S02E50 HOW CAN WE FIX CROSSFIT JUDGING AND STANDARDS?

With the CrossFit Open and Quarterfinals events over, controversy has been roiling over problems with judges and standards. Dave and Sam provide their take on where the issues lie from CrossFit Home office all the way down to affiliates, judges and individual athletes. Are there solutions? How can integrity and accountability be maintained for the ultimate proving grounds of the fittest athletes on Earth?

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S02E50 HOW CAN WE FIX CROSSFIT JUDGING AND STANDARDS?

[00:35:54] Sam Rhee: Welcome back to the HerdFit podcast with host David Syvertsen and me Sam Rhee. And today we're talking about a topic that I know you, Dave had a lot of thoughts about, we've been talking about it a little bit and it's super relevant right now because of all the things that had been going on, especially in the CrossFit space.

So I wanted to ask you, what was it about. Judging and the standards standards that you really wanted to talk about today.

[00:36:19] David Syvertsen: So we're, we're kind of right in the middle of that, the biggest part of the competition season. And when I say the biggest part, the peak of the competing season right now is the CrossFit games, which is in August, but the quarter finals from now, Dawn.

Now it goes to the semifinals. There's several of them around the world. The, the age group is a virtual, but this is where, people will stamp their ticket to the games. And it's just now gets like serious, serious, right? Not that the quarterfinals aren't, but the numbers are dwindled down big time and down to Paisley 1%, I think even less than 1% of the people that started quarterfinals.

So the, the, the biggest thing is now that the sport has always struggled with this. And we're now in year. I mean, we could probably legitimately say we're near number 12 or 13 of the sport, which if you look at the history of sport in general, that's still very juvenile, still very early compared to other pro sports, which is what they're trying to make CrossFit.

There's still a very significant issue within the sport. That's impacting a lot of people and there's people in this gym that have impacted that I'll talk about, but it's standards and enforcing the standards. And I want to draw a parallel to baseball. All right, baseball. There are umpires for every single ball for EV every single pitch that is thrown.

It's a baller strike, and it's one man's opinion, whether or not it's a baller strike and on TV. When you watch a baseball game on TV, there's this virtual box that is put together by computer. And it'll tell the viewer if it's a baller strike. So we know if it was, objectively, scientifically a baller, strike the hump.

The amp has about a quarter of a second to make a decision, watching a ball that is very small, moving at a very high rate of speed to make that decision and they get it right. Sometimes you get it wrong sometimes. All right, now I want to bring this back to CrossFit where there's a lot of different movements, Boone patterns, standards that need to be hit.

I mean, it could take you 10 minutes to read a workout description from CrossFit to say, what are the standards? And I even catch myself. I have to look at it, but I bring this back to, it's really hard to judge in the sport and the numbers are enormous and they're growing. And the CrossFit is very vocal about trying to grow the sport.

And when you have humans that are subject to error, both on the judging side athlete side management side, It's really tough to tie together how to properly police standards among thousands and thousands and thousands of people. And the only fair way to run a worldwide competition is for people to be on the same playing field.

And I don't feel it's that way right now.

[00:38:51] Sam Rhee: I think that there are some differences in the parallels that you're, you're comparing, like for example, in baseball or in tennis, there is a human that is evaluating whether a ball is a strike or a a ball or in tennis, whether it's in or out. Right. But there isn't any real debate about it.

What the actual standard is, what the standard is and in CrossFit, I think and the other thing is, is that we don't have, like both of those actually have computerized. Evaluation. So if in tennis, if the ball goes in and hits, you can actually look at what the computer says same with with baseball, right.

But in CrossFit, we're self enforcing most of these standards. And we're also not evaluating the judges because you can actually evaluate judges in baseball and say, how accurate is their strike evaluations? Yeah. That's

[00:39:41] David Syvertsen: actually a metric now that they're using.

[00:39:42] Sam Rhee: So, the other thing is, is that worse?

Our sport and Sean Woodland always says, this is unlike any other in the sense that we have so many people participating. Right. So how is it that we're going to standardize something. Is so broad and so big. It starts all the way down at the affiliate level. Yep. Garage level videos, literally garage all the way up to the games.

Yes. So how are we going to

[00:40:05] David Syvertsen: fix this? So that that's where I'm really intrigued by this topic, because I remember we, I always tell our coaches here that I always want to know if there's a problem at the gym. And I say that to members to like, let us know, but bring me a solution. What is your solution?

I don't want anyone to ever say, all right, this is wrong. This is wrong. This is wrong. You can say that only if you have a solution in your head, even if it's the one we use, if it's the one we don't use, if we all agree, it's a stupid solution. Whatever I come up with stupid solutions all the time, I've been doing it for years.

I think a big part of just life in general is you need to be a problem solver. And that's why this topic intrigues me, that everyone can complain about standards. We have a guy that's making himself a YouTube sensation, a Hiller, maybe we'll have him on Sunday. That, I mean, he's just trying to be as famous as possible.

But I do think his intentions are right. The sport is flawed and there there's a lot of correctable issues, but I don't want to hear complaints unless you have solutions. So I have a few solutions and the thing I, the way I broke this down is like in any business, including bison, you have to start at the top.

Right? And so I'm going to talk about what CrossFit should be doing. From my perspective, then we'll talk about owners slash coaches. I'm going to kind of group them together. I don't like separating owners and coaches. I'll tell you why later. Now we're going to go down to the athletes and they're going to go down to the judges and we'll spend some time on each one of those people in.

So that we can try to really come up with a decent solution here. So let's talk about CrossFit in general. This starts with, I mean, right now, there is no CEO at roses stepped down already. They're currently interviewing and I think them and the director of the games slash the head judge. Okay. We all know who those guys are at Bergen and bondsmen, right?

They need to put a serious amount of time into two things. They need to probably put more resources, money into finding ways to find judges for the worldwide open and quarterfinals. And I'll talk about that in a sec, but cross it headquarters when Rosa became CEO and what bothers me, he's already stepped down and that's a, that's a subject for another time.

He said that they wanted 500,000 people to sign up for that worldwide. Cross it open. Yeah. What, where did that number come from? I don't know. This is where the outside world comes into cross. It tries to take over and tries to put a business spin on it. And I've always felt that the open will it grow. It grew so organically.

I started in the second ever cross it open, and I want to say there was like a a hundred thousand people worldwide sign up and they were approaching half a million. And then the. Taken away regionals happen. There's been a lot of instability and CrossFit over the mine, over my course of being involved in the games.

A lot of change, a lot of change. Yeah. Every year there's like these huge changes. They took away regionals and all this. And I think their strategy of expanding the cross it open to basically you can do this anywhere in a garage, in a global gym, down the street, you don't need to have a judge that pass the judges course.

You can just do it. That's that was a move that I felt like I remember seeing that right away and kind of cringing and saying, you're kind of losing the CrossFit open. You're just making it the open. So give me your thoughts on that real quick. Before I go into why it bothers me. I mean, I

[00:43:20] Sam Rhee: understand the motivation behind that.

It was one, the. Yep. And to, to, to make it a more inclusive. So everything that they've done with the open has been to try to make it more accessible and more open. And if you have to, have certain standards or certain not standards, but, mandate certain things that just makes it harder.

Right. Especially worldwide, there's some people you watch some of these videos overseas, like internationally, and they're just doing it like out on a blacktop somewhere. And they just like

[00:43:50] David Syvertsen: drag their equipment out there. Right. And so this is the problem that this is where the sports starts. And like, this is like, Sean Woodland says, this is unlike any other sport.

Like the NBA season does not start with a bunch of us playing backyard basketball. Right. Right. And the problem is there's a lot of people out there that the open is their goal. We've had people in this gym that their goal is to make the top 10% so they can make the quarter finals, like that's third year long goal.

It's it's a cool goal. It's awesome. It's attainable, right? A huge part of this is you're trusting in every single person around the world doing it on a black top and a gym and a garage in a CrossFit box. That they're going to be upholding standards. And this is where I don't really have the solution because the numbers are, we're talking again, rough numbers that are approaching a half a million people.

How do you police a half a million people? I saw Jim and Wayne across at Jim and Wayne posting stories from that first workout with the wall walks this year. And you don't have that line. We had to all come back and touch before it, none of them were doing it. So like in my eyes, I'm like, all right, all those scores don't count, but they do count.

All right, let's use your wife as an example, Susan, not that she was making her life about making top 10%, but like, for me as her coach, I was like, she can do it. She made huge gains. And I think, I don't know if everyone understands, she missed that margin by like a few. It wasn't a few percent, so worldwide in her age group, she missed out on the top 10% by a few people which really could have been, two reps in a workout, two rest per workout she gets in.

And do you think that everyone that finished ahead of her in all these workouts filed standards to a T? No, absolutely no shot, no shot. What does cross it, have to do about that. That's going to be more on the affiliate level, what we'll talk about, but that's where I want to say. That's where the problems are starting it starting in the open.

And I think that cross it, it making it so big and so available and so accessible because that's what our world is turned into. We have to accommodate everybody. It's not. And I think the, the way the cross it open grew from like 2011 to 2016, like that's when it was spiking every single year, you had to like, kind of earn the right to compete in the open.

And I do like that. They made it there made scale divisions might remember my first few opens. There was no scale version. It was, you can do it, or you can't see you later. And that they fix that. I think that if you're in a CrossFit gym, yes, you need to make everything accessible to every caliber athlete, every experience, level of an athlete.

But to say that we're going to put all these resources and trying to get people to do it at home in a global gym. I just don't agree with it. Well,

[00:46:28] Sam Rhee: let me take devil's advocate because the first thing is is that there are, there are, there are scale divisions. So everyone who is not super capable yet you don't worry so much about judging scaled.

Not, not that you don't want to hold them to standard, but because it doesn't allow you a path to the. Yeah level. Yeah. So if you are the number one scale person in the world and you cheated your way through it and you didn't hold to standards, ultimately it's an M it doesn't really matter so much to everyone else.

[00:46:58] David Syvertsen: Right. It doesn't have any negative impact on somebody else. That's right. Because there's no next stage. The other

[00:47:02] Sam Rhee: thing is, is that 10% is a pretty broad metric to allow people to go on to the next stage. Right. So, my argument would be, well, if you're that close, you have to make sure that you're well above that 10% line and aim for top 7% or 8% in order to make it.

And just assume that there's going to be a lot of, a gray area in there. The last thing is, is that CrossFit is, they are making a concerted effort to make the program. Simpler to judge. Yes. So they had took out a lot of movements that were hard to hold standards to, and

[00:47:35] David Syvertsen: they're making it more logistically friendly for gyms.

Right. Which is a good move. Right.

[00:47:40] Sam Rhee: So are, I think they're aware that they don't want movements where it's really hard to judge or to keep standards. Right. Right. And for the most part they're doing that. So I think the efforts that they are making from home. Is helping, but you're right at the end of the day,

the thing is, is that we're very decentralized. Every affiliate is extremely independent. There's no quality control, right? No one from home office is coming over and saying, are you guys holding standards? Are you doing this? And nobody wants that. So you're right. Every affiliate is responsible for maintaining the standards of

[00:48:12] David Syvertsen: their gym.

Yeah. And we will we'll touch on them. Like I think I'm probably going to come down the hardest on that. Like the, like, I, I don't want to come across hard on CrossFit HQ, but I think that making this so wide, openly accessible, it sends a message, an underlying message that, Hey, it's not that big a deal.

Just sign up, give us your 20 bucks and we'll be good to go.

[00:48:30] Sam Rhee: The other thing is they are, they do have an online judges course. Right. And

[00:48:34] David Syvertsen: you've taken it. Yes. I've taken it every year. It's a knowing as hell. It's not hard though. And you could cheat it, not gonna say I haven't, like, Hey, what'd you get for this answer.

Okay. But so let's, let's bring this now past the open, because I agree with Sam that making it more friendly for affiliates to properly run, like again, there was a rumor that the shuttle runs we're going to be in 22.1, instead of the box jump overs, that would have been a disaster for a gym. And I remember the years they had, Hey guys, every athlete has to have two 50 pound dumbbells for guys 35.

That was a train wreck for us on some gyms. Couldn't do it, walking lunges. Can't do it with all that, with all the space demands. I love how they're making that easier for affiliates. But I do think that it's, it's got to still be, Hey, you're a CrossFit gym. If you want to do the open, you are a CrossFitter pandemic.

Let's take that year out or right. Because a lot of us, a lot of people around the world were not allowed back in the gym. Let's go back to, I think the new CEO, the challenge of the new. It's going to be blend old school, cross it with new school, right? Like going new school and kind of get in kind of overlooking all the cross journals and everything that kind of organically grew.

This thing is a mistake, but I also think that, it, the old school cross, it was like the wild, wild west. And it kind of just created this atmosphere of, it just got too big. I almost said this about a gym, always. You it's takes one personality to grow a gym from zero to a hundred people, but it's not, it might not be the same person that brings it from 100 to 500.

It's a completely different demand. Right. And we've struggled with that here at bison, where we've had to change our, our approach to things. And I think cross it was not doing that during the boom. They were not able to handle the growth. So we need to is someone at the top of CrossFit to kind of mesh these two worlds together to really keep this on the right track.

Let's go to the quarter final stage. Okay. This is where. All these videos on YouTube and a Hiller, Andrew Hiller. That's his name, right? Yep. Funder wants to go spend you go down a rabbit hole for, for a night or two. There are a lot of people in the quarter final stage, either knowingly cheating or not only cheating in that stage, and either at having an impact on those that are trying to make the semi-final stage.

And let's bring up the most basic one. If anyone did not know this is what happened. And the quarterfinal, there was a workout with wall balls, shuttle runs and rope climbs, and the The shuttle run was 25 feet down, 25 feet back. That represented one rep. All right. So I have to run down to the gym, touch the floor, come back.

That equaled one rep. And it, it was a ladder. I think at the top there was like 16 reps. It was it's a, it was a lot of running and a lot thousands of people around the world read it wrong. They read that every time they've got to a turnaround, that was a RET. So basically they were doing half the runs. So you had, for example, this is what the leaderboard looked like.

Joe Schmo from Missouri, right. Ran had, it was ranked, two thousands in every single workout, except for that one, he ranked first. So you kind of know there's a red flag there that his fitness level was exceeding his fitness level. The score was exceeding his fitness level. It wasn't a real score.

Do you remember that? Yeah. And so now you have thousands of those people doing that or in some way, screwing up the actual workout, not even knowingly cheating, they just read the workout. So now let's say I did the workout and let's say I crushed it and had the best score in the world of a legitimate score.

But now I'm 2000th in the world in that workout because all these guys did it wrong. And that ranking affects my ability to move on to the next level. That is a huge, huge issue that I don't think CrossFit solved.

[00:52:10] Sam Rhee: There's no doubt. I think that CrossFit didn't address that shuttle run problem. Well, or at least transparently, they didn't really talk about it in a way that satisfied a lot of people.

Yeah. What we're talking about now in the quarterfinals is moving from a recreational aspect to it, to the sport or competitive aspect to it. And the first thing I do want to say is, is that in the three years ago, there wasn't a quarter finals for the age group, right? It was just top 200 would get to the age group.

And that was really difficult to do for each age group. And that made the open way. Sport-specific than it is now. Right? So once you get into the CR, so once you get into the finals, which we've already moved past, now you're talking about people who are on potentially a path to the games. Right. So if you get, 10% of these top athletes and now 30 of them, I think in general, we'll go on to the semi-finals in each age group.

Yeah. Now these standards and figuring out how to evaluate these people properly. I don't want to say cheating, but just not holding the standards. Right, right. Because cheating implies, there was some intention intent and the problem is, is that and kudos to morning Chalkup for finding out or sort of, opening up or discovering this because that.

Us to talk about it. Didn't give CrossFit home office a lot of time to sort of address this. Right. And I think they really didn't.

[00:53:42] David Syvertsen: Yeah. That's a problem. Well, and I think what you said earlier, this is the biggest issue. All right. Because I know we can't just spend all this time on CrossFit HQ, what their responsibility is that needs to be more transparent with the athletes about what is the actual scoring process.

What, so just for those that don't know in the quarterfinals for the open division, they gave the CrossFit a week to finalize the leaderboard. What does finalize the leaderboard mean? They have, I don't know how many, a staff of people that will watch videos of people that qualified for the next stage.

And I know people personally that have gotten docked panelists. During that video review to the point where they, they were going to move on to semis. And now they're out, they got kicked out of semifinals because their videos were there. We're not holding the standard in the video. So there are people watching the videos and panelizing to the point where they kick somebody out.

So, but I think there needs to be a lot more transparency in terms of how big is that staff? How many people are watching videos? Is it the entire level one staff? I doubt it. Is it 10 people in an office? Is it Adrian Bosman and his basement, like who is watching them and is there some sort of quality control behind it?

Because again, we're talking about umpires and tennis officials, right? Some of it is very subjective and I want to know how many people are doing it. And what is the pro, what is this video process with the age group? That it was two weeks, right? Like so many people like, oh, is it official yet? I'm like, I don't know.

I don't even know if it's official. I still, to this day, I don't have an email even though in the rule book that says semifinal invites, go out, maybe. On Instagram. It said on May 6th, the leaderboard is finalized. It's May 8th. I have no clarity right now whatsoever. It's just, I think I'm okay. I think I'm good.

Right? So that's where I think if you're going to be a professional sport and you're going to put all these resources into all these seven things, if you say a date in your official rule book, or then you put a different date on social media, that kind of stuff has rubbed me the wrong way. So many times over the years.

Yeah. Transmit transparency. Yeah. I

[00:55:45] Sam Rhee: can defend CrossFit home office about stuff like that. They, if they, if they stay to date, they either have to hold to the date or explain why they're not holding

[00:55:53] David Syvertsen: to that date. And this is why I think there's a trickle down. Right. If I am, I am below cross the headquarters.

Right. I am under them on the totem pole. If I see them kind of saying something, but kind of like, ah, like whatever, like we'll just get to it when we can. That's what kind of made cross it, go off the rails a little bit. There was no accountability. There was no transparency. There's a very poor communication and my opinion, it's not hard to like say, Hey guys, what if things you came out and say, Hey, we thought it was going to be May 5th.

But the video process is a little overwhelming. We need until May 13th, I would respect it so much, but it almost seems like it's like a pride issue to say like, Hey, we don't want

[00:56:30] Sam Rhee: to admit that we're doing something wrong. Yeah. We talked about this and the thing is, is CrossFit. Underclassmen was so opaque and they never told you anything about everything ever.

And there were capricious and arbitrary sometimes. And um,

[00:56:42] David Syvertsen: and that's because it's going to trickle down. Like why, if you're an affiliate owner, why would you help hold standards? If the people above you aren't really holding themselves through a standard. I think

[00:56:51] Sam Rhee: they have made some efforts to. Open up.

And they had a recent press conference where they talked about some of these things. And I think the thing to understand is, is that I think these people in charge are really trying, they're not intentionally trying to mess this up. I

[00:57:07] David Syvertsen: agree with that. The, do you think the job's too big for the resources that they're using?

[00:57:11] Sam Rhee: I don't, we it's an opaque process. We don't, like you said, we don't know how many people are evaluating these, how they're doing it. All we know is, and I've seen older documentaries where they did have people looking at these and there was some sort of system where they would kick up questionable videos up a level, and then finally get to someone of, yeah, buck stops here.

They, they decided whether or not, and how to apply penalties and all that sort of stuff. And that's really complicated stuff. It is. But I will say the amount of resources that they have right now. I don't know. The issue really is, is, are the people in the finals being chosen properly to get to the semis cause that's what they really focus on.

And that's what, that's how they justified the shuttle run thing by is by saying, even if there are slips, even if, if there are some videos that get through that are not good, or there are standards that are not held big picture, it's not changing the people that are going to the semis in any meaningful fashion.

Yeah.

[00:58:13] David Syvertsen: And I agree with that. Do you, I, I agree that you could, you could just sign this entire conversation saying it's not that big a deal, but no, one's really being impacted, but more than chocolate to do a story on someone that missed the semis by one spot. So again, thankfully it's not a guy that's going to make the games.

So, if you, if you're barely making semis or like, Hey, huge accomplishment for, especially the open division, it's not, you're not, you're not going to the games. But the guy did miss it by a couple points. And there's always going to be someone every year that misses at, out by one spot, the Susan Ray of semifinals, right.

Where, what if everyone did follow the standard? Maybe he does make it. Maybe this guy has been working at first entire life and that's like his main goal. Are we, should we really say it's not a big deal?

[00:58:59] Sam Rhee: No, no. I mean, we, we should not expect everyone's going to follow standards. Yeah. I mean, it's just not going to happen.

No, no. Competitive sport. Has everyone following the rules all the time? Yeah.

[00:59:08] David Syvertsen: No. And there's people that gain the system all the time in every sport, the Houston Astros, right. I mean that, that whole story with stealing signs and I get that and I know there's never going to be a utopia.

Everyone, is following rules. Well, how should

[00:59:21] Sam Rhee: they change? Quarter final video submission and that whole evaluation.

[00:59:26] David Syvertsen: Good question. Because I don't want to be, I just told everyone don't bring problems to the table. If you don't have a solution, I have one idea and I don't, and again, it might be a dumb idea, but this is what you used to have to what you used to be able to do.

If you pass the online judges course is you used to be allowed to watch anyone's video. And give it thumbs up or thumbs down. Okay. I think, and this would be a trend. This would be annoying for some is if you want to advance to the next stage, or you want to have your score factor into the next stage, you have to submit a video of every single workout.

That would be an I'm thinking about our quarter finalists. Like imagine having 14 people, try to videotape their zones and measurements, it would be annoying, but I think it's part of the responsibility of the sport. And if you want to advance the sport stage, start fitting your workouts. And what you would do is let's say let's use Debbie Rourke, for example, may quarterfinal second in a row.

Awesome job by her. She completes all five workouts. She complete, she submits a video for all five workouts for the world. Anyone from Zimbabwe to Alaska could watch her workout and give it a thumbs up or thumbs down. And that does not dictate whether or not Deborah works videos are valid, but if there are nine, if there's, let's say more than 20 thumbs down on her video, it puts a red flag on it for cross say, Hey, we might need to watch this one.

And then cross it sends to whatever judge they have. Whether how big that staff is to go watch her video that got all these thumbs downs and say, you know what? They're right. These are all bad reps. We're going to invalidate this video. We're going to major penalize this video. We're going to monitor penalizes video or hope wait, this video is fine.

I don't know why people gave it thumbs down. Like we're going to give it a check mark. She's good to go. And it's, this is called crowdsourcing, right? Where we're really trying to use a lot of people that may be credentialed. Maybe not be credentialed to judge these videos, but I think it helps.

The sheer volume of videos that need to be watched, because again, you can come in 20th place in a workout, and this has happened in every stage, right? I came in 20th place in the cross at total because I'm really strong, but I didn't do well in anything else that video should still get watched. And with the amount of people that will sit home and watch videos, I think that was, that would just immediately start to get the ball rolling in the right direction of, Hey, if you will have shitty reps, if you are cheating, we're going to find out.

And I think it also would push people towards start being more, more responsible at the fact that I video my work. I'm like, I'm more nervous about that than I am the actual workout, that self. And it makes you really kind of stay accountable to a lot of the stuff. What are your thoughts?

[01:02:06] Sam Rhee: I don't like it for a couple of reasons.

I mean, I understand why, and a lot of people, including you have advocated crowdsourcing videos and the issue is this, there is a popularity contest, right? We talked about this, so let's suppose there's an athlete that nobody likes for whatever reason. And he, or she gets a bazillion downvotes all right.

So how about the ones where people do like, and, get a pass? So every year the disliked athlete gets all of their video scrutinized right

[01:02:35] David Syvertsen: on. They're like more of a microscope. Right.

[01:02:37] Sam Rhee: And, and let's face it for a lot of these reps, it's kind of close sometimes and there might be, some people are like, Hey, they're not locking out a full extension on the ring muscle ups when it's pretty close and, The other thing is this, you're the technical issues of having to have, how many videos do, does everyone have

[01:02:56] David Syvertsen: to put up?

I mean, yeah, they do say in the emails, if you're in quarters and you want to go to semis, everything's got to be videotaped. Like you literally have to send the video in with your score. Okay.

[01:03:04] Sam Rhee: So now, and that alone is thousands and thousands of videos. Now you're increasing that number. You're only going to increase the number of videos that CrossFit has to evaluate.

Right? Because now all the videos are going to be up. A ton of downvotes are going to be up. And so, and and they might not be reliable. You might not be able to use the downvotes in a reliable way to say this is good.

[01:03:27] David Syvertsen: Yeah. But I wouldn't even say, Hey, we're going to penalize Danny Spiegel because she had a thousand votes.

I thought you'd like to speak. I always, we talked about her way too much on this podcast. All right. Let's say no Olsen, right? Because I know some guy, I think it's just jealousy. Some guys just hate no Olson. Right. But I love no old. Oh, he's awesome. But. What if there's this a crew of people that don't like him and they just download them every time, this is the thing is his videos should be getting watched, because I think anyone that qualifies for a next stage, all the videos should be watched

[01:03:55] Sam Rhee: well.

Okay. So CrossFit is figuring out how to, I, and they probably have watched every video of the 30 that yes. Did go. Yes.

[01:04:07] David Syvertsen: Yeah. So you're talking about the age group. So all three, all videos from all 30 people advanced the next group, which you're talking about, you're talking about like, not a lot of videos around the world, over 3000 videos, right.

So yes. Did all those videos get watched or maybe most of them or the ones that really showed the true sign of fitness, right? Right. The pistol one, the muscle-up one overhead squat. Right, right. I think, I think anyone that advances to the next stage should have all their videos watched. Yes. And I also think the top 100 scores from every workout should get watched

[01:04:39] Sam Rhee: probably a significant percentage of them are already being

[01:04:42] 2022_0508_0608: watched.

[01:04:42] David Syvertsen: Right. And I, I think that's, I think I would love an objective measurement statement from CrossFit said, Hey, if you do have a top 100 score or top 50, if it's too many, top 50 in any of these workouts, we're watching it. Because it's, it's, it's not as easy to gain that. Right. I know athletes, a lot of athletes that had three tough at these scores that they didn't make it because their biggest weaknesses got exposed right.

In a different workout.

[01:05:07] Sam Rhee: Okay. Fair. I could see that. I mean, I don't, I don't think people could gain that if, if CrossFit home

[01:05:11] David Syvertsen: office. Yeah. You don't know what the top of the scores, so you're just gonna have to submit it. And I just think that's something I would love and objective measure. That's what I mean by, I would love cross it to say, Hey, we have an objective way of doing this.

And this is why I, this is another reason why I do think at some point, CrossFit will get away from being in charge of masters competitions,

[01:05:30] Sam Rhee: because

[01:05:30] David Syvertsen: it's just too complicated, too many. And like, let somebody else take it over across. It should fully support them. Maybe even some, some money, their way Bob Jennings looking at you.

Right. That I do think that at some point, someone else will take on the masters competing and I'll tell you what, dude, there's going to be money there. Not, not necessarily from a prize, but every CrossFitter eventually becomes a masters. That

[01:05:52] Sam Rhee: was such a ding moment for me. I think I agree with you a thousand percent on this.

Outsource it and it's going to be someone who really cares about it a lot, like Bob Jennings and he, and you can do very well and they're gonna make money off of it. And they will handle the video submissions and evaluations. Right. And I I've heard Bob talk about it. He hates it. Oh, it's terrible.

[01:06:13] David Syvertsen: Honest. And honestly, one of the reasons why it's terrible is people are terrible at video in the workouts. Right. I even had one this year that I was like, oh, like, I should have put the camera at this point. And I put a lot of thought into it. I know for a fact there's people that don't put any thought.

They just like, don't even know if they have enough storage on their phone for them, for the videos. Right. And that's, that's the biggest thing. So I, but this is another thing I've observed that when I talked to Ash about this last night, we just got back from a masters on the competition in Shrewsbury.

We had 16 people compete. They did all. It almost seems like competitions are not as full as they used to be in like the younger people division. And I think part of the reason why is in 2008, 2019, they took away regionals. And I do think that someone really smart from here that knows cross it very well.

It's like the F1 race. Mercedes makes no money on it, but they do it it's for the brand. I think the cross at once cross, it started to getting away from like regionals and like making a little bit of sporty and making a little bit more about fitness. I think you can do both. You can make it sport and fitness.

We do it here, I think at a really high level. And I think cross duet, same thing on their own level is you can blend the two together as long as you have responsible decision makers at the top. And. I think the younger crowd, the 21 year olds, the 22 year olds are, there's not as many going into CrossFit now as there were 10 years ago, because you had that dream, like you watch it on ESPN.

You're like, I want to do that someday little did I know I can't do that. I will never be able to do that, but it was a reason why, and I'm telling you what, there's a lot of people that dream about it. When they start, they watch the games. Like, you know what, maybe I can do that. And then it's not out there anymore.

It's not attainable anymore. There's no more regionals. There's less attention put to the sports, not on ESPN anymore. Right?

[01:07:58] Sam Rhee: We've talked about this. They do need a big I don't know if you want to say TV contract, but the other thing is, is that kids don't watch TV anymore. Yeah. So you're going to have to figure out another way of reaching them.

I guess with sports, I mean, sports are one of the few things that people still watch on live

[01:08:13] David Syvertsen: TV. Yeah. I mean the 48 of the top 50 cable broadcast this year, NFL, right. It is sports, our watch. And I do agree with you that it's, it's someone smarter than me. He's got to figure that out. The

[01:08:24] Sam Rhee: other thing is, is I think CrossFit is making a concerted effort to reach to youth.

I mean, look at the people they're highlighting mallow, Bryan, the teams. Yeah. G like these guys are all 18 to you're right about that. And so I think they realize they need to put these superstars up there. How old is Justin? Maderas he's so young. So, so they're looking to unify the sport. And I think they realize that they need that.

And I think you're right. They're going to probably take the masters and make them their own thing, their own thing. And

[01:08:54] David Syvertsen: I think we're okay with that. I mean, I think we are, I mean, I am, like I don't need to be a part of the CrossFit games to feel that I'm pursuing something worthy, right. With competing in the sport.

If anything, I think like things like legends and masters fitness, collective, especially legends, bias towards them. They, there's a huge opportunity there. And I think Bob's a smart business guy. He knows it too, but there's gotta be some support from CrossFit. And I think they might need to kind of just like, let go of this a little bit.

I think it's too big for them.

[01:09:20] Sam Rhee: The other thing is, is that you don't want, I don't know, I don't want to call it the stink of masters, but if you want to separate the brand identity to a certain degree. Right. Right. So if CrossFit represents. And like you said, fitness sport. Yeah. Then that's great.

And you're right. I don't mind under what banner I'm really competing against or, or fitnessing in. Right. If it's a subset or a offshoot or like a sideshow, which is like, kind of what it is, right? Like one of our teams named vintage CrossFit or whatever you want to call it, like masters tour, I, I don't care that that would, that would be helpful

[01:09:53] David Syvertsen: probably.

Yeah. So those are our thoughts on what, what the F CrossFit HQ is responsible for in relation to this problem, the scoring problem. Hope you guys got something out of that, but now I think it's going to become more realistic for people that are actually listening to this, because I don't know if Adrian Bosnians can be listened to us, but the affiliates and owners.

So the owners and the. And the coaches, I don't like separating the two because to me the two are the same, other than the 10%, which is basically the problems, right? Like the problems of agenda the owner's got to take care of. Right. But the culture, the upholding, the standards, I think coaches and owners, they are on the same discussion and yes, as an owner, I am a coach.

I'm an athlete too, right. Where we are the like, as an owner, I do feel like it's, it's one of my jobs. And like, I'm not the most popular guy because of it where you do have to like talk about standards and make annoying statements and make people roll their eyes about things. But that's the way we, and it's all started when we didn't have coaches, just me, Chris and Ash at the start,

that we coach the first classes for pretty much the first year. And I remember, and Ash has always been good about this. She still is. And like, it was funny. She had a reputation early on, but she still kind of does where she will know rep this, newcomer on wall balls. Right. And I don't think we do it too.

Be a jerk, but it's when you start something from scratch, the way bison started from scratch, how you set that tone in that first, first six months, nine months in a year, it carries over for a very long time. And that was where I think we cut off the separation between owner and coach was now we have a staff of 12 coaches and all of them have different ways of enforcing standards.

We're not walking around the gym, no repping people, but like Sam, you recently just had a pushup air, squat workout. And those are the worst days to coach because it's the simplest standard in the world and people don't do it. And we've struggled with this. We're nice guys. We want people to come here and get their escape and have a good time and exercise and be healthy.

Whether they squat the extra two inches, big picture, not a huge deal, but it, it, it does matter. So let's go into, without us turning it to venting about people, not doing stuff right. Let's talk about the responsibility. Let's just stick with us coach. About enforcing standards, how, what to do, what not to do, what are your thoughts?

[01:12:12] Sam Rhee: You're right. We are, we're doing Murph prep right now. And so there are a lot of workouts that I'm seeing with pushups and air squats. And it's not so much the new person, it's the people that have been here for 4, 5, 6 years. And they're not fully extending up on the air squad and they're not fully, getting below parallel on on when they come

[01:12:33] David Syvertsen: down.

And this will be, we're going to talk about the athletes next to same

[01:12:36] Sam Rhee: on with pushups. And the problem is this. I can't put it on the athletes because it's our responsibility as coaches. And so the athletes face. Is my failing. Right. And I'm letting them fail in every class. And I don't know what to do because it's 6:00 AM and I'm watching somebody do these air squats, and I've known this guy for four years.

Right. And he's doing them the same. And now I'm suddenly going to start enforcing standards and be like, Hey, dude, just stand all the way up and all the way down. And maybe I will, maybe at some point I'm just going to lose it and just be like standard Nazi and say, Hey guys, like that doesn't count, stop.

And I say this before class and I'll usually throw the previous class under the bus and I'll say, listen, these guys never follow standards. You guys should follow standards. Yeah. And sometimes that helps sometimes. And a lot of times it makes no difference whatsoever. Right. And I honestly don't know.

[01:13:30] David Syvertsen: How to, how to fix that. Oh, Sam I've said this before. I think one of the truest signs of humility is to say, I don't know a lot of people don't like to say that because it's like their, their pride can't handle it. Like, I don't know, dude, I, this is my career for almost a decade now. Like, I don't know either I do or this, so I do my best for it.

And you've taken a lot of my classes and I talk about standards to this day. Right. I, and I tried different ways, but I also know the coach athlete relationship. It's 50 50. I can give, I can give 100% of my effort to this part of coaching. There's other parts to coaching too. Right. And this is just one component of coaching is talking about standards.

So there's so many things you gotta do in a class. That, especially in a gym like this, where classes are big, we're tied on time can be tight on space. Sometimes we can't put all of our resources, thought effort, energy into that, just a standard, but I will give everything I have to that one component, right?

Like whatever energy and time I put into standards, it's always going to have all my attention for that respect of part of it.

[01:14:30] Sam Rhee: I just had a thought, and this is probably a jerk move, but what I want to do for one, one class is when we have a air squats or something, is you get a number one to 10 next to your name on the whiteboard quality of your

[01:14:43] David Syvertsen: air squat.

Okay. I had an Instagram post about this years ago. If your score was how well you move, not your. Would you move different? I'm going to give a

[01:14:51] Sam Rhee: time and then I'm going to give a one to 10 rating for each athlete. And if you get below like an eight like that, like, I don't care. Like, like it's going to be a jerk,

it's very jerky because yeah. And, and I don't want to do that, but I think for fun, just one day, I'm going to do that. And I just want to see how many people improve their quality movement when, when it's written up on the way.

[01:15:13] David Syvertsen: So that's an outside the box, the idea, right? I'm so I'm sure several coaches have thought about something like that.

Right. But this is what I want to challenge coaches to do. Don't just talk about it the same way all the time, try different ways to tell people. I remember I told, I just recently made an Instagram post about this on our bison, Instagram. I've said this in classes before. And I remember Ryan Ratcliffe sent me a text after it.

He goes, yo, you good? And I was like, if we all went out and ran a mile for time, that was today's wad run a mile for time. You, you were crushing it. You ran 800 meter. All right, the whole, you guys, the whole class ran 800 meters. You ran half a mile. You have had the second half to go. Everyone else stopped.

At three minutes at the 800 meter mark, they stopped. You ran the full mile. It took you six minutes. You're proud. That's a pretty fast mile. Everyone else said they did it in three minutes and you're like, wait a second. You guys didn't even run a mile. What would you think? Even if you don't care about scores, right?

Like I like people that don't care about scores because I think they're, they're here for fitness, right? And it's not ego that comes in, but how would you feel if that was you? You ran a mile. Everyone else ran 800 meters and everyone gives a time as if they ran a mile. It would bother you if you don't do movements to standard because you're tired, that's you, you're that person that stopped halfway through.

And I said this in the class one time and everyone's kind of looking at me, like, I think Dave starting to lose it. That's why I

[01:16:34] Sam Rhee: feel like when I talk about this, I do seem a little

[01:16:36] David Syvertsen: deranged every time. Right. But like the other day we had an air squat workout. One of our Merv prep house. I brought had everyone bring out.

I said, all right, everyone's squat to the ball ball in the warmup. I didn't make people do it in the workout. And does, and that does wake up the thought to some people that's like, all right, that is the bottom of my squat. And guess what? You just proved you can do it. So you can't tell me your knees hurt.

And that's why you don't squat. You just. Right. And this is where I try to, as a coach, you talk about it, give examples, you tell a story, make a little statement on social media. There's different things you should be trying to do to enforce standards. Not because you're the no rep police, right? Some coaches like, I actually think more athletes than coaches do that.

And it's like, I think the athletes should just shut up when it comes to that. If the, if the coach is telling you how to do something correctly, listen, that's it. Keep the mouth shut. Just listen, don't roll the eyes. Let's listen. And I think that's a huge part of coaching. And this is comes more with the experienced coach is you have to find different ways to teach people.

Now, this story that I tell about the mile and a half mile, it might only register to one out of 30 people in the class, but Hey, if it did, it did its job. If the wall ball squatting helped one person in the class understand, Hey, that's where the bottom of my squad. It worked,

[01:17:50] Sam Rhee: I, I, there was a class we had recently I didn't write scaled or RX or anything because it just pissed me off that so many people didn't really keep the standard.

And I didn't want someone to get a really good score that thought they did it to RX. I mean, it didn't, I was just like, I'm not writing anything down for anybody. I know. And I, and, and so that, that's the other thing is, is that for me personally, Th this resonates because, I'm, I'm pretty good at burpees, but the other issue is, is that sometimes when I'm going, I'm doing my burpees, I don't always just touch my chest all the way down.

Right. Yeah. And who's really good at picking up on that as Adam Rams den. So it's like, like he's judging me before and he's like, get that chest down, get that chest down. And I just, we just did a burpee workout. Right. And, I thought I crushed it. Yeah. And then I saw the Instagram story video and I was looking and I was like, I think I'm touching my chest.

Like maybe

[01:18:45] David Syvertsen: I'm closed. And I feel like, but

[01:18:48] Sam Rhee: the thing is saying like, that makes me feel like crap because I was like, all right, you know what? I don't really care how well I do want to work out. I've got to really make sure there's no doubt that I'm touching my chest down there. Because if I say I'm good at burpees and I'm going really fast at burpees and I'm not keeping distance.

Then it totally invalidates everything that

[01:19:08] David Syvertsen: I'm doing. Yeah. And that, and that, that also like that, that statement right there, it gives you some empathy for an athlete. Right. Because I do believe that not all athletes know that they're not moving to standard. I think in most cases they don't know. Like I remember Ryan surfing came up to me after the latest Merv prep workout and he goes, dude, do you think these people know they're not even halfway squatting?

And I was like, honestly, I think some of them don't know because I do think body awareness and coordination and accuracy. Oh yeah. I feel like I am, but it, you don't know. You just don't like, and I think, and like, I'm very in tune with my body and movements and standards. I've been doing this a long time and I there's still times, I don't know, but here's one thing.

Here's another idea for a coach. I'll wrap this up because you brought up the video is videoing helps. Yeah. And I remember back at the old space was probably 2015. I video, we did a pushup workout and I videotaped 50 people doing pushups. And I send it. This is before like Instagram story times, right.

Where I sent them a text message with the video of them doing a pushup. And I would say three quarters of them texted back. I'm like, holy cow. I did not know. That's what I was. And whether that's true or not, I don't know. You're like, that's not for me to decide, but when you show someone that, Hey, here's your video and I'm seeing this just so you're not getting away with it.

I think that was a move as a coach. That's when I started to like, kind of turn the corner as a coach. It's like, I don't need to just point the finger and yell at you every single time you make your decision. Here's your, here's your pushup. And, I'll give Nicole to Carlo a shout out where she is very vocal about the fact that she struggles with pushups, but, she never does.

She never shorts it. She doesn't cheat, she just struggles. And she, and she works her ass off on them. And I give that a lot of respect because I think a lot of people, when they get to the struggle point, they're like, huh, you know what it burns. So I'll just keep going. And I think that that's a video helps a lot.

And whether I'm putting on. And whether it's good for you or bad for you, sometimes you've seen videos of yourself on Instagram or, any your own videos because I see video your own workouts. I'm like, all right, man, look good. Like I'm moving well like that the standards are there and you weren't always like that.

Like, you always used to struggle on wall balls, like squatting, because you're just so focused on throwing and catching. And I get it. Trust me, I get it. The competition yesterday at Shrewsbury, I think half the people were not squatting wall balls. I was able to half at least I would say over half. Yeah.

And do I think they're trying to cheat? No, I don't want to say people are just like malicious or lazy. In some situations they just don't know. And a video truly helps,

[01:21:40] Sam Rhee: This is. The, the competitive aspect of it. I was just thinking of David hip and steel, and he really got crucified for his movement on his videos.

And he withdrew from co competition. And I met him briefly at the, at the games last year. And he's a really an and everything that I know of him, he's truly a sincere, awesome top quality guy. And, the issue is, is that for all of us, when it means so much to us, we start thinking in our heads, that standards are not quite as important as they really should be.

And whether it's the best score on the whiteboard for that day, or if you're competing against someone else, like your friend, or you just feel like, I've always gotten this number of whatever on this workout. And so, why should I have to change things? Right. I, I think as coaches, we're pretty good at.

Teaching newbies how to, to move. I I'm wrestling with the established athlete. Who's been around for a really long time. That is stuff.

[01:22:44] David Syvertsen: And where I think it's really

[01:22:46] Sam Rhee: 50, 50. Right. And it's really about our self-esteem. It's about our ego. It's about, about us and as people. And I really want to try to enforce not enforce, but I would want people to know, listen, if someone new came into the gym and looked at the class, they would say that guy moves great.

Right. And I am thinking of different ways as a coach to try to get people, to take pride in their quality of movement and not necessarily their time or their score

[01:23:17] David Syvertsen: on it. I think one of the greatest compliments I ever heard, we heard it yesterday a couple of times at the competitions, like man, like these athletes in the shim, also, they all move well.

Right. And do often move. Well, honestly, no they don't. But when you hear. Someone from the outside. Like that should be something, not that we walking around saying, I hope these people are impressed by me, but that is now we'll kind of transition this into the athlete. Like Sam said earlier with his evaluation of how quality you're moving is next to your score on the whiteboard and what people look at you and say the competition.

And then what and how this can transform it to how, what your approach is at a gym is if someone new came in and watched you move, would they say you move well? And if the answer is no, it's okay, we'll help you out, but slow it down a notch, take the weights down. So this is where the athlete comes in.

This is one of the old school CrossFit journal articles that I think people should read more than they do, right? Whether you're in coaching or not. I think if you're into CrossFit, you should be reading the old CrossFit journal articles. Quality movement. First consistency, second intensity third. So this is basically the movement progression of everything you do in CrossFit.

All right. Including the chicken wing muscle up. Do understand the mechanics progress your way there. And if you want it to take you a year, but it takes you three years, that's fine. Right? This is your fitness program for life, hopefully. Right? So stop putting a timeline on it and say, I'm really going to start doing this well, that that's how I'm going to start.

Let's keep the muscle up out of it. Let's go air squat. I'm going to air squat really well, because I want to eventually overhead squat, squat, snatch back squat, air squat, really well now do it consistently. So that means do it in workouts. And your first rep looks like your last rep has often as possible, right?

No, one's going to ever going to be perfect. But again, what is your intention? Just wrote that on the weekly programming for the gym on Wednesday's workout is very like, what's your intention. Every time all the time. Every time you come in here, there should be an intention. And most of it should be quality movement base for the sake of your own health.

Not true. Your score. If you have that intention of, I want to air squat perfectly. Okay. In today's workout Thursday, we have air squats and workout. Every single one of them is going to be perfect. Even if I have to slow down a notch, they're going to be perfect. Okay. So you've done that for a couple of years, right?

Pulled out. You can pull it over a timeline on one on that. Now the intensity comes now the loads come. Now, how fast can you go? That's the way to progress and CrossFit. And I think some people that have been doing this for four or 5, 6, 7 years, they might have skipped that whole consistency stage. They learned how to do it.

But then they kind of spent maybe a week or two on the consistency, consistency stage. And now they're doing as many reps as possible to failure with heavy loads.

[01:25:53] Sam Rhee: This is I have issues with OPEX is philosophy, but this is a good part of OPEX. His philosophy is, is, is making sure you're consistent

[01:26:01] David Syvertsen: before you move on to yeah.

And I think that's where, you know, OPEX is very one-on-one coaching and this is where the one-on-one coach helps. And B sometimes you're a little biased towards, well, I would say bias for or against yourself. I think there's some athletes here in our gym. Like they're ready to up it a little bit, but they just don't know.

And a coach can come in and the guy, yo, like I think you can push some more weight here. Right? I'm thinking about a few people in the gym right now that started within the past year. That I don't think they're completely aware that they're there ready to go up a notch with the weights, the intensity, the speed, if that's what their goal is.

I also think there's more people than that, that skip that stage. And they're the ones that we get frustrated with on pushup days on air squat days. And we're talking about like the simple shit, like we're not even talking about the cleans and the overhead squats and squat cleans, right.

Where, oh, that person's doing that. Wait, I'm going to do it now too. And I say this on every spectrum of every athlete at the beginner and the quarter finalists, like there are some people that at the high level, they get all this praise or like all you may top 10% on blah, blah, blah.

They move like shit when they get tired and it's dangerous, but it's also, you should understand it's a bad look for, for the gym that if you're on Instagram, you can't do the simple things correctly while you're moving at a high rate of speed that has the trickle down. And I don't think athletes take enough responsibility that if you do this right, if your moving quality gets so bad, when you get tired or a certain intensity level, The people that are starting, they're looking you, they're watching you.

And they're going to say, Hey, it's fine. If they're doing it, like, that's going to be my end goal.

[01:27:30] Sam Rhee: I know you took a lot of pride yesterday and people coming up to you and saying how well these athletes move, right? Whether it was deserved or not like Elena, did you teach Elena

[01:27:40] David Syvertsen: how to do that? I taught her how to do her toes,

[01:27:44] Sam Rhee: but you're right.

As a coach, I want to take pride in my athletes, no matter what class I'm teaching, I want to be able to look at them and say, these guys are moving well, I'm helping them in whatever small way I can to, to, to get better and to move well. Yeah. And, and that's, that's certainly my goal. And as an athlete, I also want, like you said when I first started, I went, when I started breaking down, I broke down bad, really bad.

And now I can tell when I'm starting to break down bad and I will either stop or I will change it, or I've also gotten better at moving better to

[01:28:17] David Syvertsen: failure. You've also been very coachable though. Like from the, from day one, you really haven't, you've never had like an ego issue. And if you did, I never knew about it right now.

I think that's a big, that's a trait. If you want to use yourself as an example, I would talk about that before. Anything else it's just been coachable. I

[01:28:32] Sam Rhee: would say the thing I do realize is is that like maybe the last 5% of a workout. But w but even when you watch games, athletes, they don't really break down when the, when they fail, their, their form doesn't really go, they just can't do it.

Yeah. And a good place to watch that is actually in regional level. Right. Because you're seeing a range of athletes and you can see some athletes who are, who are really high caliber and they break down and they break down badly. Right. And then some that break down well, and, and that's actually something that an experienced athlete can actually take from that is learn how to break

[01:29:05] David Syvertsen: down.

Well, yeah. Yup. And so the, the last stage now of who I think this falls on are the judges, and this is, this is a big one. I think this was overlooked. And this is the tricky part about judging, judging from everyone I've seen. I don't think I've ever seen a judge be paid. So if anything, the judges are paying to take the stupid course online.

Should I say stupid this course online and. Then they're volunteering. And we just had a lot of people. We, we gave them a shout out on our quarterfinal recap. Absolutely. We had over 20 people pay 10 bucks, spend that 45 minutes taking a pretty frustrating test, but again, not that bad, but then they volunteered hours and hours on a weekend to come judge us.

And so you want to say thank you to them. And I am overly thankful to them. We don't get to do this without judges. Right. And I, I liked yesterday at the competition, the DJ at the end, he said, Hey, w we don't get to do this without the volunteers and the judges it's so true. That said, there's a responsibility.

If you're gonna put that judge shirt on, you have a responsibility. You're not, it doesn't end with the fact that you're doing us a favor. Like there's a real, a real responsibility with the judges. And I wanna use. Susan example again, right. There were people that were judges that did not judge the wall walk to standard in the open.

And because of that, people that were, right on the brink of making that top 10% did not make it because those and that is the judge's fault because I'll tell you what, when you're judging, if you just give one no rep, whether it's real or not just kind of like, Hey, I'm watching,

adam Ramson wrote no rat to me a couple of times in that that pistol workout for my other foot, like literally grazing the ground. I think he might be the one of maybe two or three judges that would actually know Remy for that.

[01:30:47] Sam Rhee: He has the most integrity and balls probably.

[01:30:50] David Syvertsen: Yeah. I like Alan Greenberg when he judged me on the handstand pushup, literally your, your Pinky's not allowed to touch the piece of tape that's on the handstand pushup line.

I think my fingernail was grazing over it and he goes, yo like, no, like got to get the move, that hand, move that hand. I love that. And a judge, I think judges need to know that a real athlete that a real athlete that has some integrity loves that they'll get a no rep because it makes me feel like my score is legitimate.

It really does.

[01:31:18] Sam Rhee: It's hard to judge you for a couple of reasons. One is you move really fast. Too. It's like in baseball, where there's you have a video, you always video all your workouts. Right. So if you, if I know rep you and it was a real rep yeah. I would feel awful. Right. Then even worse is if you know, wrapped and I didn't know, rep you, I feel even shittier because then your video would show it and you'd have to upload it and then you'd have to

[01:31:43] David Syvertsen: take the hit on it.

Yes. Like the penalty. I'll tell you what, there's a kid. His name's Mike from Ireland. He made semi-finals in my age group, 30th place at 30 that's the 30. What was it? 3000 people make the next stage P came in 30th and his overhead squats on the video. He squatted to death. Every time movement look good.

The one thing he didn't do is kind of just bring his hips a little foe. He didn't extend the hips at the top of the squat. A lot of people do that, right? And the judges is counting them, counting them, counting them. And this is the issue. If the judge no rep him once or twice, and that work at the yell, you got to stand up, his score probably would have been, I don't know, 10 seconds slower overall.

Cause he would've fixed it. He would've fixed it. And the amount of time it takes you to extend the hips at the top is a 10th of a second. Right? So his overall time that would, it would have not been that bad, but because CrossFit saw all those reps that were not good, they penalize them by over two minutes.

And because of that, he got he's out. He's on the outside looking in, he almost said it on his Instagram. He's like, I almost quit. Like I just don't want to do this anymore. And because you put so much into it and that, in my opinion, I don't know the judge that that's the judge's fault. That

[01:32:54] Sam Rhee: was the judge's responsibility.

[01:32:55] David Syvertsen: And that, that's what we mean by this. Like the judge, really? Especially if you're trying to judge someone that's trying to qualify for the next stage, you know, rep you avoiding a no rep because like, my buddy, like it's all right now that their video gets watched, their penalty is now greater than it would have been.

If you just know that a couple of reps and that's like, you could say that's the judge's fault

[01:33:16] Sam Rhee: in the open though. Most of the stakes are not as

[01:33:18] David Syvertsen: high. Yeah, no, I know it's not as high. And like as well, you don't always have to bring up like my example with Susan, but I just think, I, I want to tie those two subjects together and that it is the judge's responsibility.

Yeah. And it's, you have to turn off the friend switch or, and I tell athletes all the time that if you ever yelled at judge here, like you will see a side of me. You have not seen, I will come at you so hard that if you yell at a judge, right. It for no rapping, you. I think judges here are still afraid with certain personalities in the gym to know rep them.

And if that is you, I'm not going to come down on you. But don't judge.

[01:33:55] Sam Rhee: It's funny because I think at our gym, we know the people who are the easy judgers and who are the strict judgers and I know athletes, and they will say, oh, I hope I get so-and-so. Instead of

[01:34:04] David Syvertsen: so-and-so why we don't let people pick their judge, or we try not to, some people try to finagle

[01:34:09] Sam Rhee: around.

Right. And, and I feel like we need to. Talk a little bit more about that at our gym.

[01:34:17] David Syvertsen: And so this is where the coach and owners come back into play

[01:34:19] Sam Rhee: and raise that level of responsibility for the judges. And we've been trying to do that, but I think, I think for the next coming year, I think we're going to be able to improve that quality of judging a little bit more,

[01:34:30] David Syvertsen: especially if right.

I think we had what 15 athletes advanced the next stage. Like it will not surprise me. Just thing that general tone in our gym right now that we have 25 next year. It won't, it won't surprise me. That would be awesome if we did that. And if we do that's, that means more judges are going to be needed and like CrossFit, we just criticized cross it for, as it got bigger, the quality went down.

That's going to be on us, me on me, especially too. If this thing's going to get bigger, we have to make sure the quality does not lose out. So that is on my shoulders. And if that's on a judge if you're a judge or you want to judge someday and be a huge part of what we do here again, I'd say that they're probably more important than the athletes.

No offense athletes. That that be prepared for that and make sure that you know what you're getting into. You're not only doing a

[01:35:14] Sam Rhee: favor. The problem also is, is as an athlete, if you're shooting for quarters, you have to move well all year. It can't be like you move kind of, you let yourself go with standards a little bit here and there, and then suddenly clean it up for the open.

Like I was just thinking about myself in my movements and I was like, if I really want to make sure I'm moving well, I have to move well in every workout practice now. Yeah. Because if I don't work to standards every time I'm gonna, I'm gonna not remember how to twit really, really, really properly

[01:35:40] David Syvertsen: when I need to great point.

We should have said that when we were talking about the athletes and the, to piggyback on that, because we're almost, we're going to wrap this up soon. The athlete, yes. Practice it all year. But when a coach talks about standards, 'cause I, that we might be talking to you directly to. So, like if you're in the classroom, man, this is like the eighth time they've said this.

And one of my classes we might be talking to you. So just really tune in, if I do think if, if so just to wrap it up, the, all the, there's so many stages to this problem, that so many levels of this problem, but there's also different levels that have different responsibilities and we hope that we gave you proper solutions on no matter what spectrum you're on in regard to this issue.

We, I do strongly believe, I know I'm glass half full with a lot of things in life. I do think this can be solved. I don't think it's all going to be solved in one year. I do think people are making trends. Things are trending in the right direction. Part of it, I'll be honest with you, is this guy Hiller, I think people are afraid to send in videos now and they'll think twice about locking out their elbows, standing all the way up to extension on squats and pistols, right?

So I think, you start making some people nervous. It might change some things, but just know that if you're listening to this, you have a role in this issue being fixed, especially if you're in the sport. So, anything else then? No, that was awesome. All right. Cool. Thanks guys for listening. We'll see you next week.