S06E189 Bison Beast Awards and Discussing CrossFit's Video Scoring Dilemma
The CrossFit Open typically shines a spotlight on elite athletes, but what about the everyday heroes who truly define a CrossFit community? Coaches David Syvertsen @davesy85 and Sam Rhee @bergencosmetic take us behind the scenes of the Bison Beast Awards – their gym's annual recognition of members who embody CrossFit's spirit beyond the leaderboard.
Meet Ella Kinney, the community cornerstone who's always first to volunteer and last to leave, knitting together friendships throughout the gym. Then there's Scott Rosson, who suffered a heart attack during Open workout 25.3 yet asked about his score from the hospital bed hours later – not from competitive obsession but from unwavering commitment to his community. These are the first recipients of the newly renamed Steve Rice Bison Spirit Award, honoring a beloved member recently lost.
The stories continue with Lisa Skawinski, who finally participated in her first Open after doing CrossFit since 2016, crushing workouts at the day's end despite exhaustion from work and family responsibilities. Fourteen-year-old Yaya Gusfa earned Rookie of the Year by showing up at 6AM four days weekly, demonstrating remarkable maturity beyond his years.
Most Improved Athletes Alandra Greenlee and Brendan Mcgrail made incredible competitive leaps while balancing life's demands, while Matt Aquino earned Comeback of the Year by returning from emergent back surgery to achieve his best Open performance in a decade.
The episode concludes with a thoughtful critique of CrossFit's controversial new online judging system, where community verification meets potential manipulation. David and Sam offer practical solutions to preserve competitive integrity while honoring the sport's true heart – the everyday athletes who show up, support each other, and overcome obstacles without fanfare. These are the real heroes worth celebrating.
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S06E189 Bison Beast Awards and Discussing CrossFit's Video Scoring Dilemma
TRANSCRIPT
David SyvertsenHost
00:05
Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit Podcast with Dr Sam Rhee and myself, coach David Syverson. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition and, most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the Herd Fit Podcast. I am Coach David Syerson here with my co-host, dr and Coach Sam Rhee. A little out of sorts here, because we are now in our fifth location of the past few weeks. We're actually in the front little lobby area of Outlast Fitness. We are just a few weeks away from opening and we're putting out some more information in the coming days and we'll probably even get a few episodes out there over the next few weeks about what we're doing here.
00:45
A lot of frequently asked questions, get some of the guys that are going to be coaching at that gym and just get a little bit more background information on what's been going on here the past month. We're looking forward to that, but before we get there, we have two things that we're going to talk about. They're not really tied to each other, but they're two things that I think are really important. One of them is really important to our community here at crossfit bison and the other one is kind of what's something that really impacts the crossfit community at large, especially on the sports side. Um so, sam the bison beast awards, year two of this. Do you remember what we did last year with it and kind of the rationale behind why we want to do this?
Sam RheeCo-host
01:24
no okay.
David SyvertsenHost
01:26
so the reason why we we did the bison beast awards was that when the open comes and then you have quarterfinals and semifinals and even, in this gym's case, the games, it's very much about just performance and really just about the top athletes. It's the only that. That is where the open eventually leads to, and it's a hard thing to manage every now and then. We talk about this all the time, whether it's attention or how much of our resources, which is time, energy, gym space and time given to those athletes to go achieve their goals, and we support them. We always have and we always will. But on the other side of that, there's a much deeper part to the CrossFit Open and what comes from it that we probably get more excited about. To be honest with you, it's the people doing it for the first time. It's the people that have come back from adversity. It's the people that have really put in a lot of work in over the year and improved, and not necessarily the top 1% and all those objective numbers. It's really a lot of subjective feelings that our coaches combine together. Sorry if you hear any background noise.
02:29
We are still in construction mode here at Outlast, but we decided to come up with this award show slash, series of awards to highlight members, athletes in the gym, for things beyond what's your frantime, bro. And here are the four awards we'll talk about who won them this year. I'm sam and I both coach these guys, work out with these guys, so we'll have some kind of good personal stories maybe. But the number one ward is kind of like with a heavy heart. We named this the bison spirit award last year. This year it's called the steve rice bison spirit award, which that's what it'll be named from now on. We just recently lost a member, steve Rice, one of the OGs of Bison. We want to keep his memory alive by A. We're doing a workout in his honor next week, next Monday, but also this award will always be named after him.
03:17
The next award is the Rookie of the Year. These are the people that are taking on the Open for the first time. The next one is the Most Improved in the open for the first time. The next one is the most improved. That's the one that the athletes that have objectively performance wise have improved the most over the past year with all the work that they put in for 11 months. And then the comeback of the year, someone that really hit a lot of adversity and shined in our eyes in terms of how they responded to that adversity, both with their scores but also just the mental approach of coming back from something that's really tough to come back from. We have all of our coaches vote on this, so it's not my decision, it's not Sam's, it's not a few people. We do an actual voting system and whatever the number spits out, that is the winner. Sam, do you like this idea, this macro level idea of highlighting things about the open, beyond what percentile someone is?
Sam RheeCo-host
04:04
Yeah, these are the people that stick out to me and these are the people I remember. Of course, I remember amazing performances and people who go on to semis or farther, but I would say these are the people that I am so proud of as a gym. If I wanted to embody what the spirit of our gym is, these are the people that I would say in large part represent our spirit, our ethos, our mindset, and these are people that I would hold up to anyone else out there and say you know, I am really proud of these people.
David SyvertsenHost
04:43
Yeah, like this is Bison, like these people, and they're all different athletes. We're going to go through who the one? Because the recordings of the actual award show is actually been put on YouTube this morning, so I'll start blasting it out there on social media. So we're not announcing the winners on this show, so we'll talk about them. But I do think that's a great way to put it is that if you were walking down the street and you were trying to talk about, all right, what kind of people go to Bison, you're not going to talk about the games, athletes or the semifinals. You're going to talk about these people right here, because it's not just the physical component, there's a mental, emotional and community component to it that really makes up who we are. So the Steve Rice Bison Spirit Award first one ever Steve Rice Bison Spirit Award first one ever Steve Rice Bison Spirit Award Ella Kinney and Scott Rosson and Ella Kinney I want to start off with her just in that she is.
05:31
I noticed it this year, I've noticed it in the past. She's always here when we have something going on, whether it's judging, supporting, helping out, setting up and cleaning up all the events all year long, and I think, as an owner, you start appreciating these people in time, more and more and more, because time proves everything to me. You can be on fire for a year or two and help out for a weekend here and there, but when you're there year after year, you have to be cognizant and aware of it to really, truly appreciate it. But that's who Ella is to me.
Sam RheeCo-host
06:03
She checks off so many boxes. For me, in terms of what a great person is, first of all, she is constantly trying to improve herself in the gym. I have seen her work on her technique for everything barbell, rig work. Is she going to the games? No, none of us are, but she is relentlessly trying to make sure she is getting better with every movement. Her attitude is so positive. She is so upbeat. I have never seen her really bring anyone down or look down. She is the person who is really a bright, shining star in terms of bringing everyone else up. And the last thing I would say about her is she has connected with so many people. So, for someone who has become part of the fabric, she's not just in isolation. Everybody who is in contact with her gravitates towards her. She has a close group of friends. She also has a lot of people that she knows as acquaintances and all, and she knits them all together, and so she is literally the perfect glue person that every if you ever have a superstar team, you need that glue guy.
David SyvertsenHost
07:13
she is that glue guy yeah, and she is the kind of person every long-standing successful affiliate has. They always have an alakini they're they're because they're so important. They're not on the staff, but in some ways they're just as they're so important. They're not on the staff, but in some ways they're just as important as some of the people that are on the staff. So, really happy. She actually came in second place last year by I think it was one or two votes, so I'm really happy. I'm not supposed to cheer for anyone in these awards, but I was really happy to see her name come out on top On the male side, scott Rosson.
07:46
The On the male side, scott Ross. And the story behind him is that he had a heart attack during 25.3. Don't take that lightly at all. I even have a hard time still talking about it.
07:51
It was scary for so many reasons for him, his family and, without diving too deep into his personal side of things, I'm just glad that he made it out, smiling, happy, and he texted me or his wife texted me five hours later asking what his score was so that he could submit it to the website, so that Ashley didn't come down on him for not submitting scores for our intramural open going to win the award this year, because there's a blend of seriousness to this, but also how quickly he has bounced back mentally and physically.
08:31
He's already been back to the gym to say hi, he's going to come back again next week. He's on vacation right now. I talk to him back and forth a lot, but every time I talk to him he also embodies what we do and it's not just like wow, he's so tough. He had a heart attack and he wanted to know what his score was. I mean, this is a guy that barely knows me and two years ago he gave me this pretty expensive child, a toy for Brock that Brock actually played with for a while and all he did he just knew me at the gym and that to me is like we see that at Bison all to me.
Sam RheeCo-host
09:01
He has a British reserve that you wouldn't know that he is some sort of fire-breathing CrossFit athlete when you first know him. He's super polite, he has a great demeanor, he speaks obviously in that British accent yeah, sounds so smart, yeah. But he has this internal fortitude that I've seen in classes when, especially on Saturdays and he brings a joy, you can tell he brings joy to the workout and what he does. I have to say this is probably the second, or at least the second, heart attack we've seen, and I would say if you're going to have a heart attack, it's not going to be at home when you're sleeping or resting by yourself.
09:45
It's like I hate to say it, but a gym is a pretty good place to have a cardiac issue because you get recognized right away. There were people here who saw it, identified it right away, got him to the hospital and obviously, as those cardiologists say, time is muscle and they were able to get him treated right away, which makes such a difference. I'm so proud of Scott for his resilience, for how he's acted, not just before the event but how he's acted after the event. I think he's really touched a lot of people's lives at the gym, because when you see someone who acts in those adverse times in a way that I would want to act Absolutely. I'm like if I'm ever in a situation. I would want that example for me and I think he exemplifies that.
David SyvertsenHost
10:40
Yeah, good words there. I completely agree. Definitely, scott has made an impact on this place before and after this situation, and I can't tell you how many people who don't know Scott have been reaching out asking how's he doing, what's his update. And you know you don't want to get too intrusive with the personal details of how he's doing, but it's just, it's good to know how loved and how important he is to the, to the community. So I'm really happy to him and ella, the first ever steve rice bison spirit award rookies of the year.
11:08
Lisa skowinski, on the female side uh, normally comes at night and, if I even have to be more specific, it's usually the last class of the night. Um, and this is where this is a really good example of that. There are still people like this that exist that she's been doing CrossFit off and on since 2016. This is the first time she's done the Open and to me I think that there's. Everyone knows how I feel about the Open Some agree, some disagree, and it's okay on both sides.
11:47
But when she wrote to me that this was her first, because I go through everyone's scores and I look at what they did last year and I'm like, wait, there was no, oh, maybe it's her name change or something. Nope, wasn't the name change? First time she's ever done it. She's always done the workouts but never signed up for the open, and that, to me, is a really cool and unique story and situation. I want people to understand that. That can be you like. There is never too late to start doing the CrossFit Open. And Lisa works her butt off and I think she has changed her body as much as anyone over the past couple of years and that's coming from other coaches as well and it's just been a slow, steady climb and that's the climb you want to take on. You don't get to coach Lisa that much.
Sam RheeCo-host
12:17
I coach her on Saturdays and so this is how I know how good she's gotten, because I've seen her in open gym and putting the work in. But when you're a Saturday coach, you have to pair people up and if you don't know them that well, sometimes the pairings aren't so great. And Lisa is always under the radar because she's not showy, she's not someone who displays and is an extrovert who sort of shows how good she is. And when I first started pairing her up, I didn't really quite know her and then I started being like no, this is a stealth athlete here, like I can't pair her up with some of the easygoing people, and I was like you know what she needs to be with the fire breathers. So the past couple times I've been like sort of pairing her up with some real like hardcore athletes and boy, and so I'm like she's no, I'm like you're no longer under the radar, lisa, we all know who you are, how good you are, and uh, and she's taking that next step.
David SyvertsenHost
13:18
I want to give credit to her and the other people that come late at night. I love, you know, people that come in the morning. It's tough to wake up early and come and get after it right away. But I've done both the people that come late at night after a long day of work and she's got young kids like and her house is being renovated right now. It is so hard to get up for a workout late at night and I give her so much credit because I used to coach at night a lot and she always looked tired and kind of like dragged out and you feel bad for him. But you also say like, hey, you gotta suck it up and get it done. And that's what she does. She embodies that like hey, the suck it up mindset. It doesn't matter what my score is or what my weights are, I'm going to work hard, I'm gonna go home and I promise it freaking works if you can keep yourself in that mindset.
14:02
Yaya Gusfa, keeping this in the family. Last year his brother and sister won Rookies of the Year and again this is voted. This is not a oh, it sounds like a cool story. This is voted on by all of our coaches and Yaya, a 14-year-old who's in eighth grade, is gonna start high school next year, comes at 6 am, four days a week. There is zero chance I would be able to do that when I was that old. And you can tell the Guswood kids. They come in and they got their rubbing their eyes still. You could tell they just woke up wiring their pajamas to the gym. But they get after it. I admire that clan, that family. Now that the dad's coming with them as well, I really do admire them a lot. We're trying to get one of them on in the next few weeks to talk about some out of gym training and stuff. But Yaya Gusva man, you see and train with him. What are your thoughts on someone that age?
Sam RheeCo-host
14:55
Because you still have kids that are somewhat relatively close to that age. Yeah, listen, at 23,. I wouldn't be able to come in at 6 am on a regular basis.
15:01
So for him to do this and I think being the youngest of three cannot be understated. There's one more too. There's one more, is that right? What a challenge it is for Yaya. So obviously his older sister is a state wrestling champion man. He's killing it. And so when you see Yaya, when you see the younger of three, there are a lot of ways that youngest person could go right. You could just totally go in the opposite direction, like don't do what the rest of your family is doing, try to strike out on your own. I see a lot of youngest of threes kind of do that, like they just kind of you know they're rebels.
David SyvertsenHost
15:36
Yeah, right, right.
Sam RheeCo-host
15:37
You know, because they're smaller and they're not as old. But when he comes in he does not seem at all affected by the fact that he has these two older siblings that are killing it. He's doing his thing, he knows how to scale weight. So a lot of the younger kids will also struggle because they'll be like I want to do the same weight that my older brother's doing and they get crushed. And he's figured out what he can do. He crushes it for his skill level, his development age at age 14. And he has some skills that are actually a couple skills way beyond what I've seen. His other two siblings have some rig work, some other stuff. So he is one of those really mature kids who can stay within his boundary, uh, being the youngest of those three. And I I love the kid like he uh is. You know they're all quiet, but you know you watch him carefully and you'll you'll see a wisdom there yeah, yeah, he's.
David SyvertsenHost
16:57
Uh, that, the wrestling background of those three. It kind of makes me want to get brock into wrestling, just because I think it instills a different level of toughness, toughness, grit, coachability, maturity. And normally when a parent contacts me about a 13 year old, 14 year old starting, I usually lean towards the no, and I did. I did lean towards no with Manny and then I remember his mom saying he's different, trust me, I'm like. I know every parent says that I was like, okay, he's different. And now when they brought up Yaya it was. I didn't even think I have to think about it. Um, because of the foundation that the, the two older siblings, have put in front of him. But performance wise, I mean he's, he's a big kid, I mean he's already kind of Manny's size and he's notably younger than him and I'm really looking forward to what he can do and how CrossFit can help him in his personal wrestling career, because these guys are all studs on the mat and I'm really looking forward to just being kind of in in the scope, just kind of being around them for the next four years. It's going to be really fun to see where they go. Um, most improved athletes, you know. So this is, I would say, the one metric that we do use um, some performance, not just performance like ranks and all that. Um, alondra Greenlee won the most improved on the female side, and some people might this is actually, again, it's a vote, so you just use what the number spits out.
18:12
But some people might say, well, she was already a beast last year. She did make quarterfinals last year top 10%. This year she made semifinals, as they made it top 2%. And I will say, last year we had her on to talk about High Rocks. We had her come on and she worked her butt off. She's very, very disciplined into her fitness regimen. She's just doing stuff all day, every day. But to go from around 8,000th in the world to about 1,500th in the world, that's a really tough number to do in one year In her age group, in her age group, in the most competitive master's age group. I can't stress enough how difficult it is to go up that many spots in one year and she did that. She's a really unique athlete. Sam, you just coached her. What are your thoughts on her as an athlete from a coach perspective?
Sam RheeCo-host
19:00
I'll tell you right now. I can just tell you just from today. I was talking to coach Bobby Wallum and he said and we were talking about the workout we did earlier today, the Tuesday's workout the nine strict pull-ups, the 15 burpees over bar and the 21 kettlebell swings, and that was intense. Every athlete that walked out of that gym that day was dying because there were three hang snatches too in each round. So and I saw her, I was right next to her and Bobby was coaching that day and he said that was she brings so much intensity and I will tell you, every workout, regardless of what it is, she brings so much intensity to it it's like you better get out of her way because she's going to run you over because she is so intense as an athlete and that makes for greatness.
19:53
I mean, when you look at elite athletes, I don't think any of them had an easygoing attitude. They have a crazy intenseness about them and she embodies that. I asked her what she's doing this weekend. She said I'm doing an ultramarathon. I said what is that? It's like a little over 26 miles or something, and I was like at once, like by yourself, and then she says oh yeah, and I'm doing High Rocks Atlanta the week after that. This is someone who lives for fitness, lives for competition and brings it every single time you start that clock and that embodies her to a T.
David SyvertsenHost
20:38
And she is a work in progress with some of the skills that we do and she puts time in and she will put herself out there with muscle-ups that we do and she puts time in and she will. She will put herself out there with muscle up so she'll go through the same struggle points that we do, even just the efficiency and quality movement on on the barbell, like she loves to go hard. And this open was perfect for her, especially that first workout. It was this aerobic capacity gritty burpees and gritty wall walks and light barbell cycling and rowing, which she's absolutely elite at. I mean, there was a great open for her. But I think her specialty to me is like exactly what you said she's very mentally tough and she just goes like there are. I don't see, ever see her get mentally defeated in a workout to the point where she actually just like stops or slows down. And that's a kryptonite for a lot of athletes. They get this like negative emotion in their head and it just shuts them down where she's like all right, hey, I'm feeling my muscle ups, though when I get to that kettlebell, I'm going ham. You know, hey, I feel my strict pull-ups. When I get to those burpees, I'm going ham, and I think that's something that a lot of us can learn from, and I think she adds intensity to the room and that's something it better. She's trying to get that 1% better every day, but she adds instant intensity to the room and I think you always need people like that. So congrats, alondra.
21:49
On the male side, a part of the new daddy club is Brendan McRail. Ashley almost spoiled that surprise and she, you know, hopefully she covered up her tracks enough, but Brendan McRail, a 7ammer that kind of bounced around this past year after he had a baby. Brendan is a guy again, another one like a very like acquired taste in that the more time you spend with him and the more time you coach him, you appreciate him more and more. Because the dude is, he's the same every single day. He comes to the gym. You never know what's going on in his life outside the gym because he's you know he can be tired.
22:19
We all were when we, we, when we started fatherhood, but he, um, he just always brings whatever he has that day to coach quote bobby, like hey, if 75 is all you have, bring 75, and that, that kind of, is what brendan. That's what I think about with brendan and he went from about 90 000th in the world to about 30 000 and that's a huge jump in in one year. And he does it the right way. He's coachableable, he asks questions, he breaks himself down, he scales when he needs to, he'll take a step back when something hurts. I mean, he's a guy that I really do have a deep appreciation for.
Sam RheeCo-host
22:51
I always love and hate the tall guys who are good at, who get better at CrossFit Like. He's not a classic CrossFit build. He's not like a five build. He's not like a 5'5", 6'0" Matt Frazier type. He's tall and his movement patterns have gotten so much better. He's improved on every level, regardless of whether it's his barbell, his rig work, his capacity, his cardio, everything he's done he's been so diligent about addressing and he's very earnest. He's not someone who has a huge ego. I don't know his athletic background, but I would hazard he definitely played some sports either in high school or college. He's a college lacrosse player.
David SyvertsenHost
23:33
Yeah.
Sam RheeCo-host
23:33
He looks like a college lacrosse player and so for an athlete who played at a high level to apply himself with that diligence sometimes they don't really take to it so well, they're just used to being elite at everything and the fact that he's been so humble doing it and he loves talking about it, He'll stay after seven, He'll talk to Angelo and Dan Cota and all the rest of them and sort of go through it. He just takes joy in what he does every workout. We just did Grace and he took joy in it. Like he just takes joy in what he does every workout. We just did grace and he took joy in it.
24:05
Never had done it before, Got a really good time for you know anybody, and he was sort of reflective and thinking about it and then and he was like all right, see ya, and he's going to be back the next day and he's going to do awesome, and so that's the kind of person that, uh, again, I emulate. If, If I could sit there and take that kind of joy, put that work in, regardless of how good I was or think I was, that's pretty special.
David SyvertsenHost
24:31
Yeah, last story on Brendan. I mean, those are really true words about him. But what always stands out to me about Brendan, if you ask me to give one story, is when he. This is a day that you coached. I remember taking your class, brendan. If you ask me to give one story, it's when he. This is a day that you coached. I remember taking your class.
24:45
It was a 22 minute EMOM with burpees, toes, bar and 225 deadlifts. And it was one of those EMOMs where like, hey, it's easy to get it done, but you have to. How many out of 22 did you get? And he hurt his back. This is one of his first. I would say month, maybe month or two, and he's a big, strong guy, typical college athlete. Yeah, I'll do 225. I can do it. I'm like I know, but it's different when you're tired. It just is. And he did it and he hurt his back and he was banged up pretty good and I remember being like that we might not see him again because these former college athletes when they get hurt doing something, it's an ego blow, it's oh, my God, I can't do this anymore anymore. F this. This is for weekend warriors or guys trying to relive their glory days F that I'm going to go back and lift and run right On my own. And he never left. I think he took a week off but he was so diligent and he still is to this day on deadlifts, especially to just be careful with the weight, be really intentional with his movement. And that was his first and he just took off from there. And I do think the first time you tweak something because you just don't know what intensity you can put into it, you can't bring your athlete mindset in to cross it right away. You have to kind of like massage that and wait for it to really you know, for you to really find yourself and what you can and cannot do here. And when he bounced back from that injury and just never looked back, and I think that's a big part of who Brendan is as a person, the humility we talk about humility and how important it is to cross it, that to me showed a lot about Brendan. I'm not surprised to see him here at all and to do this months after you had a first baby too. I mean we see myself too, like I talked about this with Owen, it's really hard to like maintain fitness, especially in that first year because you just there's so many things that are unexpected coming and he not only maintained it, he got better. So mad respect to him.
26:24
Come back of the year, this is just one person and last year was Vivian King, when she had her hip surgery, matt Aquino. At this time last year, he had to skip the Open because he needed an emergency back surgery. I've known Matt since we actually had a shore house together back when we were living in Hoboken. That's how far back we go, like 2011, 2012. And Matt has always had back and hip issues and it's been. He's an awesome athlete, like in CrossFit and also outside of CrossFit, like a basketball player. He's just kind of like a freak actually I would put Matt in the freak tier but he's always had that thing that has helped him back a little bit. He had to stop competing for those reasons, which is fine, uh, but he's got 10 of his discs left. I think they're in two different spots in his back and um. Again, I got permission to talk about that um, you know, with the community and on this podcast from matt and matt. At that time last year I was like, all right, emergency back surgery, he's got 10 of this left, he's probably never going to be able to come back.
27:23
Matt was in the gym a month later scaling everything and to this day, matt scales, I would say, four out of five workouts, maybe three out of five, and there are certain things he will not do, and he RX'd all three workouts.
27:37
Remember what we had, guys? We had roaming and deadlifts, cleans off off the ground, snatches off the ground, a lot of burpees, muscle-ups, thrusters, heavy thrusters. He arcs all of them and this was his best performance he's ever had in the open in the past, in the past 10 years. That to me, like I think it's one of the most shocking things of just like it blew me away to see what he was doing and you almost didn't notice it because he scales so many workouts, and I think this is something a lot of our members can learn from. You can scale all year, change things up, not pursue the fun. Yes, you might feel like a loser off to the side, but when you need to, you know, to quote John Hartman save your bullets for when you really need them, and you know a random Wednesday in April is not when you need them. You can still play and still challenge yourself and test yourself and come out on the other end better. That's what Matt Aquino embodies to me when it comes to this award surgery came back from.
Sam RheeCo-host
28:44
That took him probably almost a year, um, and then the back issue and again, this is one of those guys I love like I hate, but I love watching tall guys do crossfit because they're so graceful, like when they move. Well, yeah, they're, it's. It's so cool to watch and he is a freak athlete. I've watched him play basketball. I've watched him, um, you know move and you know he has a great body, he works really well on all his movements, he has a grace to it and he is someone who doesn't talk about these things. Like I didn't know what his rehab regimen was like for any of this stuff until I talked a little bit to him, to Nicole, his wife, and he did so much at home at first and he was so disciplined with it and Nicole was like he's itching to get back into the gym. He can't wait to actually start participating in workouts again and this is an OG guy.
29:36
This is a guy who could have said, screw this, I've been doing this for so long and, like I've gotten multiple injuries over and over again, I don't need this anymore and no one would have blamed Matt for walking away from it and doing something completely different. But you know, I don't know exactly what it is. I'm going to have to ask him one of these days, like what, what it is in his head. But I will say he looks better now than I have seen him like, maybe even before all of these injuries. I would actually hazard to say he looks better now than he did prior to all of that.
30:10
And he it's funny because he is so smart about what his movement patterns are, what he needs to do. When he does cut loose, you better watch out, because that MF can move and he has great capacity. He has great movement patterns. He is such an example in terms of how he does stuff and I don't know what his future holds, but if he keeps up what he's doing now, I think the sky's the limit. He is just such a smart guy when it comes to that. And, again, an inspiration to me because, regardless of how many injuries I might sustain in the future or how I feel like that is proof positive that I could be in a in great shape, move great and still kill it when I need to right, no matter what, what adversity I face yeah, yeah, fun fact about Matt.
David SyvertsenHost
31:03
Matt coached CrossFit for years at CrossFit Hoboken and I love that he has that perspective in him. And I've actually pointed someone that's currently going through a back issue in his direction and I said, hey, this guy's not a doctor, he's not going to give you medical advice, but I do like the anecdotal. Hey, this is what I went through, just to give some light at the end of the tunnel, because I do know we've all been in this dark area where we're like, man, am I ever going to get better? Is this ever going to feel better? And once you know that it's possible to come back and trust me, what Matt came back through is tougher than what most of you are dealing with, if not all of you. So I hope that inspires some hope in you. But there is a responsibility factor to you that you could also learn from Matt that can really get you back on track. So that does it for the Bison Beast Awards. You know we're going to put out that video on YouTube, on Instagram. We'd love you guys to share it and, just you know, kind of give high fives and fist pounds of support to these people that won these awards, because to me, it truly is earned that these awards and I I do want to give them some extra love and attention and appreciation for all the factors that we just talked about. Like that went a little bit longer than I thought we would, because, but these people, like they're very important to us, very important to the community, and I think they're much more relatable than the people that come work out six hours a day. You know, like these are very normal people and they make huge impacts on our community. But also, like, take away just the community component. They're badass athletes like they're, they're awesome to work out with. Like there are I've always said this, there are certain people that when you see their sign up for class, it gets you like, yes, you know, like you know that feeling, you know, and everyone has them for for different reasons, but like I would, I would love to work out with any one of these people in a class. Like that would makes me want to go to the gym and I think the more of those you have, the better everyone will be. Um, so the last part I want to talk to, I really don't it's we have to talk about it a little bit, but it's about the online judging mess.
33:09
If you don't know, crossfit changed how athletes are being judged for online scoring In the past. Basically, you would submit your scores with a video, ideally, and CrossFit would have about a week to 10 days to review videos. You know, we always said, hey, the math is never going to work here. There's just too many videos, too many athletes, too many qualifying spots where you're just not. There's gonna be a lot of people slipping through the cracks.
33:33
And one of our ideas, sam, was crowdsource Let the community judge videos and then they don't have. They can't penalize anyone, anyone but they could flag videos and say like, hey, there's a lot of bad reps in this workout. Or hey, there are no reps or they're not doing the workout correctly, they're cheating, they're lying, okay, and that can flag them. Cross, it can look at it. That's essentially what cross it did this year.
33:55
They said, hey, if you pass this advanced judges course, no, all right. No, anyone who just passes the 2025 online judges course allowed to go on and flag your videos or support your videos. I want to talk about both sides and because of that, you're letting, you're letting the customers cook the dinner, and that that can really hurt your product. Um, even if it's just a select 10 that are not good at this or they have bad intentions, it creates an enormous flaw in the system Without knowing what we know. Now, Sam and we'll get into it a little bit Do you like them trying this idea rather than taking it all on themselves and probably not really doing it to a quality level?
Sam RheeCo-host
34:56
Well, we suggested it, so I guess we should own it a little bit that we suggested it. Yeah, so the way they implemented it might, I mean I like the idea. I still I think they could change the implementation a little bit. So right now, anyone who passed the online judges course can look at the video. They don't even have to look at the video. You could just go right to the video site and go good, video needs review or unviewable, meaning the video can't be viewed or doesn't match the workout.
David SyvertsenHost
35:26
Yeah, it should be a zero Right.
Sam RheeCo-host
35:30
And the age group semifinals closed out on the 11th and now they're going to finalize the leaderboard on the 21st or something like that. So there were a lot of issues that people had, including Jason Grubb and some of the other age group athletes, in terms of gaming the system and they felt like a lot of people were gaming the system and I think that there are some valid criticisms with that, but I think they could be addressed.
David SyvertsenHost
35:58
Yeah, and I think the biggest gaming the system is. It's not CrossFit's fault and this is where I want to have their back a little bit. This is humanity, this is society. This is their fault in that apparently there were people, groups of people going to specific individuals and purposely downvoting their video, flagging it. And hey look, if your video is faulty, if you have bad reps and you get caught, you get caught. You have no right to complain, even if you were targeted. Do better on your videos. That's part one. I don't feel bad for anyone that got caught with bad reps, even if you were targeted by a group of people.
36:37
What's equally dangerous and I was tempted to do this here because we have an athlete that is likely going to make the games and he earned it and did the right. I judged him a few times, but you never know with videos and you want to get your whole community to go vote up Like, hey, don't watch this video, just trust me. If you have everyone doing that, that's also an issue and in my opinion, it's actually the same. It's the same level of bad If you get your friends and family to upvote your video so that you're not on the radar without even watching the video, and I think that is not a CrossFit problem. Crossfit, creating this avenue to judge does create the problem, but the people that are actually committing the quote crime are the people themselves, and those are the ones that we need to look down on. Those are the ones that need to change, because I actually think this system does work. I do have another suggestion to make it better, but this is a system that works. Am I, too, crossfit truther when I talk like that?
Sam RheeCo-host
37:37
no, I agree, I, I would say when I so. It's our athletes. Bobby wallum. He's one of our coaches and I watched his first one of the videos, the um clean, uh, bar muscle up one, and I watched the whole thing from beginning to end.
37:53
And crush that yeah, and I thought it. Every rep looked really good, you know. And so to standard I mean, you know good is to standard, basically Right. And so I wrote, I checked good video, I watched his other videos but I didn't watch the whole thing. I kind of skipped around, so I did not vote on those because it wasn't my ability. I didn't watch every rep, and if I'm not watching every rep, how do I know every rep is good? I support Bobby, but I'm not going to cheat. This is cheating basically by saying it's a good or bad video without actually watching the video and judging on its own merit, and I think that that's really what the problem is.
David SyvertsenHost
38:33
One thing I did with Bobby's videos is I looked for if there were any getting flagged negatively like hey, there's some bad reps in here and the one that he got a few votes on was the walking lunge box and he murdered that workout. I think that might have been one of his best ones walking lunge, dumbbell, snatch box, jump over. We did it at the gym last week and so because he had a couple flags on, like you know what, I'm gonna watch it and I look for things. I'm like there's a couple you know, walking lung. I'm like you know what, I'm going to watch it and I looked for things. I'm like there's a couple you know, walking lunges are always tough. You know the full extension, lockout, going back and forth, but I didn't see anything that would warrant a no rep. And the instructions on this is you're never supposed to like rewind and watch it again. You're never supposed to slow mo. It's like offset some of the negatives. But I watched it and I think some people are starting to realize you know, be careful, what you wish for. This is really time consuming, like if you were going to watch all Bobby's videos. You're at your computer for an hour and 20 minutes. Yeah, that's why I only watched one. That's one person from one age group taking one of 30 spots.
39:37
And I got actually into a little bit of an argument with a girl I don't even know on instagram about, um, the system and they're like oh, cross, it needs to do a better job. I'm like, honestly, what? It's mathematically not possible to watch every video of every athlete over and over. What cross it used to do for regionals was they used to say, hey, send us your videos. We're watching one of them, but we're not going to tell you which one. And, yes, that does get people to slip through the cracks. But to me, mathematically, how long it takes to watch a video, you can only do that. And let's not even talk about the workouts. We had a couple workouts that were 20 minutes long, 15 minutes long. There's like five minutes of intro. Like watching the tape, like are you guys that? Did you watch that the lunges were actually 15 feet instead of 14 and a half? Like I bet you didn't. You just watched the workout video.
40:25
So to me, like I made a post last week I got frustrated by this. It was like it makes me like, not like the sport and what. What makes me not like the sport. It's it's the people that are just trying to find ways to cheat and I sport. It's it's the people that are just trying to find ways to cheat and I don't know. Like maybe I'm too utopian with it. Like I just feel like it's a pretty simple solution, like everyone stop being a selfish cheater and just do what you're supposed to do and if you get docked, you get docked.
40:49
I have an example of someone that made the games um, and I have a relationship with him. He's from europe and the 40 to 44 group. He made a mistake and it's on his Instagram so I'm not throwing him under the bus here that he was the head judge and he had an advanced judge. He thought him being a head judge was the requirement that there just had to be a head judge in the room. He's the one doing the athletes. So, example let's say I'm the head judge. I can't be the head judge for my workout.
41:14
Oh, I see we did and this was really hard for us to plan. We made it work. We had a lot of help from um. Just shout out to mindy and tracy and coach liz and ashley and adam rams and hawkinson, where we would have two people intro themselves in everyone's workout video. It was a like. It was a logistical nightmare. We made it happen, but if I made a decision to say, hey, ashley is my judge, I'm the head judge for my workout, it's a zero. And this guy had all of his scores turned into zero and so he got really penalized for this really upset. He does own it, though. He made the mistake his. What he's frustrated about is the fact that he got penalized and now he's out. That's his goal. That's what he trains for all year. I can't imagine.
Sam RheeCo-host
42:01
This is a problem because it is a little onerous and I disagree with the fact that they made the rule that you have to have two judges overseeing the workout.
David SyvertsenHost
42:10
It was too much.
Sam RheeCo-host
42:11
A floor judge and a head judge both need to have an L1 minimum. That was a killer. That was ridiculous. Both need to have an L1 minimum. That was a killer.
42:17
That was ridiculous. And the fact is, though, they gave an exception to the Mayhem guys because the head judge had an expired L1 and they said they will grant a one-time exemption to that rule for that, because there were like five or six, I don't know a bunch of Mayhem athletes that would have all had zeros had they, let you know, held that rule strict and so. But the other problem is is that if you just look at the videos, you could see whether or not the workout was legit or not. It's not like you're just relying on the judges. So, to me, to zero somebody out the first year, they're implementing this like they gave Mayim a pass, so why not give the other athletes, as long as their workout videos are super clean and good, like give them a pass on this?
David SyvertsenHost
43:07
one, I agree, and this is the second time he's actually missed the games because of videos and it sucks. I hate, I hate the videos, I hate doing it. I hate everything about videos for competing, but I know there's really not another way to do it because of money and you can't send these athletes to a semifinal somewhere. But CrossFit is 100% afraid of mayhem because they know mayhem holds the keys to that bus. If they leave, if Froning leaves, they're toast. We've talked about this already.
43:45
I do agree with my buddy, mike, that it's kind of like rules for some, not for all, and that is another area where this brand, this sport, it just comes up short. You can't call yourself official if you're not going to act official and I know it's hard, trust me. There's even situations here at the gym where it's like, yeah, there's rules, but that person's okay, you have to try your best not to do it and you have to look stuff in the eye. And this is where I think CrossFit falls short. Have a spokesperson come up and own a shortcoming, just say it, because at the end of the day, that's what we want. We want someone to acknowledge like, hey, you messed up. Next year we're not going to do this or like we're going to go back into the chamber and really come up with a solution. Next year's solution is easy no L1 requirement. All right, it looks bad. We all know why you're doing it. It's a money suck. Two, it's not necessary. It's just not necessary to have two judges, especially one that's rotating around. I understand that could be a suggestion, but there's no reason to make someone have to do that to compete. That's not easy to do. It puts a lot of stress on the sport. It's going to make people not want to sign up. And again, you're making some.
44:45
I love that you made everyone submit videos, like everyone's. All five videos are out there to see. I love that. That makes people think twice about cheating and you're you're vulnerable at that point. If you have a top score, you're getting watched. There's no question in my mind You're getting watched and I think that's enough to make this accountable.
45:04
The last suggestion I want to give is, if you downvote someone or upvote, your name should be on it. So if Sam gives Bobby a thumbs up on the bar muscle-up workout, it should say thumbs up Sam Marie CrossFit Bison, so that you can see and that it's accountability. You can't hide right. People are the toughest versions of themselves when they get to type on a keyboard and no one knows who they are, and to me that's weakness. And this cuts out weakness. If you put your name next to every single vote that you put out there and I think that alone solves a lot of this like, hey, let's, let's gather up and try to get these people Like, if you see 41 positive votes for Bobby Wallen, for people from CrossFit Bison, that that's a flag to me. That's actually going to make me want to watch his videos more. But if I see 18 people from CrossFit Bison downvote someone from CrossFit Waldwick, just because it makes me that that kind of less credible.
Sam RheeCo-host
46:06
I think the other thing is and this was suggested- I think it's a great idea is if you downvote a workout, you should have to explain like a little text like why you downvoted it. Because if you just say he sucks, or arm lockout, like, you have to say like reps, you know, assuming you watch the entire workout, you should be able to specify at two minutes he wasn't standing up on the box, jumps or something, and so you can help One, it helps the CrossFit HQ, because then they can be like okay at two minutes. Let's run to that and see is this legit, or not, that's a good point.
46:32
And if they're like, nah, this guy's not, or if the complaint is very general, then you're like no, this isn't really a legit downvote. Yeah, that's a good point, so I think it would help HQ. The other thing is is did Hiller just post something about how someone was masquerading as one of the judges but wasn't actually that judge?
David SyvertsenHost
46:52
Gave a fake name. Yeah, I watched it yesterday Like what is up with that?
Sam RheeCo-host
46:55
So you know, it's people man. Watched it yesterday. What is up with that? It's people man. Yeah, so I'm just telling you that you got to simplify the number of judges and all that sort of stuff. Like you said, if you have a video, you're pretty good. It should be pretty clean. You don't have to worry about too much. But you're right, If you just leave it to crowdsource, only people are going to take advantage of it every way they can, it's going to create more problems, yeah, all right.
David SyvertsenHost
47:21
Well, hey, I love and appreciate that CrossFit is making strides and making moves to try and improve this process, but there are still a few avenues that we need to get past and some roadblocks that need to get over, but I do think the general direction is the right one. But direction is the right one, but there just needs to be a little bit more attention into trying to find the holes in your game in terms of what you're doing. All right, so thank you guys. That was a great episode on the Bison Beast Awards in 2025 and the judging mess from the online scoring system that we hope to see improve. We will see you guys next week. Thank you everybody for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit Podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.
