’ve tried CBD balm on my neck. Go. I’ve done the, uh, mobility practices from wad proof prior to the show, and now I’m re resorting to drawing power from the wad, zombie playing cards.
Sevan Matossian (03:06):
Well, I like that. Uh, I, I, I will say this, um, I, I’m thoroughly enjoying this week. It’s much easier than I, um, than I thought it was gonna be. I thought this morning show was like one of the best shows I’ve ever done. I I, I, it is crazy. I, I was scared because with Caleb and Suza, um, gone, but I’ve adapted. I know You hate to hear
Brian Friend (03:25):
That. I actually listened to it for about 10 minutes this morning.
Sevan Matossian (03:27):
Did you laugh at all?
Brian Friend (03:29):
Um,
Sevan Matossian (03:31):
No. That means
Brian Friend (03:32):
You didn’t, I don’t know about that.
Sevan Matossian (03:33):
Did you, have you, have you been, have you been following the, um, we have a, a gentleman, a caller who’s dating a woke girl, and he’s not woke and she doesn’t know he is not woke. Have you been following that? Uh, no. Narrative. Oh my God. It’s a, it’s amazing, right, Caleb?
Caleb Beaver (03:47):
It’s incredible. Honestly, <laugh>,
Sevan Matossian (03:49):
It’s like we’re five shows in of getting, uh, reports and it’s, it is, it is truly amazing. I
Caleb Beaver (03:55):
Can’t believe he’s pulling it off.
Sevan Matossian (03:56):
Yeah, it’s crazy. What’s she gonna do when she finds out? It’s like she’s dating a frog and she’s gonna like, but it’s, she’s almost her
Caleb Beaver (04:02):
Deep at this point.
Sevan Matossian (04:04):
Yeah. Well, he’s too deep.
Caleb Beaver (04:07):
Sure.
Sevan Matossian (04:09):
Uh, so, um, are you guys excited about this? Do you think you have a real solution? Is this just like a fuck you to hq? No. Is this like, we’re just hating on HQ or we’re hating on the games, or we’re here in a positive way to be like, offer some, uh, un unrequested unsolicited yet, um, helpful, constructive, uh, advice?
Brian Friend (04:25):
Well, I wouldn’t, uh, I wouldn’t necessarily say unsolicited. Okay. Maybe it’s not solicited by CrossFit headquarters. Um, although, and, and yeah, obviously people know what our opinions are about the current methods for these things, but in, I think in large part because of what we’ve said about it, the question is, well, what would you do? And in particular, I’ve been making this claim since before, uh, anything was announced anyway, that I really don’t think that it’s right to use prior data in a forward seeking endeavor because the athletes wouldn’t know what they’re doing and the decisions that they make would not be reflective of the decisions they could make now with what they know. And that’s important to establish because the same thing is true for the system that we’re applying our method to. The athletes would not have known about the system that we’re gonna talk about tonight in their pursuits and attempts in the open the quarter finals this year. But this system is only reflective of performance during the two stages of the cross the game season so far.
Sevan Matossian (05:28):
Uh, the one that you’re proposing, yeah. Mm-hmm. <affirmative> and Mike Hal’s proposing, did you guys come up with this together? What are its origins?
Brian Friend (05:35):
Um, I, so, you know, I was, I have had many thoughts about a way to potentially do this, but on the back of many people kind of pressing me or asking me, well, what, what would you do? I just tried to come up with an idea and I asked Mike to run a study and I was pretty happy with how the initial study went. So I asked to continue it and through the quarter finals, and we did. And we never ran another study. We were, I was think we were both pretty happy with where this landed, especially in light of what the current system is, because we’re really not trying to change too much. We wanna keep some, especially in what we’re doing here, we’re trying to keep and did keep some elements of what Crossroad HQ is in included this year. Cuz I think there are components of it that are and can be, um, helpful even in fu future iterations.
Sevan Matossian (06:25):
Uh, just posted on the CrossFit game site. This is by the way, for, for, for whatever it’s worth. This is how I know that whoever runs that account is a douche nozzle. Uh, semi-finals tests drop next week. What are you fucking 15?
Brian Friend (06:41):
I mean, this has been announced for a long time that the semi-final workouts would be, ano would be available one week before the semi-finals.
Sevan Matossian (06:48):
When’s the merch drop in? When’s the merch drop in?
Brian Friend (06:54):
What the hell? Gimme one
Sevan Matossian (06:54):
Second. Oh shit. We have a break in at the, uh, Brian friend, uh, compound. One time we, we, one time we were doing a show with uh, uh, Brian and, uh, the fire alarm went off, which is different than when you had have Gunnie heard the, uh, air sirens. Hey, um, Brian, uh, did you someone breach, uh, the compound?
Brian Friend (07:15):
No, my TV just turned on.
Sevan Matossian (07:17):
Oh,
Brian Friend (07:18):
<laugh>. I, I don’t know why I turned on. We just started playing something
Sevan Matossian (07:21):
Said,
Brian Friend (07:21):
Hey, Alexa,
Sevan Matossian (07:23):
Chris, be Easter Field. Uh, we got a hog shot. Fair enough. Uh, Olivia, anyone else seen a black screen? Uh, nope. Wrong show. Uh, we don’t do blackface or black screen on wrong show. Thank you. Okay. Well, I’m excited to hear about it. Um, is it b is it, is it something that, is it a complete revamp or is it just some, some tweaks and tws? So
Brian Friend (07:43):
There’s, there are a couple key, I would say key things to understand on the onset. One is that we wanted, you know, CrossFit has communicated that the intent of this in the long run is to have a more accurate representation of the competitive landscape year to year. So that if in the case that there is a year where there’s a particularly strong group of athletes concentrated in one region, that they can, they can benefit from that in terms of game spots allocated. And we wanna see that too. Uh, I’ve been advocating for that for a long time, as many people have. But what we see right now is that that, and we’ve gone over this, uh, a lot, is that that’s not really happening there because of how the system is set up. It’s pretty difficult to have an impact on the scoring system within the year that’s actually, um, being tested. So our system eliminates everything from the past and only looks at, at competitive performance in the open and the quarter finals of this season.
Sevan Matossian (08:44):
Okay. I can’t wait to, um, uh, hear about it. Uh, you know, this could be a, remember when Tyler Watkins came on here and tried to talk to me about scoring that, and then I don’t think he ever was allowed on the show ever again. I am a little concerned for help and, but we’ll see what happens. Uh, what do you wanna talk about Sapphire, uh, Godard? Uh, before we, um,
Brian Friend (09:03):
Oh, just briefly. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (09:04):
Everyone loves Wow. Her hair is God damn.
Brian Friend (09:07):
Hmm.
Sevan Matossian (09:08):
Who doesn’t love a redhead? This is incredible. Go on.
Brian Friend (09:11):
Well just, you know, obviously Condolence is out to her. She’s got, uh, like she says, a ruptured ACL out for the season and it’s gonna have an impact on her team. Her team was the third ranking team in Europe coming outta the quarter finals. And, um, I think three, if not all four of them are good enough to make or did even make the, uh, individual quarter finals on the, on their own merit, uh, or in at least did last year too. So anyway, they weren’t on my rankings the other day because I had kind of heard about this. It wasn’t announced at that time, so we didn’t bring it up on the show. But it was a tough day because two U two teams, two of the top teams from the UK both took big blows. You know, Zach seem obviously not competing at all. And Safara, they do have an alternate listed. I’m not entitle. I think they’re gonna continue to compete with her, but it’ll be a big blow losing someone as good as she is.
Sevan Matossian (09:57):
Uh, I I would like to, uh, leave, uh, s sorry. Uh, Caleb, I had to, uh, big dick you, uh, this, uh, I’d like to leave with this picture of our dear friend Sapphire. Um,
Brian Friend (10:08):
Great picture. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (10:09):
What an amazing photo. Okay. Uh, fantastic. Uh, okay. Good luck. Sapphire. Sorry about, that’s a great
Brian Friend (10:13):
Event too. A lot of handstand pushups and then a lot of sandbag cleans.
Sevan Matossian (10:17):
What about a, uh, what about a replacement for her? What about, uh, uh, Krista Holt, Christine Holta?
Brian Friend (10:22):
Well, it has to be the athlete that’s listed as your alternate. And like I said, they do have an athlete listed as alternate so they can continue, but Dad athlete does not have the same experience and credentials as Sapphire, which is okay. I mean, she can get an opportunity to compete. I think they’re still gonna compete. So,
Sevan Matossian (10:39):
But it’s just, um, we have a, a, a comment from j uh, Jeremy World. She’s sneaky hot, uh, uh, from Marco. We have a question. Is she single? Uh, Brian, is she single? Mm-hmm. <affirmative>,
Brian Friend (10:48):
Her boy. I think her boyfriend’s actually on the team.
Sevan Matossian (10:51):
Uh, we have, um, some, uh, a comment of, um, uh, just, uh, observation, uh, a scientific observation, super tight body, uh, uh, like me, super tight body, me likey. Oh, okay. Uh, shorthand. Um, and, uh, then Allison NYC also, uh, uh, I love when the quads look like that. I’m not sure what she’s talking about, but I like it when they look like that too, so. Alright. Uh, back to, uh, going back to the other, the, the developments on the other, uh, side that Brian mentioned of the other team that will not, um, be going well, that lost a player. We had this post, um, and I’ve read it, I’ve read it twice now. Maybe I should have read it three times, but what I think, uh, it’s Will Kane talking about, um, not going to the semi-finals because I, he’s, he’s a little ambiguous, but I think he’s, he’s saying, uh, sending out, uh, some love to Zack George in this, right? He’s basically saying, Hey, I, I, no, I’m reading into it wrong. I mean, you have to read into it. Isn’t he saying, Hey buddy, I’m sorry that, um, this happened, but no hard feelings. I
Mike Halpin (11:51):
Think he’s a little bit more even keel than his teammate was the other day. But
Sevan Matossian (11:55):
I think he will, Kane says, go ahead. Go ahead. Uh, Halman,
Mike Halpin (11:58):
I was just gonna say, I think he was a little bit more nice than, than Janie was, but
Sevan Matossian (12:06):
I don’t think, aren’t the photos saying that I’m your friend. I got your back. Like he’s hugging him here, like, Hey, you do you buddy. I got you.
Mike Halpin (12:14):
Yeah, I think he speaks up well for his teammates here and says how disappointing it is, but still is as nice as he can be.
Sevan Matossian (12:23):
And, and he doesn’t link to, uh, Mr. George either. Anyway, I, I thought, I thought it was, I thought it was, I think,
Mike Halpin (12:31):
Uh, do you know that, um, Molly, the meatball, the MMA fighter?
Sevan Matossian (12:36):
Yeah. Yeah,
Mike Halpin (12:37):
She was, she was in his comments saying something about him,
Sevan Matossian (12:40):
So, oh, no shit. Yeah. Well, thank you. Holy cow. Helping. Oh, meatball, Molly, I can’t imagine what y’all are going through. Uh, nicely out there, lad. There are most definitely ways to go about things, uh, sending love. Wow.
Brian Friend (12:54):
Wow. I mean, this is a real, like, I, I think that there’s definitely an understanding of the decision that Zach made from a personal perspective. It makes a lot of sense, as you’ve talked about, but there’s, you know, there are ways that are more well received to go about it than not. And it seems to be that, that at the end of the day, most people are not that impressed with the way he handled it in com in terms of communicating with his team. Not necessarily, I can’t believe you took such a cool opportunity to make so much money for your fan.
Sevan Matossian (13:22):
Fair enough. Uh, Zach, I got you back. Oh, go ahead, Halpin.
Mike Halpin (13:25):
I was just gonna say, uh, comparing the two situations there, you can see there, there is a concern on teams that don’t set up, set up actual alternates. So, like Brian and I have been digging through a lot of these teams over the last few weeks. You can see teams where they have no alternate, and if something happens, good or bad for the athlete in, in the two cases here, you can see in some cases they had an alternate. They can still keep moving. It’s, it’s a blow to the team, but they still can compete. Uh, if they don’t have any alternates or there’s no one else at that affiliate listed, then they’re just dead in the water, unfortunately. So I think that that may be something that factors in, in the future, is making sure that you have somebody there that’s maybe going to try for individual but still is listed as an alternate for the team.
Sevan Matossian (14:16):
Fair enough, wise advice, uh, one final time back to Sapphire, uh, Olivia comments. She ain’t sneaky hot. She’s in your face hot. I agree. And I would also like to propose there’s this a desire to, uh, make superheroes all these different, um, uh, ethnicities, nationalities, racist skin colors. I would like to propose, uh, a more redheaded superheroes. Uh, maybe, uh, Sapphire could play a Wonder Woman, um, you know, she could, and then Olivia, uh, closing the, um, uh, the shallow and superficial talk about people’s looks. Say I say Brian is sneaky hot. And, um, that will be our final comment in this shallow, uh, field of judging people by their aesthetic. Anthony tpa, $5. If a team with an elite indie as the alternate and the person fails to make the games as an indie competitor, can the team use that person if they want?
Brian Friend (15:08):
Yep.
Sevan Matossian (15:11):
I mean, why would the person do that if they’re an indie competitor? Right.
Mike Halpin (15:15):
They can always only do one or the other.
Brian Friend (15:17):
Yeah, that’s just saying if, you know, if you and I were the competitors and we, they were on the team at semi-finals and Halpin are alternate and he’s competing as an individual and misses the games.
Sevan Matossian (15:25):
Oh, okay.
Brian Friend (15:26):
And then you’re like, I don’t want to go to the games, or, you know, happens better than me anyway. Or, you know, he could fill in
Sevan Matossian (15:31):
Okay.
Brian Friend (15:32):
Mm-hmm. <affirmative> because he was listed as the alternate,
Sevan Matossian (15:35):
Uh, Barry Macer. No, I will, I am not gonna read this. Uh, go to your room. Uh, okay.
Mike Halpin (15:40):
Just, just on that Tia, Tia is an alternate for proven as well as Saxon Pan for proven, or at least they were during the open.
Sevan Matossian (15:48):
Okay.
Mike Halpin (15:48):
So it’s possible.
Sevan Matossian (15:50):
Did you see the picture of, uh, Dave and Adrian together in Nashville yesterday?
Brian Friend (15:54):
I did.
Sevan Matossian (15:58):
[inaudible] Uh, okay. Is it,
Brian Friend (16:01):
We would expect that they’d be doing something together after what happened this week. So
Sevan Matossian (16:05):
I do, I do. You, uh, it’s just interesting. I wonder if Dave, I wonder if Dave went out there specifically to see him, it seems. Oh shit. Yes. Yes, yes. <laugh> yes. Oh my god. Ladies and gentlemen, this is what the world is about. The bad things. Do you know why bad things happen so that good things can happen? Listen, this is, those of you who are married are gonna understand this conversation very clearly. My wife lost her phone earlier today. That’s why I was four minutes late to the show. I was on the phone with Brian doing a little prep.
Speaker 5 (16:51):
Hello, you Kaylee. Oh,
Sevan Matossian (16:52):
Fuck that. Anyway, she found her phone. Guess where it was
Mike Halpin (16:56):
In her pocket
Sevan Matossian (16:57):
In the fucking car.
Mike Halpin (16:59):
Hmm.
Sevan Matossian (17:00):
But it’s good news. It’s good news. I’m cool. I’m cool. Okay, ladies and gentlemen, uh, I present to you Brian friend Michael Halpin with what we call the solution
Brian Friend (17:12):
A solution,
Mike Halpin (17:13):
Not the final solution.
Sevan Matossian (17:15):
Okay? I’m just chilling. Good. Drink coffee, the rest of this episode. I’m so happy.
Brian Friend (17:20):
All right. Um, so if you would, if you do wanna follow along the full article’s on Be Friendly Fitness, and we’re just gonna kind of walk through it, I’ll kind of,
Sevan Matossian (17:28):
When was the article published? Brian,
Brian Friend (17:30):
I think last night.
Sevan Matossian (17:32):
Oh, did you tell me it was published?
Brian Friend (17:34):
No.
Sevan Matossian (17:35):
God damn it. How the fuck am I supposed to prepare for these shows? If you don’t tell me you feeling, you’re, you’re trying to sabotage my show because you work with the other guys now.
Brian Friend (17:43):
I’m even wearing their shirt tonight.
Sevan Matossian (17:45):
<laugh>. I know you’re a good dude, <laugh>, I love you. Okay. Uh, this
Brian Friend (17:49):
Actually is a great shirt. This is their tour short shirt from the season that that never was <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (17:53):
Oh, really? Talking on fitness made like a tour short the year that
Brian Friend (17:56):
On the back there’s like 25, uh, 28, however many sanctions there were, and only like 12 of ’em happened. And then there’s just 16 listed that never happened, which is, it’s actually kind of sad, but it’s a cool shirt.
Sevan Matossian (18:06):
Okay. Throwback. Hey, have ’em send me one. Have ’em send me one.
Brian Friend (18:09):
There’s some stuff that we’re gonna do on the show tonight, sev that, uh, I didn’t want you to, uh, get distracted by. Okay. So yes, we’re you’re coming in a little blind. Okay. On, on purpose.
Sevan Matossian (18:18):
Okay, great.
Brian Friend (18:20):
Should be fun for some people.
Sevan Matossian (18:21):
Okay,
Brian Friend (18:22):
So anyway, my, my idea was basically to that each stage of the season should be a, a vetting or a screening for the next stage of the season. So that there should be things that are tested in the open that are specifically, uh, meant to eliminate people who can’t do things that are showing up in the quarter finals. Same thing with the quarter finals into the semi-finals, the semifinals to the game. So there should be a progression to the season. So if we just looked at this year’s open and we see that there are a decent density of ring muscle ups at the end of a workout, and we’re talking about for a, an open field, a decent dec density of muscle up, you would expect that a ring muscle up is gonna be a prerequisite for something that’s coming down the road. And that if you can’t do any of those, you probably shouldn’t be advancing to the next stage of the competition.
(19:10):
Same thing with the strict handstand pushup. Same thing with the, um, the, the thruster. Okay. Why are we testing a one rep max cluster? Are we doing it just to do it or is it a precursor for something that’s coming next? Like, um, 15 cleaner jerks at 275 pounds or an op a workout that opens with nine front squats from the four at floor at 2 25. And I know especially in the women’s field, that there are people, and we’ve talked about this, that had no main ring muscles, no strict handstand pushups and a thruster weight that was pretty low that were still able to make it through. So I felt like it, it was, you know, given the, the difficulty of some of the quarter finals tests, the filtering process wasn’t necessarily up to par. So I just ran the study. I said, Mike, what if we evaluated the people who participated in the open, not the ones that signed up, but the ones who participated. And we said, in order to advance from the open to the quarter finals, you have to be in the top 15% of all of the scored tests independently. And only that group of athletes would be able to advance. And then I let him do his thing.
Sevan Matossian (20:18):
Uh, let, let me uh, contextualize that for a second. Uh, how many, um, what, what is the situation now? It’s the top what percent? 10%. 10. It’s the top 10% now of
Brian Friend (20:28):
Registrants, not participants. And we are choosing to only look at participants because we’re trying to evaluate the competitive performance against the competitive field.
Sevan Matossian (20:37):
Okay. So theirs is, theirs is, um, uh, top 10% of all the registrants and not based on individual performances, but based on their final placement,
Mike Halpin (20:49):
Right? Yes. Okay. And theirs is by region. Ours is by world.
Sevan Matossian (20:54):
Okay. Uh, and, and, and, and why, um, what made you think that this was a valuable distinction? I, I understand the participant and registration piece, but, but why individual events so that someone wouldn’t, someone maybe who did great in four of the workouts but couldn’t do ring muscle ups in the other don’t, doesn’t move ahead like you were explaining in the beginning.
Brian Friend (21:11):
No, potentially. I mean, it’s, we’ve seen this basically play out at further stages in the competition, right? The 2014 is probably the best example of this. Sam brings us a defending champion. She was amazing at just about everything. There was one thing she couldn’t do and she was not able to ad advance in the season, you know, and, and I think that this ma model is basically accounting for that because it’s, it’s, it also puts some responsibility on the programmer. What are you testing in each of these tests? And is it actually whether, and it could be something as simple as capacity, core stamina, a grip test. You know, there’s many different things that a test can break down to, but whatever you’re testing, there should be a reason for it. And you should have kind of an expectation that the athletes have a minimum threshold. The athletes that will be advancing have a minimum threshold within that context, knowing that there’s gonna be an elevated challenge coming in the next stage of the competition.
Sevan Matossian (22:02):
And, and you would do every year that way. Every every year would be that way,
Brian Friend (22:06):
Potentially. So, you know, the thing that I acknowledged when I, um, when I was being critical of this is I think that for this year you should have started from ground zero. And I’ve already said why, but I don’t think that it nec that you necessarily could not implement a structure that does capture a little bit more data over time. I just think that I would wanna be involved with some other people to have a conversation about that. Um, this is a simple study that I can do that’s just for this year.
Mike Halpin (22:36):
Yeah. And Brian says it well on the article, is that you, you give the athletes an ability to say, here’s the line in the sand, everything after this matters. And you’re gonna actually try during the open, you’re gonna try during quarter finals where we see athletes today, they’ll do the quarter finals workout, and then they’ll just go back to what they were doing for the day. They’ll, they’ll do all five workouts in 24 hours, and they won’t really try too hard at any of them. In this case, it’s, it’s raising the level to say you have to be within this 15% across all five tests to, to qualify, uh, to the next stage.
Sevan Matossian (23:12):
So, so the only, sorry, I mean, I should think of a gentler way to word this, but the only thing that it solves, well, it does, it creates one thing. It creates a more competitive atmosphere, but the only thing that it solves is, um, it, it makes it so people who are have major holes don’t move forward. It actually doesn’t address the issue. It’s not the
Brian Friend (23:33):
Only thing that it solves, but it is an issue that, that is, that becomes true in this system. Yes.
Sevan Matossian (23:39):
But it, it, it doesn’t solve this issue that when I think of the worldwide rankings, the, the big thing that I think about in the strength of field number is fact that you can’t get the points that matter unless you go
Brian Friend (23:49):
To the games. Hold on to that thought until you, uh, okay. See, see the, how this plays out, okay?
Sevan Matossian (23:53):
Because okay,
Brian Friend (23:54):
We’re not, this is not actually addressing worldwide rank. It is addressing strength of field and the game spot allocation.
Sevan Matossian (24:01):
Oh, okay. Okay. I’ll hold it.
Brian Friend (24:03):
It actually, in some ways it does away with worldwide rank better, which somewhat in, in the system that’s currently there, it’s kind of irrelevant anyway. You know, you, you could say, oh, this is the number one ranked player in the world, a person in the world based on the whatever random point system that we have. But it doesn’t actually matter in the, in the, in the way the rest of the season, there’s nothing that you get for being first. You get the exact same thing for being a hundredth, right? But you get nothing if you’re a hundred and first, right? And so we’re, you’ll see here how performance ends up dictating some of that stuff down the line. And worldwide ranking kind of falls to the wayside.
Sevan Matossian (24:39):
Uh, one quick comment. Uh, Manny Spiegel, I find myself yearning to hear about Calvin Hein and Eagle McMahon tonight. Wait till I send you the, you, you know, I got one of those dudes on the hook. He says he’s game. He’s coming on.
Brian Friend (24:55):
I know you didn’t laugh at my response.
Sevan Matossian (24:57):
I Oh, I I meant to, I meant to. It was good. I, I just can’t tell you how proud I am. There’s a lot going
Brian Friend (25:01):
On and I, you’ve, I mean, you’ve been, you’ve been trying hard. That was, I, I did see that text and I like, kind of got really excited. I mean, it, it’s just one of those things like if we just break through with one person, you never know
Sevan Matossian (25:11):
What can happen. Yeah. He’ll tell someone else, right? He’ll
Brian Friend (25:13):
Tell me. And he’s a pretty forward facing person, you know, like, you know, 30 to 50,000 people watches YouTube every, every week. So if he’s like, oh, this week I was on this podcast, whatever, whatever,
Sevan Matossian (25:24):
Bam. We’re in. Okay, Manny, sorry, not tonight. I appreciate the, the yearning and your loins. Okay, I’m ready for the, uh, I’m, I’m ready for more. Tell me more about this, this program. What, what, what are the implications? What is it?
Brian Friend (25:36):
We’re just gonna get straight to it. So if you open up that article and you go to the open, the subset of the open, um,
Sevan Matossian (25:47):
Uh, I don’t know if corn Julio’s joking or not. I hope Brian has himself covered when this gets plagiarized. Uh, and I would guess that Brian hope it hopes it gets plagiarized. That is the last thing, um, he’s concerned about, right? Brian and Mike, you, you, I mean, you hope they take this right and run with it.
Brian Friend (26:05):
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, that’d be great. So we did, um, we ran the study and then we’ll just go to the women and I’ll sh and we’ll just show you what, um, what happened here. So this is the minimum work that ended up being required to get into the 15% threshold for women. And it turns out you actually, even in this study, you did not have to have a ring muscle up. You just had to get to the ring muscle up by a certain time distinction, which is fine. I thought about making, uh, I just wanted to run the study out. So we’ll just show you what it is and then I’ll tell you why I just kind of allowed that, allowed that to be for
Sevan Matossian (26:41):
Now. Does everyone understand this? Who’s watching it? I just wanna make sure you understand it. Those are the workouts from, uh, this year’s 2023 open. And so for 23.1 to, to actually qualify for the quarter finals, you would’ve needed 30 cleans by the 11 minute 34 mark. So what Brian did is he, and Brian and Mike Halpin did, is they figured out what the top 15% was and then made that demarcation. Everyone else got basically by the 30 cleans, they got, uh, 85% of the people got worse than 1134. I’m understanding this correctly, right?
Brian Friend (27:13):
Yes. The only thing you’re misrepresenting is that I did any of the work on the back end. I
Sevan Matossian (27:17):
Did not. Okay. Sorry. Uh, any time I say Brian’s name, just insert help and help,
Brian Friend (27:22):
Basically I would, I would say, help. And can you do this? And he would say, yeah, I can do that. Okay. And then he would do it, but they wouldn’t just need the 30 cleans by 11 40, 34, they also needed a minimum of five rounds plus two burpee pullups. They also needed a minimum thruster of 1 47, and they needed a minimum of eight strict handstand pushups.
Sevan Matossian (27:39):
And then from there, they make it to the quarter finals.
Brian Friend (27:42):
If they didn’t meet any of those, then they would not be eligible to advance.
Sevan Matossian (27:46):
Okay. I
Brian Friend (27:47):
Love it. And if you scroll down, you can see exactly how many people advanced from each part of the world.
Sevan Matossian (27:53):
And, um, uh, was this total num, how many people actually went to the quarter finals? Um, with their current system,
Mike Halpin (28:02):
It’s more like 10, 10,000 or so.
Sevan Matossian (28:05):
And in this system it’s 105,000. Well, you
Brian Friend (28:07):
Can look, no, no. That’s the total number that started, and 10% of that went. So that would be 10,591.
Sevan Matossian (28:13):
Oh, okay. Okay.
Brian Friend (28:15):
In our system, you can see the num the starting number of participants not registrants, and have, in fact, there were more registrants. So that number was actually higher than 10,000 in their model. Mm-hmm. But either way, you see the number of starting athletes, the number in each region who qualified, the percentage of athletes that qualified from that region. And that in total on the women’s side, 4,108 women were in the top 15% on all four of the open tests. And therefore would be the, those would be the athletes eligible to participate in quarter finals. Nobody else.
Sevan Matossian (28:45):
And, and if I were to judge the continents, I would think that, um, south America would have the most steroids in Asia would have the least. Therefore, they’re the outliers. Just saying, I’m just saying it’s like if I were to be a judgemental asshole,
Brian Friend (28:56):
I mean, it’s like in, you know, it’s pretty, it basically settles on 4% everywhere there’s some high and some low, but that’s the mean. Right. Which was ki which was kind of cool. I, I thought that was, uh, kind of a neat thing because, and we’ll get to this towards the end, but obviously there’s a perception that there’s certain parts of the world that are predominantly stronger than others. And this is obviously there’s a huge number of people difference between 1,260, but relative to the number taking the test, it was pretty similar. Yeah. Meaning that there are still, you know, the same number of athletes around the world in each region are, we’re good enough at this P point to advance on a percentage scale.
Sevan Matossian (29:31):
Hey, uh, Halpin, this is already amazing, <laugh>. This is, I love this. And you’re catch
Mike Halpin (29:36):
You’re, you’re keeping up. So
Sevan Matossian (29:38):
It’s, yeah. Thank you. This is on. Oh, what are the implications that we only get half as many? I, I, I’m, I’m dying to ask the, the big question. Right. Did any names get cut off? But I’ll, I’ll hold off. We’re
Brian Friend (29:47):
Gonna get to that at the end. Okay. Part I didn’t wanna show you early because I knew you spent the whole time there
Sevan Matossian (29:52):
Obsessing. Yeah. Okay. So, so what are the implications? Implications are, uh, in the most superficial sense, it’s 5,000 less registered, 6,000, which is.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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