Bill Grundler (00:00):
What’s up man?
Sevan Matossian (00:01):
Dude, I switched to seven 30. Bam. We’re live. Taylor. What’s up Susan? What’s up Mr. Grundler? Are we down one?
Taylor Self (00:10):
I don’t think so. Well, John. John. Wow. John Young. Oh
Sevan Matossian (00:13):
My goodness. Old, reliable. The official CrossFit games analyst for the seven podcast. John Young must have stayed too late last night on the barbell spin.
Bill Grundler (00:24):
You do? I thought he’d be afraid to come on. He got so much love from Brian and all the fans out there. All the Who’s John Young? Oh, I hate John Young. I’m like, God dang, this poor guy
Sevan Matossian (00:35):
Johnny. Boy, we got your back. Johnny, come hide behind us. This is your front four. Look at, that’s like a football talk, right? Your front four.
Taylor Self (00:43):
Hey, do you get colonics?
Sevan Matossian (00:45):
No, but I did just wash my butt in the shower.
Taylor Self (00:49):
I’ve been wanting to try one. Is that weird? A
Sevan Matossian (00:51):
Bar not for you,
Bill Grundler (00:52):
Not
Taylor Self (00:53):
Just listen to me. I feel like
Sevan Matossian (00:54):
Continuity. Continuity
Taylor Self (00:56):
Is it not a really satisfying idea that you could get three pounds of shit out of your colon from just hosing it out?
Bill Grundler (01:04):
Alright. Yep. Morning. And the verbiage of that in the visual description that is now spawned up into my brain having already seen some pictures already. My mind.
Sevan Matossian (01:19):
Do you know I was going to start
Bill Grundler (01:21):
To show
Sevan Matossian (01:21):
This morning with, boy, it must be so weird working at CrossFit HQ right now. This is going to be a weird week with their new guy, but fuck, you wanted that mantle. You wanted it to be weird to be on the Avon podcast. I appreciate you setting the bar HQ ain’t got nothing on us.
Taylor Self (01:39):
We’re all thinking about ’em. Come on. Hey,
Sevan Matossian (01:41):
What if we were all in four chairs adjacent to each other, holding hands as we got colonics?
Taylor Self (01:45):
Is that how they do it? You sit in a chair?
Sevan Matossian (01:47):
Yeah, you buddy colonic. It’s fine.
Bill Grundler (01:49):
As long as you’re not looking in eye to eye, you’re fine. Right, right.
Taylor Self (01:53):
Maybe there’s some sort of buy one get three free.
Sevan Matossian (01:57):
We are so lucky to have Tia Tomi to our and Laura Horvat competing against each other. But what’s even more lucky is we have a race and it was scary on day one for people who want to see a race. You just thought Tini was going to blow this thing out of the water? Yes or no, Mr. Grundler
Bill Grundler (02:21):
On the run? Well, I mean I thought she’d be up there on the run. I didn’t,
Sevan Matossian (02:24):
But I mean after that were you like, oh shit, here we go again.
Bill Grundler (02:28):
Well, no, I wasn’t like that. I was more kind of like, well, all right. If she was going to have one, that would be one. It would be these other things that I would want to see and it’s way closer than I would’ve thought than I would’ve wanted it to be, I guess.
Sevan Matossian (02:41):
So Gruner speaking like an athlete as a former games athlete, he knows as a fan I was just like, oh shit, she’s going to dominate. But instead Taylor, what do we have instead? After three events? Do we have a runaway?
Taylor Self (02:55):
No, we’ve got quite the race. And I don’t think Al’s out of it points wise, it’s just a matter of is she going to be able to get top finishes like Tia and Laura Points wise, she still more than has a chance for the top spot. I was fully expecting Tia to just destroy everyone after the run, run workout. I was like, oh man, it’s not going to be close. But lo and behold, quite the race. Laura does what she needs to do, doesn’t get in her head about it. And that’s exciting and that’s fun. So I’m pumped.
Sevan Matossian (03:28):
I’m guessing after the first event, Laura got spun up in her head a little bit. Then she wins the second event and she gets her confidence back. And then the third event was the, that was the circus event.
Bill Grundler (03:42):
The monkey
Sevan Matossian (03:42):
Bars and the heavy shoulder overhead. There was the third movement
Taylor Self (03:47):
Skier
Bill Grundler (03:48):
Kill a cage. Oh, the skier? Yeah. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (03:52):
Do you think at this point Laura’s like, shit, no one’s going to help me.
Bill Grundler (03:58):
Laura did what she had to do and no one helped
Sevan Matossian (03:59):
Her. By that, I mean no one got between her and Ms. Wood, and so now she knows, oh
Bill Grundler (04:04):
Shit, this
Sevan Matossian (04:05):
Is just, do these two women know, hey, this is going to be a war between us?
Taylor Self (04:09):
I think it depends on the workout. I don’t think it’s going to be 1, 2, 1 2 for the rest of the events, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s like they are both getting top fours in the rest of the events.
Bill Grundler (04:21):
They
Sevan Matossian (04:22):
Can’t rely on anyone getting in between ’em. They have to think I have to win or I go home second.
Taylor Self (04:27):
Right. I would think,
Bill Grundler (04:29):
And that’s what we got into when we started talking about some of the dead list stuff and I think one of the other shows you had sev on where you’re talking about with Tia, pull up a little light on a deadlift or would she go for broke, just coming back from having a kid. Does Laura have the ability to, or does any of the athletes, any of those two, either those two have the ability to protect anything that they had? You saw everyone’s hands yesterday, they were just shredded. So they’ll talk about Tia’s fifth place. Was that her protecting her hands? Was she trying to hang back a little bit? Is
Sevan Matossian (05:05):
That real conversation or do we just say that to Phil Airtime? You think she could have really been protecting her hands?
Bill Grundler (05:11):
I don’t think she does, but I do think that that is a conversation within some of the athletes. Yeah, look at what they, me and Taylor were talking about this yesterday on the show. It was like, look at all of the things that they have to do with their hands. They have every single possible polling gymnastic movement that we have in our sport in four days. Every single one bar ring. Well, it’s not even a regular bar muscle up. It’s that wooden bar, muscle up, rope, climbs, pegboards, everything. Everything.
Sevan Matossian (05:42):
And what about the water and the rain that makes things worse? I’m guessing.
Taylor Self (05:46):
Oh, your hands are wet. They’re way more susceptible to tear. Also at the same time, think about the potential gnarling on that circus dumbbell, whatever the deadlift bar is going to be, I guess from somebody. They potentially was going to be the Rogue Agro bar, which has more aggressive, I don’t know if that’s true or not, but potentially if you have a rip starting on day two or day one even, or sorry, starting on day two, you’re fucked for the weekend.
Sevan Matossian (06:17):
The third event was the skier, I think it’s called the Circus event. They started off with the skiing and then they went to this unique dumbbell circus dumbbell, one of a kind dumbbells that you can’t buy. Katie said, sounds like they’re very expensive to make. And then they went to the killer cage and the athletes did this for three rounds and it looked like Emma Carey was going to be like, yo girls, don’t forget, there’s something special about me that puts me in the tier with Tia and Laura that I can just turn it on another gear. I’m not just good. I have another gear and I can win it. That’s what I saw. And then with one Round Left, he blows by is Emma Carey the next Noah Olsson man, it’s mean. You put it that way. Characterize it. I mean, I was so excited about him. I’m like, yeah, she got it. Dude
Bill Grundler (07:16):
Jr called that one. He was like, I am calling her to go big out of the gate, being able to hang in there. I just don’t think she had the, I think that the cage for her did more damage than anything. I think she would’ve done a lot better, honestly, if they would’ve had more dumbbell reps.
Sevan Matossian (07:32):
We’ve
Bill Grundler (07:32):
Seen her work on the dumbbell. We’ve seen what she can do on the dumbbell and go heavy, especially for her size. And so I think if that would’ve helped her if there was a little bit more of that. But I mean the athletes that didn’t struggle on the cage were the ones that did well in the event.
Sevan Matossian (07:46):
Do we have glimmers of just world-class otherworldly potential and Emma Carey. I mean, I know. We know Emma Lawson’s really good.
Taylor Self (07:56):
I think Emma Lawson has more potential than Emma Carey.
Sevan Matossian (07:58):
Really? Okay. Alright.
Taylor Self (08:01):
She moves so much better. Emma Lawson moves like a dream. And you think you would think as a coach, as someone familiar, surrounded by high level athletes at that level, it’s just okay, they all have the fundamentals, but when you really watch their movement, they don’t all have the fundamentals. They do not all move with virtuosity. The best do Matt does. Rich did. Still does. Ben Smith did. Does guys like Pat do? Guys like Justin do?
Sevan Matossian (08:31):
I will say this. Tia is extremely fluid like water, and sometimes I see Emma Carey move when she first starts running, whenever she first starts her first five or six paces, she looks like a stick figure before she becomes fluid. Do you know what I mean? She has this robotic, I don’t want to say goofy because it’s not like a two-year-old withy Emma. Yeah, Emma Carey. Sometimes I see something in her that just makes it look like she’s not an athlete. I see these glimmers of just
Bill Grundler (09:06):
Athleticism. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (09:07):
I’m not sure what it is.
Bill Grundler (09:09):
I wouldn’t like the way Annie wouldnt necessarily
Sevan Matossian (09:11):
Like the way Annie runs. Although Annie
Bill Grundler (09:13):
Does great. It runs. She does do well. I think it looks like she’s cross country screen when she runs, so she just does that in background in her backyard. I think with Emma Carey, I think with her, she isn’t a smooth mover, but what’s fun to watch about Emma is that she is just a put your head down, buzz saw, and she just gets after. It doesn’t care if she has to move a particular way to, I’m not trying to gain the most efficiency out of this particular movement. No, I got to get from here to there and I’m going to do everything I can to get from here to there. I don’t give a shit what it looks like. I’m just going for it.
Taylor Self (09:51):
She’s got, I
Bill Grundler (09:52):
Think that’s her deal.
Taylor Self (09:54):
She’s a savage and can hurt with the best of them without aout
Bill Grundler (09:58):
Like a juggernaut,
Taylor Self (09:59):
Just
Bill Grundler (10:00):
Head down goes
Taylor Self (10:01):
But could imagine how good she could be if she mastered the fundamentals and she moved like Emma Lawson or she moved like Mam O’Brien or she moved like a Laura. I think if you’re looking for improvement with her, you kind of have to take a couple steps back, I think
Sevan Matossian (10:16):
With Emma,
Taylor Self (10:18):
Emma, Emma, Carrie.
Sevan Matossian (10:19):
Yeah. There’s some great comments in here. Let me read these. I think I agree with a lot of these. Emma. Carrie needs to focus on basic playground skills, bike ride, monkey bars, et cetera. Emma has the frame to tolerate the top end comparatively too. I agree with all these. Emma Carey has some serious superpowers, just doesn’t know how to articulate them consistently yet. Yep, I see the superpowers. Kenneth Dela today is the maker of the thumbnails for the Seon podcast. Bruce Wayne. Bruce. Thanks brother. Happy birthday. Blink. She didn’t get on the playground though. She was homeschooled and then avocado nut. Carrie needs to learn new sports.
Taylor Self (10:59):
Dude, there’s something that hits a little different and if you’re homeschooled, Hey, you know what? I had this idea? Is there CrossFits in any city could probably put a program out like a physical education program for kids that are homeschooled, like a group PE class for homeschool kids? Dunno if you’re an affiliate. I’ve tried to
Bill Grundler (11:14):
Play that kind of stuff. Yeah,
Taylor Self (11:16):
Yeah. I don’t know. I just have,
Bill Grundler (11:17):
You know what? For the affiliates fits, it fits the middle of the day class that
Taylor Self (11:21):
Are
Bill Grundler (11:21):
The hard classes to fill.
Sevan Matossian (11:24):
There are several non-athletes in CrossFit. That’s a potent,
Bill Grundler (11:29):
Potent
Sevan Matossian (11:29):
Line
Taylor Self (11:30):
Athlete is such a broad term. I think what most people think of as athletic is field sports, but if you watch an Olympian snatch that’s athleticism in its pure form. I mean that’s crazy what they can do. Or like a gymnast, but you ask ’em to kick a soccer ball and they look like they’re fucking a paraplegic. It’s like
Bill Grundler (11:52):
They’re very good at their individual sports. We’ve seen that all over. We’ve seen it. We saw it with the softball throw back in the day. We’ve seen it with swimming when they throw all these badass athletes in. I mean to me that’s one of the funniest CrossFit scenarios of all time. The black and white shot of all of our superheroes up on the deck. 3, 2, 1, go. They all jump in the pool and it’s like the YMCA just got let out for the first time. It’s a public pool anyway. We’ve seen it on handstand walks when we first do handstand walks back in. So you see these movements that if you have a kid that is an athletic kid, the kid that does well in football, baseball, basketball, track, it doesn’t matter what you give ’em, they can climb up over the fence. They’re good at playing dodge ball and capture the flag. Those are athletic kids. We have a lot of athletes here that are so CrossFit sports specific and they don’t want to injure anything by going out and doing something different that they get very good at the barbell. They get very good at the Olympic lifts, they get very good at the machines, but then that’s it because they aren’t outside living, so that is tough.
Taylor Self (13:04):
Bill play in the mud
Sevan Matossian (13:05):
Bill has been completely frozen the entire show for me, but his audio is so spot on. Perfect. Audio is
Bill Grundler (13:11):
Perfect. I don’t even care. Am I still frozen? Really? Oh yeah,
Sevan Matossian (13:13):
Completely, but in a good position. Not like John Young. I give a banana.
Bill Grundler (13:16):
Not like my eyes are like half. No shit.
Taylor Self (13:19):
Full frozen. Full frozen. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (13:21):
You have your hand out, you’re gesticulating. Listen to me gentlemen. It’s good you’re holding
Bill Grundler (13:25):
Court. Do I need to go on and come back in? Do I need to reset myself?
Sevan Matossian (13:29):
No, I
Bill Grundler (13:30):
Mean I’m on my good internet. I don’t understand.
Sevan Matossian (13:31):
You can. You’re good internet. I’m on my phone with five GLTE, baby. I’m getting cancer
Bill Grundler (13:40):
For this show.
Taylor Self (13:42):
Oh my God.
Sevan Matossian (13:45):
I do want to go down to number 11. Good morning, Caleb. I do want to go down to number 11. Danielle, Brandon, a seventh, a 17th and a 10. She’s strong shoulder to overhead. She’s got good positioning. As you guys mentioned, she has great engine. The skier shouldn’t have been much for, although I think of her as petite as one of the smaller athletes. You guys laughed at me for that. And then the monkey bars, I think of her as a gymnast. This girl looks good hanging and upside down a 10th. Is this, any thoughts on Daniel, Brandon, how she might feel now? Taylor the camp, is she bummed? I mean two caps.
Taylor Self (14:33):
My perspective on her perception of her is that if she experiences adversity, she’s not going to react well to it the way some of the better athletes or the more composed athletes will. Why
Sevan Matossian (14:45):
Do you say that? The crying at the games and the weightlifting comp or why do you say that?
Taylor Self (14:48):
Crying, yelling at judges, the throwing the temper tantrums. There have been numerous experiences over competition seeing her encounter adversity and it holding her back. She is a freakazoid athletically, you would imagine.
Sevan Matossian (15:04):
Yeah, she’s an In terms of
Taylor Self (15:05):
Physical, yeah, athletic in terms of physical potential, probably as gifted as anyone there.
Sevan Matossian (15:10):
Yeah, no goofball on her,
Taylor Self (15:11):
Right. I just think the mental aspect of composure holds her back. And I would expect or I would suspect that if she has any severe rips in her hands, that’s going to be something that gives her a bit of an excuse to not do as well as she should in some of these workouts. Whereas an athlete who’s a little more,
Sevan Matossian (15:30):
Particularly one of my absolute favorites, I fucking love Danielle. I love almost everything about her and the stuff that I don’t like about her. I’m glad I don’t like about her. It makes me her more thoughts, bill, on what’s going on there? 7, 17, 10, or are we being too hard? Is it like, dude, these are the fittest women in the world and dude, she’s crushing.
Bill Grundler (15:50):
No, I know during one of the passes that she had on the cage there just didn’t look to be, she came off somewhere in the middle and she didn’t look bothered by it. It didn’t look like, ah dang, this was a planned, planned part. It was just kind of like, ah. Fell off and kind of this weird little smile on her face and kind of hopped back on. I don’t see the killer instinct of her isn’t there. And Chase said something in the comments about the fact of her feeding off her promotions. If she would’ve had a good first event better than seven, if you would’ve been in the top five, top three, that would’ve given her that like, oh, I’m in the game. And when she has that, she’s wickedly dangerous. But if there’s something that kind of stumps her and she’s like, oh, I’m not going to be able to get that. I’m not going to be able to get that. And again, I’m not saying that’s what she is thinking. That’s what it looks like from the outside. She just kind of goes into cruise mode and she’s so athletic that she can be in cruise mode and be right in the middle, and I just think that that’s right where she is.
Sevan Matossian (16:52):
I’m hearing Taylor say she throws temper tantrums and she’s a head case and I’m hearing you say that she’s not throwing enough temper tantrums.
Bill Grundler (16:58):
Well,
Sevan Matossian (16:59):
Fuck you.
Bill Grundler (17:00):
No, no. I don’t want to see fuck yous. I want to see. I want to win. I want to get in there and like, no, no, you’re not going to beat me on this path. I know I’m gymnastic. I can get across this bar. But no, she comes down in the middle and it is like, oh gosh, I came down again. I mean, when you are a very emotional athlete, this is one of the things that’s hard is you are learning how to control those emotions. You kind of end up almost being like, Noah, you’re either all in or you’re all out. I’m competing at the games, but I’m just here to have fun. No, you’re not, dude. You can’t do that. You have to be able to enjoy what you’re doing, but be all in going for it. And I think that she’s trying to figure that out. Those emotions are big that she has and there’s a lot of honing that has to be done.
Sevan Matossian (17:45):
Ariel Lowen, crowd favorite, took third place at the CrossFit games this past year. Third fittest woman in the world. People love Ariel Lowen. A 15th, a 16th and a fifth.
Mattew Souza (17:57):
She’s making the charge.
Sevan Matossian (17:59):
Is she making the charge?
Bill Grundler (18:02):
Yeah.
Mattew Souza (18:02):
I want her to, I’m a fan, so I think she’s going to come
Sevan Matossian (18:04):
Back
Mattew Souza (18:05):
And I think we’ll see a couple more top, top 10 and maybe a couple more top five finishes and that’s going to put it in the conversation for the overall top 10 or higher.
Sevan Matossian (18:13):
Danny Spiegel, same thing. 18, 14th, a third. Danny Spiegel. Did you guys know that? Do you look at Danny Spiegel and be like, man, she’s great at the skier. Good gymnastics and what was the other? Oh, the
Bill Grundler (18:27):
Dumbo
Sevan Matossian (18:27):
And the Dumbo. We know she’s strong, right? Shoulder overhead. She has no peer, right?
Bill Grundler (18:31):
Yeah. Yeah. I mean that
Sevan Matossian (18:33):
Was no surprise there.
Bill Grundler (18:34):
Not really. Honestly, I wasn’t expecting that high of a finish, but I mean there was absolutely nothing in that particular workout that was even going to remotely slow her down.
Sevan Matossian (18:46):
Now the first event was called the Texas Heavy. What were the movements in that event?
Bill Grundler (18:54):
The heavy rock run.
Sevan Matossian (18:57):
Oh, right, the run. Okay.
Bill Grundler (18:58):
Alex
Sevan Matossian (18:59):
Gza 12th. Alex Gza has the most, the widest range of scores, but I feel like this is her. I feel like this is what we’ve seen in her other competitions. The Run First event, she has a 12. Then the second event. What was the second event? She got a first. Thank you, Caleb. Oh no, not. Thank you Caleb.
Mattew Souza (19:21):
Seat seat at the bar was the second event.
Sevan Matossian (19:24):
Okay. Yes.
Bill Grundler (19:24):
The muscle up one.
Sevan Matossian (19:25):
The muscle up and the
Caleb Beaver (19:26):
Back squat. Back squat.
Sevan Matossian (19:28):
Oh, great, great. Okay, so the muscle up back squat, she gets a first and then back to the shoulder and overhead. She gets a 16th, 12. First a 16th. That’s the kind of thing that makes someone a crowd favorite. I think that’s why Danny Spiegel’s a crowd favorite. She can get some first. Gee, he can get some first. That’s why people like gee, obviously that’s why people like Tia. She gets lots of firsts, but it’s not going to be enough to keep you in the top tier of athletes. Right? A 12th, the first and a 16th, another first.
Mattew Souza (19:57):
Need more consistency. Yeah,
Bill Grundler (19:59):
Not man, and we talked about this at the end of last night’s show. It’s like you almost need to take some sort of look at every single person’s hands that’s on that’s going
Sevan Matossian (20:12):
To be competing
Bill Grundler (20:12):
Today. Because we saw a lot of people go down. I would’ve thought Alex would’ve done amazing in that event. Me too. I couldn’t figure out why the hell she couldn’t get off that rig. Well, everyone’s hands were shredded from, I mean the four inch log muscle up that did a lot of damage to a lot of people’s hands, the wet bar. I mean, we saw Garrett couldn’t even go like one rung without coming back down because his hands raw shredded up. Why does it matter? Lemme
Sevan Matossian (20:39):
Ask you this. Why does it matter that your hands are torn? So your back hurts a little bit and when you go down to pick up the soap, the shower, you flinch. But when you’re out there competing, it doesn’t go away. You’re like, fuck it. I don’t care how much it stings. It’s not affecting your grip or your musculature or anything. It’s just pain. It is pain.
Taylor Self (20:58):
Pain shuts down, pain shuts down the muscles,
Bill Grundler (21:03):
So it’s just
Sevan Matossian (21:03):
Straight burning. It’s this steel bar touching an open, massive open wound with your bone of your hand,
Bill Grundler (21:11):
12
Sevan Matossian (21:12):
Millimeters away from it.
Bill Grundler (21:13):
It’s wet. It’s your blood that’s all over that thing and your hands are just sliding and moving all over the bar. So that’s why everyone chalks up their hands. They don’t want the hands to be sweaty so that they can kind of stick to the bar and they can actually move. This isn’t sweat, this is rain and now it’s blood too. When you’re trying to chalk it up and you can’t, and so you’re just constantly sliding. You get up on the bar and your hand slides down and it does. It’s like insult to injury. I already have an open wound and I’m sliding this bar across that open wound putting more blood on the bar. So they actually are having a physical sensation that’s
Sevan Matossian (21:47):
Telling them to stop and Bill said it last night,
Taylor Self (21:51):
They’re going to adjust. So if you’re ripped across here, you’re going to adjust to your fingertips. That’s
Sevan Matossian (21:55):
Going to burn your grip out more. You might change the way
Taylor Self (21:57):
You’re
Sevan Matossian (21:57):
Moving, which might affect your shoulders and fatigue
Taylor Self (22:00):
’em in a way
Sevan Matossian (22:00):
You’re not used to. So it’s not necessarily just the grip, but all the compensation to that happens because you can’t grip, man, I just want to say suck it up and go. That’s what you’re supposed to do. Tape that shit up. Yeah, tape that shit up.
Bill Grundler (22:15):
You’ve never had a hand rip, have you? Sev
Sevan Matossian (22:17):
Not in fucking first year.
Bill Grundler (22:21):
Then you have that amnesia to that pain. I’ve
Taylor Self (22:24):
Had really bad rips. I’ve never had horrible rips in competition. I’ve had rips in competition
Sevan Matossian (22:29):
And I’ve never even competed. So when I rip, I can just quit. It
Bill Grundler (22:32):
Kept me out of the games. That kept me out of the games.
Sevan Matossian (22:35):
Wow.
Taylor Self (22:35):
The worst I ever ripped was when I did a hundred muscle-ups for time and I felt like I trained relatively normally through the week and I ripped the whole pad of my palm off.
Bill Grundler (22:46):
Damn. Damn
Taylor Self (22:47):
On both hands. But at the same time, I wasn’t competing. I was just training. So maybe I’m a minute slower on a workout that I’m still like, I’m happy with that because my hand’s fucked up. But in competition that’s highlighted and I get a 20th. So it’s hard to say.
Bill Grundler (23:01):
I’ve had it where it was in that, the one with the 40 pullups. I think that Masters kind of did something like that. The back squat 40 pullups. The front squats. The overhead squats one. That one. And I am good at pullups. That’s one of my best movements. And in a competition break off sets of 2025. Not a problem. And I ended up doing sets of two because I couldn’t hold onto the bar. I just was slipping off of it. Now
Sevan Matossian (23:25):
That I think about it, I’ve never had my hands ripped from pull-ups. It’s only been deadlifts. It’s always dead lifts.
Taylor Self (23:29):
Really? Wow.
Bill Grundler (23:30):
Serious.
Sevan Matossian (23:31):
Yeah, because the bar gets behind the, that’s some beta C shit. Is that?
Taylor Self (23:38):
I think it’s have such crazy calluses there. I’m kidding.
Bill Grundler (23:43):
Only on the one hand.
Sevan Matossian (23:46):
No, I’m both. Do
Taylor Self (23:46):
You switch grip?
Sevan Matossian (23:48):
No. Rarely. Rarely. As I get older, I do some of that, but rarely I don’t like to. I feel like it’s cheating even though it’s not really. I know, I know.
Taylor Self (23:56):
Dude. I have bruising on my thumbs, like perpetual bruising on my thumbs from hook grip. See that? It’s called
Sevan Matossian (24:01):
Poop thumb.
Taylor Self (24:02):
Is it really thumb? Really? Tur thumb paper. I’ve never heard of that. That is poop thumb. Dude.
Sevan Matossian (24:11):
King with shredded hands is going to be nasty, says Jason Miller. Okay, let’s go over to the Boys Men’s competition. After three events, we are starting day three for the Rogue Invitational. 2023 Rogue Invitational. How many events today? Three. Two.
Taylor Self (24:30):
It’s 4, 8, 12. The dual and the deadlift, right?
Sevan Matossian (24:35):
Yeah. So two events today.
Taylor Self (24:36):
Oh my God, really?
Sevan Matossian (24:40):
Roman. We’ll get to that very shortly. Koff 2 45. Jeffrey Adler, 2 25 and second. Pat Vellner and third with 2 25 Chandler Smith. Two 15 Chandler’s still like, Hey dude, I belong in the top five. Does Chandler belong in this top five
Taylor Self (24:57):
Man?
Sevan Matossian (24:57):
Does he stay in the top five?
Taylor Self (24:58):
Took second at Rogue last year. It’s so hard for me to say. He does not belong in the top five.
Sevan Matossian (25:05):
Sorry, a fifth, a fourth and an 11th.
Taylor Self (25:08):
And look at Brent. Come Brent’s right there. Too savage. This is a fucking, this is awesome. I love the unpredictability of this.
Sevan Matossian (25:18):
Yeah, I love how tight those points are.
Taylor Self (25:20):
I know. Awesome. That’s
Sevan Matossian (25:21):
Awesome. Because
Mattew Souza (25:22):
Every
Sevan Matossian (25:23):
Single point’s going to matter for these five.
Taylor Self (25:25):
Romans whip his D out.
Sevan Matossian (25:27):
People always talk about how good Roman is at the machines. Is that what won him this last event, the skier, the shoulder overhead and the cage? He said it was the cage that Yeah, he was smooth on all of it. Yeah, I mean had a great, he was skiing great, but Hopper did great on the ski too. But where he just crushed Hopper was on the cage. He was great. I mean, he looked like the cage was, it looked almost as silly and almost as worthless as the dumbbell to overhead part. I mean, he made it look that easy.
Taylor Self (26:01):
He transitioned the dumbbell so smoothly, just pull it between the legs, switch back to the next arm. And then yeah, like you said, he was moved with athleticism and consistency on the killer cage.
Sevan Matossian (26:13):
Let’s do a comparison between Ricky Mack and Danielle Brandon. We know Ricky’s a great athlete. We know he is a great mover. We know he is got grit. He took an 18th. I mean, that is really this guy. If you were to say who’s going to be top five at the games next year, you would say, this guy, this guy should not have an 18th anywhere.
Taylor Self (26:37):
Or Justin Coler last night said that his and Alex Kazan’s hands were fucking mangled.
Sevan Matossian (26:42):
And that once again, you’re saying that’s from the four inch bar from when they were doing the
Taylor Self (26:45):
Bar muscle. Yeah, that’s the log bar. But at the same time, like you said, you typically imagine Ricky is the guy who’s super fucking grindy and hard. And to me, if all the athletes have mangled hands, I guess my perception is that it would affect Ricky the let the least. So interesting to hear that. Come
Sevan Matossian (27:03):
On Ricky. I want to go back to the mangled hands thing again. So you’re saying he goes into that workout possibly with mangled hands, he grabs a skier, he’s hating it. He can’t squeeze it, he can’t perform what he wants. He goes to the shoulder overhead and he doesn’t want to grab that. He goes to the monkey bars. Oh, life sucks. And he has to do that three rounds. And each one of those is being impeded by torn hand, all those and getting
Taylor Self (27:23):
Worse. Getting worse. The workout goes
Sevan Matossian (27:26):
Well and having to deal with his shoulders the entire time. If that was about the shoulder, it’s like, I think he said he was a hundred percent, every athlete’s going to say they’re a hundred percent because you have to mentally think you’re a hundred percent, otherwise you’re going to be limping the whole time.
Taylor Self (27:42):
He might be healthy, but being a hundred percent healthy and then prepared to compete against competitively best are two different things.
Sevan Matossian (27:49):
And all difficult on the shoulder. The skier not fun with the shoulder. Shoulder overhead, not fun with the shoulder and monkey bars, absolutely disgusting if you have a fucked up shoulder.
Mattew Souza (27:59):
And it kind of sucks because I guess what’s coming down that pipeline today?
Taylor Self (28:02):
What? Well, he did so well movement. He won seat at the bar. So when you’re thinking shoulder, I’m thinking, well, those fucking log muscle ups. If anything’s going to aggravate your shoulder, you would think that would. But then he takes an 18th on Killer Cage, so I don’t know if it’s the shoulder at all. More so his hand actually just being fucked up or his hands, I don’t know. I mean, taking a first at seat at the bar to me is a strong indicator that his shoulder is good. But then again, I don’t know, you have the shoulder overhead’s a little bit different. Unilateral, who knows?
Sevan Matossian (28:35):
Travis Mayer, a ninth and ninth and a 14th. He missed the games last year. Although he was healthy for the games, he had I think a wrist injury during the qualifiers for the CrossFit games in 2023. So he didn’t get to go looking very good in all of the training videos over at training. Think tank, mentally as sharp as anyone and upbeat. But man, there’s a lot of gray on the dude, man. There’s a lot of gray on this motherfucker.
Taylor Self (29:07):
I think he’s 11. Think he’s 11 to 14th this weekend, and I think that’s solid for him. Middle of the pack.
Sevan Matossian (29:14):
But I thought he would come in here peaking.
Taylor Self (29:17):
Dude, he’s
Sevan Matossian (29:18):
All,
Taylor Self (29:19):
What’s his best finish at the games? Like an eighth? Can we look that up, Caleb?
Sevan Matossian (29:28):
I know
Mattew Souza (29:29):
Even how I would look that up.
Taylor Self (29:31):
I got it.
Sevan Matossian (29:32):
I think this competition for him is a, I mean, it’s the perfect stage to see exactly where you are. For him.
Bill Grundler (29:41):
He missed the end of the season last year with his injury, wasn’t able to hop in there. He’s been obviously training with his guys that he trains with. But this is a perfect place for him to be able to sit there and be like, okay, so where am I sitting with these guys? Where am my weaknesses against the field? Not where are my weaknesses? Perfect. Oh, come on. Bill is a fucking veteran.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
Check out our other posts.
