Sevan Matossian (00:00):
Hey, hey, hey. Bam. We’re live.
Brian Friend (00:04):
I was too early there.
Sevan Matossian (00:06):
Oh my goodness. Oh, hold on. I wanted to tell you guys I’m six months pregnant, but I’m still going to drink 300 milligrams of caffeine.
Brian Friend (00:18):
I knew you were transitioning
Sevan Matossian (00:20):
For the show. It’s completely unrealistic to ask me to stop drinking. Bang. I’m only pregnant.
Brian Friend (00:27):
Hey, I don’t see their name on the bottom here.
Sevan Matossian (00:30):
Who?
Brian Friend (00:30):
Bang.
Sevan Matossian (00:32):
Oh no, they’re not. This sits in my refrigerator. I know. I just brought it in here. My wife’s like, you’re going to drink that? I’m like, no. It sits in my refrigerator. This is like break in case of emergency. Do you have anything like that in your refrigerator?
Brian Friend (00:49):
Heavy cream. I bought the heavy cream. You suggested?
Sevan Matossian (00:52):
Yeah. Oh, what did you think?
Brian Friend (00:54):
So I had the heavy cream for a couple of days and then I went back to the whole milk and it didn’t taste as good after the heavy cream. So you’ve basically, you’ve ruined me now. I was happy with something that was satisfactory and now it’s not satisfactory anymore. Now it doesn’t taste good.
Sevan Matossian (01:12):
The bar has changed. Oh, that must be a typo. Audrey. Is that supposed to say Call me Brian. Okay.
(01:24):
Announcements made. You can watch detailed explanation of it. That takes fucking way too long between Chase and Adrian on the CrossFit Games podcast, you can hear Bill Grundler hear about it for the first time as Chase presents it to him on the get with the programming podcast. Bill’s reaction I think is going to be very similar to mine. There’s an incredible article with all the details. If you just don’t want all the bullshit and you’re just like, okay, hey, this is like, I just need to know what’s going on and I’m an athlete and I just want to get down and start being able to get my head wrapped around what’s going on. Or an affiliate owner, affiliate owner, athlete, I guess anyone, if you just want to get your head wrapped around it and you’re interested in the open, go over to Be Friendly Fitness.
(02:06):
It is the premier article right now. It’s called 2024 CrossFit Game Season, and we’re going to go over that really quickly. I’m going to try to give you guys the information so that we can get to the reactions. We only have JR and Bill for a short time. JR Howell is the owner of an affiliate and a competition director of the Crash Crucible, the crash, crescendo and CrossFit crash. Bill Grundler is one of the longest affiliate owners, although Mr. Howell has had his affiliate for a long time. Bill Gruner’s been around since the Donna time. He knew CrossFit before I knew CrossFit. He owns a gym called CrossFit Inferno in San Luis Obispo, and he’s been a commentator at the highest level for the sport. Then there’s Brian Friend who appeared out of nowhere many, many, many, many moons ago and has been absorbing every little bit of information you can about CrossFit and this is actually his website to get the information.
(03:01):
Every season there’s new tweaks, which is cool. I don’t have an issue with that. The CrossFit games are amazing. The open’s amazing, and today they release new information regarding the season. I’m going to briefly run through some of the really big bullet points. Some of the stuff you guys already know. The finals will be the CrossFit Games will actually be in Texas this year at Dickies. The Dickies Sport Arena Wheel Wdd will be doing the adaptive division. We don’t know where the dates pit team will be doing the team division. We don’t know where are the dates and Legends will be doing the masters. We don’t know the where or the dates, but those will be separate from what most we can glean from the CrossFit games, which will be at Dickies. The biggest implications of the changes so far to this date that we know is more competitors, more competitors all around everywhere except for maybe a minor place or two like the team competition in the finals
Brian Friend (04:04):
And semifinals and the biggest semifinals.
Sevan Matossian (04:08):
Explain that to me. Why
Brian Friend (04:10):
Not? We’ll there, we’ll get there.
Sevan Matossian (04:11):
Okay. Okay. Okay. And there may be some tuning errors in my presentation. The boys will jump on me quickly after I’m done. The open starts on February 29th and ends on
Brian Friend (04:24):
March 18th.
Sevan Matossian (04:25):
March 18th. Let me go through a little bit more here. Announcements will be the same. Thursday announcements Monday due date and then Wednesday. Validation of scores. The open will be three weeks long. We don’t know how many workouts.
Brian Friend (04:43):
Well, three weeks.
Sevan Matossian (04:44):
Three weeks. Nope. Adrian Bosman in this podcast he did with Chase said three weeks is a no-brainer. We will have a big battle there here soon on this show. I think that that’s a complete wrong thing to say. I guess we can stop there and then just start digging in. You guys want to start digging in?
Brian Friend (05:06):
Dig? Let’s start digging.
Sevan Matossian (05:08):
Brian, is there any other big picture stuff you want to lay out before we start digging in?
Brian Friend (05:15):
No, I’m probably going to lay layout for a little while and let JR and Bill kind of take the lead and especially with the opening quarterfinals as affiliate owners that need to manage those parts of the season and they have limited time relative to us today.
Sevan Matossian (05:26):
Okay, I’ll go first. The part that’s really pissing me off is this. There’s a point in that conversation that Adrian and Chase have where Adrian says the quarterfinals basically this year will be taking 25% of the individual open people. Meaning if you’re in the top 25% in the open, you get to go to the quarterfinals. And I guess I don’t have a problem with that, but then he says it’s an extension of the open. I think that is complete horseshit. I think the open is sort of the community event and then everything after there, I consider the CrossFit games. It’s no longer a community event and all I wanted was the open to mean more and now it means nothing. And I listened to the podcast that Bill and Chase did, and this is where maybe I disagree with Bill, but I’m willing to be on fuck.
(06:19):
He’s like, Hey, with 25% of the people going, it means the open means nothing. Check. I agree with Bill open’s a joke, even more of a joke now, but he says the programming is going to be really important. I disagree. I think the program doesn’t even matter anymore. Fuck it, do anything. And Bill kind of alluded to that when he is like, Hey, in the open, go ahead and put heavy lifting or whatever the fuck you want. Now nothing matters because the chunks are so fucking big. Anyway, JR Howell, let me roll it back just a tiny bit. What do you think about the, let’s start with just something simple. You happy with the dates?
JR Howell (06:55):
Yeah, I mean I kind of wanted to start with something positive. Okay,
Sevan Matossian (06:58):
Go ahead. Lets do, I mean it is exciting. It is positive. Sorry, sorry, but I really want to open to mean something. Go
JR Howell (07:05):
Ahead. Well, I mean this is just like logistics type stuff. Adrian even mentioned it on the show I listened to today with Chase where Dave has been really, really committed to trying to make things simpler. And that goes for the numbers. You have to remember, oh, okay. It’s top 25% all the way around. Okay, cool. Alright. It’s forties and it’s thirties and it’s twenties and just even the numbers you have to remember during the season are easier. But one of the things he also said was trying to make it simpler for people to think about the season as it corresponds to the calendar year. So other than it’s starting on a leap year day, you can think of March as being March as the open. Then you can think of April being as April as the quarterfinals, and then you can start to think of May as like when semifinals start.
(07:54):
So in that respect, some of the changes made a lot of sense. When we get into the logistics of the competition itself, that’s where as an affiliate owner, it’s going to be even more challenging than it ever has been. I’m not complaining about having a super fit general population. I think it’s a great problem to have. However, it being a much lower barrier to entry. I can tell you right now that I bet if I went back and looked at the scores for the people that put in scores for all four scored portions of the open year comparatively to how many people even signed up, I’m willing to bet over 50 people would’ve qualified to quarterfinals. There are gyms out there that have over a hundred, already had over a hundred maybe and Will great. We still run seven classes a day. We’re still going to have people that take it seriously. They’re going to want to redo workouts once or twice, not only during the open but into quarterfinals and logistically it’s going to be really tough. So that’s the first.
Sevan Matossian (09:02):
So you don’t agree with his no-brainer comment and I want to push back on if you want to make it simpler, get rid of the fucking quarterfinals. Well, we talk, just get rid of them. Just go can open five events. Fourth and fifth events are fucking hard. Dude, there’s 300 pounds on the bar. Sorry, tap out then who cares? But it’s five fucking events and get rid of the quarterfinals.
JR Howell (09:24):
I really understand it from a growth standpoint, not to get too far into the weeds of the masters and teens, but them expanding significantly is only going to grow that portion of the sport. I agree with that wholeheartedly.
Sevan Matossian (09:36):
I didn’t understand that. Say that again. I’m not following you.
JR Howell (09:40):
Letting it be a casting, letting the funnel stay bigger for longer all the way down to the games is only going to get people that may have been on the fence about even signing up for it or on the fringes because they’re like, dude, I can’t make semifinals that’s top 60 or top 40, but now they’re going to make top 200 semifinals. Okay, cool. I can do that and think about how many people are in that boat. So I think in that respect, it will help the masters division not only moving them to their own competition at the end of the
Sevan Matossian (10:11):
Year. Oh, the masters division, I’m okay with. I’m okay with everything. Just to be clear, everything I heard about Masters and team, and I think
JR Howell (10:21):
You have to think of it all together though from an individual and even a team standpoint. I get what you’re saying for sure.
Sevan Matossian (10:30):
Oh, I’m thinking, you know what I’m thinking? The games to me is 51% community and 49% games. And because of that I think the open should be five weeks. And I think just because it’s hard on the fucking affiliate owners to make it five weeks. Well, you’ve already done the argument for me, right? I wasn’t going to say, well, the quarter you’ve made, the quarter final quarterfinals hard as fuck. Thanks for making the open easier. I mean that’s basically what you said, but just because it’s harder and it’s five weeks, I don’t think you get less participation. I don’t think that’s true at all. I think that this community’s used to doing hard shit. I think you make the open five weeks, everyone knows where they fit in. A lot of you won’t be doing so good on event number four and five. They’re kind of for the good guys. And then you go straight to the semi-finals. Bill, do you have any thoughts?
Bill Grundler (11:13):
Yeah, I agree with the idea that I like what JR is saying about having wide funnels for growth, but I think that you buy
Sevan Matossian (11:23):
That argument. You think that’s true. What JR is saying, you agree with that? Think you open the funnel. You think that more people are going to be like, okay, I’ll do the open because there’s a chance I’m going to make it to the semifinals.
Bill Grundler (11:32):
No, I don’t think that. I think the idea is that what you were
Sevan Matossian (11:34):
Saying Jr? That’s how I understood what you were saying
JR Howell (11:37):
After that stage. So I think the same people are going to do the open because they always do the open, but then I think that next 25% really, really attainable. And then after that, the top 200 per age group is really, really, really attainable. So there’s going to be, I mean let’s
Sevan Matossian (11:55):
Just say, and I like that. Let’s just say it’s 20 bucks. They
JR Howell (11:57):
Just do bucks, a hundred bucks. We can get into the,
Sevan Matossian (12:06):
Why can’t you do that from the just go straight from the open to 200 people to the semifinals.
JR Howell (12:12):
But then the gates, there are not multiple gates and there are not multiple opportunities to make money off of it.
Bill Grundler (12:21):
I’m not even worried about the money part of that necessarily. But for that particular thing, for the masters, if you go from whatever thousands to 200, the amount of video review that you would have to do to get to those 200 to get the right people into that 200 to move ahead. Because when you have events where you’re sitting at 200, maybe you do good on one of ’em, but no one’s looking to see where you are. No one goes to check out that at all. Maybe you are like, what’s his name? The Wall Street lifter?
Sevan Matossian (12:55):
Yeah,
Bill Grundler (12:56):
And you’re one of those guys that comes in and you wreck shop on one of the lifts, throw the entire thing around. So I don’t want to go from the worldwide open to 200. I like the fact that having ’em open now, I don’t agree with the 25%. I think, and I said this even on our show, I think the idea if your only reason for doing that is because the numbers sound right, I don’t buy that. That to me is a weak sauce reason’s nothing. Whether it’s a quarter
Sevan Matossian (13:26):
That’s a nothing burgers they say in the hood.
Bill Grundler (13:29):
Let’s
Brian Friend (13:29):
Put some numbers behind it then.
Bill Grundler (13:31):
Well Brian, you’re the one that did the numbers when we were talking about this last year. Of the 10% that made it, how many people actually paid and participated? And I think you said it was like 3%.
Sevan Matossian (13:43):
No shit. No. You’re
Brian Friend (13:45):
Telling it was more than 3%.
Bill Grundler (13:47):
What was it? How much?
Brian Friend (13:49):
Three and a half that qualified for the quarter finals and actually participated? Yeah, no, it was closer to like 50% of participants.
Bill Grundler (13:56):
5% of the 10%.
Sevan Matossian (13:59):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. I understand. I see what you’re saying. I see what you’re saying.
Brian Friend (14:03):
But here’s the thing. What has been the biggest challenge with the online quarterfinals the last three years
Sevan Matossian (14:11):
Doing it in the affiliates? For the affiliates to set up the floor plans and to execute on it, the review, the video review,
Brian Friend (14:16):
The video review. How do you review an online competition that has so many people participating it in it and in the most critical regions in the world, you’ve made that stage of the season more important. If we used last year’s open numbers, just to put in perspective, 80,000 people would qualify for the individual portion of quarterfinals this year, 80,000. Now they might not all sign up, like Bill said, maybe five 50% sign up, that’s 40,000 participants in one week in those divisions. And that part of the season is happening two weeks later than it has happened ever before and it’s leaving about a month. Given the timeline that Adrian talked about until the start of semifinals, the first time there was quarterfinals, it took a month to review the quarterfinals.
(15:06):
So the timeline that you’re imposing on your team, the stress that you’re imposing on your team for the quarter final dates, there’s the numbers right there. There’s an additional 48,000 that would’ve qualified in this model compared to last year with the same numbers from last year. You’re making the stress. It’s the opposite of what I’ve been asking the cross the games team to do. Make decisions that make things easier for you. So now you have this many more people that you have to deal with potentially in that stage of the season with a smaller amount of time to turn it around before people need to know whether they’ve made it so that they can start making plans. There’s no chance. The best possible outcome here is that a small percentage of the quarterfinal videos are reviewed in a week and that you give three weeks maximum for the first slate of semi-final athletes to plan their trips to semifinals.
Bill Grundler (15:55):
I
JR Howell (15:55):
Just think, go ahead, bill.
Bill Grundler (15:57):
No, go ahead. Go for it.
JR Howell (15:59):
What are the chances they bring back peer review?
Brian Friend (16:03):
Those are details that are unknown and potentially some of these answers are going to be released with the rule book next year. What
Bill Grundler (16:09):
Is peer review?
JR Howell (16:11):
So let’s say the quarterfinals leader
Bill Grundler (16:13):
Board down. You get your thumb up and thumb down. Oh, just open it up to the world. Let
JR Howell (16:16):
The world, you go in and just say, Hey, take a look at this. Hey, no, this one’s good. And you just go and you look at the ones that have a certain number of thumbs
Bill Grundler (16:23):
Down, which I think is valid. I mean, I like how do community cut some of the extra work down? And I said this in our show is the problem that I see with the changes that are made is they seem to be made in the dark. It has yet to have happened. I’ve said it a handful of times before that it appears that there almost needs to be a mission statement for every single one of the stages of these events as they’re going on. The purpose of the open is what? You can’t just say the purpose is to qualify X number of people to the quarterfinals. The quarterfinal is to only move the next group of people to the semifinals. Because I feel like the way that it’s set up, if the quarter finals is now the real open, the open or what the open used to be, the open is now this, I don’t know, free for all thing.
(17:16):
I mean 25%. I don’t see the purpose of doing that to me. What is the purpose? Does anyone see the purpose to that? What is the purpose? That’s the question that makes no sense to me. It used to be, it is the worldwide test of fitness for everyone to jump in and those high-end people get to advance from there. So if that becomes the case, well now you only, if you’re going to only have three events, there’s an element of qualifying. And again, I’m not talking about the top athletes. I’m talking about the community side of it, 25% to move up to the next one to then what happens? Is it going to be harder in the quarterfinals? Is it going to be more skilled in
Sevan Matossian (17:58):
The quarter? How many workouts in the quarterfinals traditionally?
JR Howell (18:01):
Five.
Bill Grundler (18:01):
Is it five?
Sevan Matossian (18:03):
So you and Bill are going to have to set this up in your affiliate, three workouts, three weeks in a row. You get how long off a month, four weeks off. And then you’re going to have to set up five workouts.
JR Howell (18:14):
And again, I’m really frustrated by the news just from a, I already sent a message to all my coaches. Hey, this is the plan. I’m going to go ahead and start doing this now. I’m going to post all the dates. I’m going to post blocks where people are allowed to do the workouts. I’m going to post blocks where they’re allowed to
Sevan Matossian (18:31):
Do the workouts.
JR Howell (18:31):
Why are you frustrated? Because it’s just going to be really difficult for an affiliate that’s going to have so many people that move on. I’m not going to deter them from doing it. I’m not going to
Sevan Matossian (18:40):
Tell them, how do you know it’s going to be difficult if you don’t know what the workouts are? I just, lemme push back here. Adrian and Chase made it sound like the workouts are going to be like stand in a one by one foot square and jump rope for five minutes. Workouts done. They’re saying they’re going to make the workouts easy.
JR Howell (18:54):
I think the open to what Adrian said is I think it is going to be a lot easier. He had said minimal distances between things like you can’t put your rower right under the pull-up bar. It needs to be at least three feet away or whatever. And there was a workout last year with dumbbell snatches, lunges and crossovers where you didn’t need anything. You didn’t even need tape on the floor. All you need to be able to see was how many steps you were taking in one direction and that’s it. So I do think they’ll do their part in making it easier on the affiliate owners. I’m not worried so much about the tape on the floor. It’s time. It’s time. It doesn’t matter if you have a 10 minute workout with eight pieces of tape on the floor, you have a 10 minute workout, you need a judge. A lot of ’em need camera set up and you need probably more than two or three areas to do it in. So again, and maybe I’m really paranoid and really overly concerned with making sure everything runs smoothly, but that’s just kind of how I do it. And you, you’d be a full not to be thinking about that right now if you’re an affiliate owner.
Bill Grundler (20:03):
I think what JR is saying, to put it easy is they talked about how five weeks for an affiliate owner is tough. We just did the exact same thing because with 25% you’re going to have a large group of people that are going to do it. And honestly, if you have that many people that are going to do it, probably everyone’s just going to do it whether they qualified or not. So here we are, right back to a five week setup.
JR Howell (20:23):
One thing I’ll add too that I think was a little bit lost, typically it was a four day window. It’s now five days and a lot of people
Sevan Matossian (20:35):
For quarterfinals.
JR Howell (20:36):
Correct. And a lot of people will be saying, well that’s good. That means the athletes have more time. They’re not as rushed. The people that work, which is the majority of the people that are going to be doing it, have jobs that still want to try to get ’em in. They have more time to do it now they have more time to do it. Exactly. Meaning they will use that extra day and probably
Bill Grundler (20:55):
Redo workouts,
JR Howell (20:56):
Just do more set up. That’s just what people do. Hey, I think I can redo this and get five or six more reps in a 15 minute workout, and as their coach and as an affiliate owner, I’m not going to say, Hey dude, what’s the point? You’re not moving on. I’m not going to burst your bubble like that. So you just acquiesce and you say, oh, we got an extra day. That means another day that I need to plan for this stuff.
Sevan Matossian (21:23):
Does anyone have a good reason why they would do the 25%?
Bill Grundler (21:27):
Yeah, because 25 it’s quarter finals, but
Sevan Matossian (21:31):
We already kind of established they already know that they can’t make
Brian Friend (21:34):
Sub
Sevan Matossian (21:35):
More money from it because
Brian Friend (21:37):
They can make more money from it. The potential additional earning during quarterfinals is 4 million
Bill Grundler (21:44):
Potential.
Sevan Matossian (21:45):
But Brian, didn’t you say only half the people?
Brian Friend (21:47):
Yeah, so they’re likely to make an extra $2 million.
Sevan Matossian (21:50):
Okay, so you’re saying instead of it being 50% of 10%, it’s now going to be 50% of 25%.
Brian Friend (22:01):
Yeah. Doing
Sevan Matossian (22:02):
What kind of napkin? Math, front side napkin math. That’s a little more advanced.
Bill Grundler (22:07):
Remember? I just don’t think that increasing the amount of percentage, yes, it’s a potential of that, but I don’t think that you’re going to have that many more people do it than you would’ve had if you would’ve left it at 10.
Brian Friend (22:24):
That will be a super interesting thing to track for sure. We already, last year, Mike Halpin and I did a study of this because there were a large percentage of quarter final qualifiers that couldn’t do the movements or the lifts that were required at that stage. Now you’ve added another 15% of qualifiers that are less skilled, less strong, and less qualified quite
Bill Grundler (22:45):
Frankly. I think Kain actually in the comment said something to your point, I think he said something about the 25% mark was like one muscle up for the men, a muscle up,
Brian Friend (22:54):
Whereas the 10% was less than one muscle up for the women last year.
Sevan Matossian (22:58):
Oh, that’s what he was referencing. I couldn’t figure out what he was referencing. Lemme see if I could find it. That’s crazy.
Bill Grundler (23:03):
Which is odd to me. So it’s like that is now what’s advancing. What I loved about the open was that people could get their first muscle up or they tried to get their first muscle and they got a lot of prs like that. But it just seems very odd to me that in a worldwide competition for fitness, that if you are unable to do that, that you should be jumping from the methodology of fitness, which is the open, this is our one time to test yourself for the year where you now jump into the element of sport, the sport of fitness. It’s not the community test anymore. Once you get past it, kind of like what you said, it’s 51% community and then 49% games, all that’s the open, and now none of that stuff’s going to happen because we’re going to be advancing people over to the court of finals. Well now that line gets really blurred because who’s really moving up there and is there going to be a list that says, Hey, here are the skills you should be able to do. Well I qualify, but I can’t do that.
Sevan Matossian (24:03):
Lemme put this. These are tripping numbers for people who don’t know what they’re looking at in regards to these numbers. What Mike Halpin is so generously done with a smile on his face in this profile picture is he’s basically saying, if you know what the workouts were from last year, if you remember, this is what you would’ve had to have done for 23.1. You would’ve just had to have gotten one muscle up. I can’t remember what the workout is, but you can just imagine that’s a pretty low bar. And then he goes on and shows it for all the different workouts. Let me say this, what about this argument? I just thought of this. Tell me if you buy this, you make it so more people qualify for the quarterfinals and therefore they end up becoming more invested in semi-finals and the games because they can participate longer because they know people who can participate longer. So in a way it’s generating more fans and more intense interest because people can continue along longer. You buy that?
Bill Grundler (24:57):
No. Do you buy that? I mean, these guys got to go
Sevan Matossian (25:03):
In a minute, so let’s let them, okay, do you buy that?
Bill Grundler (25:07):
No, I don’t buy that because it’s just a financial
Sevan Matossian (25:12):
Move. You think it’s just a financial move then you think it’s just like, Hey,
Bill Grundler (25:16):
I don’t want to, well, I actually don’t know. And one of the things we talked about on the show a little earlier was if it was truly financial, then if you made it in the age group and the open division for quarterfinals, you don’t have to pay for both divisions. You only have to pay once and then you can go on either one and on either one of those sites, if it was a money draft after
Sevan Matossian (25:40):
To
Bill Grundler (25:41):
Qualify the quarterfinals. This is one of the problems. The programming for the quarterfinals for age group and for open division is the same. It’s exactly the same. Now I can choose to go either this way or that way. I don’t have to do two workouts. If I qualified in the open division and then I qualified as the masters, I would’ve to do two. But a lot of the workouts were very similar or exactly similar this year that it’s exactly the same. So that’s another thing to me. It’s like, okay, well if the programming now is going to be the same at that level, what is the programming going to look like for masters and age group and then the open athletes that are going to try to move on? And then what did it look like in the open for these guys to get there? I’m terrified. What I am terrified what the program is going to look like. I think it’s going to be an absolute shit show, honestly.
JR Howell (26:36):
Well, in the last year it was only the 10% qualified quarters and they received a ton of negative feedback about them not being accessible enough. So you had workouts where it started with handstand walks essentially. You had workouts where
Sevan Matossian (26:53):
You’re saying that the 10% was complaining the workouts were too hard.
JR Howell (26:57):
Correct. The bottom of the 10%, a lot of them weren’t even able to do the workouts. So did you agree with that or no?
Sevan Matossian (27:06):
Did you think that was a good idea
JR Howell (27:07):
For them or no, to make them that? No, no, no. I mean, I think it probably deterred a lot of people from wanting to do it this year. Now that it’s 25% and the programming is the same, it really has to be appropriate. And that’s something Adrian said, he was focused,
Brian Friend (27:27):
But there’s an implicit challenge that counteracts that, which is that in the most competitive parts of the world, there’s less people advancing to the next stage, but there’s more people potentially participating in what is being advertised as more accessible tests and those things don’t work that well together.
Sevan Matossian (27:46):
Let me ask you this, just to be clear. For the people listening at home and myself, you’ll do the open, you’ll qualify whether you’re an individual or master, you’ll qualify to this next section that’s called quarterfinals. In the quarterfinals though, there will be five workouts. You’re telling me that these five workouts for the individuals, the best male and female athletes in the world will be the same as the masters from 35 to 112 years old?
Brian Friend (28:18):
Well, if it’s based on how the open has been, it’ll be the same for the teenagers that are 16 and 17 and the masters that are 35 to 54, and they’ll just be altered versions of those workouts. Probably skill and weight for the,
Sevan Matossian (28:32):
So 54 year old will do the same workouts as Jason
Brian Friend (28:36):
As Tia
Sevan Matossian (28:36):
Hopper and Tia Claire Tomi in the quarterfinals. Yeah.
Brian Friend (28:41):
If it’s the
Sevan Matossian (28:42):
Same now I see. I didn’t understand your concern, bill. Now I thought I understood one part. I understand one part of it. That’s a whole
Brian Friend (28:49):
Nother too, there is a potential because now we see that they’ve made some changes to the distribution of masters, qualifying spots at the games, and it’s cut off at 50, at 49, where 35 to 49 have the same, there’s always the potential that the games programming team or in this case, yeah, I think the games say they’re programming the first two stages of the season could recognize that there needs to be some more gradual tapering within the Master’s divisions. So they could always make that change. But historically they have not.
JR Howell (29:20):
And I think people that are, I mean, I know this isn’t a programming show at all. Wait,
Sevan Matossian (29:23):
Wait, wait, sorry, JR before you say, the problem with that is Brian, then people who qualify for individual and whatever place they break the age off will now have to do all the workouts in the same week. Meaning people, the whole reason why they’re doing this is that so someone who’s 36 years old can do one set of workouts and plug their scores into individual and masters. That’s the way I took it. But what you’re saying is, and I guess there’d be very few 50 year olds who
Brian Friend (29:52):
Are, what I’m saying is that since Bill Grundler did it in the 2014, no one over 45 years old has ever qualified for those.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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