begin in five, four, three, two, one. Thursday Night CrossFit Talk with Scott Schweitzer and Jamie Latimer.
What is going on everybody welcome to thursday night crossfit talk the official crossfit update show of thursday nights what's going on i'm here with jamie she's all festive in her redemption fitness holiday sweater snuggled by the fire while her husband works on a broken washer lord the last thing we need right now this thing's torn torn apart you got the snapchat but oh my gosh it's a mess Yeah.
I, in the last, like maybe two years ago, we broke down and got a home warranty because like, I just can't anymore forever. I tried to fix everything just because we were broken, like out of necessity. I did what I could use YouTube and whatever, but we broke down and finally got a home warranty for the like appliances. That's what we should have done. Yeah. That's what Aaron's been doing. YouTube. He's like, I don't know. This thing might be shot. So. We will see.
Yeah. And our girl Holly's in the chat. Always there to help us. Maybe she can help interpret this rule book. We're going to go through the rule book. The nice thing they did this year is everything that's new, they marked as new. So we're just going to go through the highlights and kind of hit the new stuff and tell me where to stop. We'll stop. If we want to discuss more, we will. It's going to be a free-flowing thing because I think with anything, you got to kind of read it, digest it.
kind of figure it out. So, um, we'll just kind of hit the highlights. Um, and it may be talk about it more once we kind of get an understanding for it next, next week. But, um, I, I did look like some of the new stuff. I was like, that's not new. That's not new, but we'll talk about that. Um, but can I just say we have a rule book and still no, and we have the CrossFit games tickets out and still no date or place. for masters. Or teens. At least they know it's like at Pitt.
I mean, they have an idea, right? Like they know they're going to Michigan. Yeah. I just, how can you release ticket information? Like how, like how, what if it's the week after? And like, I can't, you can't make like the two trips. Like people need to know to make plans. Like we have no clue. I agree. I'm going to talk about that. Okay. I do want to talk about that because I do think that the timing of the ticket sales is scary to me.
Yeah. And we'll talk about the why's when we kind of get to that point. But let's go through the yearbook. I'm a yearbook. I just went back 40 years. Who's the captain of the cheerleading team? All right, here we go. Share screen, rule book, not yearbook. Here we go. All right, I'm going to try to expand this up a bit. ACR, what's going on? Maybe. How about I just hit this? There we go. All right, so we're going to go through the rule book. There's the table of contents.
We're not going to stop there. The open, they've already announced when it's going to start. Three weeks, just like always. The drug testing policy, it's still $20. That's good. I know some people thought it might go up to $25. Yeah. regional selection that, okay. So regional selection, uncommon situations, petition for exemption. So they spell out, um, the thing that's new about this is that you've had the ability to petition.
If you wanted to be in a different region than your citizenship was in, uh, there were people that took advantage of that last year. Um, like Roman and, um, and others, but we'll kind of go through this. They spell it out more clearly this year.
Some uncommon situations for selecting an athlete's competition region include military personnel, athletes with dual or multiple citizenships, athletes in the process of applying for new citizenship, adjusted status, athletes holding permanent residency in a different country other than where they hold citizenship. If the athlete resides in a region outside their country in citizenship and believes they may advance to the in-person semifinal stage, they may petition.
These must be resolved by February 1st. There's a list of what you have to approve. And the athlete must apply every year to do this. It's not a one-time deal. So that's actually pretty good. I think last year there was some behind the curtain work of when people got this and when they didn't. Now it's spelled out what are the cases for that. So I think that's a good thing. Then we go down to open registration for teams, blah, blah, blah. It's all the same.
I was hoping that the injury to one of the four could be replaced by the alternate, but they didn't change anything. At any point in time, it should be changed. I thought last year during quarterfinals they could. It wasn't until the games, basically. You can't do it during any portion of a competition. So at each stage, it has to be the four. So if you're doing quarterfinals, it has to be the four that were declared. If you're doing semifinals, it has to be the four that were declared. I see.
And if an injury occurs during any of those weekends, they cannot be substituted. Hmm. There's actually an injury clause that was added this year. There is a different scoring protocol when it comes to video submissions for the Open. Last year, there was good, major penalty, minor penalty. This year, they've added zero score and invalid score. So they can deem something a zero score if the athlete fails to complete the workout as required.
A significant or unacceptable number of reps, performed or no reps. They do not complete the required work or they complete the wrong movements. CrossFit reserves the right to adjust their score to zero. Invalid means that there was malicious intent to manipulate the workout or gain an unfair advantage. That becomes invalid and all your scores are removed from the leaderboard. Okay. So if you get a zero score, you get a zero for that workout, but the rest of your workouts are fine.
If you get an invalid, all of your scores are removed. So those are two... If you get a zero, you're not moving on. Correct. But what I like about it is if you are maliciously trying to alter the workout, all of your scores are removed. So that doesn't mess up the leaderboard for anybody else. Yeah. Yeah. That's good change. Keep going through here. Is there anything... it's still just there. It doesn't say anything about the open panel judging like we used to be able to do. Nothing.
Nope. That's too bad. There was some changes to judging, but that was not one of them. Here it is. Open judging requirements for quarterfinal qualifiers. Any athlete who wishes to qualify for quarterfinals is encouraged to use a registered judge. That is a judge who has passed a 2024 online judges course during the open workouts. Encouraged. Yeah. Not a requirement. Encouraged. So why put it in there? I don't know. Because it's not a rule. Right. This is a rule book. Yeah, you're not like.
taking away someone's score because they didn't or it would have been really spelled out um quarterfinals registration process this is new um it just talks about the dates that you uh that they'll begin um once the open competition is concluded and the leaderboard is finalized crescent will send out invitations to the quarterfinal event
any eligible athlete wishing to participate must accept their invitation and register for the quarterfinal before the close of the first score submission the i think the big change in this is it's 50 bucks to enter but if you qualify for both individual and age group you only have to pay that fifty dollars one time yay um and so i think that's really the change to that that area Yeah, and see quarterfinals judging and validation, nothing changed. The event format for quarterfinals.
There will be two competition windows in which the athlete will need to perform workouts and submit scores. For teams, the first window is a Wednesday to Saturday, and the second window is Saturday until Monday. Okay. Same for the individuals and age groups, and they give the specific dates and times, but the first window is Wednesday, April 17th to Saturday, April 20th, and the second window is April 20th to April 22nd.
The exact number of workouts that will need to be performed within each window will be released once the competition begins. Scoring format, the only thing I saw is they're using your placement as your score. So if you finish 100th in that event, you get 100 for your score. And then if you finish 6th, you get 6 points for that, so your total is 106. Low score wins. That's how it's always been. I thought so too. It is. But they spell that out.
But they do add the invalid and the zero score in this as well. So maybe that's a change. The video review says new. The following number of top athletes and teams overall in each region are required to submit a video of all workouts at the time they submit their score.
60 the top 60 women the top 60 men and top 40 teams um age groups it's the top 250 women girls 250 men and boys and i mean you're not even gonna know that you're for sure top 60. just telling you what they're saying i know i just don't like it they should just say
as usual like i just with this is why it should be a public leaderboard and it should say in here if you think you're going to be in the top 200 or have a good score upload your video and it should be up there and it should be public it shouldn't be um okay we want workout two please get it up which it says later in here you have till you have 24 hours to just send us the video that's that's not okay or you get what He's zero. He's zero score. I just think, do them, put a video in with them.
Like you, everyone needs, should have to do the process. Everyone should be, it's, it's unfair for some people to like, maybe take the risk. And it, and it sounds like some people got through last year without having any videos. Like just, so you shouldn't be able to submit a score without a video. And then if the video isn't of you or of the workout, then you're invalid.
Athletes and teams ranked outside those numbers above may also be requested to submit videos if they qualify to compete at semis. Failure to provide a video will result in a zero. So they give you the numbers that need to and then say, but you may also, if you're outside that number and still qualify, be requested to have your videos. I don't know why, like, like you said, if you're taking 60, why not say 80 people have to submit their videos? Just, yeah.
I mean, right off the top, literally, if you think you're, if you think you have any shot, you should put your, you should be submitting a video. You should be subject to taping off, measuring, videoing, announcing. You should have to, you know, go through the same rigmarole that everyone asked you and submit it that way. Um, leaderboard finalization, they actually give the dates that the leaderboard should be finalized. They did this last year, did not meet those deadlines.
So take this with a grain of salt that it's written on. Um, but it does say the team by April 15th individuals by April 29th age group by May 1st. The next new thing is semifinals. There will be seven semifinal competitions, blah, blah, blah. The programming, the score management, and the invitations for these events will be determined by CrossFit. The top athletes and teams will advance. Each region will host, and it kind of gives some vague dates.
The invitation process, you'll be given an invite. You'll have so much time to accept. Each semifinal will host up to 40 men and 40 women and 30 teams. There is some proof that has to be proof of citizens. You must have proof of citizenship and give that to a CrossFit in order to go to semis. And I think that's really it. Here's more on the invitation process.
It gives the specific dates of when they must accept and the fee to move on to semis for, is it, Is that what age group had to do last year too? No. Age group semis is just another $50. Okay. There also is team invitations and roster declaration. You must... Where was that at? I read something on this. They have to pay $600 and... Before the semifinal competition, any two men and two women from the team's roster of six can compete.
Once you're on site, no athletes will be involved in any way other than those four. And then there's a thing like from semis to the games, you can switch. That's very interesting. Yeah. And I know I read that somewhere. Hopefully we'll come across it soon. Scoring. I think they just added in the zero score and stuff to this. Appeals, they kind of spell out what you can and cannot appeal, who can do the appealing. It's the athlete or the team captain only, which has always been the case.
But here are some that you can appeal and some things that you cannot. They talk about it some more. No media of any kind is permitted during the appeal process. That seems a bit far-fetched. How are you going to win an appeal if you can't use media? Here's the injury policy that I talked about a little bit earlier.
This is, I think, a significant change that might get glanced over is that if you are injured on the floor, you have to be cleared by a CrossFit medical staff and the head judge to return to competition. So it's not up to the athlete. It's going to be up to the head judge and the medical staff from CrossFit whether you can return to competition. Interesting. Is there anything in here about minimum work requirement at semis? I did not see anything about that.
Usually that would be in the workout description. Yeah, exactly. And then it talks about the advancement of the five men and women from North America, East and West in Europe, and three in Oceania, two in Asia and South America, and the top one person in Africa. But they are open to more if once those 12... Andrew Sten says, I don't think they ever allow outside media for an appeal. I'm telling you, I've witnessed athletes with a phone showing now whether they can consider that or not.
It, I've seen it. I feel like that's what they look out. Do you think they're meaning like no media can like video the appeals process so that people like people aren't understanding how it's, I don't know what they're trying to get out there. I think you can't use outside media as a video showing that you did or didn't do something. It's what they always use, isn't it? I don't think so, honestly. Andrew says they show it, but I don't think they can accept it.
In my life as a judge, you could not use outside media as your evidence. Interesting. Yeah. Andrew, yeah, that's the rule. So yeah, teams, North America East, top eight, Europe eight, West seven, Oceania three, South America two, Asia and Africa one. I know that's how one of the appeals got dealt with. Not this year at Legends, but Yeah, true. I guess it's going to be a totally different rulebook. Yeah, they talk about cash prizes, but there is no amounts. Don't have a ton of sponsor either.
There's a dates and times for age group semifinals, and they're going to do two windows for that as well. May 8th through May 13th with two two-day windows. Judging and validation. That you must use a registered judge at semifinals. Must. It's not encouraged here. It's a must. For each test, in addition, all tests must be recorded on video. That's good.
um scoring format again just adding the uh invalid and zeros to this uh video review top 60 men and women have to submit uh all their videos and i'm sure it says down below that more may be needed if Well, this is where it says athletes have 24 hours to provide any requested video. So to me, that makes it sound like you don't have to submit videos until they tell you, oh, it's workout two we want to review. Top athletes overall in each age division must submit video of all tests.
Top 60 men, top 60 women. At the conclusion of the competition, CrossFit will select that one test to review, blah, blah, blah. And then... And so you have 24 hours to get them all videos. Why wouldn't they already have been in there? I don't know. I'm just telling you. I just don't understand. So up here it's saying you have to on this part. And then down here it's saying you have 24 hours to do it. Yeah, that's what I'm confused about.
So you don't actually have to submit a video when you submit your scores? Yes, you do. Because up here it says you have to. Okay. but you have 24 hours for that video to get to them. I mean, window one closes two days. Like that doesn't even make sense. Well, you do, you do test one and two, right? You submit those videos and they have to be there within 24 hours. Then you do test three, four, and five, and then those have 24 hours to be there. I think is what they mean. Yeah, that makes sense.
Or as I understand, it's just a copy and paste error. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, just don't like, don't allow the submission to go through without a video linked period. And then it's there. Uh, finalization and advancement. They just talk about how many from each division get to go forward. Uh, and that will be determined no later than May 28th. Okay. Then we get to the games and it culminates. Um, and it just adds that masters and teen and adaptive are their own divisions. So we just keep moving on.
Games registration for teams. And this is where I think it was. It talks about that you have to pay 600 bucks, but before the start of the competition, any athletes from the team's competition roster designated during quarterfinals may register on site. Teams will designate the two men, two women that will compete as long as the athletes registering on site at the games are part of the team's competition roster.
the two men and two women who compete may be different than the two men and women who competed at semis. I mean, I guess, isn't that what they were saying? They could have done, like they could have used Catrin two days, two years ago, but they were like, nah, we'll go. So I guess it's, that's been the case. I don't know if it's ever been verified like that before though. Yeah. Um, More registration of age group athletes just talks about it's $300 to go to the games as an age group athlete.
Um, and their backfill process, uh, all of that. Are they going to do have a backfill process? They do, but in the event of backfill violation, uh, well for drug policy, they don't go any further than three qualifying spots. CrossFit will not backfill spots for athletes who do not officially decline their invitation. So if someone doesn't decline and just doesn't show up, they're not going to backfill.
That doesn't make sense because if you... Well, I guess that's... So it's going to be... It's not as... Yeah, it doesn't matter so much. It's not as detrimental when you only had 10. Same, same, same. Games appeals, they just go through the process here again and talk about who can and can't, what you can appeal, what you can't. More stuff on that. So Andrew says if you don't accept the invite, then they won't take the next person on list. Yeah, that doesn't make sense to me.
Is that what they're saying? There is no backfill? There are backfills. But if a person doesn't decline and just doesn't show up, then they're not going to backfill that. That wouldn't happen. This is the problem with this statement. You have two weeks to accept, to pay your money. So at two weeks, they should know we have 28 people who have paid. This is where it comes into play. I'm trying to show, I accept, I pay my money and then I can't come.
So that I, I understand that a little bit, but like the officially decline, I don't feel like they're, they're laying that out. They're very clear in that.
Like, just i could just not officially decline like i could you can say accept or decline in your email but you could not not accept and that's what andrew is saying if you don't accept the invite they won't back though that's what he's saying so if i don't click accept and i don't pay there's an unfilled spot china paid so that's a little different scenario to arriving on site age group athletes will receive an email containing instructions on how to register. Pay $300.
If an athlete declines their invitation to compete at the games, their spot will be backfilled to the next eligible athlete from semis in their respective age division. Should an athlete violate CrossFit's drug policy prior to arriving at the CrossFit Games, CrossFit may award the position to the next eligible athlete from their respective age division, depending on the timing of the failed test.
In the event of a backfill or violation of the drug policy, no more than three athletes outside the qualifying position in any division will be eligible for backfill positions. CrossFit will not backfill spots for athletes who do not officially decline their invitation. If an age group athlete qualifies in both age group division and as an individual or on a team, they may compete in both finals. So if someone doesn't answer the email, they're not backfilling, which seems dumb too.
Yeah. So Carolyn jumped on late and said, I'm just joining now. Did you guys talk about the video review process? We glanced over it. Did you see something there that we didn't see Carolyn? We talked about how many people have to submit all their videos and that CrossFit may request more beyond that number, but that's about all we said about that. And then are going to pick one to review.
Correct. And then I guess maybe she's also talking about the, now there's the invalid and the zero score review process. I think she's concerned that only one of the tests are getting reviewed. I honestly feel like that's nothing new. Yeah, they did spell it out. I think I agree with you. Yeah. Okay. So we're going past appeal. Here's the injury where, again, we talked about that. They talk about the attire that you have to wear their official competition apparel.
I did notice that athletes may only wear the apparel issued to them at registration in the following categories. Competition jerseys, tops, sports bras, bottoms, swimsuits. Okay. So I don't think that's anything new. Tristan, you've missed 32 minutes. You've missed a lot. The whole rule book. So yeah, that's always been the case. Was the one video review for quarterfinals, individual quarterfinals? Is that where we saw that?
Well, if we saw it for sure in semis, and I do believe it's quarters as well. Yeah. So the equipment, Carolyn, is saying that we're not there yet. Are we? No, I don't think you've got that. No, I haven't got to that part yet. Then there's this thing about athlete entourage. Yeah. that's new. Information regarding an athlete or team's entourage will be provided in the athlete information pack sent via email prior to onsite registration.
So they're going to specifically say something about the entourage. Okay. There's a whole adaptive athlete section now. Here's the equipment. Subject to CrossFit's prior approval. Chalk, weight belts, non-tacky gloves, gymnastics wraps, hand tape, neoprene joint sleeves, and common fitness wear. may be allowed during competition. In general, support gear that improves the safety and or comfort but does not confer advantage is allowed.
Should the test call for a pull-up bar, athletes may wrap tape around the pull-up bar, blah, blah, blah, in hand. Or whatnot, both probably. But they may not tape the bar and wear hand protection.
Yeah. um athletes may not use protective gear in a manner that provides additional grip assistance or weight support eg wrapping the grip completely around the pull-up bar during pull-ups common supported tires not allowed includes but is not limited to knee or elbow wraps gymnastics dow grips and tacky non-chalk substances used to enhance grips Gymnastics scripts may only be used during movements where the athlete is hanging from a pull-up bar or gymnastics rings.
Unless otherwise stated, athletes may not receive assistance moving or placing equipment. Athletes who receive outside assistance to manage or place equipment during a workout may face penalty or disqualification. And then if you're leaving the floor, you cannot get water, tape, chalk, gloves, et cetera, from spectators or coaches. Yeah. The games. Yeah. I'm, I'm assuming any live competition. Okay. Yeah. I think Carolyn, that's, I think they're saying you can't wrap it around.
But now they're just, so you can flip it over, but you can't like completely, which I don't think many people actually do. Nobody's going to do that. I think that would be so time consuming to do. But they do spell out like no grips for deadlifts now. Okay. Yeah. So. Uh, inspection of personal attire, uh, live competition, specific attire, uh, athletes must wear footwear, no slippers, socks, or open toed shoes. Uh, only exception may be made for swim tests or other specific tests.
No part of the shoes underside or sole shall be higher than two inches. Uh, shoes cannot be altered from their original manufactured state. Athletes may only bring one pair of shoes onto the competition floor unless otherwise stated. Belts can only be five inches. And the main body of the belt shall be made of non-stretch materials. They go into knee sleeves. They go into wrist wraps. They go into hand protection. None of those breast belts this year. None of the wide belts, you mean?
Is that what you said? The breath belts. Oh. Yeah, those wider, stretchy ones. They go into adhesives and lubricants. Swimwear. Don't you have to wear the swimsuit they give you? So why would that matter? Supportive suits. Electronic devices. No music players and headphones. Devices such as mobile phones, tablets, or other portable media on the competition floor. Watches and heart rate monitors are permitted. And I think that's pretty much the end of the new stuff. Thoughts?
It's all the same to me. I don't think there's really any changes. We've got a coach in the chat. We've got a games athlete in the chat. We've got a future games athlete on the show. Anything that you think they missed other than the dates for the adaptive age group or Masters and Teens CrossFit Games? Yeah. No. Yeah, the small changes on the penalties, I think that's good. I don't know.
I wish they'd be more clear about the video submission in the review process, but they're never going to be open about that. Whoever they want to get through is going to get through, so it is what it is. So I'm a big proponent of the open it up to the public, the people who took the judges course. Because when you do that, back in the day, you had a special portal that you could go and they would just assign you videos. You didn't get to pick.
They would just assign you videos and you would review them. And usually like it was far away from wherever you live. So you weren't impacting like a semifinal in your area. Interesting. Right. And I think that things like that would help mitigate our issues with the hillers and the bat signals and all of that if you had people looking at all this stuff ahead of time. And CrossFit taking that data and then making decisions, because those people aren't making final decisions.
They're just giving you data on what they see. Then you as CrossFit can make decisions after that. Yeah, if 10 videos get 60% flagged, go review it. Something's up. Make the decision. I don't know if you saw your coach. I did. Unless he's talking about me. Because, man, I'm really on the upswing. 65 plus, here we come. maybe there'll be a 70 by then you're in for sure. Yeah. All right. So that's the rule book. Uh, anything you liked that they added?
No, I mean, I guess a little more clarification on like making it clear if they're going to hold to it, like the grip situation, like don't,
grip don't use the grips on the deadlift um things like that that's probably good additions what i do like is people that could qualify for both individual and age group don't have to double pay i love that and it's on the same weekend you're not gonna have to do the same workouts two weekends in a row you get to do them all at once um i think that is a great change um But there's still so much ambiguity in this rulebook. We don't know title sponsor. We don't know the prize purse for the games.
We don't know the prize purse for age groups. We don't know that for semis. We don't know anything at this point. The only thing we know is that if you win an open event, you can win some money. $2,024. So... So, yeah, I think that, that there's still more to come and, and I just, I wish the movement standard thing would come with a rule book. I agree. Yeah. There are basic movements that could be described that are universal for the season.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so Andrew says, probably don't have a deal done with the main sponsor yet. So hard to put the money, put out the prize money. Caroline echoes and prize money for top in the open, but nothing in semis. So that's concerning quite honestly. Yeah. If you still don't have, Man, I don't know. They've got to have it narrowed down. Maybe they're just trying to work out the final numbers from that company, but holy smokes. Yeah, I know they have ideas of what's happening.
I just don't think they have the pen to the paper to make it official. And this is where I'll give them some benefit of the doubt. That's tough. You have a demanding public that's asking for all this stuff, but you don't know all the stuff yet because you don't have official signed contracts. And they're trying their best to make money, right, at this thing and to let the game stand on their own. So you're trying to negotiate the best deal you can, to have the best product at the end.
But I know like talking to Joe and Bob, like that finding that location, they may have it, but the deal was not signed when I talked to them. The location for the games. Correct. Okay. They were still negotiating that deal.
so if that's happening with the age groups where what other aspects is that happening with yeah all right do we know yet if the individuals got paid from the games yet they did that's good Um, I heard Matt Torres say on the Savan podcast that the athletes just got paid like a couple of days before he was on. Oh, that's good. So there is that. All right. So do you want to go on to Don fall on coffee pods and wads and the notes that I took from what I learned from Don today?
I think the funniest thing he said and probably the most accurate was, there have been moments where I said, what the F have I gotten into? But he has no regrets. Because it is a different animal than anything he's ever done before. Yeah, yeah. I did see that, Andrew, as well. I have that in my notes that the chief marketing officer is no longer there. I did see that. So I'm just going to run through my notes. If you have questions, this is what I've learned.
Looking for something new to bring into our community when they're hiring people from the outside. Yes, things have been not taking away any of the past of what CrossFit has done, but they need to hear some fresh ideas and fresh thoughts. They wound down the DEI council. It no longer exists. They didn't know about the video from Jay DeCoon's saying CrossFit was dangerous until the public did. Dawn admitted that they did a poor job communicating Jace higher.
Yeah. And then they put out that survey right after that, that talked about franchising and that he also took the, Dawn took the blame on the survey that talked about franchising and said that that was, that was a poor way of doing things. And they were trying to do a blind study of, but he knew that the community was so small that it would come out before the end of the survey and that they would admit that it was them once it came out.
Um, that Jada Coons has made it 30 days in a very hostile environment says a lot about him. That was said by Peter. Um, and that it shows how, how tough the guy is that he's been able to withstand the storm and shows a lot about who that person is that I have that Josh had left the company, the chief marketing officer. They talk about media, uh, Now there's a lot of voices that are out there that can be better for the community.
But even though there are strong voices in the community, CrossFit has a responsibility to be better communicators. Don did say that. There should be a level of accountability from our community. He thinks that some people take He liked the fact that they're being held accountable by the media in the space, but he believes that at some points people take that to a toxic level. Just echoing what he said. He said, be critical and still come with it. Come at it with good tone and some inclusivity.
Peter then followed up with the one communication that is consistent coming out of CrossFit is Dave's week in review. And he asked if Don was okay with that. Don said he trusts Dave to give a good message and to be transparent and honest. And so he's good with it, even though he doesn't listen to it every week. They talked about Greg's non-compete. And Dawn said, we have to do what's best for the community and not worry about that non-compete. Well, yeah, I agree with that.
I mean, if you're doing things right, it shouldn't be an issue. Right. And someone asked a question about does Berkshire, the investment company, make money during this process? He said, no, the way it works is they will not make a cent until they sell CrossFit. Right. But they're investing so that the team they put together can grow the community and grow the business so that they can sell it and make a profit. So there's that.
He also talked about, they talked about the 30 million CrossFitters by 2030. And that we're really good at communicating inside our walls of our community and getting people fired up about it. But when we go outside the walls, we're not so good communicating the message. And we need to do better with the people not following us on social already. Like we've got to find a way to reach those people.
And he said, part of it is preaching to the base that we already have because a passionate base will spread the word of mouth out to those people who aren't there. our walls but they also need to take some other approaches to get out there themselves um they need to do better with seo which is search engine optimization um and he said that they need to win more during when people are searching for broad fitness which makes complete sense to me.
As someone who has just dived into search engine optimization and trying to figure that out in what we do, it is a very complicated process. And so I do get what they're trying to do, but it's not going to be an overnight thing. It's something that has to build over time so that you start climbing up those search engine vehicles. I still don't... I'll be very curious to see the route they take with media coverage of masters and teens.
Cause I feel like that is the audience that is going to grow and bring more people in. Like that's the kind of, like when you see a 60 year old doing a pull up, it's like, it makes you think, is that something I like, can aspire to, or if you're 50, like, you know, like something you can get into rather than seeing Tia do a beltless 400 pound deadlift. Like that's completely different. Although, I mean, she's a good one to look at because she just had the baby.
That's like, maybe not the best example, but I at 53, 54 years old, jump up on a pull-up bar and did a pull-up. You'd be shocked. Yeah. Right. Like, so I, I totally get what you're saying. I, I just, I can't believe they, their social media didn't share legends like in any aspect. Yeah. I think that's a whole nother story that thank you. Aaliyah Miller. Yeah. Like she said, everything that I felt, you know, and I, and I, I asked, well, it was Justin Berg at the time in Orlando.
Why can't we be better partners and you share some of our content? Yes. Yeah. And we didn't, we didn't get a real great answer then. I mean, I get it. Putting on the media stuff can be expensive, but if you have somebody at these events, and even at Legends, they said they couldn't afford, but share the heck out of the clips that are out there of the Masters doing amazing things. That's going to get into the general public. It was a sanctioned event. I don't know. I don't understand it.
So then to finish up the Don thing, there's a couple more. He talked about the media and that they need to test the content they put out to see what is working. We have a slant toward what has been done in the past. I agree. But you have all these third-party people putting out stuff all the time. You don't need to test it yourself. Go look at what's working. They need someone like us that are so geeky about the sport that we're on socials all the time and are sharing the cool stuff.
It's not a complicated thought process here. Um, this was an interesting question that I thought Peter gave, got to give him huge kudos for this. If the games don't stand on their own two feet, do you press forward? And Don's answer to that was what is the impact on the affiliates and what overall impact does that have? And that he thinks, I think at the end of the day, he believes that the sport of CrossFit does help affiliates. Yes. Yes. I would agree.
But I think, and this is my last thing I'll say about this whole thing is, well, one more thing. They did talk about litigation because that's come up a lot. And he said they spend millions of dollars every year on litigation. Now, I think what Peter was asking was about protecting the brand from these licensures and stuff like that coming through government agencies. And he was more about people using the CrossFit name illegally. And then sending cease and desist.
That's not what we care about you spending money on. So I don't think we got to the heart of that thing. But the last thing I will say is I think the thing that Don is most frustrated over is the lack of data that was kept on what has been happening in CrossFit for the past 15 years. There's been all this tremendous growth, and at the beginning of that growth, everything was great. You didn't need to track everything because new affiliates were coming in left and right every day.
You're at the beginning of a growth curve. Now we're at that point where that growth curve is leveling off, maybe even dipping, and you need to know why. And there's no data to tell you why because it was never kept. They can't tell you how many CrossFitters there are because they don't know how many are in the affiliates. They just know there's X number of affiliates. And so everything's a guesses like, well, we guess there's about 120 in each one or 110 or whatever number he threw out.
And so I think, I think that what's happened is Eric Rosa came in and was like, data, data, data, got a data, data, got to collect it here. Got to collect it there. and he may have swung the pendulum like way too far to the data side. Now Dawn just wants some data to make decisions and there just is none. Yeah. And that I got that as an overarching aspect of the conversation that he is frustrated that they, they're struggling to make decisions because they don't have enough data to make them.
Yeah, I don't know. That's, that's a tough one. I would think through the, the raising the affiliate dues in a way, like makes me question whether I don't feel like you're going to get new affiliates or, or some affiliates stay on in some of the smaller, more rural communities, because that's just not like, that's not their environment. And you're in, then you're like stripping away the opportunity for growth in those areas. And I don't, I don't know the solution to that.
Cause you can't have this like sliding scale. You can't ask number of members. You can't, you can't figure out rent. it would be a disaster and it would promote line. But I don't know that raising dues, I don't know, maybe it'll work for them. Like it sounds like requiring, you know, like they've done enough research that they're probably going to make money out of this. And maybe they sell within a year or two and they've gotten all their L2s and a bunch more certs.
And even if you lose 20%, you make you more in the long run. Um, To me, long-term doesn't seem like it's going to actually be the best for the CrossFit community. I just think it's going to help their bottom line for two years and then they get out. I think affiliate fees should have been raised earlier where it could have been a more incremental step up.
When eggs go up, they go up 10 cents and then another 10 cents and then another 10 cents you don't really notice it on the first 10 cents right and then then you look around like holy i'm paying four dollars a dozen for eggs but you still pay it because you're a crossfitter and you got to eat eggs in the morning yeah i don't know if i agree with that like those are again that's going to be like some of the people that are going to
go get chickens and start to like have their own homestead farm because they figured out a way to make it work and I feel like that's what they're going to do push people away and just to end up having there are some communities like my gym's probably never going to grow over like 80 people and I would probably never be able to support a higher affiliate dues and that's just my community. I know there's other people that are in that situation.
And then you're going to have the gyms that are served 200 plus members and can afford whatever dues or whatever fees you make it. I don't think you, I don't think the best thing for CrossFit is to limit those. I know this has been talked about a lot. Like people say like the passion project and the mom and pop gyms don't really have the Yeah. Right. At least you want chickens. Like, doesn't that make more sense for you to adapt and figure out a way to do it yourself?
Does CrossFit want that to figure out how to do it on my own and keep my 20, 30 members and just, I mean, we might still be doing CrossFit, but it doesn't help CrossFit. It doesn't help them monetarily, but if you're doing it right, Still probably helping them. I guess. I think that's what's going to happen in a lot of small communities. I just, I think it's, it's naive to think that you could never raise a fee. It's one of the cheapest things to run a business.
And I know that the gym owners are not rich and that they're working long hours and that they do ridiculous things for their clients. And, but at the end of the day, CrossFit is a business. Yeah. But to your point, the reason like things were so booming is because of commercial real estate. Like that's why CrossFit grew and, I mean, if he's not looking at it, as the business, they're not looking at it in that aspect. I don't know.
Like, I feel like you have to realize what's happening in the communities. Like, rents are going up. And then you want to also raise, like, everything's going up. And I get, like, you think the dudes should too. But we can only, like, pass all of this on to our members for so long before we don't have hundreds of members. Can I ask it this way to you? All these things that are going up in price, are they not going up for CrossFit too? No, they got rid of their... Do they even have an HQ?
They've gotten rid of so many. Okay. They have to secure a facility for the games. That probably gets more expensive now than it was. You have to secure X, Y, and Z to run this thing for the games. For affiliates, you have to have platforms, servers. All those are going up in price. So it's not just the gyms that are seeing the increase in costs. CrossFit is seeing it as well. And they haven't raised the affiliate fees in 10 years.
Oh, I, I think the grandpa, like I've said, like two brain, the first thing they tell you to do is get everyone on the same fee. Like you can't keep these grandfathered people in. So if that's how we push the businesses, I think that should have been their first step because most of those affiliates are like Diablo who can afford a $4,500 fee. They don't need to be at $500. And what about all these, like. red shirts that have gyms that don't even pay a fee. Is that still the case?
I have no idea if they're getting grant if they're even going to be part of this 4500 or or if they're still going to be a zero, who knows? But like, why didn't we just start with getting everyone up to? Why don't we start like, why don't we go in increments, the 500s come up to 2000. And then next year, they go to 3000. And then we talked about going to 3250.
and require the l2 because that's going to be that alone was going to be a huge influx of cash just off certs like you didn't i there were so many ways to go about this it makes me think they're going for one big lump influx of cash to sell and be out there were x employees that had gyms with no affiliate fees that's awesome So that's part of the mess that I think exists that nobody sees. I think they're a private company. We don't know what's happening behind those walls.
And I'm betting it is way uglier than we as a community think. And things had to be done to right the ship. I think the reason that ticket sales are happening in January is because they need an influx of cash now. So, yeah, that's all this is. It's like a huge influx of cash. Get those affiliate dues start rolling in. Get the L2 certs rolling in. Get some ticket sales. That's not good.
And if all of this stuff saves CrossFit... then I am all for it because everybody like romanticizes what it was like in CrossFit before the sale. But I've said this before, 2018 when the media team was let go, everybody was crying in their milk because Greg let the media team go. Yeah. He hired a CEO that was a little bit wacky. And that guy got fired eventually. So it wasn't all like... It wasn't all peaches and cream before all this happened.
And if all that was happening then... And then COVID breakout. Greg sells the company. All this stuff happens. And now we have people to blame. But I think it was a mess going into that. Because... It's just like any business that grows from a small business that does really well. And then they try to expand and they fail immediately because they didn't have the infrastructure in place to be able to handle the, all the new customers. Right. CrossFit grew big. Right.
And then, and then it had to like find its way because you can't run like a small business anymore. Right. And so I think like giving employees zero affiliate fees who become ex employees with zero affiliate fees leaves you with a mess that you have to clean up. And I know on the Dawn fall sub subject, I am on pro Dawn. You are on, I don't understand what he's saying. I just, he, he, Talk's a big game and I haven't seen it.
Like you say you want to get this out to 30 million people and you say you're trying to do the SEO and, but like, again, if you were, you would be sharing more content. That's my first, like, I haven't seen them follow through on anything they say they're going to do. How many holes are in the dam, though? Like, I'm just throwing out analogies. I'm trying to get to 100 different analogies by the end of this show. And you've got to put your finger in the ones that are the worst.
And as much as I want them to share my content and think it's easy and think they should do it, I don't know what fire they're putting out today. There's another one. What do you think is the worst? What do you think is the main problem to tackle? I think that their accounting system in the back end had to be atrocious. You have gyms paying seven different fees depending on when they joined, some with none. You have no data to know how many people are out there doing this and that.
I think that they had to clean up the financials and the tracking of the financials probably first and foremost. I mean, I feel like if that is the biggest issue was money, I personally feel like the way to do that would have been incremental and start with the zeros and start with the 500s and work your way up and clean things up. Getting all joked up. I think it would have been too slow. Why? Just rip the band-aid off. You think they're in the deep red? Because I don't think they are.
I think it probably took a year for him to know if they were black or red. I, I doubt it. There's no way a company got sold without decent enough books to see that they were in the red. Cause you wouldn't have, if they were in the, if they were literally losing money every year, every year, what you wouldn't have paid for, you wouldn't even have paid for it. Like it wouldn't even make sense. So it's a money making business and they're just trying to quadruple their numbers.
And that's what they're looking at right now. They could have easily done this in an incremental fashion. I don't agree. I don't. I think that they probably had some books. I don't think those books were accurate. And now they're probably in scramble mode and they're trying to get everything right, right, righted. So they know what they have to work with and can make the right decisions. And none of this was on our agenda for tonight, just so you know. I know. This was not.
I still think litigation is going to be one of the biggest things they need to tackle. And I'm worried with some of these bills that are coming out. I do not disagree with you there. And I'm not sure that's where their priorities lie. I agree. And it's probably what hid a lot because how much money did Greg spend on litigation before they were bought, especially the NSCA case and how much he put into that.
And if I'm an investor going, well, we stopped that case is over and we stopped spending it. Maybe we're, we're okay. And I think that may have hit some behind the scenes. Yeah, and we take a payoff. Yeah, that should have put them in the black for a while. Should have. But you don't know what they did with that either. You don't know if that came back to CrossFit or not.
The way Don talked about it on Coffee Pods and Mods, and I want to make sure I give him credit for that, is that You know, he said that they bought the company and gave them a little bit of money to function. Yeah. He said little bit. Yeah. So the investment company doesn't seem to be putting a lot of, they bought the company and that was their investment. Well, buying the company went to Greg.
so that it and a lot of times an investment company will come in and they'll give operating cash as part of the investment but it sounded like that wasn't a lot right yeah and that was that was in the hands of eric rosa yeah so yeah well we went way off the reservation tonight yeah Our show was supposed to be completely different than a rule book came out. Dawn fall was on coffee pods and wads. And then Jamie had a bent on affiliate fees.
So, so here we are anyway, it was a different show probably than maybe what's going on on other channels. Probably.
so let's wrap this up i'm i'm good we talked about tickets coming out um if you're interested and what is it you have more than like 12 people sign up for the open and you're an affiliate you can get affiliate tickets uh reliant club and rv camping pre-sale are january 16th then thursday january 18th reliant club and rv camping sales are on sales to general public Then Tuesday, January 23rd, Dickies Arena ticket presale reserved for Madison Club members.
And then Thursday, January 25th, Dickies Arena ticket presale for CrossFit affiliates. And Monday, January 29th, tickets on sale to the general public. If a CrossFit affiliate has at least 12 members registered for the 20th, had at least 23 members registered for the 23 open, you're eligible for presale. So there is that. So if you're interested in those, those are coming up shortly. I really wanted to talk about Spin's idea of eliminating online qualifiers. Oh, I was curious about this.
but maybe we'll save that for next week. This is our last show before Christmas, so I want to make sure I wish everybody a Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays this coming week, and I'll be back next Thursday. Are you in town? Yeah, I'm good for Thursday night. We've got a plan. Are you going to figure out how to send us off the rails again? No, I'll keep it under wraps. And if you don't, please check out our champion series. We are interviewing every champion at legends in the RX division.
We've already interviewed Shanna, Shannon Bunce and Amy. Yes. Yes. Amy shop at shop, but Tom Shepard town. I can't, I can't not do the French. There we go. Yes. Uh, there, what fun stories. Um, Amy, what a delight to have on Shanna. She was awesome to accidentally walks into a CrossFit gym and becomes a CrossFit games champion. Unbelievable. And then tomorrow we have Mackenzie Megan, Megan, Megan Markey, Megan Markey tomorrow who won the 35 to 39 year old division.
So technically, we've had 35 to 39, 40 to 44, which is Jamie, and then 45 to 49, and we've had 55 to 59 on the women's side. Next week, we switch to men, and we have a couple of the men on next week. And I just got another person agreeing to come on. So hopefully, we'll have the full thing. Was she drunk? Was who drunk? Was who drunk? Me? Oh, are you asking if I was drunk tonight? I don't know. I actually, I told Jamie when I first got on that I was in grumpy mood.
I almost, I almost grabbed a glass of bourbon to come down and drink while we were doing this because I was just in, in a bad mood. Oh, was Shanna drunk? That's awesome. No, she was not. So a co-worker, the CrossFit gym was three blocks from her place of work and she's a pediatrician. A co-worker told her about the gym. She tried it out, fell in love immediately. Saw all these strong women. She wanted to be that and just went after it. She tells the whole story. It's freaking awesome.
The coolest part is, and I'm probably going to clip it, is she talks about how actually being a pediatrician made her a better CrossFitter. Because I thought, I asked her, did becoming a CrossFitter make you a better doctor? And she said, in her belief system of being a doctor, it made her a better CrossFitter. So I think I'm going to clip that as well. Probably put it out this weekend because it's really cool what she talked about there.
But... And then Amy, the nomad, lived in a van, apparently ate out of dumpsters. She let that slip out. Oh, my gosh. And ended up in Canada, in Vancouver Island, and all of a sudden went from rock climber to awesome CrossFit athlete. Very quickly. Very quickly. Yeah. And she agreed to be followed for next season as one of our athletes. So now we have Hannah Black. We have Jamie Latimer. We have Amy Chabaton. Yeah. And maybe, probably, Mathilde Garnes. Oh, yeah. I knew it.
Yeah. So with that, Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night. We will see you after the holidays and before my birthday. Bye guys.