Sevan Matossian (00:02):
Oh, is that me or you? Bam. We’re live. Do you hear that? Oh, that’s bad. Hold on. I think that’s you.
Caity Henniger (00:11):
You want me to take my headphones out?
Sevan Matossian (00:12):
Oh no, now it’s better. Hold on. Now it’s better. Did you hear that feedback?
Caity Henniger (00:17):
No.
Sevan Matossian (00:18):
Oh, you’re lucky. Are you
Caity Henniger (00:19):
Still hearing it?
Sevan Matossian (00:20):
No, but it was crazy. What’s up? Good morning.
Caity Henniger (00:25):
Good morning.
Sevan Matossian (00:28):
Is that your office?
Caity Henniger (00:29):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (00:30):
Oh, that’s cool. Garage door for your office door. That’s nice.
Caity Henniger (00:38):
We had that in our original office, so we decided to bring it over when we came to the new building in 17.
Sevan Matossian (00:46):
When you look out that door, what do you see?
Caity Henniger (00:49):
We have a little museum piece out there and the map of the globe so we know where we want to go or what events we’re doing. And then there’s a little sitting area and then Bill is next door.
Sevan Matossian (01:00):
Oh, that’s cool. And I can see the map. That map’s cool. Just a full wall map.
Caity Henniger (01:05):
Yep.
Sevan Matossian (01:07):
If you go south of the equator, you hurt your back or you get someone short.
Caity Henniger (01:11):
That’s right
Sevan Matossian (01:12):
To point this shit out. What’s up with you? What time is it? You had your coffee yet?
Caity Henniger (01:17):
Go it. You good? It’s it’s 10 o’clock. Yeah, I just got through my morning ops meeting, so we’re good to go.
Sevan Matossian (01:21):
Alright, good. So your brain’s firing and all cylinders, you’re ready for all the trick questions?
Caity Henniger (01:25):
Sure. I don’t even know why I’m on here. There’s like news or something.
Sevan Matossian (01:28):
Yeah, there’s a little bit of news, but before we get to the news, I want to ask you a question. I tell this. Hey Caleb. Good morning Katie. I tell this story and I want you to tell me if it’s accurate. When you won the CrossFit games in 2008, that one of the reasons why it was so good for you was because you were a elite level basketball player and the workouts were all under four minutes and that was the longest that you would ever spend on the court practicing your discipline basketball. Is that true? Is there any accuracy to that or
Caity Henniger (01:57):
That is so false?
Sevan Matossian (01:59):
I spent
Caity Henniger (01:59):
Way more than four minutes practicing basketball.
Sevan Matossian (02:03):
Sorry, I don’t mean practicing, but I thought I had remembered asking you and you said, Hey, in basketball the longest you’ll be on the court at a hundred percent. Oh yeah, that’s true. Exertion is four minutes and then you get some sort of, I dunno, timeout. That is true.
Caity Henniger (02:19):
Yeah, I mean it could go longer than that. It just depends on when the timeouts called. You could go 30 seconds and someone call a timeout or you could go six or seven minutes.
Sevan Matossian (02:29):
So four was just maybe when I heard that or you told me that in passing it was just some arbitrary thing. On average basketball, usually there’s a foul or something
Caity Henniger (02:38):
And now it’s kind gotten to the point. Maybe not back then. I liked the shorter workouts. I still do, but I’ve grown to love kind of the long kind of grind workouts where you can go 45 minutes an hour or something like that.
Sevan Matossian (02:50):
Why do you think
Caity Henniger (02:51):
That? Just evolving.
Sevan Matossian (02:52):
Why do you think that changed? I like longer workouts now too. It’s funny, but I think I just like to go slower.
Caity Henniger (02:59):
Slower. Maybe it is going slower. I don’t know. I don’t know. I’ve really transitioned into that. Definitely some mental clarity. I like to just work through things in my mind as I’m going through the workout, not really focusing on the workout. It just kind of gives me a space to figure some things out and usually come out of it better
Sevan Matossian (03:18):
And I like that too. So basically when you were training for basketball, it was to get better at basketball and sometimes you work out now, like you said, to get clarity, to get inspiration or insight on things that your brain’s processing. So you’re on the assault bike or you’re on a run or something like that?
Caity Henniger (03:33):
Yeah, I mean I would do that when I was playing. If I was stressed out or working through a problem, I would just go in the gym and shoot just because it put me at ease. Same thing with getting on a bike yesterday. I got on a bike for an hour and got ready for it. It’s what I typically do on Sundays to get ready for the week.
Sevan Matossian (03:49):
Oh, and when you say a bike, you went on an outdoor ride?
Caity Henniger (03:51):
No, it was cold here. It snowed over the weekend. I was on a biker,
Sevan Matossian (03:55):
The C two bike. Yeah. And why do that instead of the echo bike instead of the one where you pump your arms? I always feel like I’m wasting my time if I’m not pumping the arms.
Caity Henniger (04:06):
I mean I did I think 30 miles or something yesterday, so I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time not to do that on the echo bike. That would take a second and be a little bit more painful probably, which is not what I was going for.
Sevan Matossian (04:17):
And that was it. You get off the bike and you’re done for the day.
Caity Henniger (04:20):
Yeah, that’s Sundays for me is either a long or a bike.
Sevan Matossian (04:27):
Here’s another thing, what about this? As you get older, I can’t just do the bike because I don’t want to go in the gym and just do 10 pull-ups. My arms will feel like they’ll tear out of their socket, but after I’m warmed up on a bike, I’m like, oh, I could do 10 pull-ups easy right now. I’m lubed up. So don’t you want after you put in all that effort for warming, because you’re old too, right? How old are you?
Caity Henniger (04:46):
I’m 42. See, I had to think about it.
Sevan Matossian (04:49):
Yeah, that’s how you know you’re old. You want to be like, okay, I’m warmed up. I might as well do something like five rounds of Cindy or something.
Caity Henniger (04:57):
No, I’ve been like five days on. So usually by Sundays I’m ready for a break. So an hour doing something like that, I’m good, but I usually get on for at least 10,000 meters or something like that before a workout trying to get my body. I don’t do any other warmup. Don’t condone that, but it works for me. Yeah, it works for me too and maybe that’s why I’m broken, but
Sevan Matossian (05:16):
Where do you hurt? Do you have a chronic issue? Do you have a spot?
Caity Henniger (05:20):
I mean, my left knee has always been an issue. I’ve had seven surgeries during my playing career, so it doesn’t really like the cold. It doesn’t like some movements, but we get it warmed up and we can go,
Sevan Matossian (05:32):
Oh, look at this wad zombie. A dear Katie, I’ll read this very slow. Can we get floor access and first class tickets for Seon and his son for Rogue Scotland? Oh, I really apologize. I apologize for the imposition of
Caity Henniger (05:46):
My, you definitely put someone up to that one.
Sevan Matossian (05:49):
Definitely not. I’m turning red and in 2009, show up to the CrossFit games as the champ and you pull out of the games. What happened? I don’t think I ever heard that story while
Caity Henniger (06:03):
You pulled out. Well, I was on the cut line after that hill run. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (06:09):
Oh, okay.
Caity Henniger (06:10):
Yeah, it was rough.
Sevan Matossian (06:12):
Yeah. And so you got cut?
Caity Henniger (06:15):
Yep.
Sevan Matossian (06:15):
Oh shit, I didn’t know that. I thought for some reason I always thought you got injured.
Caity Henniger (06:19):
No, I was on the cut line after the hill run. I couldn’t move my legs. I laid up on the top for a while and then got back down. But yeah, I was on the cut line after that.
Sevan Matossian (06:28):
Everyone was laying down up there. It was a
Caity Henniger (06:30):
Mess. I was like one of the brutal workouts for sure.
Sevan Matossian (06:34):
And were you pissed?
Caity Henniger (06:37):
Yeah, I’m competitive so anytime I don’t feel like it’s my fault, I don’t feel like I prepared like I should have. But anytime you’re going into something to win and I always think I can win at something, then you’re not going to be happy with the result.
Sevan Matossian (06:54):
Let me ask you the most controversial question of the interview. How do you feel about cuts in general
Caity Henniger (07:00):
Sport?
Sevan Matossian (07:02):
I love them as the storyteller because it adds tension throughout the weekend.
Caity Henniger (07:07):
Yeah, I think it adds tension. I think when you’re doing it right. I think that all depends on what the event is or the sport, but I truly feel it is part of sport. If you’re trying to find the best at something, then yeah, there can be cuts.
Sevan Matossian (07:23):
Oh, I don’t know what this is. I hope this is inappropriate question. No one ask anything inappropriate.
Caity Henniger (07:31):
That’s not
Sevan Matossian (07:31):
Inappropriate. Everyone doing your best behavior Fergie show Ms. Katie. Thoughts on Terry Todd and how he influenced Rogue? His inside power lifting book sells for over $200. Who is that Terry Todd, do you know who it’s
Caity Henniger (07:43):
So yeah, Terry Todd and Jan Todd are really good friends of ours. Terry passed away a few years ago, but he really helped start the sport of powerlifting and then he helped start and develop World’s Strongest Man and the Arnold Strongman Classic, but just the major player at the Iron game and all his insights. So a lot of the documentaries that we’ve done, you’ll see Terry as the historian and really the person guiding us through the documentary of the history of it. He was really influential to Bill and I and obviously we miss him, but the sport misses him as well. So yeah, if you inside powerlifting, if you can get your hands on one, I mean that was when power lifting was first starting. I think he was the first guy to squat 500, 600 and 700 pounds in his career. If you see the one out there on the left.
Sevan Matossian (08:43):
Was it immediate when you guys started Rogue, was it immediate that you guys started branching outside of CrossFit to people like that since the barbell is? No,
Caity Henniger (08:50):
No. I mean that started really when we started to get involved with the Arnold Classic here in Columbus, which is this weekend. We’d actually just started setting up this morning.
Sevan Matossian (08:57):
Oh geez.
Caity Henniger (08:58):
So we support 12 sports for the Arnold and obviously the Strong Man is the biggest one. We do the broadcast for that. We do the operational items for the event, but that’s really when we got to know Terry and Jan. And that’s also when we started to get into some of the other sports like the weightlifting and powerlifting and we got involved with IPF and the USAW and IWFI guess throughout that. That was probably, I think 2012 we started to support the Arnold, but then really like 1450 we started to make specific items like the Elephant deadlift bar and then the wheel of pain and some items like that.
Sevan Matossian (09:38):
Hey, I forgot about that. I saw your trailer on Instagram with half Thor. What’s the filmmaker’s name there? His name’s Todd.
Caity Henniger (09:46):
Todd Sampson? Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (09:47):
Is he still with you guys?
Caity Henniger (09:49):
Absolutely. Yep, he did. He’s doing, he did the one that’s releasing today. I think it releases at noon Half Horse Road to the Arnold.
Sevan Matossian (09:57):
Oh my god. And did he do the Scotland video too? The trailer for Scotland?
Caity Henniger (10:01):
No, that was another guy. JP did that for us,
Sevan Matossian (10:04):
Man, the videos. The videos are just killing the half. Thor one is absolutely beautiful. The one I saw on Instagram with him doing all the lifts. And then the Scotland video is amazing, by the way. I sincerely mean this. It is hard to do a voiceover. It is hard not to sound like a goofball. Doing a voiceover and your Scotland one was great. How many takes did that take you?
Caity Henniger (10:25):
One
Sevan Matossian (10:26):
Really?
Caity Henniger (10:27):
We did it three times, but I had it the first one. We just wanted to get it right, but I like to do it where I just am talking because you see him cut to me in the video. I was actually saying that and then we just overlaid it.
Sevan Matossian (10:39):
Did you have a script or you just that’s just No,
Caity Henniger (10:41):
That was just me. I don’t like to be, I mean, I’ll read a script if I need to. I had thought about it on my way over there, but knew really what I wanted to say.
Sevan Matossian (10:50):
Yeah, it doesn’t sound like a script. That’s why it’s good and it’s intense and the music’s good and your voice just has a buildup to it. Great job. Thank you. I was listening to, it’s funny, have you ever heard Rich’s podcast where he reads, I mean I know that they do it on purpose now that they just take the piss out of him, but where he does, he reads the sponsor.
Caity Henniger (11:10):
Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (11:12):
Yeah. You had none of that in there. It was so good. So that’s March 1st. That’s in, what is that? That’s in four days. Are there still tickets available for that? Can people go people CrossFit area?
Caity Henniger (11:23):
Yeah, the strongman was sold out. Arnold definitely the expo still has tickets left and then the Strongman sold out. They just released I think another 400 tickets over the weekend. So it’s going to be packed in there.
Sevan Matossian (11:36):
I don’t know the details of that event, but does have to work, compete in the event or does he just go there and put on a, he just tries to set a new deadlift record every year or something?
Caity Henniger (11:46):
No, this is actually his first year back first event back in, I think over two years. So he’s coming back Leases who’s also won the Arnold, he’s won the Rogue Invitational. He’s coming back after a year off. And then you have Mitchell Hooper who’s really dominating the sport right now. He’ll be there. So it’s really, I think maybe one of the best lineups that they’ve had. So it’s going to be interesting to see who ends up on the podium.
Sevan Matossian (12:11):
The Martine guy seems really cool. You guys did a video on him too. He seems like a really down to earth fun guy.
Caity Henniger (12:16):
Yeah, he’s awesome. All those guys are, I mean they’re all great. I mean you could scroll through that whole list and I don’t know the amateur very well, but everybody else on that list, they’ve been at the Invitational, they’ve been at the Arnold and they’re, they’re fun to be around. They look really imposing, but they’re not, they like to have fun and have good conversation. So I think that’s anybody that wants to be good at their craft and wants to talk about it. It’s always interesting to be around
Sevan Matossian (12:42):
This Mitchell Cooper guy. I don’t know this sport, but is, when you say dominating, he’s, is he best ever dominating or just dominating his group?
Caity Henniger (12:51):
I wouldn’t say best ever. He probably had the best year, one of the best years probably in history last year. He won the Arnold, he won the Invitational. He won World’s Strongest Man, and I believe he won Giants Live. I think he won four of his five events last year. So I mean he, he’s in a really good spot. He was running marathons four years ago or something like that. Just kind of a crazy story as he got into strongman.
Sevan Matossian (13:17):
Has this guy of all the strongman embraced CrossFit the most? I feel like I see him on the most crossover videos. I feel like I’ve seen him more. I see him at Waap Palooza. I saw him on the stage in the background cheering people on. I feel like I see him everywhere.
Caity Henniger (13:33):
Yeah, I definitely think he’s embraced it. I wouldn’t say he’s the only one. I think all of those guys, if you look at it, Hathor has a really good relationship with Annie and Catrin and so I think they trade stories and trade training. Obviously there’s some crossover, but not all. But I think if you look at the log event, I know that a lot of the CrossFitters went to the strongman to ask them tips and you could see them in the warmup room trying to help them, which I always think is really cool. But if you look at Hooper, he’s trying to get better at his jerk for the axle and the log press, which I think is really interesting. So if you saw him at Water Palooza, he was actually in the warmup area working on his jerk technique, which you don’t see very often just because those guys aren’t as mobile.
Sevan Matossian (14:16):
God, here’s another question I don’t want to read to you. Boy. Augusta’s link. Hi Katie. Can we get a sev on code for Rogue? You guys? Someone’s in our
Caity Henniger (14:27):
House. We put all these people up to
Sevan Matossian (14:28):
It. I’m telling you I did not for discount or anything. Oh, okay. This is good. Okay. It’s taken a twist. Could be fun just to track the sev on podcast listeners purchases at the end of the year. Bill and Katie have been very, very generous to me before and talk to me about doing affiliate stuff and thank you. Okay, I’m going to spend that $5 wisely. Thank you, Scotland. So the Rogue Invitational, is it going to be an invitational this year? Is it correct to call it an invitational? Yes. And you’re moving to Scotland. That seems like biting off. I got stressed out for you.
Caity Henniger (15:09):
Yeah, well, last
Sevan Matossian (15:10):
Year was very, very stressful
Caity Henniger (15:12):
Being outside and in the rain and the elements, I think, well, we knew we had been in Austin for three years. We knew it was going to move. We didn’t know if it’d move within the city, within the state or wherever. And then when the games announced they were coming to Fort Worth, we thought, okay, this is a good time to move so that we don’t have to kind of back to back events in the same area. And we’ve wanted to go somewhere overseas and just thought it was the right timing. So we’re going to be there for a couple of years and we’re really excited. I’m really excited. The venue’s great. It’s got, it’s an expo hall. It opened at 19,
Sevan Matossian (15:49):
So it’s new, it’s beautiful,
Caity Henniger (15:50):
It’s beautiful, but it has an arena, so it’s not just like this Exfo Hall you go into. So you go in, it kind of looks like that. And then as you turn right, you enter into a 10,000 seat arena, which is really
Sevan Matossian (16:01):
Cool In the round. Like an amphitheater?
Caity Henniger (16:04):
Yeah, it’s, it’s got a horseshoe and then you can add seating behind it. It just depends on how we’re going to set up the floor. I don’t think we’ll get to 10,000 seats. I think we want to utilize the floor to be able to have some of our items in there for both CrossFit and strongman for the event. But it was tough coming off last year. I mean, being out in the rain, ideally we’d like to be outside for the event, but that’s just after going through what we went through and the athletes and all the spectators last year, we knew we did not want to do that. So the majority of the event is going to be indoors just so that we know that we can put on a good show and not have to worry about that.
Sevan Matossian (16:37):
It’s funny, I didn’t remember the rain until you said it. Eaton Beaver. Good morning, Katie. I’m rocking the road. Crocs
Caity Henniger (16:44):
Awesome.
Sevan Matossian (16:48):
When you saw Waterloo.
Speaker 3 (16:51):
Oh,
Sevan Matossian (16:53):
We have the feedback. Oh, there we go. Went away. Maybe one of your earpieces.
Caity Henniger (17:00):
You want me to take ’em out?
Sevan Matossian (17:02):
It went away again. Okay. Is that her Caleb or me? It’s Katie. Oh good. I dunno what that is. You
Caity Henniger (17:13):
Feedback?
Sevan Matossian (17:14):
Yeah, it must not be the headphones. Okay. You can put those back in. We’ll just have to deal with it. I don’t know what that is. I’m glad it went away though. Hey, can you hear me? Yeah. When you saw Water Palooza, I know Misery Likes Company. When you saw them have to deal with the rain, were you excited or you like Yeah, no, not
Caity Henniger (17:36):
At all. It was so bad I felt for them because it’s still, you said you don’t remember the rain
Sevan Matossian (17:43):
You got got scarred, not gotten
Caity Henniger (17:44):
Over the rain. There was a while where I didn’t even want to talk about the Invitational because it was just so stressful trying to figure out, give
Sevan Matossian (17:52):
Me an example of something that was just the rain came and it was just a damn, Hey, could you log out and log back in? We got a serious problem. Thank you. Sorry guys. Oh yeah. Good. I’m glad. It is her. What do you think that is, Caleb? I’ve never heard that. Almost 2000 shows. I’ve never heard that.
Caleb Beaver (18:14):
I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Bluetooth logging in or something. I have no idea.
Sevan Matossian (18:19):
Do you guys hear that? Do the listeners hear that or is it just me? It’s crazy loud.
Caleb Beaver (18:25):
Heidi said it sounded like coffee grinder, so
Sevan Matossian (18:27):
She must hear it. Okay. Okay. Yeah. Okay, good. Yeah, I didn’t know what to say. It sounded like it does sound exactly like a coffee grinder. That’s exactly what it sounded like. Okay. Let’s see.
Caity Henniger (18:42):
Is that any better?
Sevan Matossian (18:44):
Yeah, someone described it perfectly. Heidi K described it as a, it sounds like you’re grinding coffee beans. Tell me one of the moments where it was just like, holy shit, I can’t believe this is happening. And do you see the cloud from far away? I know it’s different than California and California, it’s like the whole cloud is covered, but in Texas, is it like, oh shit, you seem to be,
Caity Henniger (19:06):
Well yeah,
Sevan Matossian (19:07):
That’s dark cloud coming.
Caity Henniger (19:08):
That’s the thing in Texas is there was a couple of systems that went through and just separated us. So it was raining like two miles away and then it just didn’t come to us. But Danny Rogers and I spent so much time looking at radars that now I don’t even believe a radar because it would rain when it wasn’t supposed to rain and then it would not rain when we thought we were going to get hit. But Sunday morning was tough was I think we tested a workout in the morning at like 6 45 because we knew that there was going to be weather and it was like 70 degrees. And then this front came in and by 10:00 AM it was 40 and it was raining. And at that point it was raining so much that I was just like, what are we going to do? We knew we were probably going to move the event up into the concourse, but I mean that took the cake outside of the first day when there was hip height water in the dugouts where we were supposed to do all our scoring and broadcast. That was the first day, I mean, on Thursday you couldn’t even see the field in the morning.
Sevan Matossian (20:07):
Wow. Yeah.
Caity Henniger (20:08):
So that kind of started the stress.
Sevan Matossian (20:10):
So just a low level panic the whole time.
Caity Henniger (20:14):
It’s the hardest, it’s the most stressful thing. One of the most best stressful things I’ve done. And then obviously the team, the athletes, everybody felt it. There wasn’t someone that didn’t feel it that was onsite. For sure.
Sevan Matossian (20:28):
Ernie Garza, along with Jake and Jan. Anyway, we can help volunteer for Scotland. Oh, I like this. Offering things to Katie. This is better or apply to be part of the team. Keep killing it. Hope to grow a pair and introduce myself next time I see You’all. Oh, that’s awesome. Is there a place on the Rogue website for where people can sign up to be volunteers?
Caity Henniger (20:45):
We’re going to have that up hopefully in the next month. We’ll have that up for signups.
Sevan Matossian (20:49):
Okay. Do you guys take a lot of
Caity Henniger (20:51):
Volunteers? Don’t hesitate. Ernie, you can come introduce yourself anytime.
Sevan Matossian (20:54):
No, she’s scary. Don’t Ernie good. No, don’t listen
Caity Henniger (20:57):
To Emon. He’s scared
Sevan Matossian (20:58):
Of me. You don’t have to be. Use your best judgment, Ernie. She’s scary. Do you guys take a lot of volunteers?
Caity Henniger (21:06):
We’ll see what we’re going to do this year. I think last year we had over 200. Yeah, I mean all the help that we couldn’t, as cliche as it is to say we could not run the event without the volunteers. I mean they are what makes that event go and they do a kick ass job and have been great. We have people that have been there all five years and I think that’s really cool that they keep coming back a lot of work.
Sevan Matossian (21:29):
And you said you’re going to do Scotland multiple years. Does that mean at least two?
Caity Henniger (21:34):
At least two.
Sevan Matossian (21:36):
And that makes me feel a little less stressed out because then at least you can leverage the first year. Yeah, the second year.
Caity Henniger (21:43):
And we could do it a different city every year, but just for the team and the operation of it, I really like to be in a venue multiple years just because the first year you’re still figuring it out and the second year it can be better. And then year three at Dell Diamond, even with the weather. And I think that’s what helped us last year with the weather is it was year three, so we knew everything that venue could do and we knew where we could go and pivot if we needed to. And obviously with a new venue you’re not going to have that familiarity. So yeah, we’d like to be there at least two years and maybe stay over there after that. I don’t know. I would like to bring it back here as well.
Sevan Matossian (22:20):
What’s the city in Scotland?
Caity Henniger (22:21):
Aberdeen.
Sevan Matossian (22:22):
Aberdeen. And can you tell me the origin story of that in no details too much, why you decided to leave, how you chose Scotland?
Caity Henniger (22:33):
I think knowing where that we weren’t going to be in Austin, we started to look at a couple cities here in the us. We actually looked at bringing it back here to Columbus and tying it into the first year here. But how we have evolved here at Rogue, we couldn’t have it indoors. We couldn’t have it in our warehouse anymore. There’s too much stuff in here now. And then we just really started about taking it to Europe and I was actually going on a trip there in December. So I decided to look at a few venues in London or around London. And then I knew I was going up to visit Rob Lawson who runs CrossFit Aberdeen up in Aberdeen and knew about the p and j and said, Hey, why don’t we just run through there
Sevan Matossian (23:10):
Probably. What’s the p and j? What’s that?
Caity Henniger (23:12):
That’s the venue PJ Live.
Sevan Matossian (23:14):
How did you know about it?
Caity Henniger (23:17):
Rob had mentioned it just as we had started, there was a place in Glasgow, there was a place in Leeds and then a few in London that we looked at. But within five minutes of being in this spot, I was like, this is it. I want to come here. So we knew if we could make the contract work and make it work out, then we were going to go there. So it was pretty quick. So I was there early December and then we got the deal done a couple of weeks ago
Sevan Matossian (23:44):
And it looks beautiful and clean. It looks very, yeah,
Caity Henniger (23:49):
They really take care of it and it’s in a good area. We did a documentary a few years ago called Stone Land, so there is a rich history of stone lifting in Scotland. So tying it into the strongman community and the Highland Games, it’s about an hour from Bre Mar. They have a huge Highland games there every summer in August. So just tying all of that together. We really like that storyline. We think it’s going to be fun in November and Scotland. It’s probably going to be chilly and it’s probably going to rain at some point, but it’s beautiful there. You can see from some of the shots in the video. That’s all within kind of a 20 minute radius of downtown Aberdeen
Sevan Matossian (24:24):
And I get stressed out. Thinking of the logistics, when do you start moving? What is the rogue show there?
Caity Henniger (24:36):
So we’ve already started. Actually started, yeah, we knew we wanted to go there, like I said, in December. So I’d already started that with some of the internal team of what it’s going to take. We obviously will have to shift the gear earlier than just putting stuff on trailers. It take two days to get to Texas. So just thinking ahead of when we need to have workouts complete, when we need to have the equipment complete, and then what it’s going to take to pull off the broadcast as well. So we’re already starting on that. I don’t want to be behind. I’d like to have all that shored up by early summer so that we just go into the fall with a perfect plan or a plan not perfect because it’s not going to be perfect.
Sevan Matossian (25:13):
Is it like that you load a bunch of stuff up in containers, you put it on a boat, it goes over the sea, it gets there and then someone pulls it out with a sheet of paper and takes inventory and they’re like, oh shit, one of the containers didn’t show. And
Caity Henniger (25:27):
Yeah, I mean that’s probably one of the most stressful parts. Even with let’s say with semi trailers here. That’s one of the most stressful parts of running an event for us is did the equipment make it? We’ve had trucks when we were supporting some of the CrossFit stuff get stolen or rerouted, we had stuff taken off some of our trailers. We’ve had drivers go, they won’t communicate for 12 to 16 hours, which gives, I don’t have any more, don’t need any more gray hair, but that’s definitely one of the most stressful parts of it. Outside of just running the event,
Sevan Matossian (26:00):
You’ve had stuff stolen. Have you ever had a truck crash?
Caity Henniger (26:04):
No.
Sevan Matossian (26:05):
No. Okay. Knock on wood. Yeah. Oh, here we go. Poor Katie. Katie. This show is wild Braylin tenor fitness competitor. Good morning, Katie. Will you waive my, I didn’t put anyone up to any of these. Will you waive my entry fee in exchange for exposure for my presence? Otherwise my agent will charge you a hundred dollars in an hour. Thank you. I can’t wait to win.
Caity Henniger (26:29):
I’d have to see your resume and then maybe we’ll just charge you the a hundred dollars an hour charge. You braylin,
Sevan Matossian (26:35):
Send it over Braylin Katie at Rogue. Alright, this group. So all get there, you’ll set it up and then there’ll be a pretty significant presence. Then when the show’s over, you pack all that stuff up, you put it in a warehouse and it’s ready for next year. And I guess if you’re over there with all that stuff anyway, I guess that there’s a chance, I guess it gets your brain thinking also that, well, we already got the equipment over the pond. Maybe now we take it to mainland Europe or something. It opens up. Maybe it’s one step closer to something over there.
Caity Henniger (27:11):
Well, we already have a European operation, so we’re based out of Finland, the company is, and then our distribution centers in Antwerp. So yeah, there may be a chance that we take some of that stuff to the warehouse in Antwerp, but most likely the majority of it will come back here.
Sevan Matossian (27:29):
The invitational process will be pretty much the same. Is that the plan? That’s the way that event looks?
Caity Henniger (27:35):
Yeah, I think that’s the plan. I know there was a lot of talk of who gets invited, how they get invited, and Bill and I and the team have talked a lot about what that system looks like and can we come up with a more transparent, either qualification or a way to show what we’re looking at along the way, what events they’re doing. Is it a point system, is a qualification system? What does that look like? So people have more transparency into what we look like because everyone thinks it’s just based off the games. And that is true to an extent, but that’s not the only way that you get into it. So maybe we have something
Sevan Matossian (28:11):
Like it’s not just the, this is what I always thought it was in general top 15 from the men and women are invited from the games and then there’s online competition for the remaining five spots
Caity Henniger (28:23):
And it works out a little bit like that. But if you look at that, the top 15, if I went to a Waterloos or another event and watched that, it’s probably going to be the top five to 10 at least are the same. So it’s kind of them building their resume. And then you obviously have people that if they decline then we kind of go to the next one. And then maybe it’s to the point where we don’t want to invite anyone more and we take the queue and we value that. So maybe we were set on having five people, maybe we take seven people from the queue. The queue has gotten pretty competitive over the years as well, just with the people that either maybe they had to sit out the games or they were injured. So this is, if you look at Ricky Gerard or Travis Mayer, they had to use the queue to actually get in because they didn’t compete at the games.
Sevan Matossian (29:05):
Okay. And I like the online qualifier because one year it gives us a chance to see people whose names we maybe didn’t recognize who are really good. I think it was either last year or the year before Jorge Fernandez went. And that was really cool seeing him there. And every year there’s one or two people you’re like, wow, they’re going to get in the mix with these people. Didn’t ker at her do her first professional adult was there. Yeah, that was wild too.
Caity Henniger (29:31):
Yeah. And this year I think Victor Hoffer made it in from the queue and ended up winning one of the events and was a nice little competition for him. But if we didn’t have that qualification system, then it would really just be the 20 or so athletes you just saw in August. And I like to mix it up a bit. I think it’s really good for the sport to have others in and not just the same ones. Yes, it is an invitational and we want the top people to be there, but we also want to give those up and comers a chance.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
Check out our other posts.
