March 11, 2021 - The Joe Rogan Experience
02:56:26
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| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
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unidentified
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Joe Rogan Podcast, check it out! | |
| The Joe Rogan Experience. | ||
| Train by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day. | ||
| Welcome. | ||
| Thanks for coming, man. | ||
| Appreciate it. | ||
| Thanks for having me. | ||
| I've watched you compete. | ||
| I watched that documentary, too. | ||
| What is the documentary called? | ||
| I forget the name of it. | ||
| The Fittest? | ||
| Yes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Dude, that is crazy. | ||
| The physical strain that you guys are... | ||
| What happened to the Vaughn? | ||
| Sorry. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| We're back. | ||
| The physical strain that you guys put your body through is fucking insane. | ||
| And until you watch, like, you guys compete and do all the shit, like, rucking, like, running with the weight vest on and... | ||
| Everything, yeah. | ||
| It's insane. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, the games... | ||
| So, like, the games are, like, the big competition, and it's, like... | ||
| It's a wild show because sometimes it's five days, sometimes it's three days, and we'll have usually between 12 and 15 events over those days. | ||
| Do they let you know in advance what you're going to have to do? | ||
| Some. | ||
| We might find out an event, sometimes a week or two ahead, but then we'll have others where we're literally finding out the event as we go, as we're competing. | ||
| So we don't even know what we're doing on the competition floor. | ||
| They'll be... | ||
| They'll be like, alright, start lifting that weight. | ||
| We'll tell you when to stop. | ||
| When you hit your number of reps. | ||
| Stuff like that. | ||
| It's interesting to train for. | ||
| Because you don't know if you're training for a one rep max or a hundred. | ||
| You don't know if you're training for a 40 meter dash or a marathon. | ||
| It's... | ||
| Yeah, it keeps it interesting. | ||
| We've had events that are like 20 seconds long and then a couple years ago we had to row a marathon on the stationary Concept 2 rowers. | ||
| So like 42,000 meters. | ||
| So was that 26.2 miles? | ||
| Rowing? | ||
| Yeah, 42,000 something meters. | ||
|
unidentified
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How long does that take? | |
| I think the average time was about three hours. | ||
| I think a couple people were like three and a half hours. | ||
| Yeah, because you can't row as fast as you can run, right? | ||
| Can you? | ||
| I mean, I would prefer to row a marathon than run one. | ||
|
unidentified
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Really? | |
| Just because it's easier on the joints. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Like, your ass goes numb just from sitting on the seat. | ||
| But yeah, it was just easy on the joints. | ||
| They did it because we tested it and after you run a marathon, you can't walk for a couple days. | ||
| Your body's just trashed. | ||
| With rowing a marathon, you're sore, but you're good to go the next day. | ||
| Doesn't it really, though, depend on the person and what kind of condition you're in? | ||
| Because my friend Cam Haynes, that motherfucker runs a marathon every day. | ||
| Yeah, I think if you're conditioned for it and that's all you're doing. | ||
|
unidentified
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But he lifts weights too. | |
| Yeah, I've met Cam. | ||
| I met him a couple years ago. | ||
| He's got problems. | ||
| Does he? | ||
| Yeah, he's crazy. | ||
| Oh, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's legit crazy, like David Goggins crazy. | ||
| There's a few people that I know that I'm like, what are you doing to yourself? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Yeah, I'll watch Cam, and yeah, he runs a marathon every day. | ||
| It's like, why? | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| That seems terrible. | ||
| He likes those ridiculous ultra races, like the Moab 240s and stuff like that. | ||
| Yeah, I got a buddy that does all those 200-mile, couple days long. | ||
| Yep. | ||
| And it's like, alright, I get that that's your thing. | ||
| I don't get it, but more power to you. | ||
| They're just testing me for Cam. | ||
| He's just testing his mind. | ||
| He wants to find out when it breaks. | ||
| He can't break it. | ||
| And every day he strengthens it. | ||
| So every day he's running massive amounts of miles. | ||
| He'll run like 19 miles in the morning. | ||
| He'll run like 6 miles in the afternoon. | ||
| I wonder if he's ever played with other challenges instead of just running. | ||
| Because I know if I'm practicing the same thing over and over, you adapt to it, you get better at it, you get more comfortable with it. | ||
| And it's like when those curveballs get thrown at you of something that you're not used to. | ||
| And I mean, that's basically... | ||
| That's CrossFit, right? | ||
| That's what our training is. | ||
| We're trying to think of different things... | ||
| That can be the test for us and figure out like, alright, if this comes up, how do we deal with it? | ||
| How did you get involved? | ||
| Did you just walk into a class one day and get excited about it? | ||
|
unidentified
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Kind of funny. | |
| So I have a background in Olympic weightlifting. | ||
| Did that for 10 years. | ||
| Lived at the Olympic Training Center. | ||
| Like, my goal was to go to the Olympics for weightlifting. | ||
| And then that didn't pan out and, like, started focusing on school. | ||
| And then I just kind of, I guess, just gained the freshman 15. So I was like, alright, I either need to start working out again or change my diet. | ||
| So I was like, oh, I'll start working out. | ||
| And, you know, trying to find an Olympic weightlifting gym is like a needle in a haystack. | ||
| But CrossFits are everywhere. | ||
| And so I just Googled CrossFit near me because they use all the same equipment, like the barbells and bumpers. | ||
| And so I just showed up, introduced myself. | ||
| I was like, hey, I don't want to do your CrossFit thing. | ||
| I'll be in the back room just doing cleaning jerks and squats. | ||
| And just kept doing that, kind of showing up on an irregular basis. | ||
| And then one of the girls from the gym who was a competitor was just kind of like, Bribing me into workouts every once in a while. | ||
| Like, oh, you might be good at this one. | ||
| Give this one a try. | ||
| Give this one a try. | ||
| And the owner of the gym actually signed me up for my first competition because he said, okay, I think you have potential in this. | ||
| You should give this a try. | ||
| And so we made a deal that he signed me up and paid my entry fee. | ||
| And then if I won any money, I had to buy a pair of CrossFit shoes. | ||
| What are CrossFit shoes? | ||
| At the time, it was the Reeboks, the minimalist shoes. | ||
| I was working out in Air Max 90s. | ||
| And so he's like, anything's better than that. | ||
| And what year was this? | ||
| This would be back in 2012. So anyways, I won the competition, got a couple hundred bucks, and was like, Yo, this is kind of cool, like, just pocket money for a college kid. | ||
| Like, are there more competitions like this? | ||
| And so they showed me where to find these competitions, and I just kind of started driving around the Northeast, like, all of New England. | ||
| And if there was prize money at a competition, I was signing up. | ||
| And so I basically looked at it like a part-time job of, like, while I'm in school full-time and broke... | ||
| I can make some pocket money. | ||
| And yeah, just kind of... | ||
| I was like, alright, if I want to keep winning these competitions, I need to work on my weaknesses, get better, and then just kind of fell in love with it. | ||
| And it just ratcheted up Bit by bit until I'm at the World Championships and I'm like, oh shit, how did I get here? | ||
|
unidentified
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And then you won over and over and over again, which is crazy. | |
| It's a weird start, man, to something that you not just excelled at. | ||
| I mean, I think you're the winningest guy ever, right? | ||
| Yeah, I've been on the podium seven times and I've won it the last five years. | ||
| That's bananas. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| For someone who started off as a lark. | ||
| Yeah, I'm not blind to it. | ||
| I'll be sitting with my fiance like... | ||
| Just when these cool opportunities get plopped in front of me, I'm like, how did I end up here? | ||
| This wasn't supposed to be my life. | ||
| I was a mechanical engineer. | ||
| I thought my sports career was over with Olympic weightlifting. | ||
| I broke my back. | ||
| It was a whole... | ||
| What did you do to your back? | ||
| I broke my L5 in two spots. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How? | ||
| Just training too heavy too often. | ||
| It just fractured the actual bone? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, like the little wings off the side. | ||
|
unidentified
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Oh! | |
| And it was on two separate occasions, too. | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| They were like a week or two apart from each other. | ||
| So, wait. | ||
| Hold on. | ||
| You broke one and then you kept lifting? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I didn't really have a choice. | ||
| So I was living at the Olympic Training Center, and, like, there was a lot of pressure on the program to, like, produce. | ||
| And I was on the Junior World Team. | ||
| I was leaving for Romania in a couple weeks to compete. | ||
| And, yeah, I was just... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I wasn't training as smart as I should have been. | ||
| And so the first one where I was doing, like, a clean pull. | ||
| So just, like, a deadlift with a big explosion at the top. | ||
| And, like, loud pop on one side. | ||
| I dropped the bar and, like... | ||
| Have you ever seen those heat packs that have the little clicky thing in them? | ||
| It was that's what it felt like when it like clicked and then it's just like the inflammation just spreading and and so you know go to my room lay down for a couple days and then you know it was it was oh I knew something was wrong like I've never had an injury like that you know I couldn't move Did you get an x-ray? | ||
| Did you get an MRI? No, because it was like... | ||
| I was leaving for the competition in like two weeks, so it was like too late to call the alternate to replace me. | ||
| So do they know that you're this injured? | ||
| I mean, I told them, like, hey... | ||
| And they're like, suck it up, pussy? | ||
| I'm injured, and I was told, like, hey, there's a difference between pain and injury. | ||
| And I was like... | ||
| Okay, I'll get back to lifting. | ||
| And so then a couple of days goes by and I'm being super cautious, like basically stripped all the weight out of my training. | ||
| I'm just moving. | ||
| And then what was it? | ||
| It was heavy back squat and like load up and you're going for like a new one rep max, like a week before you get on the airplane. | ||
| And yeah, I hit the bottom of the hole. | ||
| Left side goes. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| And so anyways, I went to the competition. | ||
| Did terribly. | ||
| The coach was like, hey, what's your goal for this competition? | ||
| I was like, I just don't want to bomb out. | ||
| I just want to make one lift. | ||
| One lift in each. | ||
| And he's like, okay, we'll make sure that happens. | ||
| I only made one snatch, one clean and jerk. | ||
| And then it was when I got back, I put my foot down. | ||
| I was like, hey, I'm not lifting shit until I get an x-ray. | ||
| And they x-rayed it, and they're like, oh yeah, there's a break right here, right here. | ||
| Did the coach feel bad? | ||
| I mean, I feel for him now that I have a little more life experience. | ||
| At the time, I hated the guy. | ||
| But now that I know the situation he was in, he was under pressure for keeping his job to like, hey, you need to produce athletes. | ||
| Like none of the American athletes are doing well on the world scene. | ||
| But it's like USA is one of very few countries that competes clean. | ||
| And so it's like, how do you compete? | ||
| So he had this outside pressure to produce an athlete, whether it was the right way or wrong way. | ||
| Isn't that fucked up, that statement that you just said, but I know it to be true, when you said the USA is one of the few countries that competes clean? | ||
| It's actually true, and so strange. | ||
| I remember at the Junior Worlds that I competed that, the winning guy in my weight class snatched more than what I clean and jerked. | ||
| This 18-year-old kid, and he power-snatched 155 kilos. | ||
| It was crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
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Where's it from? | |
| I want to say he was... | ||
| Like, somewhere over in Europe. | ||
| And I'm pretty sure it was, like, the whole podium got popped. | ||
| It's kind of like, I remember, like, the 2008 Olympics. | ||
| Like, the 94 kilo class. | ||
| They started testing down. | ||
| And it's, like, currently it's, like, ninth place guy has the bronze medal. | ||
| Because they just kept testing down, down, down. | ||
| So did they pop him right after the competition? | ||
| Or did they pop him in the future? | ||
| I think it's, like, years later. | ||
| Because it's, like, at the time with the drug, they don't know how to test for. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And so they saved the samples. | ||
| And then years later, they figure out how to test for this stuff. | ||
| Did you see Icarus? | ||
| I watched the first bit of it. | ||
| I haven't seen the whole thing yet. | ||
| It's fucking nuts. | ||
| It's nuts. | ||
| I mean, it's just crazy. | ||
| If there's a sport with money, people are going to start bringing drugs into it. | ||
| Well, the crazy thing about that was that it was a Russian state sponsor. | ||
| They sponsored the entire dope. | ||
| They doped everyone. | ||
| That guy, Gregory Rechenkov? | ||
| Yeah, the guy who was the supposed anti-doping guy from Russia. | ||
| He said the only people they didn't dope were the figure skaters. | ||
| Because they found that the figure skating, it actually interfered with fine motor skills. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And made the women too manly. | ||
| So kind of funny about that, my parents were both figure skaters. | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| And so they're both Olympians, 1976. No shit! | ||
| Yeah, Paris Freestyle. | ||
| And my dad talks about, like, he would be in the locker room in, like, different countries. | ||
| He was like, they just had their syringes on the bench. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| And he was like, you come in after your session on the ice, and he's like, the German team's just there. | ||
| Like, they're not even hiding it because... | ||
| It was legal. | ||
| Well, they didn't test for it back then, right? | ||
| Yeah, they didn't know, right? | ||
| But the American team did that, too, back then, supposedly. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
|
unidentified
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Yeah. | |
| Yeah, I was reading this thing about Bruce Jenner where they were talking about all the shit that they gave him when he was winning the decathlon and they gave shit to... | ||
| Apparently post when it was post the Eastern Europeans winning a lot of weightlifting competitions and then it was clear that they were experimenting with different kinds of steroids. | ||
| I remember reading the article... | ||
| They were testing it at York Barbell. | ||
| I remember reading these journal entries from the lifters and some... | ||
| They were bolting the bars to the ground or to squat racks, and they would take the drugs and then just push on the bars as hard as they can. | ||
| Because their theory was like, the heaviest bar you can lift is the one you cannot. | ||
| And it was like, huh? | ||
| And some of these lifters are saying, like, yo, these pills or these injections... | ||
| Are where everything is coming from. | ||
| Like, this is where all my gains are coming from. | ||
| And then others were like, no, no, it's the training methodology. | ||
| Like, the drugs have nothing to do with it. | ||
| I'm just hitting all these personal records. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe a little bit of both? | ||
| I think I know which ones I'll put out more. | ||
| For sure, for sure. | ||
| Just taking the drugs doesn't make you stronger. | ||
| You have to actually lift the weights. | ||
| For sure, the drugs are helping. | ||
| The idea that the drugs don't help. | ||
| I've actually seen someone argue that before. | ||
| That steroids are useless and if you train properly, they actually get in the way. | ||
| I was like, what are you talking about? | ||
| There's been a couple people in CrossFit that got popped and they're like, oh, the drugs weren't even doing anything. | ||
| Oh, silly boy. | ||
| Of course they were! | ||
| They work! | ||
| There's a reason why they're so prevalent, and there's a reason why they test for them. | ||
| They don't test for things that don't work. | ||
| They're not testing you for Cheerios. | ||
| They're testing you for shit that really works. | ||
| The one guy that he was on the podium at the games and then got popped, I competed against him six or eight months prior, and like... | ||
| The one stat, like, he was snatching, like, 260 or 265, and then he shows up to the games and snatches, like, 290, and he's taking... | ||
| He almost hit 300. And he's like, no, no, the drugs had nothing to do with it. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| I bet they did! | ||
| Yeah, I don't believe that. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| You've been in the sport for years. | ||
| If you're just a beginner, you can make progress like that. | ||
| But I'm like, you've been in the sport for years. | ||
| And then in the last six months, you just had this huge spike in your performance. | ||
| And you're like, oh no, it's just because I became dedicated. | ||
| It's like, I'm not buying it. | ||
| Dedication. | ||
| So important to be dedicated. | ||
| Now, how often do they test everybody? | ||
| I mean, pretty often. | ||
| Do they show up randomly? | ||
| Yeah, so we have out-of-competition drug testing. | ||
| When I did weightlifting, we were on the NAND program, so no advance notice. | ||
| So if you're in the Olympic sports, you're tested by the Olympic Association, you have to give one hour a day. | ||
| Of where you are. | ||
| And they show up. | ||
| They don't call. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| So, like, everyone put from, like, 5 to 6 a.m. | ||
| I'll be in my dorm room. | ||
| And, like, if you're leaving for the airport at, like, 4.50, you'll see someone sitting outside the dorm room just, like, looking at their watch, waiting for 5 a.m. | ||
| to hit and give the knock. | ||
| And, like, they'll follow you. | ||
| They come with you to school, work. | ||
| Doesn't matter what you're doing. | ||
| Will they make you miss a flight? | ||
| Uh, yeah, probably. | ||
| Probably. | ||
| I'd assume they would. | ||
| But, I mean, like, I remember having to talk to professors of, like, I have an exam and, like, I didn't have to pee. | ||
| So I'm like, you guys got to come to class with me. | ||
| And having to, like, explain to a professor of, like, hey, like, these guys are here for drug testing. | ||
| I compete in the sport. | ||
| Is it okay if they just sit there? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Yeah, so the CrossFit. | ||
| How creepy. | ||
| I mean, it's weird. | ||
| Like, I've had it before where they showed up at 5 a.m. | ||
| I didn't have to pee. | ||
| And I'm like, yo, it's 5 a.m. | ||
| I'm going back to bed. | ||
| They're like, yep, we'll sit right here. | ||
| So they just sit in the room while you're sleeping? | ||
| Yeah, they just pull up a chair and they'll just sit there. | ||
| Just stare at you while you're sleeping. | ||
| Go back to bed. | ||
| How can you sleep while this guy... | ||
| I mean, just put on the TV or something for him and you just go back to bed. | ||
| I mean, after a while, you get used to it. | ||
| The first time having to take a drug test in front of someone, it's weird. | ||
| They're inspecting you closely. | ||
| They have to look at your dick. | ||
| Yeah, making sure it's not rubber. | ||
| And then, I mean, now it's like, I don't even break conversation. | ||
| It happens so often. | ||
| Every competition, out of competition. | ||
| You get to know the guy that's in your region for drug testing. | ||
| Did CrossFit always have drug testing? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I don't know enough about the history. | ||
| I think it's newer. | ||
| But yeah, with CrossFit drug testing, it's I remember the first time I got drug tested. | ||
| When I first got on the sport, I was like, I think these guys are doping. | ||
| Like, I don't believe it. | ||
| And I didn't know about the drug testing protocols. | ||
| And then I had to sign up for it because I was doing well enough in the sport. | ||
| And then I get a phone call of like, hey, this is so-and-so from drug testing where your name got pulled. | ||
| And I was honestly excited because I'm like, oh sweet, they do regulate this. | ||
| This is great. | ||
| So I was like, yeah, I'm at the address that I listed. | ||
| Come on in. | ||
| Door's unlocked. | ||
| And he's like, oh no, no, no. | ||
| We'll be there tomorrow. | ||
| I was like, what? | ||
| I'm like, you're giving me a day's notice? | ||
| I don't like that at all. | ||
| You can flush your system out in a day, right? | ||
|
unidentified
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For a lot of things. | |
| I have to assume that if you know what you're doing, you have a plan B. You have to assume... | ||
| That you're going to get tested at some point, right? | ||
| How can they... | ||
| I know that the USADA stopped allowing people to use IVs. | ||
| Because one of the things they said about IVs is it allows you to flush your system out. | ||
| And you can test negative things. | ||
| I never knew the reasoning. | ||
| I remember it was coming up... | ||
| Like those IV bars that like they just jam-pack it full of vitamins and whatever like these super doses and it's like started it's like a hangover cure right? | ||
| Right. | ||
| And I remember that was getting pitched like other people around me were doing them and they're like you should do this and I'm like all right my livelihood depends on not breaking the rules so I'm like And I'm contacting people at CrossFit like, hey, is this allowed? | ||
| And it's like right there in the rulebook of like no IVs over 50 milliliters or something. | ||
| It's equivalent to like a tablespoon or two tablespoons. | ||
| So I was like, okay, that's not allowed. | ||
| Not doing that. | ||
| But yeah, I mean... | ||
| So, you can't even do IV vitamin trips? | ||
| Mm-mm. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But you can do some IVs. | ||
| Like I said, no IVs allowed. | ||
| I think if it's a medical emergency. | ||
| So, like, if you're super dehydrated. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So, like, if you're in trouble and, like, getting hospitalized or, like, there's a need for it, I think it's allowed. | ||
| Is that... | ||
| Do they do that to you when you have rhabdo? | ||
| Do they give you... | ||
| I should probably tell people what rhabdo is. | ||
| Rhabdomyelosis, which is... | ||
| What is it exactly? | ||
| Like your muscle tissue is breaking down because you overtrain? | ||
| Yeah, I think it's... | ||
| So I've had it once. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And I found out after the fact of like, oh, okay, that's what that was. | ||
| It looks like you're pissing coke. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's just brown. | ||
| And you're like, uh-oh, that ain't good. | ||
| But it's like, yeah, if you don't train for a long time and then you do a workout super high intensity and it's like one repetitive motion just over and over. | ||
| And so I'm not 100% sure. | ||
| I don't know all the science and proper terms behind it, but it's basically like... | ||
| Like your muscle poisons itself, something like that. | ||
| But yeah, it's not good. | ||
| I know a lot of people that have been hospitalized for it. | ||
| Do they use IVs to treat you with that? | ||
| I think so. | ||
| I think it's just like you need to get so hydrated, just flush everything out. | ||
| Because it's something like your CK level spike. | ||
| I don't even know what that means. | ||
| It's interesting that that's a real thing that happens pretty often amongst people that do CrossFit. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's probably more towards the beginners. | ||
| Because now when I train, I don't even get sore. | ||
| So it's just people that are out of shape that try to do something that you would do. | ||
| Yeah, and if it's not a well-programmed workout, where it's just like, all right, we're doing a thousand thrusters for time, and it's going to tear your quads. | ||
| It's like, no, no one should be doing that type of workout. | ||
| But I'm sure it's the same as if I just jumped in on Cam Haynes' running routine when I've done no building up to... | ||
| I have no business running a marathon every day. | ||
| So yeah, if I'm just jumping in a workout that I'm not prepared for... | ||
| Well, yeah, it's going to fuck you up. | ||
| Yeah, that is the thing, right? | ||
| When someone says that it takes you six months to recover from a marathon, there should be an asterisk if you're not conditioned to run marathons. | ||
| I mean, it's like any sport. | ||
| If I go in to roll or something and it's like... | ||
| Well, no, I need to learn the fundamentals. | ||
| If I'm just jumping in into a full sparring session, it's like, well, yeah, bad shit's going to happen. | ||
| Yeah, it really is like anything. | ||
| And in CrossFit, when you talk about someone doing a thousand thrusters, is a workout, are they scheduled by the people that run, they call them boxes, right? | ||
| Your gyms, you call them boxes? | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Is that like inside term? | ||
| I think that's like the coin term. | ||
| Is that dorks? | ||
| Is it like so dorky that you don't say it? | ||
| Because you're too CrossFit? | ||
| Well, I came in from weightlifting, so like... | ||
| So it's a gym. | ||
| We used to watch CrossFit fail videos from weightlifting. | ||
| When I started CrossFit, I didn't tell any of my weightlifting buddies until they saw me on ESPN. And I was getting texts or phone calls and they're like, hey, so I was watching TV today and you do CrossFit now? | ||
| And I'm like, ah. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, that was me. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're on ESPN and you're embarrassed. | |
| That's so silly. | ||
| But yeah, a lot of people call them boxes. | ||
| But you would call them a gym. | ||
| Yeah, I just call it the gym. | ||
| Well, if you call it the gym, I think everyone should call it a fucking gym. | ||
| How about that? | ||
| So if they go to those CrossFit gyms, are the workouts, like when they have the workout of the day, is that workout scheduled by the person who runs the gym? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So they could just randomly choose a bunch of shit you could do? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like the owner of the gym is allowed to run it however they want. | ||
| They're free to do whatever. | ||
| So there's no regulations on the equipment, programming, coaching, nothing. | ||
| So I came from a gym in Vermont, Champlain Valley, that I thought that was my first experience with the CrossFit gym. | ||
| And it was this huge gym, amazing coaches that cared about the fundamentals, had amazing programming. | ||
| They put thought into every aspect of it. | ||
| And then I remember visiting other gyms that it's like, I mean, it's like the size of this room, half the plates are broken, the coach is just a cheerleader, and I remember being like, wait, this is the same thing? | ||
| So do you just have to pay a fee to be a CrossFit gym, or do you... | ||
| I'm not 100% sure how it works, because I've never... | ||
| Had an interest in opening a gym? | ||
| I would imagine, just what I would think you should have to do, the workouts should be scheduled. | ||
| You should have, okay, this is a workout that you can do. | ||
| We've balanced it all out. | ||
| Yeah, and I think it kind of comes down to the gyms that aren't putting in that effort will dwindle out. | ||
| Because people start expecting... | ||
| They're like, I'm paying you a good chunk of money. | ||
| $100, $200 a month. | ||
| I want something for that money. | ||
| I'm not just going to show up to your dusty garage. | ||
| But what I would hope is that there's some sort of accreditation. | ||
| If it's accredited and then you have workouts that have been thoughtfully put together so that you know that you're going to get a really good workout, a balanced workout and be safe. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I've shown up to gyms where... | ||
| It's brutal. | ||
| I'm sure a lot of them are out of business now. | ||
| But I've also shown up to ones that are great. | ||
| The people take pride in it. | ||
| They want to give the customer the best experience they can. | ||
| I was lucky enough that just by random chance, the first one I showed up to, if they have a class over whatever number of people, they have multiple coaches working. | ||
| During the workout, the coaches aren't just cheerleading and telling people to go harder or go faster. | ||
| It's like they're critiquing technique. | ||
| They're giving a good foundation. | ||
| I mean, that's where I hit the ground running coming into the sport was I have this background in Olympic weightlifting, so I know how to move my body correctly. | ||
| So it's like I came in like leaps and bounds ahead of so many people because I didn't have to work For years and years to build this foundation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| So all I had to do was figure out the cardio side of it. | ||
| The cardio side of it has to... | ||
| I mean, you're built like a fucking brick shithouse. | ||
| Well, I would imagine that's really hard to have... | ||
| Like, you giant fucking legs and you're stacked. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, I mean... | |
| Like, Olympic lifters. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's not necessarily what I would think of in terms of, like, someone who's a cardio machine. | ||
| I would think you're fueling so much muscle. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's... | ||
| I mean, just... | ||
| Taking in enough calories and fuel for the day is a full-time job. | ||
| Like, when I was training and competing, I'm taking in 2,000 to 3,000 calories a day just in liquid. | ||
| What's a typical meal for you? | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| You have to ask my wife that one. | ||
| She does all my... | ||
| She does all the cooking and meal prep? | ||
| Yeah, everything. | ||
| Do you have those little plastic things you open up and... | ||
| No. | ||
| No, it's like, I'll just text her when I'm on my way home from the gym. | ||
| And like, hey, be home in 10. And then I walk in and like, there's a whole plate. | ||
| But like, I'm like a child at breakfast. | ||
| I hate eating breakfast. | ||
| And it's like she'll have like the three, four eggs, the bagel, cream cheese, fruit, vegetable, like... | ||
| Why do you hate eating breakfast? | ||
| I just... | ||
| I don't like eating first thing in the morning. | ||
| But you have to because you need the fuel. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So it's like... | ||
| I'm like a child sitting there and she's like, no, you're not allowed to leave until you clean your plate. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm like, oh, shit. | |
| Like... | ||
| So now it's like, now that I'm not training... | ||
| As a career, I won't eat until 2 or 3 in the afternoon. | ||
| And how old are you now? | ||
| 31 now. | ||
| And what made you decide to retire at 31? | ||
| Because it seems like that's kind of your athletic peak, no? | ||
| Yeah, I think people peak at different ages. | ||
| I had my best performance ever. | ||
| Like, my last competition. | ||
| But it was just time, you know? | ||
| You were done with it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, when I did weightlifting, it's like I rode that bus until the wheels fell off. | ||
| And, like, when I left it, I had resentments. | ||
| I didn't like it. | ||
| You know, I cut off ties with a lot of people just because I didn't know how to handle it. | ||
| And so with CrossFit, I wanted to make sure that I left it, still wanted to be a part of that community. | ||
| Like, I still want to feel good about showing up to competitions, keep my friends, like, all this stuff. | ||
| So, you know, like... | ||
| It's been a goal of mine for a long time to, like, you know, get certain records in the sport. | ||
| So I hit that record and there's just been too many other things in my life that I've put on hold. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, I'm good. | ||
| Like, I've done everything in the space that I wanted to do. | ||
| Now I want to pursue some of these other things that I've put on hold. | ||
| And you know, like, my whole life has revolved around this for seven, eight years now of, you know, not traveling, not going out to meals, not hanging out with friends. | ||
| It's like, no, like, from eyes open to eyes closed revolves around this. | ||
| So when we talked about meals, you said you don't like eating breakfast, but what would a breakfast be for you when you were in peak form? | ||
| I mean, the typical, like, probably four eggs, four or five strips of bacon, bagel, cream cheese, bowl of oatmeal, bowl of fruit, big jug of water. | ||
| I mean, nothing crazy. | ||
| It was just like the quantities I was having to put down. | ||
| And are you supplementing as well? | ||
| Yeah, like, just the typical, like, protein, creatine, pre-workout. | ||
| Vitamins? | ||
| A shitload of beta-alanine. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, beta-alanine works. | ||
| Nothing crazy. | ||
| Oh, I love that stuff. | ||
| That stuff works. | ||
| Yeah, I can't believe more people don't take it. | ||
| Like, I found where I could buy it just on its own, like, not mixed in a pre-workout, and just kept it in my gym bag, just like a scoop before every training session. | ||
| What do you think beta-alanine does for you? | ||
| It makes me feel like I have a third lung. | ||
| So that's how I always felt it was. | ||
| I felt like I had a third lung when I took it. | ||
| And you would just take it with water? | ||
| I mean, I would just dry scoop and then swig it down with a cup of water. | ||
| It tastes weird. | ||
| Yeah, I didn't really have much. | ||
| The one I had didn't have much of a taste. | ||
| It was more just like your mouth gets tingly right away because it had the direct contact there. | ||
| And you would do that how often before workout or how far before you're working out? | ||
| I mean like 10 minutes. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Because I would do like a very gradual warm-up activation, all that stuff going in. | ||
| So by the end of the warm-up, like you're rubbing your face just like, oh shit, it's kicking in. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| But then someone told me that it actually blocks, what is it, lactic acid production? | ||
| So I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| That makes sense for why I feel so good when I take this. | ||
| Because like... | ||
| So much of CrossFit is just like, alright, A, who can spike their heart rate and keep it there the longest, and then who can hold off the lactic acid the longest. | ||
| And when you would take beta-alanine, what dose, like, what's the... | ||
| I wish I could tell you. | ||
| I didn't even do that much research on it. | ||
| It was... | ||
| People that are so meticulous about their supplements and their training are probably screaming right now. | ||
| Even at the games, every year, everyone has their prepackaged food. | ||
| They're weighing out their chicken, their white rice, their broccoli, and I'm just scarfing down Snickers bars. | ||
| As soon as I come off the floor, I worked with experts in each of these divisions of this guy who trains triathletes. | ||
| He's a scientist that shows these guys how to be optimal. | ||
| And he's the one telling me, he's like, yo, if you're doing a 60-minute workout, like Coca-Cola and a Snickers bar, as soon as you're done, Isn't that crazy? | ||
| I was like, oh, okay. | ||
| So I can never eat a Snickers again. | ||
| I've eaten so many over my career for the last three, four years. | ||
| Floyd Mayweather was always drinking Coke or Pepsi after he trains. | ||
| And people were like, this is crazy. | ||
| He's ruining his body. | ||
| And I'm like, no, no, no. | ||
| He knows what he's doing. | ||
| He's dumping sugar into his muscles. | ||
| So it was this guy. | ||
| I went out... | ||
| I think he's the University of Colorado. | ||
| And he has, like, the sports lab, like, at the university. | ||
| And the typical, like, put you on a treadmill with a gas mask and heart-raised wires, all this stuff. | ||
| And he just keeps ticking up the treadmill, going faster and faster until you drop. | ||
| And it's like every three minutes he's, like, pricking your finger and drawing blood. | ||
| And, like, he's telling you where all these different levels are. | ||
| And I'm like, I don't care. | ||
| Like, you just tell me what I should do to get better. | ||
| I don't want to know where I'm weak. | ||
| Just tell me how to get better. | ||
| And he was telling me, he's like, don't drink the bottled Gatorade. | ||
| Drink, like, you buy the scoop of the powder and mix a gallon worth into, like, eight ounces of water. | ||
| Whoa. | ||
| And I was like... | ||
| Oh. | ||
| That much, huh? | ||
| And so it's like you do these like 90 minute zone 2 training sessions where you're just on a spin bike or running for 90 minutes. | ||
| And he's like, as soon as you're done, slug that down. | ||
| It's just like sludge. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like, oh, this sucks. | ||
| But it gets into the muscles. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's, I don't know the science behind it. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| People that are smarter than me that know what they're doing. | ||
| And I'm like, okay, cool. | ||
| So he's like, yeah, eat Snickers bar after a workout, slug down this condensed Gatorade, and you're good to go. | ||
| I'm like, okay. | ||
| Now, does he want you to do the Gatorade because it also has electrolytes along with all the sugar? | ||
| I think it was just the sugar. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| It was just the condensed. | ||
| So, I mean... | ||
| I had good performances the last couple years, so I'm like, alright, what you told me is working. | ||
| I'm going to keep doing it. | ||
| But yeah, I mean, I don't have a background in exercise science or anything like that. | ||
| So half the time when these people are telling me these things, I'm just kind of like, alright, this is your world. | ||
| You're the pro in this. | ||
| Do you think that having this background in Olympic lifting was a giant advantage? | ||
| Huge. | ||
| Huge advantage. | ||
| I mean, not only am I coming into the sport with lifts that are like I'm already messing with the top guys, but now I know how to move my body efficiently. | ||
| So a lot of times if you see these guys in longer workouts where it has 30 snatches at the end of it or just this high-volume Olympic lifting, by the end of the workout, they're moving differently. | ||
| Their technique is breaking down. | ||
| The bar is swinging out. | ||
| They're not catching the bar as efficiently, so it's crashing on them. | ||
| For me, it doesn't matter if it's the start of the workout, end of the workout. | ||
| I may catch the bar lower, I may have less pull, but the movement's identical. | ||
| I just have this huge advantage coming in that whether I'm fresh, tired, sore, I only know how to snatch a bar one way. | ||
| Would you advise a young person, if you ran into someone and they said, I want to be a CrossFit champion, would you say get into Olympic lifting first? | ||
| I don't think it's necessary to do pure dedicated Olympic weightlifting first. | ||
| I think it's a necessity to do pure dedicated Olympic weightlifting and doing it properly. | ||
| Because so many times you'll see people like, oh, what's your workout today? | ||
| Oh, let's work up to a heavy single. | ||
| It's like, whoa, what? | ||
| You're not working off percentages? | ||
| You're not building up to... | ||
| Explain that to people, what you mean? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| Because a lot of people are like, what the fuck is he talking about? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like, a lot of people just like... | ||
| If you're trying to bench 315, you don't just go into the gym every single day and take a whack at benching 315. It's like you start at a lower number and doing a shitload of reps, and then you're tapering, you're cutting down the volume, you're increasing the weight, you're working off percentages to build up to that heavy single. | ||
| So, I mean, like, when I did weightlifting, I mean, you're working most of the time between 70-80% of your max lifts, just dialing in that technique and, like, making sure you know how to move with weight. | ||
| And I remember coming into CrossFit with my background, I'm like... | ||
| Wait, you guys are just going heavy every day? | ||
| That's not smart. | ||
| Your body's going to break down. | ||
| You're not learning how to move this weight properly. | ||
| It was a huge advantage coming in with my background. | ||
| Not only knowing how to move the weights in those specific lifts, but then even with the kipping movements for pull-up bars or muscle-ups, I know how to move my body by using... | ||
| I'm using my hips like I'm getting that pop out of my hips to get up over the bar and so I just knew how to move a little bit more efficiently and so it was a huge advantage coming in. | ||
| Do you think it's better because it seems to me that if you came in with a strong cardio base like as a triathlete or something like that that it would be harder to put the strength on Versus someone like you comes in with a strong muscle base, a strong power base. | ||
| It seems like it would make more sense that you would be able to develop cardio easier than they would be able to develop strength. | ||
| I think there is some truth to that. | ||
| Because it's hard to develop strength while you're doing the heavy cardio, right? | ||
| You can maintain strength. | ||
| But if you're doing a lot of long-distance running and shit like that... | ||
| I don't know about that. | ||
| I mean, I've continued to hit strength number PRs throughout my career. | ||
| Right, but you already had this base. | ||
| Yeah, I think... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Because that's the one thing that they always say if you're someone who gets into marathon running or something like that. | ||
| Like, you lose a lot of strength. | ||
| You lose gains. | ||
| Is that just, like, atrophy of... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Yeah, I would wonder if it's that or if it's just the fact that you're doing this one particular thing where your body's like Hey, we gotta get lighter this motherfucker. | ||
| Yeah, yeah, I think that's that would be it I Would if I were a betting man, I would say it's easier to build the the cardio side of it versus the weightlifting because Because I think there's more aspects that go into the weightlifting. | ||
| Because there's the strength, the flexibility, the technique, the coordination. | ||
| There's a lot of things. | ||
| Whereas for me to build cardio, I just get on an air bike and start hammering away. | ||
| There's not much technique going on there. | ||
| Now, was air bike your main source of cardio exercise? | ||
| For me, it was rowing. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Rowing. | |
| Like the Concept 2 rower. | ||
| And it was just like I showed up, one of the first competitions I did, or like anytime it showed up in like the class workout in the gym, I just got my doors blown off by everyone on the rower. | ||
| And, uh, so I was like, okay, like if I want to get better, I need to figure, figure out this machine. | ||
| And, uh, and so concept two is actually based in Vermont. | ||
| So a lot of their employees went to the same gym as me and I'm, I'm in the back rowing one day and one of the main employees comes back and he's like, stop, stop what you're doing. | ||
| You're so bad at this. | ||
| Let me show you the technique of how to do this. | ||
| What were you doing wrong? | ||
| Everything. | ||
| I mean it was just like I was throwing my shoulders back first movement pushing like so like dominant I'm pulling with my arms early and it's like you want to extend your legs first then your back and then follow through with your arms so it sounds so simple but like when you're in the movement it's just that you're thinking of a hundred different things at once and and so that sequence is just to be more efficient so you can go longer and further Yeah, I think, you know, it's a very unnatural feeling. | ||
| Because, you know, like, for me, it's like my quads are my most dominant muscle. | ||
| So I want to use that the most for the pull. | ||
| And it's like, no, like, you want to hinge, just like a clean, like you extend your legs first, and then your back, you know, like you want to stay over the bar. | ||
| It's the same with the rower. | ||
| But I think it was probably a good dose of like, I worked on it a little bit. | ||
| I saw the results. | ||
| And so I got that gratification of like, oh, I like this now. | ||
| I worked a little bit on it. | ||
| I got a little dose of that feel-good of like, all right, you're getting better. | ||
| Keep working. | ||
| And so then I just... | ||
| I used the rower the most out of any of the tools. | ||
| The bike... | ||
| I mean, no one likes the bike. | ||
| That thing sucks. | ||
| Yeah, it sucks. | ||
| So brutal. | ||
| And especially if... | ||
| The bigger you are, the better. | ||
| Just because you can manhandle that machine. | ||
| But I'm like 5'6". | ||
| The handles are up here for me. | ||
| It's not fun. | ||
| What do you weigh? | ||
| What did you weigh when you were at your peak? | ||
| Usually for a competition, I would walk in low, mid-190s. | ||
| Usually right around 195, give or take. | ||
| But in training, sometimes I'd blow up to a little bit over 200. And my weightlifting would get awesome. | ||
| And then sometimes my body weight would drop to like in the 180s. | ||
| My gymnastics would be awesome. | ||
| But the nice happy medium for everything was like mid-190s. | ||
| And so when you're doing things like running, there's some events where you have to run distance, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I would imagine you're built like a bowling ball. | ||
| I do not have running legs. | ||
| No. | ||
| You have powerlifter legs, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I've put in a ton of time and I've worked with a lot of great people. | ||
| To get better at running, you know, just get better at any of the cardio stuff. | ||
| Do you have any joint issues or knee issues or anything from running? | ||
| No, no, I'm good. | ||
| Like, I mean, it was a big thing with, I wanted to end my CrossFit career without a limp or like some injury that dictated, like, I wanted to choose my retirement. | ||
| I didn't want to be told like, oh yeah, you're retired, you know, your knees are blowing out, you're whatever. | ||
| But no, I've always tried to train smart. | ||
| Like, Doing it properly. | ||
| And so I've studied how other people in other sports do these things. | ||
| I'm not just leaving my front door and going for a marathon ruck. | ||
| I'm talking to people that are experts in their craft. | ||
| So when I wanted to get better at deadlifting, I don't know how the fuck to train deadlifting. | ||
| I have a rough idea, but not how to do it perfectly. | ||
| And so I reached out to a powerlifter who had some world records. | ||
| And he sent me over a whole program when I wanted to get better at running. | ||
| I'm like, alright, who's awesome at running? | ||
| Probably someone that's done some Ironmans. | ||
| Let me reach out to it. | ||
| And the guy, I think he got second place in the Hawaiian Ironman twice. | ||
| And I've worked with him for years. | ||
| Did he change the gait, the way you run? | ||
| Oh, so much. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I mean, I was terrible. | ||
| What were you doing wrong? | ||
| I mean, my breathing was super sporadic. | ||
| You know, in the beginning, it's like, oh, you know, I feel great. | ||
| I'm not, you know, just moving air as much as I can. | ||
| It's like, I feel good. | ||
| I'm comfortable. | ||
| But then, like, by the end of a mile run, it's like, sometimes I'm taking a breath every other step, sometimes every third, whatever it was. | ||
| So the foot position when I land, where my foot's striking in relevance to my body, my cadence. | ||
| I think my cadence was super slow when we sped it up. | ||
| Actually using the ball on my foot because weightlifting is just all heel, heel, heel. | ||
| And then changing my breathing cadence. | ||
| And then finding, all right, where's the bottleneck in my running? | ||
| Are my lungs not strong enough to expand to take in more air? | ||
| Is it... | ||
| Where's the weakness? | ||
| All these different... | ||
| Just breaking everything down into these minute little details to find where that bottleneck is and put a plan together. | ||
| And did you run with running shoes or minimalist shoes? | ||
| Oh, no. | ||
| I always run with the big old cushy... | ||
| I'm like, I have no pride. | ||
| These people that are running in minimalist shoes, this is the proper way. | ||
| I'm like, all right, I'm trying to do the fastest way. | ||
| I don't give a shit if it's the way we were intended to run. | ||
| These shoes feel good. | ||
| I'm going to wear them. | ||
| Need a little cushion. | ||
| I just want to imagine, for heavier people, the pounding is the real issue. | ||
| I mean, at 200 pounds, when you're going out for a 10-mile run, it's a lot of weight pounding. | ||
| It's a lot of repetition. | ||
| And when you're rucking, what's the amount of weight they would make you carry? | ||
| I mean, it varies. | ||
| Yeah, we have to do a lot of runs. | ||
| It was like the 5'11 vests for a long time, and then How much is that worth? | ||
| I think the men's is 20 pounds and the women's is 14 or 16. But then we've had the backpacks. | ||
| We had to do one race where it was like four laps and it started with a 20 or 30 pound plate in it. | ||
| And then every lap you had to pick up another 10-pound sandbag and throw it in. | ||
| So by like your last mile, I think it was like 50 or 60 pounds. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, like it gets, it adds up. | ||
| Yeah, that I would think would be terrible for your joints. | ||
| Yeah, I think you kind of move, like you change your technique depending on the weight that you have. | ||
| So it's like by the time you have 50 pounds on your back... | ||
| Like heavy walking? | ||
| Yeah, you look almost like one of the competitive speed walkers. | ||
| That's just like heel-toe, heel-toe. | ||
| So I mean, you're trying to keep a bit more of a clip than that. | ||
| Is there anything that looks less cool than competitive speed walking? | ||
| I know it's hard to do, but most things that are hard to do... | ||
| Those guys are... | ||
| They're moving. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Like... | |
| But they look like dorks. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Have you ever seen, like, the suits where, like, the aerodynamic suits were, like... | ||
| No. | ||
| I don't know if it was a joke if someone was... | ||
| Or if it was a real thing. | ||
| But it was, like... | ||
| Kind of like the cyclists, how they have, like, the glasses that integrate into the helmet. | ||
| And it's, like, a big cone in the back for aerodynamics. | ||
| Like alien. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's it. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| It was a joke. | ||
| It's a joke? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Oh, my God. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh my god. | |
| Whatever it takes. | ||
| Oh my god, that's a joke. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, no one gives a fuck if you win competitive speedwalking. | ||
| If someone goes, I won competitive speedwalking first place. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| I mean, just the way they move their hips. | ||
| I don't know how they... | ||
| Let's watch. | ||
| Let's see. | ||
| I don't know how they don't wear their hips. | ||
| They call it racewalking now. | ||
| Look at these people. | ||
| This is so silly. | ||
| How do you know that, like, if someone's competing in that, how do you know someone's not just gonna run? | ||
| They're running. | ||
| That fucking guy in the front's running. | ||
| There's referees that are making sure that you have a foot on the ground at all times. | ||
| That guy's just running goofy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Get in the middle of that pack that you can... | |
| That's so weird. | ||
| They're running, man. | ||
| This is so silly. | ||
| Is someone really watching you? | ||
| You're running! | ||
| He's running! | ||
| Come on. | ||
| Those fucking people are just running poorly. | ||
| That is running. | ||
| Look at them. | ||
| I think I saw... | ||
| The guy in the back is running a marathon. | ||
| Speedwalk marathon. | ||
| And it was like the marathon ended on the track and they had to do two laps on the track in front of people. | ||
| And he was like way ahead of everyone. | ||
| And he got DQ'd because he broke stride. | ||
| That guy just ran. | ||
|
unidentified
|
The fuck? | |
| Yeah, he's running. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He almost passed out and he got pissed and started running. | |
| Well, he lost his shoe. | ||
| Someone flat-tired him. | ||
| Yeah, he lost his shoe. | ||
| I mean, what a strategy, eh? | ||
| Like, if someone's ahead of you, just give him a flat tire. | ||
| Someone got that guy right there. | ||
| Like, he's so pissed. | ||
| Goddammit, now I gotta run. | ||
| He threw his water down. | ||
| Motherfucker! | ||
| I'm losing the speed walking! | ||
| Look at it, he's gonna catch up to them now. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I'm gonna catch you. | |
| I'll get you. | ||
| Now he's running. | ||
| That guy's clearly running. | ||
| Like, come on, man. | ||
| What is running and what is speedwalking? | ||
| When do you decide? | ||
| Oh, that guy looks like he did it on purpose. | ||
| That guy's a dick. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's the Olympics, man. | |
| Is it the Olympics? | ||
|
unidentified
|
This was, yeah. | |
| Oh, Christ. | ||
| How is this in the Olympics? | ||
| This is so weird. | ||
| I remember, like, conversations of, like, weightlifting or Greco-Roman wrestling getting pulled out of the Olympics. | ||
| And then you hear about the sports that are getting put in. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you're like... | ||
| Are you shitting me? | ||
| Like you're putting interpretive dance in instead of Greco-Roman wrestling. | ||
| It's like one of the original sports. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| There's too much toxic masculinity, Matt. | ||
| You don't understand. | ||
| We don't encourage that. | ||
| We don't encourage explosive athletic endeavors that require incredible amounts of discipline. | ||
| Dude, I remember we shared a window Like, our gym to the Greco gym when I was doing weightlifting. | ||
| And I used to just watch. | ||
| Like, my platform was right next to them and I could watch through and I'm like, that is the coolest shit. | ||
| They're savages. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| They're just brutes. | ||
| They all, like, none of them can use earbud headphones. | ||
| They can barely get a Q-tip in there. | ||
| I'm like, that is the coolest shit. | ||
| I bet music sounds like dog shit to them, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right? | |
| Because your ears design that on purpose. | ||
| Do you not have any cauliflower? | ||
| No, I don't have any. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I have, like, little pieces. | ||
| Like, I have, like, one little chunk here. | ||
| But I always wore ear guards. | ||
| And people would make fun of me. | ||
| See, I, like... | ||
| I found some cool ones that were flat. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here with your badges. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I remember, like, there was a sports bar in Colorado that, like, the owner contacted the wrestling team and said, anytime you guys want to watch the UFC fights, like, you got a table here. | ||
| Oh, that's cool. | ||
| And, uh, so all the wrestlers would get together and I would just, and, like, you show up and it's all, like, the tap-out gear and affliction, like, everyone, they all got invisible lat syndrome in the bar. | ||
| And then I would just ride the coattails of all of Team USA and as they're coming in like Team USA wrestling gear and they all have cauliflower ear and it's like the crowd just fucking moved. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was like, this is so cool! | |
| It's like the international sign of like, I'll kick your ass. | ||
| Yeah, it certainly is. | ||
| If you get your ears like that, you earn it. | ||
| Unfortunately, some guys actually do it to themselves on purpose to make their ears look like that. | ||
| It's like a white belt jujitsu move. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I could see that. | ||
| They'll crush their own ears. | ||
| I could definitely see that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah, that's unfortunate. | ||
| Well, they get really into it. | ||
| And they want everyone to know. | ||
| If you're just in the grocery store, how do people know that you're a fighter? | ||
| It's like, all right, let me just punch myself in the air a couple times. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I don't... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You can drain it too, you silly gooses. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| All it is is... | ||
| It's so gross. | ||
| It's just calcified blood. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| When blood gets trapped in between the layers, it just calcifies and turns into a rock. | ||
| I remember watching my friends drain them. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's nasty. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's nasty. | |
| Randy Couture used to use it. | ||
| His cauliflower ear is so hard. | ||
| It's like it sticks out that far. | ||
| He's basically a rock by his ear, and he would drive it into people. | ||
| Yeah, he would drive it in your face. | ||
| I guess it stops hurting after a while, right? | ||
| It didn't hurt him. | ||
| No, like when it first happens, it's super painful. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| But once it becomes calcium. | ||
| But it does break off sometimes. | ||
| Especially in MMA fights, guys will lose a large chunk of their ear. | ||
| I'm serious. | ||
| A quarter-sized chunk of their ear would fall off and be on the mat. | ||
| Or their ear would tear off. | ||
| Where do you go from there? | ||
| Like... | ||
| It's not good. | ||
| Usually the fight's over. | ||
| There was a woman named Leslie Smith, and she was fighting in the UFC, and a hole opened up behind her ear that was so nasty. | ||
| You could see into her head, and they stopped the fight. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| She was so tough, she was trying to keep going. | ||
| Yeah, we're good. | ||
| Yeah, she was trying to keep going. | ||
| But that was mostly because of Cauliflower Ear. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Damn. | |
| Yeah, there it is. | ||
| Bro, it's so crazy. | ||
| See if you can find a better image. | ||
| There was one with the hole, and I was clicking so fast I lost it. | ||
| Yeah, there's one you can see. | ||
| There it is. | ||
| See that? | ||
| You can literally see into her head. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| So that broke off because of the cauliflower ear. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah, because basically it's weighted. | ||
| There's a rock in there. | ||
| So I've like... | ||
| I've watched UFC and stuff for years and years. | ||
| I always loved it. | ||
| I met Chuck Liddell a couple months ago. | ||
| He used to fight at 205, right? | ||
| I look at that and I'm like, sometimes I'll walk around at 201. He's a little bit bigger than me. | ||
| Add on some weight for cutting down. | ||
| I could not believe how huge that man was. | ||
| He was enormous when he was in his prime. | ||
| I remember I ran into Chuck when he was just getting into the UFC, and I couldn't believe he could make 205. He was huge! | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember seeing him, and even when he fought, you see him, you're like, alright, he's a big dude, but he weighed in at 205. He can't be that astronomically big. | ||
| He's 205 for about three minutes. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But then even when he's standing next to someone else, it's like, well... | ||
| That guy's in his weight class as well, so he's about the same size. | ||
| Yeah, I met him, and I was like, I have a whole new respect for how enormous. | ||
| Dude, that man was the scariest man I've ever met. | ||
| He was just huge, and I'm like, yeah, you look like a killer. | ||
| Well, you should meet Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Francis Ngannou makes him look tiny. | ||
| That guy's the scariest guy. | ||
| Physically, the scariest specimen. | ||
| Yeah, his hands were just like... | ||
| Yeah, enormous. | ||
| They were clubs. | ||
| I'm like, that's not even a functioning hand. | ||
| Like, that's just a club for beating people. | ||
| Well, you gotta think Chuck has been involved in martial arts and wrestling since he was a little kid. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| His body's developed into that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking crazy. | ||
| It's a hard way to make a living, man. | ||
| Tough people, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think it's like any physical sport like that. | ||
| Like, I mean, you look at these NFL guys or whatever it is, and it's like you're literally taking a beating for a living. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| You're just trying not to break. | ||
| I think maybe the NFL's worse in terms of the kind of impacts that they take because they're running at each other. | ||
| Well, and then, like, it's not, like... | ||
| You don't see it coming. | ||
| Like UFC, it's like there's one dude in front of you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| Like he may hit you with a kick you don't see coming, but it's like you know where it's coming from. | ||
| The NFL, it's like you get blindsided. | ||
| Full clip. | ||
| There's nothing you can do. | ||
| And the guy's a super athlete. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Just ridiculously powerful, super fast, and he's throwing his entire body into you. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, I started working with a bodywork guy, like Tom Brady's bodywork guy. | ||
| Like if you ever wonder why Tom Brady's playing at 43, it's because of this man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Really? | |
| He is a magician. | ||
| What kind of stuff does he do? | ||
| The most painful body, like, he just makes your muscles supple. | ||
| He's like, if your muscle is pliable and supple, you can't hurt it. | ||
| And so, like, I started working with him, like, two years ago, and it was unreal. | ||
| Like, just the light switch fix that he gave. | ||
| But anyways, he was saying to me, he's like, what you do is so easy. | ||
| What you do is so easy. | ||
| And I was like, after a while, I'm like, hey, Like, do you mean simple? | ||
| And he's like, yeah, yeah, yeah. | ||
| He's like, the bar's not swinging back at you. | ||
| He's like, when you get hit with a weight, it's all square, perfect on. | ||
| Like, you're not getting blindsided by some, like, 200-pound D-lineman. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| 300-pound D-lineman, just like, and you didn't see it coming and bending your knee the wrong way. | ||
| He's like, you're in control of the bar. | ||
| It's not swinging back. | ||
| And I was like, oh, good point. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, how those NFL guys last, like... | ||
| Decades. | ||
| I know, it's crazy. | ||
| I've been hit like that. | ||
| Like, oh my god. | ||
| I guess it's just discipline and making sure you're taking care of your body and then for some, it must be genetics too. | ||
| I mean, just... | ||
| Yeah, I think you have the combination of like the genetic freaks and then if you have a paycheck big enough at the finish line for anyone. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, I mean, a lot of those guys like... | ||
| I mean, you're earning 25, 30 million a year. | ||
| There's not much I won't do for 25 million a year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| And it's like your year is 16 weeks of getting hit. | ||
| It's like, all right, that's pretty cool. | ||
| The problem is the brain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| The brain just doesn't recover. | ||
| The punishment those guys take is, you know, when you hear guys like Junior, how do you say his last name? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When he committed suicide and they analyzed his brain. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's the same thing with Aaron Hernandez when they did an analysis of his brain. | ||
| Yeah, you start self-prescribing drugs to get that quick fix. | ||
| Yeah, your CTE is just out of control. | ||
| Then it's just a spiral. | ||
| They said his brain at 28 years old was like an 80-year-old with Alzheimer's. | ||
| Yeah, crazy. | ||
| I watched that documentary and it's like, this is real life? | ||
| This happened in this world? | ||
| Holy hell. | ||
| Well, he fucking murdered somebody in Florida and got away with it. | ||
| Before he murdered guys up north. | ||
| What was the stat of the 2008 Florida Gators team? | ||
| The rap sheet, there was like 120 people on the roster and like 40 of them have been arrested. | ||
| It's like, dude, those numbers are staggering. | ||
| What the hell is going on? | ||
| It's probably the culture, but it's also probably the impulsiveness that comes with massive amounts of brain damage. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Well, who's the... | |
| Antonio Brown. | ||
| I know very little on the topic, but it was people saying that he took the one hard, hard hit for the Steelers, and then his personality just... | ||
| He was a different person. | ||
| His personality changed, his temperament, everything. | ||
| And it's like, man... | ||
| That happens. | ||
| It's real. | ||
| It happens with people. | ||
| I'm glad I was in a sport that I'm not getting knocked out on a regular basis. | ||
| Did you watch the UFC this weekend? | ||
| No. | ||
| Crazy event. | ||
| I saw the one guy got DQ'd, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's brutal. | ||
| Just a straight knee to the face while you're on the ground. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Super unfortunate. | ||
| And one of his coaches was yelling, just punches, just punches. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Yeah, Marcos Tomata, his nickname's Parampa, is the jiu-jitsu coach, one of the coaches for American Top Team, and he's yelling out, just punches, just punches. | ||
| And then someone else in the coach is yelling Russian. | ||
| In Russian, they're yelling to Piotr, yelling to hit him. | ||
| And, you know, because he's thinking that the guy's... | ||
| It's confusing to some fighters when is a downed opponent. | ||
| A grounded opponent is technically... | ||
| Well, I'm sure if he's hunched over, it's like, wait, is his knee down? | ||
| Well, if you have one... | ||
| Here's the thing. | ||
| If you have your feet down but one hand down, you're not grounded. | ||
| If you have two... | ||
| Maybe Nevada's still... | ||
| Nevada uses a hybrid version of the new mixed martial arts rules. | ||
| It used to be anytime you had a hand down at all, you were a grounded opponent. | ||
| And then they switched it to if you have two hands down, you're a grounded opponent. | ||
| But if you have a knee down, you're a grounded opponent. | ||
| So he had a knee and two hands. | ||
| So he was fucking grounded. | ||
| There was no question about it, he was grounded, but... | ||
| I think maybe he thought he was coming up, and Piotr tried to catch him as he was coming up, but it was 100% illegal. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you can see it here. | ||
| See, he's got one hand down. | ||
| Yeah, look. | ||
| He's got one hand... | ||
| No, it doesn't. | ||
| Both of his hands are up. | ||
| Both of his hands are up. | ||
| So maybe that's what he thought. | ||
| Maybe it was because the knee was down and both hands were up. | ||
| He thought he wasn't grounded. | ||
| Yeah, maybe that's why he was confused. | ||
| But it's 100% illegal. | ||
| That sucks for both of them. | ||
| See, if you hear your coach yelling, hit him. | ||
| See, even I'm thinking, okay, is that grounded or is it not grounded? | ||
| I know it's grounded because this has come up before. | ||
| Because it used to be that when your hands were down, then it was grounded. | ||
| But then Big John McCarthy explained to me, no, no, no. | ||
| Anything other than the surface of your feet on your legs. | ||
| So your knee, if your knee is down, that means you're a grounded opponent. | ||
| With that guy, is he coming over from a different fighting league? | ||
| No, he's the champion. | ||
| There's different versions of the rules. | ||
| In some places, a grounded opponent... | ||
| What is the new version of the rule? | ||
| One of the new versions of the rule is if you are putting weight on your hand. | ||
| So, like, you can touch it, but you can't... | ||
| If you have weight on it, then you're a grounded opponent. | ||
| But if you're just touching, that's not a grounded opponent. | ||
| I mean, that's... | ||
| It's too complicated. | ||
| As soon as you allow opinion to come in, it's like... | ||
| Well, then there's the debate on, like, was that the right call, bad call? | ||
| It's like, just... | ||
| Set up a clear definitive rule. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, there's other folks that also think, well, why isn't that a legal technique? | ||
| How come you can punch him in the face? | ||
| You can't knee him in the face. | ||
| This is stupid. | ||
| Like, how come you can't kick him in the face? | ||
| How come when a guy's lying on his back, he can kick you in the face, but you can't kick him in the face? | ||
| Like, that seems stupid, too. | ||
| From 2018, Nevada rules on it. | ||
| This is the new... | ||
| Nevada has a hybrid version. | ||
| They didn't adopt the new grounded rule. | ||
| I think... | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unless they've changed it since this. | |
| Yeah, I think it says to be considered grounded. | ||
| It says a more technical piece of the new rules pertains to that of a grounded opponent which states a fighter must have both of their hands down on the ground whether it be palms or fists for them to be considered grounded unless a knee or anything other than the soles kicks or knee strikes to the head of a grounded striker or a fighter rather Okay, | ||
| so that's why it's confusing. | ||
| So, the grounded opponent thing, the fighter must have both their hands down on the ground. | ||
| That's what it used to be. | ||
| Whether it be palms or fists, for them to be considered grounded, unless a knee or other than the soles of the feet are down as well. | ||
| So, either way, he was grounded because there was a knee down. | ||
| So it was an illegal technique all over the world, that one, that move, which is unfortunate. | ||
| I mean, that's got to suck for him. | ||
| He was winning the fight, too. | ||
| That's what sucked. | ||
| Piotr Jan, it looked like he was starting to gain control of the fight, and I think it was in the fourth round. | ||
| Was it the fourth round? | ||
| It was a good fight, though. | ||
| Really good fight. | ||
| And I'm sure they're going to have a rematch, and the rematch will be super hyped up. | ||
| But he had dropped Al Jermaine, and he had taken him down and tripped him, slammed him to the ground a few times, and it looked like he was in control of the exchanges. | ||
| But still, very good fight. | ||
| I mean, years ago, a buddy brought me into the gym, and he does... | ||
| It's up in Vermont, so it's not that crazy serious, but he brought me in. | ||
| And he asked me, he's like, oh, you know, do you watch any sports? | ||
| I was like, oh, yeah, I love MMA. And he's like, oh, I do that. | ||
| Sundays are open mats, if you want to come in and roll. | ||
| I was like, yes, I'm there. | ||
| Really? | ||
| And do you have any experience at all? | ||
| None. | ||
| None. | ||
| And it was the most fun I've had. | ||
| And it was just like the most JV elementary version of him. | ||
| It was my first day. | ||
| Like he's showing me like, all right, if someone has you like this, you know, clamp your arm here, throw your hips here. | ||
| And it was so much fun. | ||
| And then the whole CrossFit thing kind of took off and I was like, all right. | ||
| I'll put this on the back burner. | ||
| So you're thinking about doing it now? | ||
| Now that you're... | ||
| I mean, not like competing or anything. | ||
| But training. | ||
| Just for fun. | ||
| Just for the workout, the mental challenge. | ||
| I don't want to warn you, this is how you got into CrossFit. | ||
| You might go, well, I just went in. | ||
| I was just a hobby. | ||
| I was done CrossFit. | ||
| I said, this will be fun. | ||
| I'll learn how to choke people. | ||
| Next thing you know, you're at the fucking world with white tape on your fingers, warming up. | ||
| No, I mean, it's... | ||
| I remember watching it, and it's like, how did you not see that kit coming? | ||
| Like, we all saw it. | ||
| And then it's like, when you're in there, it's like, oh, my God, there's so much that goes into just throwing a punch. | ||
| And it's like this whole crazy... | ||
| Different type of cardio and this grit. | ||
| It was so cool. | ||
| The main event Saturday night was really interesting because it was this guy who's the middleweight champion, Israel Adesanya. | ||
| Yeah, he went up, right? | ||
| Yeah, who's this really super technical striker and he fought this destroyer, this Jan Blachowicz, who's the light heavyweight champion. | ||
| So you got to see this really fast guy who's really good at fainting, setting traps for you against this fucking, just one of the most brutal knockout artists in the sport. | ||
| Well, I remember seeing them face-to-face and being like, What the fuck are these two guys doing fighting each other? | ||
| Like, this guy looks, like, hot his size. | ||
| He's a big fella. | ||
| Did he just, like, weigh in, like, one pound over... | ||
| No, no, he didn't even weigh in at the limit. | ||
| I mean, Stylebender, he usually fights at 185. Yeah. | ||
| He weighed in for this fight at, I think it was, like, one... | ||
| What is it? | ||
| No, no, no, no. | ||
| It was, like, 200.5. | ||
| That's what he weighed in. | ||
| And the weight limit is 205. So Bohovich weighed 205, but not really. | ||
| He weighed 205 at that moment. | ||
| For like five minutes. | ||
| And then he put on... | ||
| I would imagine Bohovich is walking around at least 225, somewhere around then. | ||
| So why would he... | ||
| Want to take that fight. | ||
| It's a challenge. | ||
| Just a challenge. | ||
| I think the real issue in the fight was highlighted when Bojovic took him down. | ||
| Because then you realize how much bigger and stronger Bojovic is. | ||
| And he just was pounding on him on the ground. | ||
| And Israel just couldn't get up. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, when you have someone that big, that much bigger than you... | ||
| It's not just that. | ||
| Israel is not, his background's a striker. | ||
| He's a super sophisticated striker, but he's not that sophisticated on the ground. | ||
| He's good on the ground. | ||
| He knows how to stop takedowns, and I'm sure he knows how to do a lot of jujitsu. | ||
| No. | ||
| And for a guy like Bohovich, who's just... | ||
| You know, there's this old saying that a great big man will always beat a great small man. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it's really true. | ||
| Size matters. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It just matters. | ||
| I'm a very surface-level fan of, like... | ||
| I see the fights, and I'm not following these guys. | ||
| I don't know their backgrounds or anything. | ||
| And it's like, I just saw the two of them, like, nose-to-nose, and I'm like... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| What's going on here? | ||
| Bohovic is so thick, and his power is ridiculous. | ||
| To put it into perspective, Jon Jones, who's the greatest of all time, he fought this guy Dominic Reyes. | ||
| Dominic Reyes went five rounds with Jon Jones, and it was a really close fight to the point where some people thought that Reyes should get the decision. | ||
| Bohovic blew Dominic Reyes out in two rounds. | ||
| Beat the fuck out of him. | ||
| I mean, beat the fuck out of him. | ||
| He had a footprint on his ribcage. | ||
| Like this huge red mark on his ribcage from Bohovic. | ||
| Kicking him in the body. | ||
| And then KOs him. | ||
| Dominic Reyes was never in danger of winning that fight. | ||
| It was just a matter of... | ||
| Just manhandling. | ||
| Just every time he touched him, you would see the difference. | ||
| There's guys that just have... | ||
| That's a weird thing about fighting, in particular striking. | ||
| Some guys just have this crazy power, and it doesn't make any sense. | ||
| It's the same in any sport. | ||
| There's just dudes that have this... | ||
| It's a grunt force. | ||
| I've had it with some buddies that are like, we'll train. | ||
| It's like squatting, benching, Olympic lifting. | ||
| Our numbers are pretty similar. | ||
| But then it's like, we'll just kind of wrestle. | ||
| And it's like, they just manhandled me. | ||
| A lot of that's technique, though. | ||
| Oh no, like we're both like, neither of us know what the fuck we're doing. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| But it's like they just have that brute strength, like that farm boy strength. | ||
| That's like, what the hell is going on? | ||
| Farm boy strength's real. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You gotta think, if you're throwing bales of hay. | ||
| Yeah, just awkward objects, medium weight all day long for years and years. | ||
| That's like kettlebells, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like sandbags. | ||
| You're kind of doing something. | ||
| You probably know. | ||
| What's going on with Jon Jones now? | ||
| Jon's moving up to heavyweight. | ||
| Yep, so what's happening is next in two weeks, two and a half weeks, Stipe Miocic is fighting Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Francis Ngannou is the guy I told you before. | ||
| Do you know who he is? | ||
| No. | ||
| He's the scariest motherfucker in the sport. | ||
| He hits guys and literally knocks them into another dimension. | ||
| He's terrifying. | ||
| And his story is incredible, man. | ||
| I had him on the podcast. | ||
| He escaped Cameroon and made it all the way to Europe. | ||
| Oh, I know this guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It took him 14 months. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He got arrested seven times, and every time they would arrest him, they send him to the fucking desert. | ||
| So they send him to the Sahara Desert? | ||
| What desert is it? | ||
| Is that it? | ||
| You look not as convinced as I am. | ||
| Whatever the desert was, so they send him all the way to this fucking desert and he makes his way all the way back to Morocco every time. | ||
| And they did it seven times. | ||
| They caught him and captured him seven times and finally... | ||
| He made it all the way across to Spain where they put him in jail for two years. | ||
| So he's in jail in Spain for two months rather, not two years, because the whole thing took 14 months. | ||
| So it took him a year to get to Morocco, a year to finally get into Spain, then in Spain he was in jail for two months and then finally leaves Spain and makes his way to France. | ||
| And lived in France as a homeless guy, literally sleeping in a parking lot and working out at a gym, and then finally starts fighting, and then makes his way to the United States. | ||
| Now he's the number one UFC heavyweight contender. | ||
| Yeah, I feel like after you do that, life's easy. | ||
| It's like, yo, this whole thing ain't shit. | ||
| You know what I just went through? | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| They dropped me in the middle of the desert seven times. | ||
| Whereas, like, you know, he doesn't know how he's gonna get out. | ||
| Like, he was talking about drinking water that had, like, rotting bodies in it. | ||
| And you had to, like, filter the water through a t-shirt to drink it or die from dehydration. | ||
| He had to make up his mind. | ||
| Pull up... | ||
| Francis Ngannou KOs Alistair Overeem. | ||
| This is literally the scariest knockout I've ever seen in my life. | ||
| He hits this dude with a left hook and puts him in another dimension. | ||
| You hear stories like that guy, and you're just like, oh, okay. | ||
| My day's not that bad. | ||
| I'm complaining about a hangnail or something. | ||
| Francis is the guy that has the frosted tips, but he's... | ||
| What an enormous... | ||
| And he's fighting Alistair Overeem, who's a former K1 champion. | ||
| Right here. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Boom! | |
| Oh my god, just lifted his head right off. | ||
| But Francis can do that to anybody. | ||
| Like literally any human alive he could do that to. | ||
| You're talking about a guy who cuts weight to make 265 pounds. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Look at that fucking KO. Wait, they fight a 265? | |
| 265, yeah, but he really weighs about 275, so he has to lose 10 pounds to make the weight class. | ||
| He's the scariest. | ||
| Well, he's one of the scariest. | ||
| Derek Lewis is the other scariest. | ||
| He's another guy that puts people into... | ||
| I mean, it's so easy to hear that someone weighs 265, because we all know a fat person that weighs 265, and you're like, oh, okay, it's not that. | ||
| Not like that. | ||
| When it's like that... | ||
| Yeah, sculpted. | ||
| Yeah, he's a 265 Greek god, and fully natural. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And, you know, Derek Lewis is another guy. | ||
| He just knocked out Curtis Blades with an equally terrifying one-punch knockout. | ||
|
unidentified
|
I was with John. | |
| Yeah, and so John is now in the range of 250-plus pounds, and he's weightlifting. | ||
| He's doing a lot of deadlifts and squats and just packing on the pounds as he gets ready to fight the winner of Stipe Miocic and Francis Ngannou. | ||
| Yeah, I follow John, and I've actually chatted with him a bit. | ||
| Like, I think it was like he hit me up and was like, hey, any pointers on this one thing? | ||
| And I sent him a video. | ||
| He's doing these deserts or squats. | ||
| Did you ever fuck with these? | ||
| I have. | ||
| Like, especially coming back. | ||
| What's the benefit of doing these? | ||
| I think it's just a lot. | ||
| It's just putting the bar further in front. | ||
| So it's like just a lot more on your posterior chain. | ||
| So it's like the further the bar is, the further the weight is away from your center. | ||
| The more you have to pull back and compensate for it. | ||
| But I would do stuff like that. | ||
| I think it was when I was coming back from my back surgery. | ||
| I was doing them. | ||
| What did they have to do to fix your back? | ||
| They basically went in and rebroke it. | ||
| Dremel tooled the bone. | ||
| Because it healed, but it didn't heal. | ||
| Back together. | ||
| So it's like each bone just kind of calloused over itself. | ||
| So they went in and Dremel tooled, put in some protein that generated bone growth, and then put in two plates and six bolts. | ||
| So they... | ||
| So they said they were like, yeah, we can go back in in a couple years. | ||
| If the hardware is giving you a hard time, we can go back in and take it out because the bone is going to be healed. | ||
| But if it's not giving you, if it's not bothering you, we'll just leave it alone. | ||
| So it just never bugged me enough to go through that surgery. | ||
| Does it go off at the airport? | ||
| No, it's... | ||
| I don't know if it's a different type of metal that doesn't set it off or if it's just not big enough quantity. | ||
| But I mean, it's just little tiny plates that were just put in to tack it. | ||
| It doesn't fuck with you at all? | ||
| I mean, I'll have... | ||
| If I sleep wrong, I don't know if that's just that I'm 30 now and sleeping can fuck me up. | ||
| No, I mean, I haven't had any big moments where it was like... | ||
| Oh shit. | ||
| Something happened. | ||
| I mean, I came after the surgery. | ||
| I went back to weightlifting. | ||
| I hit personal records. | ||
| I lifted for another year after I came back from the surgery. | ||
| And then... | ||
| I just, like, I trained out of resentment coming back because so many people wrote me off of like, ah, you know, he broke his back, he's done. | ||
| And so I basically just trained with, like, the fuck you mentality for, I mean, it was a year before I came back. | ||
| So, like, in a full back brace. | ||
| Just rehabbing it. | ||
| And then a year of competing. | ||
| And so by the time I was done with weight, I rode that until the wheels fell off. | ||
| Like, resentment is a hot-burning fuel. | ||
| It's a good motivator, but it burns hot. | ||
| So you can't use it for too long. | ||
| Did you have any other significant injuries from CrossFit? | ||
| From CrossFit? | ||
| Not really. | ||
| I think it was like I came into CrossFit with enough of a knowledge base of how to train properly and not just like... | ||
| Go hard, start flopping my body around. | ||
| And I changed how I trained over the years because early on, I was still young and I could get away without doing a warm-up or a cool-down or kind of cutting those corners. | ||
| And then it started catching up with me. | ||
| So I was like, okay, if I want to make this a career, I need to take it more seriously. | ||
| I mean, I tore my LCL. Warming up for an event, but I was just doing, like, the pigeon stretch, like, where you put your foot up on a table, and you're, like, kind of pulling... | ||
| You feel the pop? | ||
| Yeah, like, I was pulling on my foot, and I... Oh! | ||
| And it just, like, let go. | ||
| And that was actually, like, at a competition. | ||
| What'd you do? | ||
| Kept my mouth shut. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| I just, like, threw on a couple knee sleeves. | ||
| Like, I remember... | ||
| So my mom's a doctor and she's at the competition. | ||
| I was like, I didn't want to tell anyone. | ||
| I didn't want to go to the medical team because they might medically pull me if I'm a danger to myself. | ||
| And so I remember getting my mom and being like, hey, I think I tore something in my knee. | ||
| Can you check it? | ||
| And she was like, impossible. | ||
| You cannot tear your own ligament. | ||
| You can't do it. | ||
| And then she was like, okay. | ||
| Maybe you strained it. | ||
| And then it was after the competition, she was like, oh yeah, you definitely tore that shit. | ||
| You need to go to the hospital and get a brace. | ||
| But I mean, that was just me. | ||
| That's funny that she said you cannot tear it by doing that. | ||
| I think she was saying you can't self-implement a torn ligament. | ||
| She was like, it would hurt too much before it let go. | ||
| You can't pull it to that point without the pain being too much. | ||
| Is it possible you were already slightly injured? | ||
| I don't think so. | ||
| I mean, I was an idiot. | ||
| I was, like, cranking on it because, like, more is better. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Of course. | |
| Like, nothing in moderation. | ||
| Right, of course. | ||
| Yeah, so, I mean, it was a loud pop, and then, like, I mean, it's just creepy. | ||
| How'd you do in the competition? | ||
| I won it, yeah. | ||
| I just didn't tell any of my competitors. | ||
| It was the World Championships. | ||
| Oh, that's hilarious. | ||
| Now they're hearing this going, Fuck! | ||
| He's eating Snickers bars, too! | ||
| Son of a bitch! | ||
| Like, have you ever seen that? | ||
| Like, when someone tears the LCL? Like, they just, like, hold their leg up to the side and it just, like, droops in. | ||
| It looks like the pencil when you do that little, like... | ||
| Did you have to get surgery? | ||
| No, so the LCL is, like, one of the few that will, like, regrow or heal itself. | ||
| So I had to wear, like, a full leg brace for, like, three or four months. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Three or four months. | ||
| Yeah, it was a while. | ||
| It was enough to suck. | ||
| That seems like surgery would be a better option. | ||
| So they told me the surgery was like a full year recovery. | ||
| It was equivalent to an ACL or MCL reconstruction. | ||
| But they were like, so you want to try this brace first. | ||
| So I just wore pants. | ||
| And it worked. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Are you guys allowed to use peptides or anything like that? | ||
| Can you use BPC-157 or anything to heal? | ||
| You just said a lot of fucking words. | ||
| You don't know about those? | ||
| No. | ||
| Really? | ||
| I've heard the word peptides, but I just got introduced to what SARMs are not that long ago. | ||
| And it was because someone got popped for them. | ||
| Yeah, I just found out about that recently. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, oh, he got caught using steroids. | ||
| And people were like, it wasn't steroids. | ||
| It's SARMs. | ||
| I'm like, oh. | ||
| It's kind of similar. | ||
| What is exactly SARMs? | ||
| Didn't Mark Gordon bring it up? | ||
| Someone brought it up. | ||
| I remember, like, I did, like, the quick Google search to, like... | ||
| Try to figure out what I could from a Google search, but that was the extent of what I went. | ||
| And basically the summation I got was like, it's basically like a steroid that only affects muscle fiber and not like all your organs. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| What are steroids? | ||
| Difference number one. | ||
| Men on steroids may develop breasts. | ||
| Oh, there we go. | ||
| Women will lose their femininity. | ||
| SARMs have no such effects. | ||
| SARMs are more focused on bone and muscle health. | ||
| You gain muscle faster on SARMs than ROIDS. Steroids are linked to an increased risk of some cancers, like prostate. | ||
| SARMs are safer than steroids in this regard. | ||
| Sounds like someone's selling SARMs. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Sounds great. | |
| SARMs are similar to steroids, but they're not one and the same. | ||
| Both work by binding to your androgen receptors, triggering changes in your DNA, which increase your muscles' ability to grow. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| What does it stand for? | ||
|
unidentified
|
That didn't pop up. | |
| Doesn't say? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Let me see. | |
| Just, what is a SARMs? | ||
| No, are they legal? | ||
| Can you just buy them? | ||
| So that was this guy's reason. | ||
| He was like, oh, I just bought it off the internet. | ||
| How can it be illegal if I just bought it off the internet? | ||
| Is that real? | ||
| Selective androgen receptor modulator. | ||
| You can just buy them? | ||
|
unidentified
|
There's a bunch. | |
| How crazy is that? | ||
| If that's what they are. | ||
| Fucking crazy. | ||
| I have a feeling that's not really... | ||
| That can't be that. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| Are SARMs safe? | ||
| Bodybuilding products that contain selective androgen receptor modulators, or SARMs, have not been approved by the FDA and are associated with serious safety concerns. | ||
| Well, that sounds like it's written by a bitch. | ||
| Including potential to... | ||
| It's like, yeah, there's no fact there. | ||
| That's your opinion. | ||
| Keep that shit to yourself. | ||
| Some little pussy, some little weak fuck. | ||
| You scared to grow? | ||
| No, BBC 157 is something that helps heal injuries. | ||
| The FDA is talking about banning them because they're super effective. | ||
| Oh, they're so good at what they do. | ||
| Yeah, they're really effective at injuries. | ||
| This is the ISADA website. | ||
| Okay, are SARMs prohibited? | ||
| All SARMs are prohibited at all times, both in and out of competition, for all athletes, from those competing at the highest level of sport to those competing at the recreational level. | ||
| SARMs are listed in the category of other anabolic agents under, what does it say, S1.2 of the WADA prohibited list. | ||
| Yeah, I don't mess around with that shit. | ||
| Even if I go in to the doctor because I'm sick and he'll give me a script and I'm like, hey, you need to write me three scripts and then I call the drug testing. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like our liaison for drug testing. | ||
| I'm like, hey, is this allowed? | ||
| Nope. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Throw that one out. | ||
| But now you don't have to do that. | ||
| So I'm still on the drug testing list. | ||
| How come? | ||
| I think it's to prevent people from just like announcing retirement. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Like, going and doping for six months and be like, guess what, bitches? | ||
| I'm back. | ||
| Yeah, right. | ||
| So I think I have to stay in it for like six months or a year or something. | ||
| We were talking before about people sending you stuff. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That you just can't fuck around with anything. | ||
| I take none of it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, you know, people, they get your address and stuff just starts showing up. | ||
| Or even like sponsors that are like, you know, if I'm talking to a new something, a company, they're like, I want to, they want to just send you their products to try. | ||
| And it's like, How do I know you're not sabotaging me? | ||
| How do I know you're not on that dude's team over there? | ||
| That's the fear. | ||
| That's a weird fear that I didn't even consider until you brought it up. | ||
| You have to worry about someone spiking your stuff. | ||
| Yeah, and then like... | ||
| Does that happen? | ||
| Have you ever heard of that happening? | ||
| I've heard of people maybe using it as an excuse of like, you know, the tainted supplements or like, oh, this protein was mixed in a vat that was used for this other thing. | ||
| And it's like, I want to believe you. | ||
| But I'm calling bullshit. | ||
| There's a guy on YouTube. | ||
| His name's Derek, and he's got a channel called More Plates, More Dates. | ||
| It's a ridiculous name. | ||
| But he's very smart. | ||
| He's a chemist, apparently, and just brilliant at breaking down what the effects of supplements are, and different steroids, and how they work, and He's just brilliant. | ||
| And uses them too. | ||
| The guy's super jacked. | ||
| But he breaks down a lot of these UFC fighters' claims of tainted supplements. | ||
| And he's like, this is how you know that's bullshit. | ||
| But he shows it in a way that I don't even think the fucking USADA people understand. | ||
| Because his understanding of it is incredibly sophisticated. | ||
| And he's breaking down their levels. | ||
| The levels that they're testing at. | ||
| And also breaking down the epitestosterone level, the testosterone to epitestosterone. | ||
| Does he get people off their bands canceled? | ||
| No, the opposite. | ||
| The opposite. | ||
| He's calling bullshit on people that said, oh, I just accidentally tested positive. | ||
| Someone must have spiked my shit. | ||
| He's like, uh-uh-uh, this is how you know that's not true. | ||
| And here's how you can still cheat. | ||
| And he was showing how it's possible for fighters to cheat and how even though they think that the USADA protocol is super sophisticated, it's really not. | ||
| And it'll... | ||
| Like, the testosterone to epitestosterone ratio, that's another one that, like, gets manipulated. | ||
| He's like, you can fuck with that. | ||
| Like, for sure, a lot of these guys are taking something. | ||
| And they can get away with this. | ||
| And he talks about Paulo Costa and John Jones and a few other people that have been propped. | ||
| And he's like, here's how you know they were definitely using. | ||
| No. | ||
| Oh shit. | ||
| Yeah, and he's, again, his understanding of it is super sophisticated. | ||
| So as he's breaking down this stuff, he's doing it like step-by-step, factual, according to science, according to the levels that they were tested at. | ||
| Like some of the people in CrossFit, the excuses they're coming out with, it's like, where are you coming up with this shit? | ||
| Like what kind of excuses? | ||
| Well, so I heard it was this guy who's a lawyer. | ||
| That, like, as soon as he hears about someone popping, he approaches them and is like, I will get your sentence reduced. | ||
| Pick out of these seven excuses. | ||
| Oh, boy. | ||
| And, like, it's the same packet, and he just changes your name in it, and he sends it off. | ||
| But it's like, some of the excuses have been, like, oh, my boyfriend was doping. | ||
| And he shot his doped uploads inside of me. | ||
| So one girl said, like, I went down on my boyfriend, and... | ||
| One was, I was making out with my boyfriend, and he was taking something that you hold under your tongue for like 15 minutes. | ||
| Well, one thing that can happen to women is when guys have testosterone cream. | ||
| Like, there's testosterone cream, and then if you're sweaty and you're having sex, it can actually get into the woman's... | ||
| Yes, that's legit. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| The one, like, there's been one of, like, oh, I was eating, I ate tainted meat in Iceland. | ||
| Yeah, one guy in the UFC said he ate kangaroo meat. | ||
| Dude. | ||
| Yeah, he ate kangaroo meat. | ||
| Yeah, and, like, I remember that excuse came out, and it's, like, did some research, and it's, like, tainted meat in Iceland was a thing, apparently. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, really? | |
| Like, back in the 80s. | ||
| And it's, like, yo, that hasn't been an excuse in a while. | ||
| Like, bullshit. | ||
| Didn't Canelo Alvarez have an excuse like that? | ||
| He did, right? | ||
| Tainted meat in Mexico. | ||
| Did he get popped for something? | ||
| Listen to me. | ||
| Canelo Alvarez used to fight at 154 pounds and he went all the way up to 175 and won the light heavyweight title. | ||
| There is no question in my mind he's on some supplements. | ||
| I mean... | ||
| It was my mistake eating meat in Mexico no longer eats beef. | ||
| Get the fuck out of here. | ||
| Yeah, he switched to horse meat. | ||
| Like, come on, son. | ||
| Clembuterol, see? | ||
| But clembuterol is a fat burner. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He was on some shit. | ||
| Yeah, someone in CrossFit just got popped for that, and they were like... | ||
| They were like, it's not even a performance enhancer. | ||
| I'm like, it makes you... | ||
| I didn't know what it was. | ||
| I looked it up and it makes you burn fat. | ||
| I'm like, how is that not a performance enhancer? | ||
| Yeah, you'd be lighter. | ||
| Yeah, you're maintaining all your muscle mass but stripping away... | ||
| All this dead weight. | ||
| Yeah, I think clambuterol is something that fighters use while cutting weight to maintain mass. | ||
| I think because it helps them... | ||
| See if that's... | ||
| Google that. | ||
| Because I think that's... | ||
| Because other fighters have been popped for that as well. | ||
| And I think that was... | ||
| I thought when I looked it up, it was a fat burner. | ||
| Like, it just, like, makes you strip fat, like... | ||
| Probably does that too, but that's probably how they lose weight without losing mass. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Because a lot of times when guys are losing weight for UFC fights or for boxing matches. | ||
| Drugs have been popular in the athletic world. | ||
| Helps reduce weight. | ||
| Can increase a person's metabolism. | ||
| Francisco Vargas and Canelo Alvarez tested positive. | ||
| Cyclist Alberto... | ||
| Da-da-da-da-da-da. | ||
| Why so many athletes? | ||
| Athletes at that level, for him, he's earning more money than he can shake a stick at. | ||
| I understand the appeal to cheating and that. | ||
| The whole thing with CrossFit, I don't get it. | ||
| These sports that... | ||
| There's not the multi-multi-million dollar contract. | ||
| It says it promotes muscle growth through anabolic properties. | ||
| Yeah, I know what you're saying. | ||
| Canelo Alvarez has some fucking preposterous contract with DAZN. I think it was like hundreds of millions of dollars, right? | ||
| Yeah, there was some... | ||
| Once the pandemic changed it because they can't have fights in arenas, so that was part of the deal, I think. | ||
| Yeah, there was a little bit of a dispute, but didn't he just fight on DAZN? I think his last fight was on DAZN. He's awesome, though. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, yeah, he was. | |
| Yeah, he KO'd that guy on DAZN. That guy, he's phenomenal. | ||
| I mean, it's not making him a better fighter, but I think... | ||
| I mean, just watching his videos. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, just his head movement. | ||
| Incredible. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Unreal. | |
| Unreal. | ||
| Canelo Alvarez-Dazone agreed to a minimum $365 million contract for five years. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Woo! | |
| 11 fights. | ||
| Whee! | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| $365 million. | ||
| That's a hell of a payday. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Minimum. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Depending upon... | ||
| Man, I got into the wrong shit. | ||
| Nah, but you didn't though, dude. | ||
| Look at you. | ||
|
unidentified
|
You're here. | |
| Coming from weightlifting... | ||
| Your brain works. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Coming from weightlifting, getting into CrossFit, I count my blessings every day. | ||
| I'm like, this is fantastic. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Is there a lot of loot in CrossFit? | |
| For most, no. | ||
| Is the money in the victory? | ||
| Is it in the prize money or is it in sponsorships? | ||
| Sponsorships. | ||
| I mean, every contract's different how you set it up. | ||
| So, I mean, you can set them up well if you've got a good manager or agent. | ||
| I mean, the biggest competition we have every year is $300,000 and there's only one winner. | ||
| And what does everybody else get? | ||
| Nothing? | ||
| I think it goes like $300,000. | ||
| I think this last year I went to second place with $105,000. | ||
| So like $300,000 is nothing to scoff at as an annual salary. | ||
| But when you're rolling the dice, training all year at a maybe... | ||
| I can get rough, especially if you twist your ankle on day one and you have to pull out. | ||
| But I mean, coming from weightlifting where there is zero money coming to CrossFit, I remember my first couple contracts, they're like a grand a year, two grand a year type thing. | ||
| I'm laughing all the way to the bank because I'm like, holy shit, you're going to give me $1,000 and free protein? | ||
| I'm in! | ||
| Well, that's why it was funny for you to just enter into these competitions, just to pick up a couple hundred bucks here. | ||
| Yeah, the first competition was like 500 bucks, and the next one was like a grand, and then it's like 2 grand, 4 grand, 10 grand, and it's like... | ||
| Next thing you know, you're the world champion. | ||
| I didn't have a bank account. | ||
| I would have to sign the check over to my mom, and she would go cash it. | ||
| I mean, shit like that. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| I'm driving around New England, and this 1988 Oldsmobile, this car I bought for $300, it is a hoopty, and I'm just like, I'm loving life. | ||
| I was a full-time college student. | ||
| I looked at this as like a side hustle. | ||
| Isn't it funny when you look back on those days, not a care in the world, just struggling? | ||
| It's the most romantic times. | ||
| Just eating ramen noodles. | ||
| After a workout, it's like, man, I'm real hungry. | ||
| I remember going... | ||
| If I had a group project or something I had to work on after training, I would stop at this gas station on the way back. | ||
| I would get a pepperoni stick and a gallon of whole chocolate milk. | ||
| And just like go to the library, meet up with whoever I need to meet up with. | ||
| And it's like pepperoni stick to make me feel like I was chewing on something. | ||
| Like the gallon of milk had like 1600 calories and just scarf that down. | ||
| And like, all right, cool. | ||
| Three bucks, $3 dinner. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Wow. | |
| You know, looking back at moments like that, it's like, all right, those are the times I want to remember. | ||
| Like when you're struggling, like I was living in my parents' basement, just... | ||
| I didn't give a fuck. | ||
| It was awesome. | ||
| But you got through it and became successful. | ||
| That's why those moments are cool. | ||
| If you're 40 and that's what you're doing, right? | ||
| That's not fun. | ||
| It's only fun when you're on the launching pad. | ||
| When you look back and you think about struggling and how you got by when you were young. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like, I have those fond memories with weightlifting, too. | ||
| And, like, I was never successful. | ||
| Like, I won, like, junior nationals and shit like that. | ||
| But, like, I never made a world team or, like, the senior world team or had any records or anything. | ||
| But, I mean, like, yeah, you know, working out in the dingy basement, you know, you're making this weight set just work because it's what you have. | ||
| You know, it's not, there's no other option. | ||
| So it's like, there's no, like, I wish I could have this better, this better. | ||
| It's like, no, that's what you got. | ||
| Either you work with it or you don't. | ||
| I mean, those times, they're fucking awesome. | ||
| They're fucking awesome because you became super successful. | ||
| I'm excited for finding that again. | ||
| What do you think you're going to do? | ||
| You're so young. | ||
| 31 years of age. | ||
| You can still do things athletically. | ||
| You can still do career-wise. | ||
| You can pick and choose. | ||
| I'm excited. | ||
| There's a couple projects in the works of as soon as I announced my retirement, a lot of it was because I was like, alright, I've put so much of my life on hold to just Strike while it was hot. | ||
| Alright, I'm ready to do other shit other than just these killer rowing intervals and going to bed at a bedtime, a wake-up time, all this shit. | ||
| What do you think you're going to do? | ||
| You know, so the first thing I did was like started release my programming. | ||
| You know, I've played my cards so close to my chest for so long because I was like, I'm doing shit that I know other people aren't doing in my training. | ||
| So I don't want to tell people about it. | ||
| And it's like every other CrossFit athlete, every time they hit a PR, they do something new. | ||
| They post about it on Instagram to get some likes. | ||
| I haven't said shit. | ||
| And so the day I retire, I'm like, dude, I'll tell everyone. | ||
| I don't care. | ||
| I don't need it anymore. | ||
| Here you go. | ||
| So that was like a project that I partnered with some people down in Miami that they're using their platform to do that. | ||
| So how are they releasing it? | ||
| Are they releasing it like it's a subscription thing? | ||
| Yeah, a subscription. | ||
| So it gets released April 1st. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| But it was just like they already did it for powerlifting, powerlifting, Olympic weightlifting, bodybuilding, like uber successful in that side. | ||
| They built this amazing platform. | ||
| And then I'm like, I don't want to mess around with a website. | ||
| I don't want to mess around with inputting all this data. | ||
| I'm good at programming, and I know how to do that well. | ||
| So here you go, and then you do your thing. | ||
| Yeah, so doing that with Hybrid down in Miami. | ||
| Partnered up with some buddies that have been in the CrossFit space for a long time for a sports nutrition company. | ||
| Some people from the sports nutrition world, some people that have been in the CrossFit space for a long time. | ||
| It just seemed like a fun project to do. | ||
| We're like, hey, let's see what we can build this thing into. | ||
| So that's getting launched in a couple months. | ||
| Yeah, just kind of like I had all these opportunities and I don't know how to manage my time because I've only done this one thing for so long. | ||
| And so as soon as I announced my retirement, all these opportunities flooded. | ||
| And I was like, I'm going to pick my two favorite, take these. | ||
| Alright, put everything else on the back burner. | ||
| I was like, let me figure out these two things. | ||
| And once the ball's rolling on them, I'll pick up the next two things. | ||
| Did you know before you entered into the last world championship that that was going to be your last one? | ||
| Oh, I tried to retire a year ago. | ||
| I tried to retire after my fourth win. | ||
| I was sitting on the dock a week after. | ||
| I was up in my camp. | ||
| And the guy who was coaching me at the time called me. | ||
| He's like, hey man, how you doing? | ||
| We're having a nice little chit-chat. | ||
| And he's like, What's your plan? | ||
| What's your travel schedule? | ||
| When do you want to start training? | ||
| And I was like, oh, no, no, no. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| He's like, what? | ||
| I was like, oh, no. | ||
| I retired, dude. | ||
| I'm good. | ||
| I won four in a row. | ||
| I'm happy. | ||
| I'm done. | ||
| And he's like, oh, okay, okay. | ||
| And then he hangs up. | ||
| And then five minutes later, I get a call from my buddy, my manager and agent. | ||
| And he's like... | ||
| Hey, buddy. | ||
| How you doing? | ||
| I'm like, Shane just called you, didn't he? | ||
| He's like, yup, you doing okay? | ||
| And he was like, you'll hate yourself when you're 40 if you don't go for one more. | ||
| Why? | ||
| Because the previous record was four. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| And so he was like, you can't just tie that. | ||
| What happens to most guys when they stop? | ||
| Do they own gyms? | ||
| I think a lot of them... | ||
| Well, right now, it's like... | ||
| Nobody else has been competitive and retired. | ||
| they're all still trying to hang on they're taking some at-bats or they go team or you know whatever it is you know like they either have like this big injury that they're still trying to come back from or they go team so like they're not competing as an individual anymore now they have teammates and they're in that division um or yeah there hasn't there haven't really been any that have like made a career out of it and then been like i'm out | ||
| I've seen some articles about some guys that are still in it and struggling and a lot of meniscus injuries. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| A lot of... | ||
| I mean, that seems to be a big one that comes up a lot. | ||
| Yeah, I think it's kind of like the natural thing of like, you know, you're putting yourself into these susceptible positions. | ||
| And then if you don't have the technical foundation to back it up, like, yeah, you're... | ||
| Something probably going to let go. | ||
| Something's going to fall into a bad angle. | ||
| And just now you're putting like such a heavy load on it. | ||
| Something's going to pop or break. | ||
| And you think that's what it is? | ||
| It's like your foundation and understanding movement better... | ||
| I've been doing Olympic weightlifting since I was 12. So, I mean, I'm going on like 19 years now. | ||
| You just must have fucking dynamic tension. | ||
| I mean, tendon strength, though, from all those years of fucking doing shit like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I would imagine. | ||
| I'm sure there's part of it of like my body is adapted to it. | ||
| Yeah, it has to be, right? | ||
| Doing like full squat snatches, clean and jerks, squats, everything. | ||
| Like, I've been doing this for 19 years. | ||
| My knees are fucking great. | ||
| Knock on wood. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| We'll see. | ||
| But thankfully, when I started Olympic weightlifting, my coach was just hammered. | ||
| Technique, technique, technique. | ||
| And when you're 12, 13, you're full of piss and vinegar. | ||
| You want to load up that barbell. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| Like, yo, I want to go hard. | ||
| I want to impress the girls in the gym. | ||
| Let me put on some big plates. | ||
| And he's like, nope. | ||
| Keep lifting that broomstick, buddy. | ||
| Well, you should thank that guy. | ||
| Oh, I have. | ||
| Many times over. | ||
| It's so hard to rein kids in. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, it can't be fun for him to just constantly take the weight off that bar. | ||
| Your technique wasn't perfect. | ||
| Do it again. | ||
| So do you think that from now on you'll only be doing things athletic? | ||
| Or do you think you'll try to do other stuff as well, like in terms of your future? | ||
| I think the natural progression is to do something in the CrossFit space. | ||
| So, you know, like the Sports Nutrition Company. | ||
| We're starting out with the basic supplements and nutrition guides, stuff like that. | ||
| But, you know, I'm passionate about coffee. | ||
| I would love to get something in the coffee world. | ||
| It has nothing to do with CrossFit, it's just I've been passionate about espresso and all these different beans. | ||
| Once you start learning about it, It's a whole different world that you had no idea existed. | ||
| Like, you got a nice little machine back there. | ||
| Yeah, that machine's always fucking up, though, man. | ||
| The coffee's great, though. | ||
| Have some of this. | ||
| This is Black Rifle. | ||
| Black Rifle coffee's great shit. | ||
| But the machine sucks. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Yeah, it's supposed to be really good, but it keeps breaking. | ||
| You're not cleaning it, or what? | ||
| Yeah, we clean it. | ||
| It gets cleaned. | ||
| It just breaks. | ||
| Tricky, right? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, that machine, most people will give their left arm to have that in their house. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Oh, yeah, that's a nice one. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Okay. | |
| Yeah, a little Linnea Mini. | ||
| Black Rifle just gave it to us. | ||
| We didn't even ask for it. | ||
| I didn't even know it was coming. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, that is like... | ||
| In terms of home machines, that's like cream of the crop right there. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, okay. | |
| Well, Evan Hafer, the owner of Black Rifle, he's like a super coffee nerd. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, I'm good buddies with Evan. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, all right. | |
| There you go. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When we were down here, I was down in Austin for like... | ||
| All of last December. | ||
| And, like, tried lining up a trip with him. | ||
| I mean, a whole crazy story. | ||
| Like, anytime I come to Texas, like, I'll hit up Matt. | ||
| So last year I was in Texas. | ||
| I stayed with Matt. | ||
| And then this year I was like, I don't want to be a nuisance to Matt every time I'm in Texas. | ||
| Stay with him. | ||
| So I hit up Evan. | ||
| I'm like, yo, going to be in town. | ||
| Can I crash with you? | ||
| He's like, absolutely. | ||
| Come on by. | ||
| And then, like, talking to another buddy. | ||
| And he was like, what do you mean you're staying with Evan? | ||
| He lives in Utah. | ||
| I was like, he said I could stay at his house. | ||
| And I ended up staying out at this ranch that... | ||
| Yeah, he's got a ranch out here. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, that place is the creepiest fucking place I've ever been. | ||
| Is it? | ||
| Dude, it's like 27 bedrooms. | ||
| It was built in the 60s, I think they said. | ||
| And nothing has changed. | ||
| Same furniture. | ||
| You know, that's where all the NASA astronauts used to go to? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Like, we're walking around this... | ||
| It looks like a motel out on like a couple thousand acres. | ||
| And I was like, where the fuck are we right now? | ||
| So I got out there. | ||
| So we thought we were going to Evan's house because he never told, he's like, you can stay at my house. | ||
| Here's the address for my house. | ||
| Well, it is a house and he does own it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He's out here sometimes. | ||
| And so then he's like, oh, I'm not there. | ||
| I'm like, well, dude, I didn't come out here to stay at like a cool retreat. | ||
| I came out here to see you. | ||
| Like, I don't give a fuck about this place. | ||
| And so we get there. | ||
| We pulled in at like 10 or 11 p.m. | ||
| There's no lights. | ||
| You can't see anything. | ||
| And it's like, I mean, what is it, like 14,000 square feet, this place? | ||
| And the dude is like giving us a tour. | ||
| And he's just, like, there's wings of the house. | ||
| I'm getting lost in this place. | ||
| And then he just leaves, and it's just Sammy and I in this house. | ||
| And I'm like, this is the creepiest fucking place I've ever been. | ||
| Because there's, like, all the mounted heads on the wall from all the animals. | ||
| And, like, this place is a time warp into 1960s. | ||
| Does it have photos of the astronauts in the vault? | ||
| Yeah, everywhere. | ||
| Yeah, so like, you're like, am I in a museum right now? | ||
| Like, what is this? | ||
| And then we were the only ones there. | ||
| No one else in Black Rifle was there. | ||
| So we're just hanging out and Sam, I was like, hey, you good? | ||
| And she's like putting on a brave face. | ||
| Like, yeah, I'm good. | ||
| I'm like, yo, this place creeps me the fuck out. | ||
| I called up Matt the next morning. | ||
| I was like, yo, we're coming over. | ||
| That's funny. | ||
| Yeah, that's a big hunting ranch. | ||
| They take a lot of guys out there hunting. | ||
| But, you know, I wonder how many animals they're going to have out there now because Texas' deep freeze killed so many animals. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| I mean, thousands of animals. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Crazy. | |
| I was reading an article about a ranch that lost 2,000 Axis deer. | ||
| They froze to death. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, a lot of the ranches out here lost all of their Axis deer. | ||
| I've kind of cracked up. | ||
| Living in Tennessee for the last couple years, coming from Vermont, Tennessee, if they were expecting frost the next morning, they would cancel school. | ||
| And coming from Vermont, I'm like, what are you talking about? | ||
| I remember being at the bus stop with snow drifts taller than me and you just shiver and you're miserable. | ||
| And then it's like, once you realize, oh, they don't have plows, they don't have roads, none of the houses are equipped for this, nothing. | ||
| And then you even go further south. | ||
| I remember seeing Tim Kennedy, all his pipes froze. | ||
| In Vermont, it's like, no, the houses are built to withstand winter. | ||
| Down here, it's like, no, winter doesn't exist. | ||
| Well, what we had was super unusual. | ||
| Once every 120 years, they were saying, it gets that kind of freeze. | ||
| It was strange. | ||
| Driving around was strange. | ||
| I grew up in Boston, so I'm used to driving in the snow. | ||
| Snow tires. | ||
| Yeah, I just know how to drive and that kind of shit. | ||
| And I have a Toyota Land Cruiser. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So it's four-wheel drive. | ||
| I know how to drive and that stuff, and it handles it well. | ||
| But I was watching people slide into curbs and just didn't know what to do. | ||
| They'd lived in Texas their whole life, never even been in snow. | ||
| Yeah, I remember being down in somewhere in Texas a couple years ago, and they got like one-inch skiff of snow. | ||
| And it was like the towns were shut down for like three days. | ||
| And I'm sitting there like as a Vermonter like... | ||
| Because Vermonters laugh at the snow that they get in Boston. | ||
| I'm like, throw some chains on your tires and get out there, you know? | ||
| Nobody has chains. | ||
| Nobody has plows. | ||
| Nobody has chains. | ||
| Yeah, like the towns don't own a salt truck. | ||
| That's foreign. | ||
| No, no plows, no salt trucks. | ||
| There's some plows, apparently, up in the northwest of the state. | ||
| You can get some plows. | ||
| Because they get fairly regular snow up there, so they have plows. | ||
| So they try to use some of those. | ||
| It's just a wild world of like... | ||
| Winter doesn't exist. | ||
| Well, what's wild is a week and a half later, it was 80 degrees. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's wild. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, like Vermont gets those weather swings of like... | ||
| Do you get more now up there because of global warming? | ||
| Is global warming real? | ||
| Allegedly. | ||
| If you talk to the liberals. | ||
| I've heard terrible things. | ||
| But I remember walking around college campus, and it's just sub-zero for so long, and it's the first 40-degree day. | ||
| And everyone's walking around in shorts and t-shirts, just like, this is great! | ||
| I know, right? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I remember that about Boston, too. | ||
| But I think there's something real good in growing up like that. | ||
| Because it makes you appreciate warm weather. | ||
| Living in California, everybody's spoiled. | ||
| It's like they won the weather lottery. | ||
| So they got all this money and they don't appreciate it and they just spend it like crazy. | ||
| No, it's like they inherited the weather money. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's what it's like. | ||
| Because they don't understand. | ||
| If you grow up in a place like Vermont, those winters are ruthless. | ||
| And so when spring rolls around, the birds are chirping, the sun's out, you're like... | ||
| Oh, this is great. | ||
| You don't waste a nice day. | ||
| Yes, yes, yes. | ||
| If it's sunny out, especially early spring, like mud season, it's like you're out hiking, you're out taking advantage. | ||
| I think that's good for people. | ||
| I think it's really good for people to grow up like that. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| In particular. | ||
| As you get older, I understand when people move to Florida, they're like, fuck this. | ||
| I mean, I remember growing up, and I always said, like, oh, I'll move south. | ||
| Like, I have no connection to Vermont. | ||
| I don't care, any of this. | ||
| And then it was like, we left, we moved down to Tennessee, and we were gone maybe a year, and we went up to visit. | ||
| And I remember just driving and being like, shit, I miss this. | ||
| Like, I miss the trees. | ||
| Like, the whole state looks like a park. | ||
| Yeah, it does. | ||
| It's incredible. | ||
| And I was like, shit. | ||
| It's beautiful. | ||
| This is home. | ||
| You know, Bernie Sanders and I were talking about this, and he's like, it keeps people from moving up there. | ||
| That's the thing, is that the cold weather, the winter, the snow and everything, the good thing about it is it keeps... | ||
| There's a very low population up there. | ||
| How many people live in Vermont? | ||
| What is it? | ||
| Let's guess. | ||
| Let's guess. | ||
| In the state, half a million? | ||
| 300,000? | ||
| Yeah, that sounds about right. | ||
| I think it's about 300. Yeah, I mean, it's not cheap. | ||
| It's a million? | ||
| 600? | ||
| 600? | ||
| 623,000. | ||
| Really? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Huh. | |
| I was way off. | ||
| Yeah, but it is so pretty up there. | ||
| So gorgeous, and it's like, growing up there... | ||
| Like, you don't realize how health conscious everyone is. | ||
| Like, doing sports and activities is normal. | ||
| And then, like, you go down to where it's like people live off Mountain Dew. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And you're like, holy shit. | ||
| Isn't that interesting? | ||
| A lot of times that's based around university towns. | ||
| Because Vermont is also a university. | ||
| Burlington in particular, right? | ||
| Yeah, a bunch of colleges there. | ||
| Yeah, that's the same thing with Boulder, Colorado. | ||
| You know, Boulder, Colorado is a university town as well, and people are super active. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I don't know if it's an education thing, if they're more intelligent, or if they're just, you know, kids that did sports and stuff. | ||
| I think it probably just has a lot to do with the natural landscape, too. | ||
| That, too, yeah. | ||
| I know, like, when I was training, it was like... | ||
| Most gyms, on the weekend, they're packed. | ||
| Vermont, empty. | ||
| Really? | ||
| During the summer, they're out mountain biking because all the ski hills open up for mountain bikes. | ||
| And then during the winter, everyone's out skiing. | ||
| That's what people do for entertainment. | ||
| They're being physically active. | ||
| And then moving down... | ||
| You take a walk through a southern Walmart and it's like, oh my god. | ||
| Guys, stop. | ||
| Not good. | ||
| Why are you putting this in your body? | ||
| Yeah, well, there's some weird stereotypes about people from the South, too, about them being dumb. | ||
| And a lot of that, unfortunately, comes from hookworm. | ||
| I don't know if you know that. | ||
| Yeah, it's crazy. | ||
| For the longest time, the people that lived in the Deep South in particular, I mean, the stereotype of Southerners was always these slack-jawed people that were slow-minded. | ||
| There was an epidemic of hookworm in the South where people would walk around barefoot, they'd get these parasites that would get into their body, and they would radically affect cognitive function. | ||
| And it legitimately made them exhausted and stupid. | ||
| It's hookworm. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Who told us that? | ||
| That seems like an outrageous rumor that just got traction. | ||
| No, it's real. | ||
| It was more than half the population was infected by hookworm at one point in time. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Until they realized what was going on. | ||
| And so there was this stereotype about really stupid people from the Deep South, and that is entirely where it came from. | ||
| These poor people were infected by a terrible parasite that was robbing them of their energy. | ||
| If over half the population is doing that, it's going to stick. | ||
| Pull something up on that, on cookware. | ||
| It's really crazy. | ||
| When you find out about it and you realize that these people, like no one had any idea what was going on. | ||
| And they just thought, guys, people down here are fucking stupid. | ||
| Meanwhile, you're just seeing these poor folks are just infected by this parasite. | ||
| More than half the population. | ||
| Jesus. | ||
| Yeah, it's nuts. | ||
| Because it's real common for the kids to be walking around How a worm gave the South a bad name. | ||
| Hookworms once sapped the American South of its health, yet very few realize they continue to affect that. | ||
| They continue to afflict millions. | ||
| That's the worm, that creepy little fucking disgusting worm. | ||
| Oh, that's disgusting worm. | ||
| For more than three centuries, a plague of unshakable lethargy blanketed the American South. | ||
| It began with a ground itch, a prickly tingling in the tender webs between the toes, which was soon followed by a dry cough. | ||
| Weeks later, victims succumbed to an insatiable exhaustion and an impenetrable haziness of the mind that some called stupidity. | ||
| Adults neglected their fields and children grew pale and listless. | ||
| Victims developed grossly distended bellies and angel wings, emaciated shoulder blades accentuated by hunching, all gazed out dully from sunken sockets with a telltale fish-eyed stare. | ||
| I mean, think about any movie that's making fun of deep South Southerners. | ||
| That description is it. | ||
| It's fucking nuts, man. | ||
| Yeah, and the culprit behind the germ of laziness, as the South's affliction was sometimes called, was, how do you say that, Nicator Americanis, the American murderer, better known today as Hookworm. | ||
| Millions of those blood-sucking parasites lived, fed, multiplied, and died within the guts of up to 40% of the population, stretching from southeastern Texas to West Virginia. | ||
| Hookworms stymied development throughout the region and bred stereotypes about lazy, moronic southerners. | ||
| Isn't that nuts? | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Without seeing it in writing, you'd hear that rumor and just be like, get the fuck out of here. | ||
| Yeah, you're just making some shit up. | ||
| That isn't real. | ||
| I wish I remember who told us. | ||
| I was looking for the clip about it on the podcast. | ||
| Tell us who it was. | ||
| I forget who told us. | ||
| The first story I found was Michael Yeo last year, but it seems like we... | ||
| I think we were telling him that. | ||
| I think I was telling him that. | ||
| Somebody told me, and I remember like, what? | ||
| It might have been Rhonda Patrick. | ||
| I don't remember. | ||
| But yeah, that's what happened, man. | ||
| These poor people. | ||
| So you go down there and you see them drinking Mountain Dew and being stupid. | ||
| That's where all that shit came from. | ||
| And then those people, because it took a long time for them, for fucking centuries, people were living like this. | ||
| Yeah, for them to figure it out. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Peter Hotez. | |
| Ah, there we go. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| He's brilliant. | ||
| He's a doctor. | ||
| And he's actually a specialist in infectious diseases. | ||
| He's another one who told me that people that live in jungle climates, like in southern, really hot climates, almost all of them are infected by parasites. | ||
| Because they just live with parasites. | ||
| That's scary. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Fucking nuts. | ||
| We're over here worried about this one, and I'm sure someone else over there is just like, you're scared of what? | ||
| Yeah, you're scared of what? | ||
| A little cough? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I didn't even get a cough. | ||
| I just lost my taste and smell. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| I worked out every day. | ||
| I was perfectly fine. | ||
| Just couldn't taste anything. | ||
| Yeah, Jamie had a little sinus infection. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It was super mild. | ||
| I took the precautions of like, alright, I'm going to quarantine and keep to myself. | ||
| But it worked out every day. | ||
| Perfectly fine. | ||
| Energy was fine. | ||
| Yeah, well, that's the type of person, you're the type of person that doesn't get hit with it, you know, because you're fit. | ||
| But, you know, we've had some problems with UFC fighters, because these fucking guys trained so goddamn hard, and they were training with COVID, and they kept getting deeper and deeper into their system, because their immune system was breaking down. | ||
| Because there's a difference between just working out and training for a fight. | ||
| And when these guys are training for a fight, they're like, you know, they're literally breaking their body down to almost nothing and then trying to build it back up. | ||
| Yeah, and I have to assume, like, if there's a virus in the air, it's like the amount of volume that is moving from their lungs. | ||
| When you're breathing heavy like that, and it's like... | ||
| People try to compare of like, oh yeah, I go to the gym and I'll do cardio. | ||
| It's like, no, no, no. | ||
| You don't do that. | ||
| It's like where you're gasping. | ||
| You're out there speed walking, bro. | ||
| Exactly, right, man? | ||
| Crushing six-minute miles. | ||
| Yeah, well, the other thing is these guys are literally breathing in each other's mouths because they're training together. | ||
| Such close proximity. | ||
| They're wrestling and they're doing jiu-jitsu and they're on top of each other or they're sparring, kickboxing, they're clinching. | ||
| I mean, they're infecting each other. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When it gets in the gym, it usually just burns right through the whole gym. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Yeah. | ||
| That's fucking crazy. | ||
| But the thing about it is in these gyms, the vast majority of the people that are smart and know that they have it, it doesn't become a big deal at all. | ||
| It's a big deal. | ||
| One of the things they found out recently was 78% of the people that were hospitalized in America with COVID were overweight. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| 78%. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| It just breaks your immune system. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, your body is dealing with so much... | ||
| So much other shit before that gets there, and then it's not working optimally. | ||
| Yeah, out of the people that died from COVID, 94% of them had something else going on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| 94% of them had an average of 2.6 comorbidity factors. | ||
| I remember seeing... | ||
| It was like... | ||
| Whatever the acronym is for whatever the company that's putting out all these stats. | ||
| And I was like, oh, only 6% of the deaths that were reported. | ||
| I think it was the CDC. Yeah, there it is. | ||
| Only 6% just had COVID. That's crazy. | ||
| It's crazy. | ||
| And it's like, you just scared the shit out of so many people. | ||
| Well, so many people needed the shit scared out of them, but what drives me crazy is they didn't do anything other than wait for a vaccine. | ||
| So many people stayed fat, stayed lazy, keep eating shit. | ||
| And I've talked to people like that, and I sat across from them, and they're like, can't wait for the vaccine. | ||
| I'm like, well, you know, you could be out there fucking drinking water. | ||
| How about work out, you slob? | ||
| Jesus Christ, you're just waiting for someone to inject you with a vaccine? | ||
| I mean, we were talking about this when I first got here, of like... | ||
| I mean, for me, I'm like, I don't buy the first generation of a phone, a car, nothing. | ||
| I'm like, no, you go work out the kinks. | ||
| You figure out what's wrong with that shit. | ||
| Now it's like a vaccine comes out. | ||
| I'm like, no, I'm not sticking that in me. | ||
| I'm like, you go work out the kinks. | ||
| I understand why people want people to take the vaccine. | ||
| I understand that they want people to achieve herd immunity. | ||
| But what I don't understand is the lack of acknowledgement that this disease is not what we thought it was this time last year. | ||
| It's not nearly as deadly. | ||
| And for people that are healthy, it's not a big deal. | ||
| That's a horrible thing to say if you hear it and someone you love died. | ||
| And I'm sorry. | ||
| But it's true. | ||
| Jamie got it. | ||
| He was sick for a day. | ||
| I didn't even get it. | ||
| My whole family got it and I didn't get it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like you don't test positive for the antibodies or anything? | ||
| Dude, I can test it every day. | ||
| I was testing twice a day. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's not that thing that we were worried about. | ||
| The thing that we were worried about was going to kill a giant percentage of the population. | ||
| You hear when people say, it's killed half a million Americans. | ||
| Half a million Americans have died with COVID. Yeah, and it's a tragedy. | ||
| But what's even more of a tragedy is that there's not an emphasis on keeping people healthy. | ||
| The emphasis is only on social distance, wear three masks, wait for a vaccine. | ||
| Dude, I was in the airport not long ago and saw someone wearing two masks. | ||
| I was like, what the fuck are you doing? | ||
| A lot of people wearing two masks. | ||
| They're asking people to wear two masks in California. | ||
| That's a thing. | ||
| The same guy that the fucking governor of California is literally asking... | ||
| This is the guy that closed down outdoor dining with no data at all. | ||
| There's no data that says any outdoor dining is spreading COVID. Not only that, he got busted eating indoors with no mask. | ||
| How is that not enough? | ||
| He just implemented the rule of you cannot eat at a restaurant. | ||
| And then he immediately is at a restaurant. | ||
| With no mask on. | ||
| That is infuriating. | ||
| He was telling people to put a mask on in between bites of food. | ||
| And he wasn't doing it. | ||
| And now, recently, he's telling people to wear two masks. | ||
| And not only that, the cases are dropping, the deaths are dropping, the people that die from COVID, because they do have much better treatments and much better understanding of what to do. | ||
| One of the things they used to do initially was put people on ventilators immediately. | ||
| And then they realized in New York City that 80% of the people they put on ventilators died. | ||
| Yeah, it's not good. | ||
| Ventilators, in that particular situation, ventilators are not good. | ||
| Because ventilators, apparently, they blow people's lungs out. | ||
| People were having a problem with their lungs getting fucked up from the ventilators. | ||
| And then also, my friend Michael Yeo, who got it, his doctor was smart and didn't put him on a ventilator, but he said to him, Hey, if I put you on this ventilator, you're going to die. | ||
| Because your lungs are going to stop working. | ||
| Your lungs are going to want this machine to work for you. | ||
| Damn. | ||
| Yeah, like, I know nothing about any of the medical backside of this shit. | ||
| All I knew was, like, when it first happened, for the World Championships at CrossFit, like, we couldn't compete at the Games unless we had a negative COVID test. | ||
| So I just stayed home for months. | ||
| I trained at home. | ||
| I have a sauna and ice bath in the backyard. | ||
| Massage table in the living room. | ||
| I just stayed home. | ||
| How did you get massaged? | ||
| Did you worry about getting COVID from your masseuse? | ||
| Just trying to limit exposure. | ||
| The masseuse I was using has a couple kids that are in school. | ||
| And it's like, alright, well, I'm just going to try to cut that out for now. | ||
| But Sammy would do a lot of my body work on me. | ||
| Where do you think you got it from? | ||
| Oh, when I did get it last December? | ||
| Oh, I mean, I was at a hunt camp with like 17 people and none of us cared. | ||
| It was like the group chat comes out like three days later. | ||
| It was in December? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So you got it real early. | ||
| Yeah, like over... | ||
| Yeah, it was like this last Christmas. | ||
| Oh, this last Christmas? | ||
| Yeah, like three or four months ago. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| So you were over it, and you're like, fuck it, I'm just going to act on it. | ||
| Yeah, so I was super cautious leading into that competition, and then as soon as I got the negative test, I was like, okay, cool. | ||
| I'm still being cautious when I meet someone that they're not as healthy enough. | ||
| As they could be. | ||
| But for me, I don't give a fuck. | ||
| I'm like, alright, cool. | ||
| Got it. | ||
| Lost my taste. | ||
| Lost my smell. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That sucks. | |
| For how long did you lose your taste and smell? | ||
| It was enough time that I got concerned that if it was ever coming back. | ||
| I think it was probably like three weeks. | ||
| Zero taste. | ||
| Like, could not tell the difference between coffee and water. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| It was weird. | ||
| How weird is that? | ||
| It was so weird. | ||
| How'd you know you were getting it back? | ||
| Smell a fart or something? | ||
| No, I think it was just my coffee in the morning. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| I was still drinking coffee just because, like... | ||
| Like, I wanted the caffeine. | ||
| Right. | ||
| But I think I was like, I think I took a sip and I looked at Sam like, oh shit. | ||
| I think I can taste it a little bit. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Out of nowhere. | |
| I think I can taste it a little bit. | ||
| So I was like, okay, it's coming back. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That's a huge relief. | |
| What a weird side effect, you know? | ||
| Real prevalent. | ||
| It was... | ||
| I can't even describe it. | ||
| And, you know, like, you can't smell anything. | ||
| So, like, Sammy would look at me and be like, hey, like, you should shower. | ||
| I'm like, the fuck you mean? | ||
| She's like, you're starting to smell a little bit. | ||
| I'm like, oh... | ||
| Whoopsies. | ||
| Sorry, sweetheart. | ||
| That's hilarious. | ||
| Yeah, it's a little... | ||
| I understand people wanting to be cautious. | ||
| I understand people wanting others to take precautions, and I agree with all that. | ||
| We all should, and that's one of the reasons why I test every day. | ||
| And also one of the reasons why I heavily supplement. | ||
| I mean, I take everything. | ||
| Quercetin, and fucking zinc, and high levels of vitamin D, and C, and K2, and fucking... | ||
| Fish oil and everything and I'm on testosterone and I'm taking a lot of shit. | ||
| You're a walk-in pharmacy. | ||
| Yeah, and on top of that I'm going into the fucking sauna every day at 185 degrees for 25 minutes and then on top of that I'm doing cold showers. | ||
| Yeah, I'm just My body's... | ||
| And I know when things are weird. | ||
| And when people in my house got sick, I had two days where my workouts were weird. | ||
| Two days where I was like, hmm, I feel a little shitty today. | ||
| So I was just going to go through the motions. | ||
| When you're so in tune with it, and then it's like there's just like a grain of sand in the gear, and you're like, something's not right. | ||
| Exactly. | ||
| Something's not right. | ||
| But what frustrates me is the concept that a lot of people who don't take care of themselves were pushing, which is that you can't do anything. | ||
| About this. | ||
| Like your immune system is not going to help you. | ||
| Nothing's going to help you. | ||
| Which is nonsense. | ||
| Because we all know that some people get it and some people don't. | ||
| Right? | ||
| Some people are around. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Some people get it and they get over it quickly. | ||
| Some people don't. | ||
| Well, what is that? | ||
| Well, that's your immune system. | ||
| That's 100% your immune system. | ||
| Some people get it and it's a terrible experience. | ||
| Some people get it and it's very mild and almost nothing. | ||
| What is that? | ||
| That's your immune system. | ||
| And for some people, it's not their fault. | ||
| They have issues. | ||
| They have diabetes. | ||
| They have all sorts of things and they didn't see it coming and they got sick. | ||
| Not blaming the people who got sick. | ||
| What I'm upset about is this weird narrative that people who don't take care of themselves... | ||
| They push is that whatever you do, you just need to get vaccinated. | ||
| You need this because otherwise you're going to get it and it's going to kill you. | ||
| It's going to fuck you up. | ||
| But it's not. | ||
| I don't understand. | ||
| It's not true. | ||
| I understand if you want to quarantine, if you want to wear two, three masks, go for it. | ||
| Do whatever floats your boat. | ||
| Do whatever you want. | ||
| Dude, I haven't seen my parents in a year. | ||
| Really? | ||
| My parents are super cautious about it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Oh, shit. | |
| Yeah, they were living in Phoenix. | ||
| They were locked down down there, and they didn't go near anybody. | ||
| They'd get their groceries delivered. | ||
| It was so rough. | ||
| It was rough. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, I mean, what am I going to do? | ||
| Say, don't live like that? | ||
| But they started this approach... | ||
| When we all thought, you know, way back in February of last year, we thought that this was going to kill 10% of the population. | ||
| Now I know my fucking neighbor, he's 80. He was sick for four days. | ||
| Got some IV vitamins and he said about four days later he started feeling good. | ||
| He's 80. Damn. | ||
| He's 80. Yeah. | ||
| I don't understand, like... | ||
| If I don't care, and I'm not hurting anyone else, what's going on? | ||
| Well, people, they get angry at you. | ||
| They, like, health shame you. | ||
| I get it. | ||
| I get where they're coming from. | ||
| I do understand. | ||
| And I feel terrible for someone who has neglected their health, and then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, you're forcing a situation like, hey, I know you didn't plan for this, but now here's something that's going to radically test your immune system, and if you're not ready, you could die. | ||
| It's not fair. | ||
| It's not fair for them because they were operating under this assumption that, hey, I can eat fucking cheeseburgers and drink shakes and not exercise ever and not take vitamins ever and I'll be okay. | ||
| Because for the most part, you could be okay. | ||
| And then all of a sudden something comes along that tests you. | ||
| I mean, like, what's your definition of okay? | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, it's not how you want to be or how I want to be. | ||
| No. | ||
| Dude, like, I... In my off-season, I take a month of like, I'm not training, I'm not watching my diet, nothing. | ||
| Just like you have a fuck-off month? | ||
| Like, incredibly. | ||
| Do you love it? | ||
| I love it for like a week. | ||
| But you only love it because you work so hard. | ||
| I only love it because I know what's around the corner. | ||
| I know I'm getting back into it. | ||
| So it's like even during my training week, I have one day off. | ||
| One complete day. | ||
| I don't get off the couch. | ||
| I wake up, have my coffee, and I lay on the couch, and I'm like, I'm not doing shit. | ||
| Just watch TV and chill? | ||
| Just watch Netflix all day. | ||
| When I know I'm training the very next day, I know what I'm doing in 24 hours. | ||
| I'm going to be killing myself in the gym, so I want to do as little as possible right here. | ||
| If I know I have a week off after competition, there's no fucking way I'm sitting on a couch for that long. | ||
| I'm like, no, I feel like I'm wasting. | ||
| I'm wasting my potential. | ||
| I'm wasting my day. | ||
| I'm wasting my life. | ||
| I'm not progressing in any way. | ||
| So it's the same as like after competition, after the big one, I take a month off minimum. | ||
| And it's like I eat junk food, and for the first couple days it's like, oh, this is a treat, this is nice. | ||
| Dude, after like six days, seven days, when you start getting a bit of a jiggle, and you feel slow, you're tired, and you're like, dude, fuck this. | ||
| Do you exercise at all during that time off? | ||
| None. | ||
| Nothing? | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| Not even go on walks? | ||
| No. | ||
| Fuck no. | ||
| Like, when I say I take time, I don't stretch, I don't roll out, I don't do anything. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| What is it like the first day back after that? | ||
| Rough. | ||
| Every year. | ||
| The first week back. | ||
| The first week back, I'll get on the rower because I'm so familiar with that. | ||
| I know how to suffer on that rower or on a bike or something. | ||
| Every year, I'll get back on. | ||
| I'll pull some 500s with built-in rest, whatever. | ||
| I went too far this year. | ||
| I went too far to the dark side and I lost all my fitness because I'm doing these workouts that are like a warm-up for me a month ago. | ||
| And then it's like, I stop halfway through the workout, and I'm just hurting, and I'm like, there's no way I can come back from this. | ||
| I'm fucked. | ||
| And then it's like, you just keep coming back day after day and just chipping away at that block and getting your fitness back bit by bit. | ||
| Do you ever say to yourself when you do chip yourself back and you are struggling, do you ever say, next time I'm not doing this? | ||
| Every year. | ||
| Every year I'm like next time when I take my month off it's like every other day I'll go for like a 10 minute jog or like do some squats with like 135 pounds something super easy but like just to not let myself backpedal this much so I have to dig myself out of this hole but on the other side it's like I enjoy doing that because if you're just operating up here all the time By the end of my career, | ||
| I'm going for like one pound PRs. | ||
| I'm going for one second PRs. | ||
| Well, it's not very gratifying when you kill yourself for a year and then you put on two and a half pounds. | ||
| So it's like, no, I'll let myself slide all the way back until I'm like this lump on the couch that I just hate. | ||
| And it's like, I want to look forward to eating healthy. | ||
| I want to look forward to having a bedtime. | ||
| Like staying up until 2 a.m. | ||
| watching Netflix. | ||
| I can do that all day long. | ||
| Like just... | ||
| How long does it take before you're back 100%? | ||
| A couple weeks. | ||
| Two weeks. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, like usually, like, so the competition season starts with the open, like the online competition, and it's one workout per week. | ||
| I'll usually start doing cardio, like hammering cardio stuff, like a week or two ahead, but I won't do a CrossFit workout until, like, usually the first workout that's announced. | ||
| And then over that five weeks, like the first week is usually my lowest score. | ||
| The second week is my second lowest score. | ||
| And then usually by week four or five, I can grab a worldwide win. | ||
| But it's like, it comes back quickly. | ||
| It sucks. | ||
| It's painful. | ||
| It hurts a lot. | ||
| But it's like, you just keep coming back day after day, hammering an air bike or a rower. | ||
| And then like doing the recovery work too. | ||
| Because it doesn't matter what movement I do. | ||
| I'm going to be so crippling sore the next day. | ||
| Like my back squat, like in season I'm squatting just shy of 500 pounds. | ||
| I can do sets of 10 with 135 and I'll be walking peg-legged for like two days. | ||
| Wow. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Yeah, so I'm doing sauna sessions, ice bath sessions, all that stuff. | ||
| What is your protocol for sauna and ice bath? | ||
| I usually do like 15 minutes in the sauna. | ||
| It'll vary depending on what the temperature is outside, but usually like 190-200 degrees, I'll try to squeak out 15 minutes. | ||
| Are you doing it in one of those barrel outside saunas? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Do you like that? | ||
| I love that thing. | ||
| It's like one of the best purchases. | ||
| Saunas are awesome, aren't they? | ||
| I'll never go back to not having a sauna. | ||
| Daniel Cormier uses a sauna outside. | ||
| He's got a barrel sauna outside in his backyard and he uses it at night when it's dark out. | ||
| Yeah, me too. | ||
| He says it's so creepy. | ||
| He goes, you just got this one little window that you're looking for. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's a super thin door. | ||
| I think it's listed as a four-person, but it's like... | ||
| Come on. | ||
| If you're in there with one other person, you better be comfortable with that person. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Because you're close. | ||
| But, I mean, it gets... | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's DC's sauna. | |
| Yeah, there's DC's sauna. | ||
| Yeah, so mine's even... | ||
| He says it gets dark out there. | ||
| He goes, his wife shut off the light of the porch. | ||
| He has to open the door. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What the fuck are you doing? | |
| Turn that light back on. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| So mine's identical to that, but it's even shorter. | ||
| So it's like 6 feet. | ||
| That looks like an 8 foot one. | ||
| Those are so awesome though. | ||
| I can't recommend saunas enough. | ||
| I have one inside the house. | ||
| And then right next to it, I have just a deep freeze in one of those plastic garden sheds. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's a deep freeze, and I just ran caulking around all the seams, filled it up with water, put a thermostat in there, like an auto. | ||
| So would you keep it at, like 33 or 34 or something like that? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| I found when I was putting it down that low, it would ice over, and it was just working the engine a lot. | ||
| It was working the compressor. | ||
| So I think I keep it at 38. I think it cuts off at 37 and it'll kick on at like 41 or something. | ||
| It's fucking cold. | ||
| And how long are you doing that? | ||
| Depending on what my training looks like. | ||
| But usually between 3 and 5 minutes. | ||
| And I'll go back and forth between the sauna and ice bath like 3 times. | ||
| In the middle of the winter, it was 35 degrees out, and I would just get in my pool because my pool doesn't have a heater. | ||
| And I fucked up once, and I got in there for too long. | ||
| I was in there for like seven minutes, somewhere around there, and I had a hard time getting out. | ||
| I was like, oh shit, this is a problem. | ||
| My legs weren't working. | ||
| I had a friend over training, and we were going back and forth, and she comes in, and her lips are blue. | ||
| And I was like, were you in the ice bath this whole time? | ||
| She's like, yeah, like 10 minutes. | ||
| I'm like, oh my god, no. | ||
| She could die! | ||
| I'm like, your lips are blue and she was going all the way in. | ||
| Oh no! | ||
| Yeah, so like, if I'm... | ||
| In the middle of a training week, I'll always end on hot. | ||
| So I'll do the ice bath and finish on the hot. | ||
| If I'm going into a rest day, I just full-fledged, right up to the neck, end on cold. | ||
| I feel amazing, but I'm always afraid that my muscles are tense. | ||
| So I'll end on cold if I'm going into a rest day. | ||
| So you're worried that, like, climbing out, you could pull something or something? | ||
| I mean, just, like, if the next day I'm going into training, like, if things are still tight, like, I want to have some time to, like, loosen back up before I get into another training session. | ||
| So do you do, like, 15, 3, 15, 3, back and forth? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| How many times do you do it? | ||
| Usually two or three. | ||
| Like, if I'm doing, like, three sauna sits, I'll do, like, I mean... | ||
| Once you're coming out of the ice bath, it's amazing because you can have that sauna up at 200 plus and you don't feel shit. | ||
| You're just getting the nice tinglys from all the blood starting to flow again. | ||
| But yeah, I'll usually do minimum 30 minutes of intervals in the sauna. | ||
| It really is amazing how effective that is to do those things. | ||
| I remember reading the stats of you sleep better after a sauna if you do it at night, and then it boosts your natural HGH. And I was like, I'm sold. | ||
| Anything to help that? | ||
| Well, they did a study out of Norway that Dr. Rhonda Patrick told me about. | ||
| They did this study where they showed that four times a day, I think the protocol was 170 degrees for 20 minutes, and They got a 40% decrease of all-cause mortality, meaning 40% decrease in heart attacks, strokes, cancer, because of the amount of heat shock proteins your body generates. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Not a big deal, but I think it's Finland, not Norway. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Finland. | ||
| I'll remember that now. | ||
| Some icy place where they speak weird. | ||
| Finland. | ||
| So it's just massively healthy for your body. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But, you know, for a lot of folks that don't have one in their house or can't have one in their house, it sucks during COVID because, you know, you can't even go to the gym and use one. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And like when I was in Vermont, like the gym that had one was like stone throw from my house. | ||
| But then when I moved to Tennessee, I was like... | ||
| I don't know where Asana is. | ||
| And there happened to be a sauna store in that town. | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| And it was... | ||
| I remember, like, going in and, like, people, like, poke their head out from the back, like, from offices. | ||
| They're like, can we help you? | ||
| So, yeah, I'm looking for Asana. | ||
| They're like, holy shit. | ||
| We got one. | ||
| They're like, we haven't had a customer in here in years. | ||
| They're like, we do all of our sales online. | ||
| They just sell drugs. | ||
| And so they're... | ||
| They were like, yeah, we're actually closing the store because nobody in this town wants saunas. | ||
| And we do all of our business online. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| So they're like, you want one of our demo models? | ||
| I was like, yep. | ||
| Dude, in the countdown show for this past weekend's UFC, Jan Blachowicz is from Poland, where it's obviously cold as fuck. | ||
| And he just, this is what a savage this guy is. | ||
| He just goes out to the lake and punches a fucking hole in the ice and climbs in there. | ||
| Like a fucking viking. | ||
| It's awesome. | ||
| Once you get used to it, people their first time getting a cold bath, they're freaking out. | ||
| They're tense. | ||
| You see them dip a toe in, they run away. | ||
| Dude, now? | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| You just tell yourself, no, everything's going to be okay. | ||
| Just relax. | ||
| Look at this guy. | ||
| Look how comfortable he looks too, though. | ||
| He's such a savage. | ||
| I fucking love that dude. | ||
| Now that you know about him too, watch some of his fights. | ||
| It's like his bones are made out of rock or something. | ||
| It's weird. | ||
| They're just a different version of a human. | ||
| Yeah, he's a Viking. | ||
| 100%. | ||
| That's old school Viking genes. | ||
| When he hits people, it's different. | ||
| It's like he hits guys and you can see them just like, boom! | ||
| What the fuck? | ||
| I mean, it's so funny. | ||
| Like, so many of the CrossFit competitors are from Iceland. | ||
| Oh, of course. | ||
| And powerlifters from Iceland, too. | ||
| And I know, like, the one that I'm really close with, Katrin, like, every time I see her, give her a big hug, and, like, she goes both hands over. | ||
| She's just, like, got these broad shoulders on her, and it's like, how are we the same thing, you know? | ||
| Like, you're just this different breed of a human. | ||
| How about the Mountain from Game of Thrones? | ||
| He's an Iceland guy, too. | ||
| Have you ever met him? | ||
| No. | ||
| He's so big. | ||
| Dude, I met him and it was like, I felt like my brain short-circuiting because he was so tall and so big. | ||
| You can't comprehend it. | ||
| He's 6'10". | ||
| When I met him, he was 6'10", 440 pounds. | ||
| 6'10", 440? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That's so crazy. | ||
| And through his shirt, you could see his abs. | ||
| And, like, we're in, like, this big circle. | ||
| We're at a dinner. | ||
| And, like, they're going around introducing, like, hey, Thor, this is so-and-so, so-and-so. | ||
| And, like, he's shaking everyone's hand. | ||
| And, like, just shaking this, like, bear claw of a mitt. | ||
| It was, like, how? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then everywhere he goes, he has his father and his grandfather with him. | ||
| He's the shortest of the three. | ||
| Jesus! | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like, his father's like an inch taller, and his grandfather's another inch taller. | ||
|
unidentified
|
It's crazy. | |
| That's Vikings, man! | ||
| I remember meeting him and Brian Shaw, and it's like, you guys are 400 pounds plus. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thor's 440. What the fuck? | |
| Like... | ||
| Yeah, look at him. | ||
| It was dad and his grandfather. | ||
| That's crazy. | ||
| Yeah, last time I was with Thor, I was at a competition, and he was about to go. | ||
| He was competing. | ||
| And so I'm talking to my buddy Rob. | ||
| He just finished the event. | ||
| And so I'm like, alright, Thor's about to go. | ||
| I won't say hi. | ||
| He's getting ready. | ||
| And we're in this little circle of people and Thor's sitting right on the outside and it's just like this tree branch. | ||
| This tree trunk just reached through and just gave me knuckles. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And I was like, sup Thor? | |
| Fucking huge human. | ||
| Did you ever see what he used to look like? | ||
| Before he got giant? | ||
| Before he got thick? | ||
| No. | ||
| He was thin, like a basketball player. | ||
| Same with Brian Shaw. | ||
| You see Brian Shaw's high school basketball photo, and it's like, oh, you're 6'8", and not this wide. | ||
| Like a basketball player. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And then they just... | ||
| Lifted weights. | ||
| Get huge. | ||
| Eat everything. | ||
| Eat lambs. | ||
| Dude. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Those guys' diets are... | ||
| What is that? | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Is that what he used to look like? | ||
| 2006? | ||
| 2009? | ||
| He went trans for a little bit? | ||
| And then 2015? | ||
| I mean, you see him now. | ||
| Like, he's lost... | ||
| I would love to know how much weight he's lost now. | ||
| Oh, has he lost weight? | ||
| Oh, he's way down. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| Because he's doing a boxing match. | ||
| Oh, that's right. | ||
| I think he retired from Strongman, I think. | ||
| Hmm. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Why is he doing a boxing match? | ||
| He had one match. | ||
| Did you see it? | ||
| I watched a little bit of it. | ||
| He fought a tiny guy. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| He fought a guy relatively tiny. | ||
| He's fighting Eddie Hall. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, Eddie Hall's enormous, right? | ||
| Dude, Eddie Hall is such a freak. | ||
| The size of that left thigh. | ||
| That's not little. | ||
| He's still a freak. | ||
| So, how old is Eddie Hall? | ||
| They're both like 30s? | ||
| I wouldn't even know. | ||
| Yeah, I'd say they're probably both mid-30s. | ||
| And so, what makes him want to do that? | ||
| Like, why is he having a boxing match? | ||
| I think they might have a beef from when Eddie competed in Strongman. | ||
| And then Eddie was the first man to ever deadlift 500 kilos. | ||
| And then Thor did 501. And I think they just talked shit. | ||
| So they decided to fight. | ||
| And then I think someone with a big enough prize purse came in and was like, Yo, boys. | ||
| How about this? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's going to be... | ||
| It's going to be a scary fight. | ||
| Eddie is freakishly athletic. | ||
| Well, that might be a problem. | ||
| Watching that man move. | ||
| Boy, look at that face. | ||
| Look at his neck! | ||
| His neck pokes out the back of his head. | ||
| He... | ||
| Last time I saw, he was like 360 pounds, and he had a six-pack. | ||
| Why don't you Google Eddie Hall boxing workout? | ||
| I mean, that's what I was looking at to get to this. | ||
| I want to see if he can strike. | ||
| Here's December. | ||
| The thing is, like, sparring is okay, but I want to see his movements. | ||
| I want to see him hit a pad. | ||
| From someone that doesn't know... | ||
| Okay, that's not good. | ||
| That's not good. | ||
| Right away we're saying we've got a real problem. | ||
| Yeah, this is terrible. | ||
| But if he's fighting someone else that has a very similar skill level, is it bad? | ||
| Yeah, he's very rudimentary, but also you see his body is very stiff. | ||
| I feel like I've seen videos. | ||
| Oh no, this is back in December. | ||
| Okay, this isn't too long ago. | ||
| Yeah, his body is super, super stiff. | ||
| Just the body transformation he's gone through. | ||
| Have you seen when he deadlifted 500 kilos? | ||
| Is this his Thor boxing? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, really? | ||
| So he had a boxing match in 2012. Interesting. | ||
| See, Thor, right away, you can see he's moving a little bit better. | ||
| He's still fucking ridiculously enormous. | ||
| See, the other guy is just more fluid. | ||
| But so much smaller. | ||
| I mean, the guy looks like he's 100 pounds smaller than him easily. | ||
| More than 100. Look. | ||
| Look at the size difference. | ||
| But you can see he's having a hard time moving his body. | ||
| When you put that kind of mass on your body like these guys do, it's just... | ||
| You know what it's like? | ||
| It's like trying to go around the Nurburgring in a drag car. | ||
| Right? | ||
| That's what it's like. | ||
| If you can look up the body transformation he went through when he deadlifted 500 kilos, it looks like someone filled him up with an air hose. | ||
| But it doesn't look like a real human. | ||
| Especially when you know what he looked like before. | ||
| But what I think is scary about Eddie is he's done these other things in the past where he was like, look at that. | ||
| That's him. | ||
| Just the thing is, looking at him sparring there, he's just not moving so good. | ||
| Jesus Christ. | ||
| So now he's 360. I just want to see him hit the pads, though. | ||
| Like, I'm seeing him sparring, and he doesn't look very mobile, and he's doing everything, like where he's dropping his hands real low, and his body looks... | ||
| But the thing about sparring is, it's like you're anticipating getting hit back, so you're tense, and if he's not efficient and fluid, like if he doesn't have good mechanics, then you don't get a total sense of what he can do. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Maybe he can get better. | ||
| When is the match? | ||
| September 21st, it says. | ||
| Oh, that's plenty of time. | ||
| This is three days ago. | ||
| Oh, okay. | ||
| April, May, June, July, August, September. | ||
| We've got six months to prepare. | ||
| Okay, see? | ||
| This is super stiff, man. | ||
| And he's throwing these punches with his arms. | ||
| These are arm punches. | ||
| Almost like he shouldn't even be hitting things. | ||
| No, really. | ||
| Legitimately. | ||
| If you want to train a guy like that... | ||
| He's supposed to have more body rotation? | ||
| 100%. | ||
| You almost would not want him to hit things hard. | ||
| What you would want him to do is have his hands loose. | ||
| And you would want him to just get used to doing this. | ||
| Just get used to moving your whole body as you punch. | ||
| Because right now he's so jacked and he's so big that he's doing this. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He's such a huge human. | |
| For sure, just the mass that he has is going to hinder some motion and some movement. | ||
| But if someone could show him... | ||
| There's guys that were big guys that have fluid technique. | ||
| Here's a perfect example. | ||
| Google Butterbean KOs. | ||
| Oh my god. | ||
| Perfect example. | ||
| I love Butterbean. | ||
| Who doesn't love this fucking guy? | ||
| King of the Three Rounders. | ||
| Butterbean was an enormous guy, but he would flatline people. | ||
| He had good technique for a big guy, and he was fluid. | ||
| Look at the size of him. | ||
| Perfect example, right? | ||
| Fucking enormous. | ||
| I mean, fucking enormous guy. | ||
| But when you watch him throw punches, he turns his shoulders. | ||
| Watch, he throws his right hand. | ||
| He turns his body into it as much as he can with all that fucking mass. | ||
| Look at that. | ||
| There's a perfect example. | ||
| See that left hook he just landed? | ||
| Back that up just a wee bit, please. | ||
| Watch how he tags this guy. | ||
| Boom! | ||
| Right there. | ||
| See? | ||
| He's turning his body into these punches. | ||
| That's the difference. | ||
| He uses his whole body. | ||
| He's still enormous, but as he's punching, he punches through the hips. | ||
| His feet are connected to the floor. | ||
| I mean, he's an efficient puncher. | ||
| And that's what I would tell that guy. | ||
| If you brought that guy to any world-class boxing trainer, you bring him to Virgil Hill or something like that, what they're going to do, the first thing they're going to do is teach the guy how to punch with mechanics. | ||
| I'm just excited to watch what he does. | ||
| When he got into World's Strongest Man, he said his claim. | ||
| He's like, no, it's not an opinion. | ||
| I'm going to win the World's Strongest Man. | ||
| And then he won it in 2017. Is this Thor here? | ||
| See, this is so much better. | ||
| This is so much better. | ||
| See how he's just touching these things? | ||
| You can't hit those things hard, right? | ||
| Because they're just these little flimsy little sticks. | ||
| So what he's doing is just touching them, but he's rotating his body. | ||
| See how he's moving his feet and everything like this? | ||
| This is much better. | ||
| Much better. | ||
| Doesn't mean he's going to win, right? | ||
| Eddie Hall could catch him and knock him out. | ||
| Anything can happen, right? | ||
| They're just punching each other and they're both not that good. | ||
| But he looks way better here. | ||
| Because this is a guy that seems to be really paying attention to fundamentals and technique. | ||
| Because whoever his coach is, that guy's doing it perfect. | ||
| Excellent. | ||
| That's what I would tell the guy to do. | ||
| See how he's just touching things and moving his body, like turning his hips and everything like that? | ||
| That's really what you want to do. | ||
| Any other video I've seen of Thor, he didn't look that good. | ||
| That's impressive that he's moving like that. | ||
| He's taking it serious. | ||
| I mean, it'll be a fun. | ||
| I'm excited to see. | ||
| How much is he going to make? | ||
| I think they each got a million. | ||
| Pay-per-view. | ||
| So they probably guaranteed him a million. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And then they get some sort of back-end on pay-per-view. | ||
| I just want to know, are these going to be like 30-second rounds or like three minutes rest in between? | ||
| What's going to happen? | ||
| Well, hopefully there'll be real rounds, but the Mike Tyson-Roy Jones Jr. fight was only two minutes. | ||
| They were two-minute rounds. | ||
| Oh, man. | ||
| They were mad. | ||
| They were mad. | ||
| They were like, this is what the women do. | ||
| The women fight two-minute rounds, which is probably pissed off the women. | ||
| They're like, hey, hey, hey. | ||
| Hey! | ||
| Easy. | ||
| But Mike Tyson's supposed to be fighting Evander Holyfield next. | ||
| No shit. | ||
| Yeah, yeah. | ||
| Evander Holyfield's been training for a long time. | ||
| He's been working his way up. | ||
| And, you know, in the beginning he looked a little, you know, sluggish and slow, but now he looks pretty fucking good. | ||
| Evander? | ||
| Evander. | ||
| He looks pretty fucking good. | ||
| He's been, like, real steady with his training and posting it on social media almost every day. | ||
| He posts something. | ||
| Mike's still scary, though. | ||
| Oh yeah. | ||
| That man. | ||
| So is Evander. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Evander Holyfield has a bulletproof mind. | ||
| His mind is bulletproof. | ||
| You can beat him. | ||
| Guys have beat him before, but he's never going to quit. | ||
| You're going to have to shut him off. | ||
| You're going to have to drop him and beat him up. | ||
| I think I'm a Tyson fan. | ||
| I love that dude's training mentality. | ||
| Oh, who doesn't love Tyson? | ||
| You know, Vanda beat him twice. | ||
| I remember seeing the video where he's talking about how scared he is when he's training. | ||
| Yeah, we played that the other day. | ||
| Dude, I saw that and I just related so much to it. | ||
| Because I train scared. | ||
| Everyone else is training to win. | ||
| And to win, they got to beat me or everyone else. | ||
| So it's like you're just training scared all the time. | ||
| I thought there was something wrong with me when I was nervous going out from the warm-up area onto the competition floor. | ||
| I was like, man, I'm not a confident person. | ||
| I have these insecurities that are coming out. | ||
| And then hearing him talk about when I'm in the warm-up or when I'm in my locker room, I want to cry. | ||
| I'm so scared. | ||
| I'm about to go into a ring with this man who's trying to take my head off. | ||
| And I was like, oh shit. | ||
| Okay, it's not just me. | ||
| This is the most ruthless human ever. | ||
| And he's having these feelings too. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| And then when he talked about going out on the floor, he said, by the time I'm in the ring, I am God. | ||
| And I was like, oh shit. | ||
| I just related to that a lot. | ||
| I just latched onto that. | ||
| We played that clip the other day. | ||
| It's an amazing clip. | ||
| It's super inspirational. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Did you feel different defending your world title? | ||
| Like, when you won it and then trying to win it a second time? | ||
| Did you feel different? | ||
| Yeah, I mean, each year was different. | ||
| But yeah, I remember the first time... | ||
| You know, I remember the feeling the first, it was just a big relief. | ||
| You know, because I competed twice and I took second place two times in a row. | ||
| And then I was starting to realize, oh man, I might finish this CrossFit thing without ever winning. | ||
| Like, that's a real possibility. | ||
| And so I remember winning the first time, I was like, okay, that weight's lifted off. | ||
| You know, there's not this like, I'm going to leave this career with nothing. | ||
| But then, I mean, it's just hearing other people, like, other people talking shit of like, oh, last year was a fluke, you can't do it again, or like... | ||
| Wait a minute, how can anybody say it's a fluke to win the CrossFit Games? | ||
| That is literally the dumbest fucking thing. | ||
| When you look at the volume of work you guys have to do... | ||
| Dude, I had the director of the CrossFit Games, after I had won four times... | ||
| Three of these wins, I broke the record for margin of victory. | ||
| The best win of games history, I've set and broken that record three times. | ||
| And after my fourth win, going into my fifth, he put out an article saying Matt Fraser's slipping, his performance is slipping, and I'm like... | ||
| The director? | ||
| Oh yeah, the dude that runs the whole thing. | ||
| What's his name? | ||
| Dave Castro. | ||
| Is this the guy we were talking about? | ||
| No, no, no, this is a different guy. | ||
| Why would he do that? | ||
| Beyond me. | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| Did you talk to him about it? | ||
| No. | ||
| No? | ||
| No. | ||
| I saw this come out and I was like, how am I slipping? | ||
| I haven't lost an in-person competition since 2015. If it's an in-person competition, I've won it for the last five years. | ||
| And he put out this article and I was like, wow, that's a huge conflict of interest because he's the one programming the games. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Right. | |
| He's programming the competition. | ||
| And then he also released something that said, like, I just finished programming the 2020 games and it's not good for Matt. | ||
| I was like... | ||
| Oh, wow. | ||
| Are you shitting me? | ||
| So do you think he was trying to get you to lose? | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| I mean, there were a couple things that came up that... | ||
| What a dick. | ||
| There were a couple things that came up that made me question of like, I think you're trying to... | ||
| Does he have a relationship with someone else that's in the... | ||
| No, I think he just doesn't like me. | ||
| Why? | ||
| You seem like a real nice guy. | ||
| Everyone just jumps when he says jump, and I wasn't that guy. | ||
| He likes power. | ||
| Yeah, that's a general consensus. | ||
| What is the deal with the dude who started CrossFit? | ||
| Because he doesn't look like he exercises. | ||
| No, I have. | ||
| That's baffling to me. | ||
| Yeah, I remember seeing him. | ||
| There's a lot of boxing trainers that don't look like they work out at all, and they're great trainers. | ||
| But then I feel like the boxing trainers, they look like they don't work out, but then you see them hit a bag and you're like, oh shit. | ||
| Probably, like Butterbean. | ||
| Yeah, I remember seeing him for the first time and I'm like, that's the guy? | ||
| That's the guy who started this whole thing? | ||
| How did he start it? | ||
| Was he high? | ||
| I got an idea, bro. | ||
| I don't really know. | ||
| Let's get people to work out until they die, man! | ||
| I haven't heard enough. | ||
| I don't know enough of the history. | ||
| But you would imagine that when I thought I'm going to see the guy who created CrossFit, I thought he'd be built like you. | ||
| I'm like, oh, we're going to see some stud. | ||
| Or at least some form of healthy athlete. | ||
| Yeah, some guy who's really into extreme competition. | ||
| I've met him twice. | ||
| Like, and it was a, hey, how you doing? | ||
| That was it. | ||
| Like one time he was at an event and I think he needed something from the person I was talking to. | ||
| And so he was like, hey, I'm Greg. | ||
| Nice to meet you. | ||
| I was like, hey, nice to meet you too. | ||
| And then the second time bumped into him randomly at a Starbucks. | ||
| Oh. | ||
| Like, we were in Hawaii. | ||
| And then, like, he came into the Starbucks. | ||
| I was like, oh, hey, Greg. | ||
| And he's like, hi. | ||
| That's it? | ||
| That's... | ||
| Hey, guy who wins my thing every fucking year. | ||
| Maybe I'd want to say hi to you. | ||
| He came out recently talking about how he hates... | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| That's the guy. | ||
| He came out recently, like, in the last couple years of, like, how he doesn't like the games. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| Yeah. | ||
| He was like, I don't... | ||
| It made him rich as fuck! | ||
| How is he not like the games? | ||
| Because he was saying it's not what CrossFit's about. | ||
| CrossFit's about the everyday person going into the affiliate and it's like... | ||
| Yeah, that's true. | ||
| But this is a pretty good promoter for the other part. | ||
| And during one interview, he was saying, he's like, yeah, what's to say? | ||
| If one person's running away with the competition, I don't do something to change at the last minute so they don't win. | ||
|
unidentified
|
What? | |
| I'm sitting there like, I'm trying to make my livelihood off this, guys. | ||
| It'd be cool if you didn't intentionally try to ruin this for me. | ||
| That's... | ||
| How do you not, like, when someone says something like that guy said, where he said it doesn't look good for Matt, and then you win it again, how do you not, like, rub it in his face? | ||
| Like, hey, fuckface, what's up with that article? | ||
| Especially since you're retiring. | ||
| I mean, you kind of put it, it's one of those things that, like, mentally, like, you pin it on the wall. | ||
| So, like, it became a thing that he said, he goes, Matt's performance is slipping. | ||
| And I was just like, alright, I'm gonna show you slipping, motherfucker. | ||
| Like, you're just like, okay. | ||
| I don't want to give him the gratification knowing that I'm thinking about it. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Well, now he knows. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I think I've already told him some other stuff. | ||
| Oh, did you? | ||
| I mean, it's just a weird relationship because it's like... | ||
| Yeah, he says stuff like that, like publicly. | ||
| And it's like, if I'm friends with someone, yeah, I'll talk shit to you all day long to your face. | ||
| I would never go to a publication and say it without giving you a heads up or whatever it was. | ||
| Well, not only that, when you say something like that that has no basis in fact... | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you say he's slipping, and then you go, well, let's look at his performances. | ||
| Actually, he's not slipping at all. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Like, look, he's fucking dominating everything he gets into. | ||
| So how's he slipping? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You want him to slip? | ||
| Is that what it is? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, it's been pretty obvious in knowing that he doesn't like me. | ||
| And he hasn't liked me for a long time. | ||
| Do you think maybe people don't like it when someone just kicks too much ass? | ||
| They get a little upset and they go, this is... | ||
| I don't know if it's that. | ||
| I like different people to win every year. | ||
| I think it's good for the sport. | ||
| I think it's good on either extreme. | ||
| It's fun to watch someone that just repeats... | ||
| It keeps getting better and better. | ||
| And I also think it's awesome for a nail-biter coming down to the last workout to see who's gonna pull it off, you know? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I think with him... | ||
| Like, I got treated a certain way. | ||
| Like, I wasn't jumping when he said jump. | ||
| Like, I got treated a certain way when I first came into the sport. | ||
| And it was basically like, ah, whatever. | ||
| Like, you're nobody. | ||
| And so I was like, okay. | ||
| Like, I have your card. | ||
| I know that's how you act now. | ||
| And then, like, he became, tried to be nice to me once I had some success in this space. | ||
| And I was like, no, I'm good. | ||
| And it was like one competition. | ||
| It was like all the top-ranked people from each country get on a team. | ||
| It's called the Invitational. | ||
| And I was the second-ranked American after my rookie year in the competition. | ||
| And I was all excited to be on this team and go to this competition. | ||
| And then they skipped right over me. | ||
| They took the number one and number three guy. | ||
| And I'm like, what the fuck? | ||
| No one ever called me, explained this, nothing. | ||
| And so then every year after that, I went like, hey, you're invited to be on the invitation. | ||
| I was like, no, I'm good. | ||
| Like, thanks. | ||
| I'm still waiting on that invite from 2014. But... | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| What are you going to do? | ||
| The guy who invented it looks like he's Charles Bukowski's kid. | ||
| Doesn't he? | ||
| I looked a little more. | ||
| He apparently was born with polio, according to the article. | ||
| And he taught himself, it said, to become a gymnast. | ||
| And there's a picture of him as a gymnast, younger, on the rings, and got injured on a dismount. | ||
| Oh! | ||
| So he got injured and then he couldn't work out anymore. | ||
| But that was all before CrossFit. | ||
| Oh, interesting. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That makes sense. | ||
| He's his own guy. | ||
| Like, he's... | ||
| The stories you hear, it's like, holy shit, that's real, huh? | ||
| You know? | ||
| But... | ||
| The stories you hear. | ||
| I mean, just like how... | ||
| As soon as the whole thing came out after George Floyd, he's under fire because people are like, oh wow, you're a shitty person. | ||
| And then it's kind of like when allegations come out against one person and someone goes public with it and then everyone else steps forward. | ||
| Like, oh, that happened to me too. | ||
| Here's my story. | ||
| And those stories started coming out and people had conversations with them where they recorded it. | ||
| And it's like... | ||
| the shit he was doing was disgusting of just like racist and like womanized it like all this stuff started coming out and it's like holy fuck like how did it go this long without ever without this stuff ever coming out so anyways he he sold the company it's in someone else's hands now and we'll see what happens Now, | ||
| CrossFit as a company, when someone starts a gym, they start a CrossFit gym, do they have to, do they buy a franchise? | ||
| Like, how does it work? | ||
| I think you basically pay an annual fee to use the word CrossFit. | ||
| And then once you have that name, you can do whatever you want in there. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you construct the workouts entirely your own. | ||
| So do you have to know what you're doing? | ||
| I've never done CrossFit. | ||
| Could I just open a CrossFit gym and start calling it CrossFit? | ||
| Or do I have to take classes? | ||
| I think you need to have your CrossFit L1. You need to take the course. | ||
| You take a course. | ||
| You learn the things. | ||
| It's a weekend course. | ||
| Oh, is it? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| So you don't really have to be an expert. | ||
| I took it way back in the day. | ||
| I was trying to impress a girl that was doing it. | ||
| So I was like, yeah, I'll do it. | ||
| Yeah, I love this. | ||
| Yeah, so that was an interesting experience. | ||
| So it's not like teaching karate. | ||
| You have to get a black belt. | ||
| I mean, yeah, it's a two-day course or a three-day course, maybe. | ||
| So you don't even really have to be fit to own a CrossFit gym? | ||
| No, no. | ||
| No, there's no requirements on... | ||
| Any of that stuff. | ||
| You just pay your annual fee and keep her going. | ||
| They have a lot of CrossFit gyms, though. | ||
| They must be raking it in. | ||
| Yeah, I think... | ||
| I mean, COVID. Like, all the lockdowns. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Crushed CrossFit businesses. | ||
| Crushed jiu-jitsu. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Everything. | ||
| Like, anything where you're, like... | ||
| Comedy clubs. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Crushed everything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Restaurants. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so I think the intent is good of like, this is your business, run it however you want. | ||
| Right. | ||
| And it's like, the cream rise to the top, you know, the good ones flourish, and they keep expanding, they open up more locations, all this stuff. | ||
| And then it's like, if you're not putting the effort in to program well, and your members aren't seeing results, well, they're only going to stick around for so long, and you're only going to stay in business for so long. | ||
| So I think the intent of it is great. | ||
| It's your business. | ||
| Do whatever you want. | ||
| But there's definitely some places that kind of abuse it. | ||
| It just gives it a bad name. | ||
| If there's no one in there regulating some Joe Schmo jumping up and doing ring muscle-ups, it's like, yeah. | ||
| You're going to get a slap tear on your shoulder or do something. | ||
| I've met multiple surgeons that They're like, oh, you do CrossFit? | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| CrossFit paid for my yacht. | ||
| Like, just, like, from doing shoulder surgeries. | ||
| What a dick. | ||
| And, uh... | ||
| Yeah, it's like... | ||
| CrossFit paid for my yacht. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| And just, like, so straight up, I'm like, yeah, I'm not surprised. | ||
| Like, if you don't have someone actually coaching you, of course it's gonna be bad news. | ||
| Like, if I just walked into a gym and just started sparring... | ||
| Right. | ||
| Like, no, it's gonna go terribly. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I'm gonna get hurt. | ||
| Um... | ||
| Yeah, that's the argument that I always hear about CrossFit, against CrossFit, is that all those... | ||
| This is the argument that Steve Maxwell used to have, was that all those movements are not designed for a competition. | ||
| They're designed to strengthen you for a competition. | ||
| Like, whether it's clean press or, you know, kettlebell presses or whatever you're doing. | ||
| Like, what those are good for is strengthening your body for other athletic endeavors. | ||
| And he thought, is just one man's opinion... | ||
| He thought that doing those in a competition is not wise. | ||
| And then these Olympic lifts for repetitions, it's not wise to do that. | ||
| He didn't feel like it was good. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I definitely see that side. | ||
| For me personally, I'm like, okay, if these weren't good, I shouldn't be walking. | ||
| Yeah, but see, I think you're a perfect example of how to do it the right way, and I think it's really interesting, you coming from that weightlifting background, that you did have all this excellent form and incredible strength. | ||
| I'll watch people competing. | ||
| And say it's like 95-pound snatches. | ||
| By the end, I'm like, stop. | ||
| Just put the bar down. | ||
| What are you doing? | ||
| Your back's not tight. | ||
| You're not setting your hips. | ||
| The bar's swinging. | ||
| You're doing everything wrong. | ||
| You were doing it, right? | ||
| Why did you change? | ||
| You got fatigued and you started spazzing. | ||
| It doesn't matter what the sport is, what the movement is. | ||
| If you start doing it incorrectly... | ||
| When I see those injuries, man, when I see people dropping weights on their heads and shit, when they get exhausted and their muscles fail, I'm sure you've seen some of those videos. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| Horrific. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Oh, yeah. | ||
| It's... | ||
| Yeah, I mean, I've dropped bars on my head when I was doing Olympic weightlifting. | ||
| Oh, God. | ||
| You dropped a bar on your head? | ||
| Yeah, like going for a snatch and it was like... | ||
| I don't know. | ||
| My head wasn't in the right place and just elbows buckled and it came down to the back of my neck. | ||
| There's actually one video. | ||
| I have a buddy. | ||
| He dislocated both wrists. | ||
| He was doing cleans. | ||
| It's on YouTube if you want to watch that. | ||
| He was doing hang cleans with straps on and like 365 pounds and he was doing a triple. | ||
| Oh boy, I'm scared. | ||
| So this is Zach Critch. | ||
| The whole recovery from this. | ||
| Here it comes. | ||
| So he's strapped on so he can't dump the bar and his elbows hit the platform. | ||
| Boom. | ||
| Just popped off both wrists. | ||
| Oh boy. | ||
| I don't want to see this. | ||
| Yeah, I mean, it's not a graphic, but it's just, like, he went to dump the bar. | ||
| So, like, if you're tipping backwards on a clean, you keep it on. | ||
| Like, you keep it on your shoulders. | ||
| But he went to dump it at the last minute, and his elbows hit the ground and just ripped off both his hands. | ||
| But he made a full recovery. | ||
| It was, like, a multiple-year recovery. | ||
| So, like, that video, I was the kid on the platform next to him. | ||
| That was me at the Olympic Training Center. | ||
| And I remember watching it happen. | ||
| And he screamed like he was flailing around in pain. | ||
| I remember watching it, and I'm like, what are you screaming for? | ||
| The bar didn't even hit your chest. | ||
| And then you just see his hands flopping. | ||
| You're like, oh, your hands aren't attached anymore. | ||
| Oh, Jesus. | ||
| How long did it take for him to come back? | ||
| It was like a year or two. | ||
| Oh, my God. | ||
| I watched one where a guy was in the middle of a competition. | ||
| He dropped the weight on the back of his neck, and he was paralyzed. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah, so... | ||
| Or... | ||
| Yeah, he was out in California. | ||
| So... | ||
| I remember him talking about that. | ||
| I want to say, like... | ||
| It was while the bar was overhead. | ||
| It wasn't from the bar hitting him that paralyzed him. | ||
| I think the bar hit the ground and his legs were already limp and then it bounced and hit him. | ||
| I've only met him once, I think. | ||
| Or Kevin Ogar. | ||
| Kevin Ogar, that's who it is. | ||
| Yeah, super unfortunate mistake. | ||
| I'm not 100% sure what happened there, but yeah, that was during a competition. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Five or six years ago? | ||
| And he's paralyzed, right? | ||
| Yeah, he's in a chair. | ||
| Still works out like a madman every day. | ||
| He's crushing it. | ||
| You look at any sport, if someone walked into a powerlifting gym and was like, I want to back squat 600 and just loaded up 600 and went for a rep, it's like, yeah, of course you're going to get There's an issue that happens sometimes in MMA gyms where guys dive on a guillotine. | ||
| They dive for a takedown, and then as they're diving for a takedown, their opponent gets them in a guillotine, and so as they go down, their head hits the ground first, and their head hits the ground with both of their body weights. | ||
| Right? | ||
| So they're shooting for a double, right? | ||
| The guy takes a guillotine and they hit head first. | ||
| And so you've got, you know, if you're 200 pounds and the guy's 200 pounds, you've got 400 pounds on the top of your head. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And it just pops her neck. | ||
| It's happened a few times where guys have been, is this him? | ||
| Oh, Jesus Christ. | ||
| Bounced back and struck him in the neck, severing his spine and leaving him unable to move his legs. | ||
| Holy fuck, man. | ||
| Yeah, that's a... | ||
|
unidentified
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Oof. | |
| Gives you the tinglys. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| But I guess anytime you're doing anything with your body that's that extreme... | ||
| Yeah, anything physical that you're pushing it to the point of almost failure. | ||
| It's like, yeah, you're taking on risk. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| You know. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Scary shit. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| When you look at your career and you look back on it, is there anything you would have done differently if you could go and do it again? | ||
| Huh. | ||
| I mean, the typical answer I always give, I love where my career ended up. | ||
| I love where I'm at now. | ||
| And it's like, yeah, I made mistakes. | ||
| I made very obvious mistakes. | ||
| But they made me, they put me to where I am today. | ||
| So it's like, no, I would leave the mistakes where they are. | ||
| Going back, I definitely, looking back, I'm like, oh yeah, I fucked up a couple times. | ||
| There are a couple, like the whole 2015 season. | ||
| You know, in 2014 I got second place and then the guy in first place retired and I was like, I'm a shoo-in. | ||
| Here we go. | ||
| And then I just like slacked off the whole year, ate like shit, didn't have a good training schedule, nothing. | ||
| And then I got second place again. | ||
| I got the results. | ||
| But still, you came in second, which is pretty crazy. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Slacked off, ate like shit, came in second. | ||
| I looked at it as, like, I lost. | ||
| I understand. | ||
| So that was rough. | ||
| But then the following year, like... | ||
| That's what made me get my ass in gear and be like, no, fuck that. | ||
| If I'm doing this, I'm doing it right. | ||
| I'm doing everything. | ||
| And so I went from losing by like a handful of points to breaking the record for the most points and then breaking it again, breaking it again. | ||
| So in some ways it's like, I hate that season, like the disappointment that came with it. | ||
| But then I'm like, well, I wouldn't have had these next five seasons without that disappointment. | ||
| That's the one that kicked me when I was down. | ||
| And just changed everything about what I do. | ||
| So it's like, do I want to change that mistake? | ||
| Like, no, it was a failure, but I learned from it. | ||
| So it's like, thank God that happened. | ||
| Because if I had won in that 15 season, if I had won, well, I would have thought I could keep out training a bad diet. | ||
| I could train inconsistently and be good enough. | ||
| I could stay up late and not give a fuck. | ||
| I would have kept all those habits. | ||
| What is the difference in training? | ||
| What did you do differently when the next season rolled around and you knew you didn't want to come in second place again? | ||
| What did you alter? | ||
| Going in the whole 2015 season, I was a barbell specialist. | ||
| I came from an Olympic weightlifting background so I was like, I never need to touch a barbell. | ||
| So I never did weightlifting. | ||
| I just kept getting better at the cardio, cardio, cardio to the point that I didn't realize that my weightlifting was now turning into a weakness. | ||
| Staying up super, super late. | ||
| I'm newly... | ||
| I took a semester part-time at college. | ||
| And so, you know, just staying up until 3, 4 in the morning, sleeping until noon, and then, like, I would finish up my training at, like, 10 p.m. | ||
| And I was like, oh, it doesn't matter what time of day. | ||
| I'm getting my training done. | ||
| But it was super sporadic. | ||
| My diet was shit. | ||
| I was eating off food trucks and just, like, pizza, Chinese food. | ||
| And I thought it was funny proving, showing people, like, ah, I can out train a bad diet. | ||
| You know, they're the ones telling me, like, they're trying to help me. | ||
| It's like... | ||
| You gotta clean this up. | ||
| You gotta eat these foods. | ||
| I'm like, fuck that. | ||
| I'm still beating you in workouts. | ||
| You can't tell me what to do. | ||
| And so it's like, yeah, I got my ass kicked in front of a lot of people at that competition. | ||
| Yeah, I think... | ||
|
unidentified
|
I don't know if I would change a single fucking thing. | |
| You know, there's some relationships that, like I said, some shit that I regret, but it's like, what are you guys doing? | ||
| It's part of being a person, right? | ||
| Yeah, exactly, right? | ||
| That's how people learn, you know? | ||
| And I think that losing, for a lot of folks, failure is one of the best motivators ever. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| That feeling when you know you could have done better, and now you go, okay, now I get it. | ||
| I think it's one of the best feelings ever when you... | ||
| Change from it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| And you get on the other side of it. | ||
| Because I remember like doing interviews of like, and I had my two medals hanging and I was like, I fucking hate that medal. | ||
| Like, I hate it. | ||
| Now it's my favorite one. | ||
| I'm like, yo, if it weren't for that one, I wouldn't have these five gold ones. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah. | |
| Like there's zero chance. | ||
| I may have one other gold one, but I would have kept up those shitty habits. | ||
| I wouldn't have made that big life altering switch to dedicate everything to it. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, I look at, for the last, like, five years, it's like, everything you do during the day, it's like, it's going to bring you closer to your goal, it's going to move you away from your goal. | ||
| And so, I remember that first year, I was like, one year of your life, that ain't shit. | ||
| Like, to dedicate that towards your goal, and then it doesn't pan out, you lost one year. | ||
| Whoop-de-doo. | ||
| And I was like, every decision I make is going to be only towards my goal, towards my goal, towards my goal. | ||
| And then I did that, and it was like... | ||
| There were some parts that sucked, you know? | ||
| Like, my buddy's getting married, and I can't go to the bachelor party. | ||
| My girlfriend lives in Rhode Island. | ||
| I live in Vermont. | ||
| Getting close to a competition, I can't drive down to see her. | ||
| You know? | ||
| Shit like that. | ||
| So it's like... | ||
| Yeah, that was a bummer, but I told myself I'm taking one year to dedicate towards it. | ||
| And then I did it, and I was like, oh shit, I won. | ||
| I won by a lot. | ||
| This is cool. | ||
| Alright, let me keep doubling down on this. | ||
| What else can I improve on? | ||
| I don't need to drive to the health and fitness club to get in the sauna. | ||
| I bought a sauna, brought it to my house, you know? | ||
| Shit like that. | ||
| Optimizing my sleep schedule. | ||
| Like, bringing in all these tools to help me get better sleep, you know? | ||
| What kind of tools get you better sleep? | ||
| The one that I've used for a long time, it's called the Dawn Simulator. | ||
| It just looks like a giant light bulb next to your bed, and it wakes you up with light instead of sound. | ||
| It does a simulated sunset as well. | ||
| You get in the bed, and the light's on, and it slowly dims down. | ||
| And so it's like your body reacts to that and just starts pumping melatonin because it's like, yo, sun's setting, it's time for bed. | ||
| And you're just sitting there reading a book and before you know it, you're just nodding off. | ||
| So that's been a huge help. | ||
| You ever seen those cooling pads? | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| It's like radiant cooling for your mattress. | ||
| I got one of those. | ||
| Holy shit. | ||
| I'll never go back. | ||
| Really? | ||
| Like, working out so much, my core temperature's just always through the roof. | ||
| I'm always sweating through sheets. | ||
| Got one of those, and it's like when you bring your body temperature down, you're able to get into a deeper sleep, hit that, like, whatever, REM cycles and all that jazz. | ||
| It was an absolute game changer because I was waking up in the middle of every night, 2 a.m. | ||
| Always wake up, have to kick off the blankets, like whatever. | ||
| Had that and it was like, that was the first time I ever slept through the night. | ||
| It was just one of those cooling pads, like completely blacking out the windows, having a white noise machine, you know, all that type of stuff. | ||
| But I don't think people realize how beneficial sleep is. | ||
| It's like if sleep and hydration came in pill form and cost $100, you couldn't keep that shit on the shelves. | ||
| It's like that right there is just... | ||
| It's like a cheat code. | ||
| So when I'm training and competing, I'm sleeping minimum 10 hours. | ||
| I'm just always guzzling down water. | ||
| Simple shit like that, but it's so elementary that people just kind of toss it off to the side. | ||
| It's like listening to your mom be like... | ||
| Make sure you get your eight hours of sleep. | ||
| And you're like, ah, yeah, whatever, Mom. | ||
| You know, fuck it. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| Yeah, I mean... | ||
| Yeah, I'm trying to think, like, what else I got at my house that's kind of, like, a good tool. | ||
|
unidentified
|
But... | |
| Yeah. | ||
| Well, listen, man, what you did is pretty fucking incredible, and I love the fact that you walked away when you're in your prime. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| I think it's awesome. | ||
| It's like, why stick around? | ||
| You won five years in a row. | ||
| See ya. | ||
| Tip of the hat. | ||
| Good luck, fuckers. | ||
| I'm just excited. | ||
| Like, all right, did that. | ||
| Well, you can do anything, man. | ||
| A guy like you, you can win the CrossFit Games five years in a row. | ||
| You could literally do anything. | ||
| All you have to do is just decide. | ||
| Yeah, I'm excited for it. | ||
| Just getting in contact with the right people. | ||
| I love working towards something. | ||
| It's like, alright, I just need to find that new thing that I'm going to dedicate all my time and energy to. | ||
| Yeah, so I'm excited. | ||
| And it's kind of the same as when my weightlifting career ended. | ||
| I dedicate everything to school. | ||
| Then my school career and I dedicate everything to CrossFit. | ||
| I'm like, this is just the next thing. | ||
| How I do anything is... | ||
| There's no moderation. | ||
| I dive fully in. | ||
| I commit myself. | ||
| I want to learn everything about everything. | ||
| Uh... | ||
| Yes, I mean... | ||
| And you're still only 31, man. | ||
| You could literally do anything. | ||
| Yeah. | ||
| I mean, the kind of dedication... | ||
| Hopefully you've got lots of time. | ||
| You've got a lot of time, man. | ||
| And if you don't, you don't. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Whatever. | |
| Well, hey, brother. | ||
| It was very nice meeting you. | ||
| I appreciate it very much. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you for having me. | |
| Super impressive what you've done with your life. | ||
| And good luck with everything else, man. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| Appreciate it. | ||
| All right. |
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