I was born to kill it. I was meant to win. I am down and willing, so I will find a way. It took a minute, now it didn't happen right away. When it get hot in the kitchen, you decide to stay. That's how it win us, man. What is going on, everybody? Welcome to the Clydesdale Media Podcast, presenting the athletes of the semifinals. Today, we are so privileged to have with us Max Krieg. Max, what's going on, man? Not much. Thank you for having me on the show. Yeah, excited to have you on.
It's funny, last year, my co-host for my Thursday night show, Jamie Latimer, had you pegged as her dark horse to make the games last year out of semifinals. Yes. Wow. And so because of that, we watched you very closely last year at semis. And she actually interviewed you after one of the events. I don't know if you remember that. I do. I was, I was pretty smoked and I probably didn't make much sense of the interview, but I remember it.
Yeah. I, if I remember you still had your ruck on from the ruck muscle up workout, right? Yup. Yeah. Yeah. What I find fascinating with you, and this has nothing to do with CrossFit, is you look completely different with the mustache than without the mustache. Thank you. Yeah, this is only two weeks strong right now. I'm calling it my semifinal stache. I had one last year. I'll grow it out every once in a while just for fun.
I'm in the military, so we can't really grow out much facial hair except for a mustache, so it's fun to grow it out every once in a while. I grew it out last year. It exceeded my expectations at semifinals, so I figured I'd grow it out again this year and see what happens. Jake Chapman says, Max looks like a World War II Army captain called John Stanley. Yeah. Thanks, Jake. We also have a guy in the chat. I don't know if you know him, Corey Leonard. Yeah, I just love that guy.
And we'll probably see him this weekend at Franco's. Yep. I will be there. So Corey's been a longtime listener. He was actually my roommate at the Masters Fitness Collective when I got to kind of see his first ever big competition. And we couldn't be more stoked that he's actually going to get to compete in semifinals in the Masters Division this weekend. Yeah, that's awesome. I'm excited to see him throw down. Yeah. What a funny guy. So I don't know if you've heard of...
The Southland competitors camp that Brandon Luckett puts on, I met and, uh, somehow me and him always end up sitting next to each other during the seminars. And we're just, we're just bust. Like we're just having a good time the whole time, just messed around and he's a fun guy to be around. So that's truly how Corey and I kind of got to know each other's through the Southland Southland group. And the way I know the Southland group is I live three miles from Rudy burger.
Okay. And so I covered him last season through the open and semifinals, did little mini documentaries of that. And he talked about the group down at Southland and how him and Lynette go down there and hang out with Brandon and the crew and how much they love it. And that's how I got introduced to Corey. And then we actually met in person for the first time at Masters Fitness Collective.
okay awesome well yeah small world and uh funny that you say that um the burgers are awesome I i met them at competitors camp I think three three competitors camps ago I saw him at water palooza briefly and then um some of the most recent competitors camp and when I was doing quarterfinals this year um A couple people recommended that I get a coach, and I haven't had a coach up until, I mean, very recently.
And so I'm a very analytical person, and I appreciate people who are very analytical at sport and kind of a student of the sport. And so when I was thinking about getting a coach, the first person I thought of was Lynette.
And I'm sure, like, as you've, like, interviewed and talked to Rudy and kind of, like, um seeing their their process their their coach athlete relationship obviously they're married um but like the way that Lynette approaches the coaching process and the way she analyzes everything that Rudy does um she was the first person that that came in my mind so very recently I reached out to her I think like a week week and a half ago And so she's actually going to be coming out to
semifinals with me to be my coach. I'm super excited to work with her. And so far, we've just been talking back and forth, texting, and she's awesome. Wow. That's awesome. She is. She's one of the most analytical people I've ever met. She always says when I talk to her, you know how we're data driven. Like I think she prefaces every statement with that. And I'm actually going to be over there with them this weekend. While you're hanging out with Corey, I'll be hanging out with them.
just I look when we because we do like new shows I need to see the workouts to be able to talk about them and who better to watch do the work the age group workouts than two-time champ rudy burger could agree more yeah so I'm gonna hang out with them this weekend and that's super cool um so yeah she's she's the best and she leaves no stone unturned for sure yeah Um, so, and didn't she program the last competitors camp? Um, I don't know if it was her or Brandon or a mix between the two.
Yeah. So just, uh, so follow up stuff. Corey said, it's great when you guys hang out cause we don't pay attention to shit and that gets to the shit that gets said, but we have fun. Yeah. Sounds like Corey.
yeah um and he also echoes lynette is the best cannot express how awesome she is there was a group that came up to mfc with corey and lynette took them all under her wing and made sure they were all fed that they were all eating right that they were all getting taken care of even though they didn't have any coaches with them that weekend um that's just who she is so How did you find that competitor's camp down there? How did you get pulled in? And why is it such a good thing for you?
So I got pulled in from one of my buddies that I work out at Panama City CrossFit with, Tyler Hill. Um, and he's, he's a photographer in the CrossFit space. Um, he's very tapped in, um, to everything that's going on. Um, as you can tell from my Instagram, I'm, I'm pretty bad at social media. And, uh, so I often rely on others to, to kind of like keep me up to speed with what's going on. Um, he knew that I was someone who, um, had high aspirations for CrossFit.
And he kind of saw how, like I was analytical about things and I was pretty deliberate with the process. When he saw this competitor's camp pop up, he brought it up to me. He said like, hey, this is something I think you'd really like. So me, him and his wife went to the first competitor's camp or our first competitor's camp. I think it was the second one that they hosted.
And um met met brandon met the whole team there met met roy the owner of the of crossfit francos and um met a lot of great athletes um like scott tella was there um who else was there uh bill lahey was there alexis johnson was one of the coaches helping out and so this was really the, my first exposure to high level CrossFit athletes and being able to like pick their brain, um, for an extended period of time, um, and really like tap into some of that knowledge.
And, um, yeah, I, I try to take it, um, as much advantage as I could. And so I would say to answer your second question, like how it, like, what did that competitors can't mean to me? Um, it, I mean, I wouldn't be where I am right now without the competitors camp. And I would say mostly like without Brandon Luckett. I'm someone who does better if I have people to the left and the right of me pushing me. And I knew that. with the upcoming quarterfinals.
So this was in quarterfinals in 2023 last year. I asked for that reason, I asked Brandon if I could do the quarterfinals with him. He said, absolutely, you can stay in my house. And this is like, I had met him for, I had known him for like three hours. He's like, yeah, I'd do the quarterfinals with me, stay at my house, which was awesome. And so Yeah, I just got to got to know Brandon better and the community around that competitors camp.
And since then, like it's just been a really good family and just group of people with a lot of knowledge in the space that I've been able to tap into and learn from. so the more I'm learning about this group and I've met a lot of them, it's almost like CrossFit for nerds. Like, I think I'd fit right in. Like, like Alexis Johnson is like supercomputer math whiz, right? Brandon is super analytical. The burgers, we've talked about them.
Um, even Scott Tetlow is very, like he is so regimented because he has so little time. His efficiency is like through the roof. Um, Is it a bunch of like-minded people like that? Yeah, absolutely. Then how the hell does Corey fit in? No, I'm just kidding. I don't know who gave him an invite to that camp. Well, that's super cool. And people like Brandon don't come around every day to have just dudes that are that good. How cool is it to see how well he's doing this season?
I thought he was supposed to be retired. I think he's retired like three or four times now. But then he just realizes how much he loves it. I mean, he's more of a competitor than anyone I know. So he just – he loves getting after it. And I think every time he thinks he's at the end of the road and he wants to retire, then he just is reminded like how much he likes competing and then – He's back in it.
And so it's really cool to see him at the top of leaderboard for both the open and the quarterfinals. And these these semifinals workouts are get the workouts. This whole CrossFit season so far have been like pretty basic and gritty. And that's where Brandon thrives. And I don't think it's any different with the semifinals workouts for the most part. And so, I mean, I think he's going to thrive at semifinals as well. Yeah. With this year's semifinals, it's so old school CrossFit.
Like there's no pulling weights on a napkin. There's no, um, weird rock muscle ups. There's, there's no like new movements. It is just good old fashioned triplets, couplets and get after it. Go dark. Yep. Do you think that plays to your favor? I do for the most part. Um, It's I think I do. I think I do best in the workouts that, um, where like you really have to hurt for the most part. Um, like historically I've done good with, uh, just like basic movements, especially like on machines.
Um, maybe being a bigger athlete helps as well. Uh, So yeah, I think that part of my game will be beneficial with like the workouts that we see at semifinals. I will also say that I enjoy like brand new things that come out because I think I, like relative to the field, I adapt pretty well to like brand new things that come out. So like in quarterfinals, I liked it when they did the crossovers for the first time. I liked the fact that there was a rock for the muscle ups.
So yeah, I guess it's kind of, that's kind of a gray answer. I do. And I don't, this is going to be a weird question. Do you think you'd be a better games athlete than a semifinal athlete? Maybe I think, I mean, like, Looking at my background, I played field sports growing up. I don't have any fitness in my background. I wasn't a gymnast. I wasn't an Olympic lifter. So I think those types of things, if people have a background with fitness-related things, they do better. um, in the gym.
And then I would say with my background, I do better when we like start to get outside of the gym. Um, especially like the past few years, like if they have the amount of running that they have at the games, like I, I like to run. Um, so like that, I like to swim. Like if they were to do some, some like stuff like, uh, like paddle boarding or kayaking, I think I would do pretty well at that. Um, so I think so. And I think the underestimated part of the games are it's a long weekend.
It's a longer weekend than any other competition you're going to go to. And you're going to have ups and downs throughout that weekend. And if you've played team sports, that's generally something you've had to endure at some point in your life. Yeah, definitely had my fair shares of ups and downs.
Yeah. And so I just, I think people, I don't know, I've listened to a lot of Rich Froning in the past 24 hours, and, like, he's a big team sports guy, and it seems like that helped him a tremendous amount when he was competing. Yeah. I think Corey just wants to take over the interview, but he said the Taylor Swift shirts he works out in also help him a bunch. Yeah, they give me special powers.
you a swifty absolutely not and not a recent swifty I was old school um yeah sophomore year of high school is when I really got to taylor swift we'd always listen to her during art class and then uh that's when my my love for taylor grew I was part of the t swift appreciation society in high school i No, no big deal. And then when I met my wife, Meg, she like, I think I'm a pretty big Swifty, but she's much more than I am.
She's always at the top of the Spotify charts, like 0.5% of the listeners every year. And so I think that's something that like we connected with. And then, so we just listened to Taylor Swift all the time. Are you a Chiefs fan now?
um I'm a I appreciate greatness so out nothing to do with t swift but I like I like greatness and I i really appreciate people that can repeatedly win at a high level um more so than like an underdog um so for that reason I like the chiefs they might have NFL might have overdid the whole like media with T Swift and Travis so yeah I must be opposite of you because I'm a Chicago Bears fan and I haven't seen greatness in 30 years stay strong I'm hoping this could be the year I've said that in
other years but it is actually looking good for a change Um, so back to you, um, I don't even know where we were. So you're active military. You were part of the army warrior fitness group. Are you still a part of that? What does that mean? It it's become so popular and I mean, I've seen them at, um, I live here in Columbus, Ohio. I've seen them at the Army or the Arnold Fitness Expo come do competitions here. What's it like to travel just doing fitness? It's pretty cool.
So... The team has two components to it. They have in-person athletes. So those are athletes stationed at Fort Knox that fall under recruiting command. And then they have at-large athletes. I'm currently an at-large athlete. With that, you continue to do whatever job you have in the military. Um, but you can go on, uh, on trips that the military will fund that the army will fund, um, to support the warrior fitness team. Um, so I'm not like in an in-person athlete yet.
That'll be my next assignment, um, in August. Um, but yeah, it's, it's a really cool experience to be a part of the warrior fitness team. uh like I said we fall under recruiting command and really like the whole the whole point of it um is to show people that are interested in joining the military that it's a lot more than just suiting up and going on the front lines and shooting. The people in the military are normal people just like me and you. They have hobbies just like me and you.
And there's a lot of opportunities other than that small tunnel that vision that people get when they think this is the only thing in the Army. What is your current occupation? I'm a diver. Nice. And are you in the panhandle? Yeah, right now I'm stationed at NSA Panama City at the Navy dive school here. Okay. So are you Army or Navy? I'm Army. Okay. But stationed at a Navy base.
Yeah. So pretty much every military diver goes through the, it's called NDSTC, Naval Diving and Salvage Training Center. here in Panama City. The only exceptions to that are Navy SEALs who go through their training in San Diego, and then Army Combat Divers that go through a separate school in Key West. But everyone else, so that includes Army Engineer Divers, which is what I do, Navy Divers, Navy EOD Divers, Marine Combatant Divers. uh, air force combat divers and coast guard divers.
They all come through NDSTC. And so it's a really cool melting pot of a bunch of different branches, a bunch of different types of jobs. Um, because at the end of the day, military diving is military diving. Um, so mostly everyone goes through the same basic curriculum to start out and then we'll branch off and do our, um, specific, uh, specialties. Are you still in training or have you actually done it as part of your job already? I've done it. So, so I went through dive school back in 2018.
Um, and then I've, I've been a diver since, um, and right now I'm back here, um, as an instructor. That's really cool. I was a collegiate swimmer, and I always wanted to do some diving and just never was in a location where it made sense. I've taken some classes and done it in a pool, but never in the ocean. You got to go. That's awesome. My cousin, who's like a brother to me, is in the Navy stationed in Pensacola. Okay. So what, an hour from you guys? Yeah, two hours or so, two and a half.
But he ended up getting sick on a dive and had to stop. Oh, really? Like he got the bends, decompression sickness? Yeah, and he ended up working for the Naval Hospital in Pensacola. Okay. So, yeah. So we get into this season. You're coming off last year where, again, I think I told you maybe before we got online that my co-host, Jamie, picked you as a dark horse to come out of the West. And so we were watching you very closely. Yeah. And you were close to getting that shot.
There wasn't a huge point difference away from you qualifying. What have you changed in the offseason to give you that better shot at making the games?
I analyzed my performances throughout the year and kind of saw the things that I – like major weaknesses – And these are things that that I kind of already knew, but just like competing on a big stage like semifinals and then and then seeing where you where you fall compared to some of the big boys out there kind of just like reemphasis reemphasizes the things you need to work on.
um yeah so so I did that I reached out to several people that again I thought do a very good job of being students of the game that was brent fukowski patrick velner and then josh who's one of the coaches at hwpo um I can't remember his last name right now um and and just like show them like my performances and and these these are my strengths and weaknesses what I think I need to work on and then just and brandon luckett um obviously reach out to him uh just kind of get some
insight on um some of the the strategies that they've used to tackle their weaknesses and and see what their recommendations were um and specifically if you look at my performances at semi-finals the snatch event was my worst event and then followed by the uh the event that had overhead squats rowing um pirouettes um handstand push-ups rope climbs um so overhead endurance has always been something that I've struggled with And so I tackled that by taking a break from CrossFit.
I did Olympic lifting pretty much like I didn't touch a Metcon from the end of semifinals until December. I did a few Olympic lifting cycles. I reached out to a local weightlifting coach here, Aaron Paley. Shout out to him. He's awesome. And I, I worked with him, um, and then, so I would do that in the morning and in the afternoon, I would do different like gymnastics progressions on things that I need to work on.
So, like I said, overhead endurance is something that I've struggled with in the past. Um, so anything from like handstand walking to handstand pushups, um, ring muscle ups or something I've struggled in the past. So I did a lot of work with those, um, and try to like break that down and strengthen different aspects of that movement. Um, Something that Brent Fikowski brought up is that my mobility is not the best.
So if you think about it, like if I'm doing a handstand walk, because I'm not completely stacked, my movement is a lot less efficient than someone like Danielle Brandon, who's like perfectly stacked. And so I worked a lot on overhead mobility this off season. Um, and just like mobility all around. Like if you look at my snatch, like my ability to get down into the hole, isn't, isn't as good as a lot of athletes, which means that I have to pull the bar an extra couple inches.
Um, so just like the little things like that. Um, so really try to hammer those weaknesses and then come December. Um, I started incorporating more CrossFit style training and Metcons, um, hop back on to, I followed, um, I followed my hand programming. Um, so followed back on, uh, onto Mayhem programming and started doing that in preparation for the season. And then the other thing was just my lack of experience with CrossFit competitions.
So something that I think Brent, I think all of them, so Brent, Pat and Josh, and Brandon said that I needed to do was gain more experience because the, like part of my performance at semifinals this past year, like I, went down towards the end of the weekend um because I think I was just like like I'm not that nervous of a person typically like I don't get that anxious about things but I think my central nervous system was just so taxed by the end of the weekend because I was just nervous about
everything um which like I'm sure there's a lot of factors that go into it but a lot of that has to do with lack of experience um and so one of the things that they hammered was that I need more experience with CrossFit competitions and competing at a high level with good athletes. Sorry. So this last off season, I did Crash Crucible. I did Waterpalooza. Um, and those were kind of like my two competitions that I did. And I knew like a crack crash crucible.
Um, like I said, I wasn't really doing CrossFit at all. I was pretty much like Olympic lifting. Um, and then I, I tried each of the, the events, um, once before I went to crash crucible, but like I was not in good CrossFit CrossFit shape at all and definitely felt it.
Um, and even at water Palooza, um, Like I was getting back into training, but still like not feeling like I was in the best CrossFit shape, but like, I kind of had to swallow my pride a little bit, um, and know that that was going to be a reality that my performance wouldn't be the best, but I could still get, um, that experience of competing with people. Um, yeah, so that was kind of my approach to the off season. So Jay Birch asks, was it Josh Godness? Probably. Okay. A wad zombie with a joke.
If you want to learn how to dive, watch soccer. All right. You just play soccer. So when you look at the events that have come out already... Does the snatch ladder make you nervous or does the snatch ladder make you excited because you get to show what you've learned in the offseason? Both. I mean, being realistic, that will not be my best event at semifinals. Um, so like, I don't like that. Like, I'd rather have a bunch of home run events.
Um, but to your point, like, I am excited to, to see like really where I'm at and like the hard work that I put into the off season. Um, see, see how much it paid off. Cause like you can hit certain numbers in training. Um, and like. get a good gauge of where you're at, but it's not really until like you put yourself to the test in a real competition until you really see like where you're at and where that hard work has landed you.
Is a ladder like that better for you or would you rather just line up and do a one rep? It's definitely better for me. And I think, I think the fact that It's on the last day is also better for me because I think that everybody's going to be sore and tired. So it, and I think I recover pretty well. So I have that going for me.
And then the fact that it's the last day, I think that levels the playing field a little bit as opposed to if it was day one and everyone was fresh and everyone's going for a one round max snatch probably wouldn't bode as well for me.
yeah I i was at the west coast classic in 21 when that first came out and or when it the second time they did it and it was like event one or two and people were flying like flying on that snatch ladder it's going to be interesting to see this year how it's going to be on day three yeah especially when you're running two and a half miles doing 50 clay and jerks 50 front squats at 225, um, people are going to, the legs are going to be sore.
Yeah. Yeah. And, and even if fresh, it, so many races came out of that event, like people racing over that last bar to, to beat each other out. I love the event as a spectator. It's so fun to watch. Um, yeah. So I'm, I'm anxious for it. Yeah. Yeah. is there, is there any home run workout that you can't wait to get ahold of? Um, I, like I like, I usually do pretty good in running events. So I think the first one will be pretty good for me. Um, I like legless rope climbs and machines.
So the echo bike, uh, legless rope climb box jump over, um, workout will be pretty good for me. Um, I'm excited to see how the rowing handstand walk, like what that event actually consists of. I know a lot of people are speculating that there's going to be some obstacles as part of it.
So, depending on how that looks, I think the ratio of rowing to handstand walk isn't is like pretty good on the rowing side, which helps me out as opposed to if it was just like a handstand walk gymnastics workout. So that could potentially be a good event for me as well. You're going to be outside this year. Does that make it better or worse for you?
I'm never opposed to getting some vitamin D. uh I'd have to look I haven't even looked at the weather in carson right now um I would assume this time this time of year it's not that bad so yeah I i assuming always gets me in trouble yeah Yeah, I don't know. I haven't looked myself. Wad Zombie actually lives there. So if he wants to give us a forecast for now in the next three weeks, that'd be cool. Yeah. So what is a realistic goal for this season? The goal is to make the games.
And I think... I think that that's realistic. My, my goal last year was just to make semi-finals and I, I definitely exceeded my expectations by coming in fifth 15th. Um, so looking at last year's performance, seeing that I was six spots out from qualifying, I, I think it's, I think it's a realistic goal and, uh, yeah, we'll, we'll see how it goes. Corey just checked currently 67 and sunny. So not bad. And, and you got the dry heat. So it's not too humid. And I'm originally from California.
So maybe, maybe like some, somewhere in the back of me and my body is used to being outside of California. Well, he says it's beautiful today. Sunny 75 to 80 degrees should be the same at the end of the month. Last year was cloudy though. Excellent. So is that why you compete in the West? Because you're from California? No, just because I... I really wanted to do the season at Franco's so I can be with guys like Brandon Luckett and people who compete at such a high level.
And like I said, I do better when I train and like compete with people who are better than me. So that's why I feel at Franco's and why I work out there and train there so much. Okay. Yeah. I wish they would just, I don't know. I wish they'd come up with a way to just split the country in half and each side get the same number of invites and you just split them up so it's even. Because it's hard to figure out who's where until I see the leaderboard. And they'll change it.
They'll change it again next year. Yeah, I'm sure they will. Nothing ever stays the same in CrossFit. Yeah. So how long have you been doing this? Like, when did you start CrossFit? I started in 2018 when I was coming through dive school here. I did it for half a year, then tore my meniscus snatching because I didn't have the mobility or the technique to do it. And I was just doing a lot more weight than I had any business doing. That was a pretty bad injury.
It put me out for probably a year and a half to two years where I was still doing some CrossFit-type stuff, but there was a lot I couldn't do. I did the Open in 2018, and then I didn't do a season again until... 21 um did the the opening quarterfinals 21 22 and then last year um was the first time I uh qualified for semis so a few years so you haven't been like full on crossfitting for very long at all really yeah Well, that's awesome.
Um, you've, you've come pretty far, pretty fast and you're surrounded by a good group of people. Um, this has been a lot of fun, Max. Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Yeah. Thank you for coming on. Thank you to everybody in the chat for being here. Um, good luck at semis and, uh, we'll, we'll be watching them rooting, man. Sounds good. Thanks so much.
And, uh, I love, I should say that I love that the podcast is presented by thick boy and, I met him at beach ballers last year and I love his shirts. So shout out to thick boy. He's got some funny shirts and I got one myself, but it's a little inappropriate. So I won't, I won't tell you what it is. Yeah, he has some good, fun shirts. And he sponsors this podcast. He just started. This is our first month with him. And go to thickboy.fit.
You can pick out your own inappropriate T-shirt and get that ordered and sent right to your house. Awesome. Thanks a bunch, Max. And we'll see everybody next time on Clydesdale Media Podcast featuring the athletes of the semifinals. Bye, guys.