JR Howell (00:00):
Dude. Dude, I have the most petite pectorals ever. Oh,
Taylor Self (00:03):
I’m not talking about you. I’m talking about Hiller. Can he do this? Hiller, can you make them fucking titties? Bounce? Boy, he
JR Howell (00:10):
Can do that with his eyebrows in Unison
Taylor Self (00:14):
<laugh>. Okay. All right. Today’s show, the best ever CrossFit games programmed in history. The best ever programmed CrossFit games ever in history. Ever. All right. So yeah, how do we wanna start this? There? I, I’ll start by saying this. I think I fucked myself because I made a Google sheet and went through years 2013 to 2022, which I thought were the relevant years, in my opinion, of, of candidates for the best programming ever. And I broke down mono structural movements, weightlifting movements, gymnastics movement, patterns within each, how many each year had what they were, how many couplets, how many triplets, how many chippers, how many intervals, how many single modality. Um, I also put two categories that were like theme of the year and deficiencies, and it just got so muddy. Like, it, it, it was like so much information. It’s like data overload.
Brian Friend (01:20):
Can I just interrupt you real quick? Yeah. I thought you were gonna say you fucked yourself because you like spent 12 hours in the sun and you look like a tomato <laugh>.
Taylor Self (01:27):
No, it’s because of this. I have this wor Edison light bulb dude. Here, let me, I can show it on my screen if you can see that Bad boy
JR Howell (01:34):
<laugh>. That is very orange.
Taylor Self (01:35):
Yeah, it’s a warm, it’s a warm, it’s a Thomas Edison light bulb, dude. He made it so shut the fuck up. And he’s my hero. Um, anyway, so that, yeah, I, I kind of messed, messed me up a little bit and took away some intuition that I had. Um, I feel like we should all three start by saying what our favorite year is, because that’s not Yeah, I was gonna
JR Howell (01:55):
Say.
Brian Friend (01:56):
Well, no, I, I actually like what you did there, of just like giving a little bit of your process mm-hmm. <affirmative> of how you, you know, went about starting this, uh, adventure. Maybe JR wants to do the same and then I can do so.
Taylor Self (02:07):
Yeah. JR
JR Howell (02:08):
I already had like three years in my head I was like, all right, I know where to go. It’s gonna be between these three, I think every year has at least one workout that I don’t really care for, which is fine, but I, I actually found myself eliminating the two other years solely because of workout, a workout that I just really did not like. Yeah. And in the year that I picked as the most well programmed, there wasn’t a single workout that I was like, yeah. Like ’em all accept that one. And while we’re talking through it, it’s probably a good point, like, just because you don’t like a workout, does that mean that it wasn’t part of a really well written test because you’re supposed to be objectively picking mm-hmm. <affirmative> the best programmed, not the programmed year you like the most. So I think while we may have a favorite year and then a year we think was the best, I think it would be silly to think that, um, we didn’t let a little bit of our personal biases come into play.
Brian Friend (03:06):
No. And I mean, if it’s a, if it’s a well programmed year, then I think it will produce, you know, a, a good pro, an enjoyable product as well. And I’m not sure which three years you’re talking about. I’ve, I’ve had this conversation before and I pretty much always defaulted, uh, 20 14, 20 17, and 2018 as the top three years. I don’t know if those are the same ones you’re referencing, but, um, to get to that point, you know, years ago when I first started kinda looking at this, I just, I hadn’t did the same as Taylor. I eliminated the front part of the programming and I, I went, I, I don’t, I think 2010 and before, you know, and if you guys are super interested in that stuff, bill and Chase do a deep dive on every single one of those games years and, and kind of lay it out and in a vacuum. Yes. 2007 is well programmed for three events, but to put it in, in par with the, the games from the last 10 years is not Yeah. It’s not really the same conversation.
Taylor Self (03:58):
Yeah. I found myself also to what JR was saying, going back and being like, man, this year has a lot of good workouts, but there’s one I hate and I can’t pick it. And, and not even, it’s not even just that I hate it, you know, personal bias comes in a little bit, but there’s some dumb workouts that are just like, that’s unnecessary or
JR Howell (04:16):
Some, some of it too is like, um, you, you, you find the one thing that makes that year the one that wasn’t picked. Yeah. Like you find the hole in the programming. Yeah. Yeah. And you’re like, oh, well they all have holes. I mean, if you’re pretty good at knowing program design, it’s easy to pick apart any year and be like, oh, well, that year was super squat centric and didn’t have any single leg movements, but then the next year only had one volume squatting workout outta 15 and they went heavy three or four times. Yep. Like, you’re gonna find a hole. And I think all of them, so even in the ones that we all picked, I’m sure there’s gonna be something about that year that we still don’t really think hit the mark.
Taylor Self (04:57):
Yeah. I, for example, 2020, the online covid games year where they had the two stages, uh, you could make an argument that there are eight out of the 19 events across both stages are single modality or testing single implement or single modality. Like if you take the CrossFit total, that’s weightlifting, weightlifting, weightlifting. So you could call it a triplet, a weightlifting, triplett, but you could also call it single modality. So that’s the one. It has seven without that. But in my opinion, you have eight out of 19 workouts are just testing one thing. That’s too much for me. I
JR Howell (05:33):
Don’t, that’s, that’s where we’re gonna, we’re gonna disagree big time, because one of the reasons why I picked my year is because I think Dave did that. And I think to me, the biggest flex of a programmer is being able to do what you just said and you can still look at it and really not notice it. Right. Because they’re that in
Taylor Self (05:57):
20, they’re
JR Howell (05:58):
That good at balancing
Taylor Self (05:59):
It out. I, I agree. And in 2014, or sorry, I’m, I just gave it away. I fucked us all over. But in that specific year that you’re talking
JR Howell (06:06):
About us all, or me,
Taylor Self (06:07):
You in that specific, well, yeah. In that specific year, you don’t notice it In 2020 you notice it big time. And then you have instances where you’re repeating the same movements and really similar workouts from stage one to stage two. Gh, hds, gh, hds, thrusters, thrusters, one rep, Mac squat one rep mac squat.
JR Howell (06:25):
As much as I don’t like the word fair, is it really fair to like, to, to try to pick apart 2020 other than the final leaderboard? You have
Taylor Self (06:33):
19 events. You could, you had 19 events, you could do whatever you wanted and you repeat. Yeah, dude,
JR Howell (06:38):
I think fair, you could do whatever you wanted. There was like a certain amount of equipment that could be sent to for
Taylor Self (06:43):
Online, but then you only have 5,000.
JR Howell (06:45):
That was over half the, that was over half the
Taylor Self (06:46):
Events. Yeah. But I thought the online workouts, half of those were better than anything else.
Brian Friend (06:50):
Well, you could do is using it as an example of, of how you evaluate a year. And that, in evaluating that year, that was something that Taylor noticed personally, if I was evaluating that year, I would not count all 19 events. I would only count the 12 scored events at the games, at the games at the, at the, at the in California.
Taylor Self (07:07):
I liked the online. I liked nasty Nancy, I liked Dan Diane, friendly Fran quite a bit. Oh
Brian Friend (07:14):
No, they’re great. I mean those, yeah, there’s some phenomenal workouts in there for sure. But yeah, no other game season has, has 15, has 19 tests. Almost all of ’em that are in the relevant years are between 11 and 15 tests and the, um, in-person version fits into that mold. So I think that that’s a fair sample size to evaluate relative to the other years.
Taylor Self (07:33):
Alright, what I think we should do is we’re gonna start with 2022 and we’re gonna work back and we’ll start with that year. We’re not gonna go over all the workouts, but we’ll start with a year and we’ll say, okay, this is why you thought it was the best or not. And if what we’re gonna do essentially is if we didn’t pick this year, jr’s gonna give his one reason why Brian will give his one most glaring reason why I’ll give mine. So we’ll start with 2022 and let me fix this so we can share the screen and get all the workouts in there.
JR Howell (08:03):
Um, I think you could do that with every year except 2014.
Taylor Self (08:06):
Okay. No
Brian Friend (08:08):
Way. We can definitely do it. 2014. You
JR Howell (08:10):
Can’t, you cannot find a picture that has ’em all on there.
Brian Friend (08:12):
Oh no. Oh, oh, oh. I thought you were talking about to find the air.
JR Howell (08:16):
All right. Like this picture. Yeah. We, there isn’t one for 2014.
Brian Friend (08:20):
No, there’s a few, there’s a lot of things about the way that the games website has changed recently that I like. There’s a couple things that being one of ’em that I really, really dislike. Yeah. The other one is, if you go to a leaderboard and sort by an event, you can’t sort the same page by overall rank. Again, you have to like completely leave and come back to be able to do it right. Please fix that. Whoever’s in charge of that,
Taylor Self (08:41):
They won’t.
Brian Friend (08:42):
They might, they’ve made so many other positive changes recently.
Taylor Self (08:45):
Okay. All right. Well let’s, let’s go to this. So we
Brian Friend (08:47):
Got, guess I asked nicely
Taylor Self (08:48):
2022 and there are
Brian Friend (08:52):
Two
Taylor Self (08:53):
And a half reasons why I didn’t, why I don’t like it. But do you wanna start with me or does anybody else wanna go first?
JR Howell (08:59):
No, you go
Taylor Self (09:00):
Okay. I don’t like speed skill medley. I thought alone each of the movements within that test were great and appropriate. I don’t like the way they made the cuts or how the workout played out. One guy finishing it, no women even getting to the press, the handstand, I thought that was a big miss. I also don’t like in that year, their opportunity for like a classic CrossFit couplet or triplett. I think to me, I look at three workouts. I look at Alpaca has the potential to be pretty classic Hat trick has the potential to be pretty classic up and over is pretty classic. I thought because hat trick had so much rest between rounds, right? It’s three rounds for time Sprint, 20 wall balls took a 50 40 yard sprint, 20 wall balls, six dumbbell snatches. I just, I know it was execution based but without the opportunity or without the foundation or base of enough classic CrossFit workouts in 2022, I thought that was a miss. Meaning there aren’t any great. Okay, three rounds for time, 21, 21 Friendly Fran or Dan Diane esque workouts. There was essentially one, right? You had up and over and, sorry, I’m missing if I scroll down on this. You also have
(10:26):
Elizabeth elevated, like those two workouts stick out to me as like pretty classic CrossFit, maybe Echo Press, but I didn’t like hat trick, hated that and how there was so much rest between rounds. I would’ve rather just seen it three rounds for time. Um, and I didn’t like speed skill medley and then this is kind of outside of their control, but taking the legless row climbs out of alpaca due to the rain, I thought ruined things to a degree.
Brian Friend (10:54):
All right. Now that he’s given all of the reasons this year JR try to build on that <laugh>,
JR Howell (10:58):
Um, yeah, for me, I think first of all, I wanna say that this, this year has at least two of my top 10 all time favorite games workouts in it.
Taylor Self (11:12):
So there’s And how many? Oh, top 10. Okay. There are
JR Howell (11:14):
Parts of this competition that I think are like unbelievable. I think this year does have the broadest range ever programmed at the CrossFit games. As far as variance goes, I think this is the, are you
Brian Friend (11:29):
Gonna tell us what those two workouts
Taylor Self (11:30):
Are? Oh, I messed that up. Nope.
JR Howell (11:32):
<laugh>, but I think four interval based workout is workouts is too many. So that’s my one thing. There’s four interval based and I think two is great. I think three is even fine ’cause I really like work to rest workouts, but I think four is too many. And then, um, I think that there was too much new for us to appreciate. So like skill speed, medley the thing over the format over the way they eliminated over the way they progressed, but then eliminated also. So you couldn’t see if there were a lot more people that were capable of those skills that only five people got to try. I think there was just too much given to us new for us to really appreciate any of them. The P bars and the sandbag ladder, maybe one more like maybe the block that would’ve been enough for a full games of like new stuff, but yet we had the pirouettes, we had the low start or the press to handstand. We had the double under crossover. So in that workout alone, there were three things that we’d never done before in competition. And I think that it was just, there was so much that we couldn’t appreciate any of those one things for how cool they were
Taylor Self (12:45):
Muddy.
Brian Friend (12:46):
Yeah, I mean, you guys have said, you know, a majority of of the sentiments that I think most people probably have the, and I know that we’re kind of harping on the same workup, but if we are gonna, if you are gonna have something new at the games, I like to have something new that everyone can do. And that’s what I really didn’t like about speed skill medley was that there were, it was eliminating and changing as we went. So we didn’t actually get to see, uh, what kind of percentage of the athletes had some of those skills. It was only a few who even got to attempt them in a live competition setting. And it’s like, you know, kind of, it’s an an analytical and historical study mindset that I bring to that. But like, I like to be able to look back at the first time double unders were the games and see how difficult it was for majority of athletes. And now know that that’s a given the first time that we saw a couple of those skills, we didn’t really get to find out how many of the 40 men or women there could do them. And so we’ll never really know what the progression was from the first year to when, you know, whenever in the future.
Taylor Self (13:41):
Cool. Okay. 2022 out,
JR Howell (13:45):
<laugh>, those, those two workouts are back nine and up and over.
Taylor Self (13:50):
Your two top 10 favorites.
JR Howell (13:52):
Yep. Two workouts
Taylor Self (13:53):
In this year. If I, if I had to, I can’t believe you actually told us if I had to pick two from that year, it would be the capital and Elizabeth elevated.
Brian Friend (13:59):
Those were the two I would’ve guessed
Taylor Self (14:00):
Also. Yeah, that’s what I would’ve guessed. Okay. Um, all right. 2021. Little bit cleaner to see most of the events. I’m not gonna start this time JR or Brian.
Brian Friend (14:14):
Well how about JR starts this one and we’ll just cycle through that, that order. Cool.
JR Howell (14:18):
Yeah, we can do that. Um, so this year, and really from 20, let me think for a second. From 2010 to 2015, the finale had more than one workout and I thought that those were the best finale years ever starting with 2016 all the way up to the present. That has never happened since. So right off the bat, like this finale to me was just very underwhelming. Lunging, you could argue is one of the most exciting things to a finale in a workout period, but we just really didn’t get much of a race at the end. And maybe that was just due to where the leaderboard was or maybe that was due to what people focused in on, um, on the broadcast or whatever. But like I look at the finale first when evaluating as like, Hey, was this a really good finale? Was this a really good final?
(15:16):
’cause I do think it’s really important. The other thing I look for is, is there a swim and how is it presented? And this is one of those years where I felt like the swim was just presented in the same way. Mm. I really, really like when we test swimming in more of a mixed modal setting. And it’s not just mono structural stuff, it’s not run swim run, it’s not swim kayak, it’s not, um, swim paddle. It’s not, you know, whatever. It’s not just swim tested in an endurancey type workout. So like those right off the bat for me was enough for me not to really look farther at this one.
Brian Friend (15:53):
Is there is the event eight listed below event nine on this image. I mean, it’s the handstand walk obstacle course, but it’s out, it’s out of order. It’s not there.
Taylor Self (16:03):
Yeah, it’s out of order. Let me scroll down. Here it is. Navigate the handstand walking course.
Brian Friend (16:09):
You know, something to always, to always look at is when you have cuts in the field that the ordering of the events matters a lot. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, when I look at, when I look at the events leading right up to the cuts here, just in a vacuum, you see it events six and seven that are testing a pretty similar thing. And then you see, especially in the way that it’s written here, uh, event nine, which is again a pretty similar time domain that’s gonna reward, you know, powerful athlete. And obviously there’s event eight there that’s completely different with the handstand walk, but three of those four events leading into, uh, the, the cuts are, you know, two of ’em are somewhat redundant and then one of ’em favors of, you know, another, uh, power athlete in my opinion, uh, that would also do well on the, on the cleans. And so I don’t really like the density of that style of workout. Similar time domains similar, I think rewarding similar athletes throughout the Ford leading into a cut when, I mean, there is a second cut in this year and I also don’t like that it’s only one event before the second cut, but, um, it’s completely different, so.
Taylor Self (17:09):
Okay. Uh, for me, biggest things, um, I’m gonna agree with JR. I think the lunge finale finish is amazing, but a lot, it matters so much what comes before the launch. So years that stick out to me in this kind of format of finale are Anas, which I believe is 2019 Jr. Maybe 18, 18, 18
(17:32):
Anas this workout and Jackie Pro, where the density of movements is so massive that it’s almost like the incentive to race at the end of the weekend after 14 events, things aren’t broken up in a sense where intensity is easily obtained and the race is just diminished because of that. So think on Jackie Pro, right? You have the one K Row and yes, it, or is it 15 hundreds one K Row with the time designation for Intensity on the Row? Great. But then everybody goes to the thrusters and it’s 50 in a row at 95 pounds and boom, the race starts to fall apart. And then you get to the bar muscle ups and it’s 30 in a row at the end, again, race to a degree begins to fall apart. For aas. You have the five four pegboards to start already. You can pretty much cut out half the field, which is okay.
(18:21):
Then you get to the thrusters, another 40 in a row, and then the yolk is, it just, it gets boring when there’s so much density. And this year, again the same, the 600 meter row, five sets of 15 chest to bar pull-ups, the race is gone at that point. And then Justin Maderis is 200 feet ahead of everyone else on the launch. And it’s just boring to watch. You look at a year in contrast, like Fibonacci from 2017 and on the men’s side it was challenging because only one person finished, but on the female side, it gave you potentially the best race you could have ever watched. And the movements were extremely difficult, arguably more difficult than these other finales, but they were broken up in a sense, a couplet back and forth, back and forth, back and forth that it allowed for a race to unfold. So I really disliked that aspect of it, the finale. I just didn’t like.
JR Howell (19:11):
It’s really interesting too that you’re saying that because I’ve heard Brian say before and I I, I used to really disagree with him, and now I’m kind of coming around to the idea that the finales were not sprints. And a lot of times at regionals and semis we’re used to seeing that Sprint finale, which is exciting, but Brian’s kind of made the point that it kind of leaves you like, I didn’t really get to see anything because everything happened so fast. I didn’t get to see any back and forth. I you got that a little bit this year at semis, it was a little bit of a longer final. There were three rounds, you could kind of see people move, you could see differences in cadence on the bike. It’s interesting that you pick those three years about why you didn’t like them because yeah, they’re all like triplett chippers mm-hmm. <affirmative> and they’re all have chunk volume. So it kind of is like, even though the time domain here is more, so what Brian’s talking about that that like six to eight or nine minute time domain where you can actually see some things unfold and see some people fall apart and see some people pull away. You, it seems like you think it would be better off to do in a cyclical rounds for time. Yes, for
Brian Friend (20:15):
Sure. Take this workout, lemme make it three rounds, 300 meter row, 30 chest bar, lunge, repeat, repeat, different lunge, repeat, repeat, different lunge, different
Taylor Self (20:24):
Storytelling. Think that’s, yeah, I think in that sense it’s probably an awesome workout. Um, the other two reasons for me is the yolk interval workout was vastly underestimated by the games team programming. It should have been like 25 GHS and 10 cheese curd burpees over the bale. Yeah. Um, and it just from the start it was like, oh shit, Tia almost finishes the workout of one interval that was a bust. Um, so that for me, and then the final reason, um, where is it? Where is it? Why is this slipping from my mind? Ah, I’m gonna highlight, I just think these and I can do them well. But I thought the standard and the visual of the freestanding handstand pushups on that workout was just, to me, boring and stupid. And for the only instance of handstand pushups, I thought it removed any sort of capacity in gymnastics pressing that made it entirely skill-based. And you already had that handstand obstacle, which was fully skill-based, you know, overhead gymnastics, yes, you have the 55 wall walks, which is hard and important, but there’s no other handstand pushups and now you just have 30 here and it’s not even about the pushup, it’s just all about, you know, learning a new standard that you heard about 30 minutes before the workout. So I, I’m not, I didn’t like that.
(21:48):
All right. 2020. Do we wanna skip this year?
JR Howell (21:53):
Yeah, I think we, I mean we kind of already touched on it a little bit. Okay. Um, unless
Taylor Self (21:57):
There’s too much going on,
JR Howell (21:58):
Unless there’s a good, a really good thing that you think is in here that like to me having to do classic throwback ramped up versions of benchmarks, um, was really cool. Yeah. Like I thought that, I thought, like I’ve thought about writing an article called Make Couplets Cool again, because they’re kind of like, they kind of get lost in programming these days. Yeah. But like going back to some of these classic couplets and triplets is really cool.
Taylor Self (22:27):
Yep. I love that aspect of stage one. It was so fucking cool. But then I look at the program in totality and I guess I, with it all on one page, I can’t help but take both stage one and two and two account, but you have the one RMM front, squat one K row handstand hold, corn sack, sprint, CrossFit, total handstand, sprint, ranch loop, snatch speed, triple sprint, sled sprint, arguably like so many, so many almost single modality or single implement tests. Like I, I don’t know that just, and then really the kicker for me, so dumb dumbest thing ever. There’s no intensity there, there’s no excitement, none. So I just, yeah.
Brian Friend (23:14):
Would you like, have liked at Atlanta as an opening event for a games on a Thursday rest day? Pick up from there?
Taylor Self (23:21):
I, I think I would, I still, I think a super aggressive workout for sure, but dude, you get way more intensity out of it at that point and maybe at that point you might hurt. I, I don’t know if you hurt people in that sense where like you put it first on the weekend and people go fucking nuts on it and then everybody has rhabdo in their legs, shoulders and biceps <laugh>. Uh, I don’t know. Uh, no, they
Brian Friend (23:44):
Would be fine. They <crosstalk>. I think they’d
Taylor Self (23:45):
Be fine too. I like it as an opening workout. Hate it as a finale.
JR Howell (23:49):
One thing from that year though, if we’re Oh, you’re not there anymore,
Taylor Self (23:53):
Go ahead. I’ll go back
JR Howell (23:54):
Is only a few times in CrossFit games programming history by Dave was an ascending rep scheme and an ascending loaded workout ever programmed happy start and it happened in happy start. Yeah. I love that workout. I think that’s just like that not unlike in the previous year, the run toe to bar workout a amount structural gymnastics couplet has only been programmed in competition, I believe four times ever. Bos made a point about it it this year. Yeah. Shuttle run burpee pull up 21.1 was double Under Wall Walk that Workout Toast to Bar Run. And then in the year that I picked 2014, there’s another one. So, so little, little like, oh, you don’t really think about that. They’ve been doing programming for 20 years, but why are there never been any mono structural gymnastics couplets? There’s only, it’s only happened like four times ever.
Taylor Self (24:49):
I, so I love that workout, but part of the reason that I don’t like 2020 is how they take the same exact movement from stage one like Friendly Fran and a barbell thruster, and now you have happy star in a barbell thruster at the games. Why not? There’s not a dumbbell in 2020. Why not make it a dumbbell thruster ascending weight? I thought that would’ve been quite a bit cooler and eh, just my opinion,
JR Howell (25:13):
It, it did stand out to me a lot, uh, even though I’m sure that, you know, maybe time or resources or whatever that even though it was at the ranch with a really small field, the amount of odd objects and the amount of, um, mono structural, um, apparatuses other than just running was not used at all.
Taylor Self (25:32):
Yeah, not at all. Which challenging. Okay, 2019,
Brian Friend (25:37):
My turn to start Brian’s
JR Howell (25:39):
Turn start Brian’s favorite year. Yeah. This is the best one for him to start on.
Brian Friend (25:42):
Honestly, if you look at the programming as a whole with only the, with all the events and you eliminate the format, I think it’s a very well programmed year. But you can’t, you and I don’t really need to say much about it, but the ordering of the events, the events that were selected, uh, immediately proceeding critical cut after critical cut, after critical cut completely detract from the validity of this year in almost every way. I can, uh, I can come up with
Taylor Self (26:09):
Question. If you kept the first three cuts first cut 75, second cut 50, ruck 40, and they kept it there, would you have been okay with it?
Brian Friend (26:21):
Yeah. Um,
Taylor Self (26:23):
Because then you’re cutting down to just,
Brian Friend (26:25):
The thing is like, it’s very obvious what was trying to happen with the first and second cuts. Those two workouts are on their own. They’re good workouts. Yeah. They’re, they test a variety of different things. You have to have skills, you have to have strength, you have to have capacity. Mm-hmm. <affirmative>, the, the third one, if it’s just the rock right there, then like for those 10 athletes that are the last ones in the last ones out, it’s a little bit like, man, if you just give me like anything else, I would’ve had a chance to do the rest of ’em. So the first two for sure, I don’t have a problem with, I do like the idea a little bit better, um, but I probably would still wanna substitute something else in, in place of the ruck before the final cut.
Taylor Self (27:02):
I think what’s interesting is they have running in some form or fashion and three of the first four workouts and that cuts to 30 people running. Clearly important at the games. But interesting for sure. I wonder, would you change your opinion if instead of the ruck they cut to 40, if they just flipped sprint couplet and the ruck?
Brian Friend (27:22):
Uh,
Taylor Self (27:23):
I don’t like that really either.
Brian Friend (27:25):
I mean, for the thing is, if you’re looking at each individual workout on its own and you had to say like, you know, these ones would be okay to put before a cut. These ones not be realizing how critical they were. Most of the ones that they chose, ruck, sprint, comp, Mary and Sprint, all of them have, uh, I think are poor choices.
Taylor Self (27:45):
Yeah. Maybe they put the standard in there for cut three, but then what do you finish with?
Brian Friend (27:53):
Well, and I mean, look, we like, we’re we’re coming up to the, to the 2023 crosser games and they just announced the cuts. And this is a great example for people to go back and look and study and realize, okay, we’re gonna have these cuts, two rounds of ’em this year. Programming wise, what they put before the cuts matters a ton. And if you’re gonna have an extra day before another cut, the scoring table’s gonna change. And those work cuts are gonna wait differently, not at the top. Obviously the winner’s gonna get the same, but in those middle places doing, you know, placing 15th in a field of 30 compared to a field of 60, we got to see, you know, what, 30 outta 60 and 15 outta 30 looks like at semifinals. And we know it’s dramatically different. It’s the same at the games.
Taylor Self (28:33):
Okay. So your big thing is the cuts for 2019.
Brian Friend (28:37):
I mean the, the, the, if you’re gonna have cuts, if you’re gonna have variable scoring tables, then the programming matters a ton. And I think that the placement of the workouts had a negative effect on the overall result of this competition year. And I can’t ignore that when I’m trying to pick one best year of programming. But I do think it’s worth saying that as a whole, from beginning to end. I like the programming this year.
Taylor Self (29:02):
For me at least this year, cuts play a little bit of a role. I think more than that in, in my in particular opinion, the programming lacks a meaningful chipper. Like there’s no straight through classic chipper, which me and JR talked a bit about, I mean, you have second cut I guess, but it’s pretty short. Um, and then beyond that I see overall, uh, a bit of lack of squatting in general. You know, you have the 30 overhead squats at 95, 1 35, you have the squat snatches to start. And I don’t know that I count the pistols in Mary to a degree. I guess I would’ve liked to see a little bit more of, of bilateral squatting.
JR Howell (29:51):
So for me, three things really stand out. One small thing, which I look forward to, reprogramming for Crucible this year.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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