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We cover the sport of CrossFit from all angles. We talk with athletes, coaches and celebrities that compete and surround in the sport of CrossFit at all levels. We also bring you Breaking News, Human Interest Stories and report on the Methodology of CrossFit. We also use the methodology to make ourselves the fittest we can be.
What's going on everybody?
Welcome.
to the Clydesdale Media Podcast,
where right now we are
focusing on highlighting as
many of the CrossFit Game
Masters athletes as we can.
I'm not making any Dave
promises because there's
like 400 athletes in Birmingham,
but I'm going to get
through as many as I can in
a couple of weeks.
Ryan Redkey, what's going on, Ryan?
Not much, Scott.
How are you doing?
Good, good.
Great, great.
So this is your second CrossFit Games.
Yes, correct.
Last year you took fifth.
Yep.
Your trip to the Games this
year was kind of interesting.
You finished,
you had your worst finish
ever in a quarterfinals or semi,
not that it's a huge sample size,
but at semifinals this year.
Yeah.
What, what, what kind of prompted that?
Was it an, an event itself?
Was, um, injury illness?
No, definitely not injury or illness.
Um, I think it was a couple of things.
I, I,
I feel like I kind of peaked at
quarterfinals, um, mentally, physically,
um,
I feel like it was on point
for my quarterfinals performance.
Everything was clicking.
And then as probably most of
the listeners know that are
tuning in for a Masters athlete,
it was a quick turnaround
for quarterfinals and semifinals.
It was only a couple of weeks.
And so I think I kind of let
off the gas a little bit mentally.
Um, like, uh,
I'm in a chat group with some other,
other guys in my age group and, um,
you know, the morning of semifinals,
they're like, you guys ready?
And I'm like, ready for what?
You know, like half kidding.
Um, I just wasn't quite mentally, um,
prepared.
Um, I don't know.
I think it was a few reasons,
but I just feel like it wasn't quite,
quite into it.
Um, uh, that week, um,
I feel like after the first couple days,
because it was so long,
after I got two events under my belt,
and then I felt like I kind
of was hitting my stride a little bit.
But yeah,
I feel like I underperformed a
little bit on a couple of the workouts.
So we had you on a group show.
You're a Mayhem athlete,
as you are proudly
displaying on the screen.
And you went to Mayhem.
Was that for semis?
Yes, correct.
That was during semis.
Yep.
Was that,
did that environment help at all
or did it hurt?
Um, I don't think the environment itself,
um, is what hurt at all.
Um,
is what caused me to underperform a
little bit.
Uh,
I had went out to mayhem about two
months before for a camp, um,
just for a performance camp, um,
training my coach and some other people.
And, um,
As I was preparing for it mentally,
it just kind of felt like
that's what I was going to.
I was going to just go train, I think,
is partly what it was in my
mind leading up to
traveling to Cookville for that weekend.
So it didn't really feel
like I was going for a competition.
So I don't think it was
mayhem itself at all.
It was just my kind of
outlook on everything,
where I was at at the time mentally.
Well,
the good news is you had three months
from semifinals until we
get to the games.
Yeah.
I find completely bizarre
that they rushed you guys
into a semi before elite athletes,
and yet your games is after theirs.
Yeah.
Yes.
I remember last year, it was –
felt like a lot of time and
people were saying that
that was a long time, um,
from semi-finals to the games.
And now it's,
I think it's almost like a
week more this year because
the semi-finals were even a
little bit earlier and the
games were a little bit later.
So, or excuse me,
like semi-finals were a little bit later,
but I think it's a longer
time this year even than it
was last year.
Um, so yeah,
like a quarter of the year
between semi-finals and the
games long time.
I hope that's because they
didn't know when the games
were going to be still
trying to find the location and that, um,
and maybe they can schedule
it better as we get into next season.
Yeah.
That's what, what Bob has implied.
Uh,
I think multiple times is that it'll be
better in the future that, you know,
most of these events, uh,
booking for the arenas is a
couple of years out usually.
And so they were trying to
find a place on a date that
would work on a short time.
So hoping it's better.
So before we dive into the games,
I want to get some backstory with you.
Sure.
In my research of you,
I found out that you were a
college wrestler.
Yeah.
And you were three-time NCAA,
three-time USA Wrestling All-American.
Correct.
So what is three-time USA All-American?
Is it a concept?
No.
what that means is like the
Olympic styles of wrestling.
So there's three,
three styles of wrestling, basically for,
for us wrestlers.
There's three styles.
There's the folk style or collegiate style,
which you wrestle in high
school and college.
And then there's the international styles,
which are going on in a few
days in Paris and the Olympics,
which is two styles of that,
which is freestyle and
Greco Roman wrestling,
which are the same scoring,
except it's a little bit
different scoring from,
from college wrestling style.
But,
Greco-Roman is all upper body.
You can't attack legs.
You can't use your legs
offensively or defensively to score.
And so that's kind of what I
wrestled in that.
And so when I say USA Wrestling,
USA Wrestling is the
platform that hosts all
freestyle and Greco-Roman
wrestling as well.
And so I was All-American
three times in Greco-Roman
wrestling at three different levels.
And it was called Juniors at the time,
which was high school.
And just when I graduated, I got fourth.
Uh, in Greco and then in college,
they call it S fours,
which I think it's called under 20 ones.
Now, um, I got seventh place, I think.
And then I got, um, or no,
I was the fifth.
I think I got fifth at that.
And then I got,
I think a seventh place in
universities or sixth place
or fifth place, somewhere around there in,
uh, universities,
which I think is now called
under 23 or under 25.
Um, wrestling.
So.
What, speaking of, you know,
the Olympics starting today, um,
did you have aspirations at
any point in your career?
I mean, of course I would have loved to,
you know, you dream about it.
Um, so after I finished college wrestling,
um, I did wrestle the Greco and I got, uh,
you know, at the university level,
like I said, I was an all American.
And, um,
after I finished my collegiate
career and I did go out and
wrestle in the, in the U S open, um,
one year.
trained a little bit, but not near enough.
I was, um, you know,
Minnesota is a kind of a, at the time,
especially it was a hotbed
for Greco Roman wrestling.
Um,
I think this last Olympic cycle was the
first year that, uh,
which is where I lived at
the time where I grew up, um,
a non Minnesota or
Minnesota person did not
make the Greco Roman Olympic team.
Um,
So this year they have one
that is technically not on
the Minnesota team right now,
but he was a Minnesota
wrestler for most of his career.
So I did a little bit with those guys,
but I didn't put enough time into it.
I just kind of wanted to
keep wrestling for fun.
I did a couple of sprint triathlons,
and I'm like,
why am I doing this when I'm
still 24 years old?
Why am I,
why am I trying to learn
something brand new in a
sprint triathlon to compete
in that where I can still wrestle,
you know?
So I wrestled a little bit more, but no.
Yeah.
Where did you wrestle at collegially?
Collegially,
I wrestled at Minnesota State.
Okay.
Yeah, I went to,
I went to Clare University for a minute.
Back in the day,
I'm a bit older than you are.
And I was friends with Kurt Angle.
And we followed him.
Now, he went freestyle in the Olympics.
Correct.
Yeah.
And it was a blast watching
him ascend and make it to
the Olympics and do what he did.
And my roommate was a wrestler,
and so we just hung out at
the wrestling house all the
time and got to know those guys.
And Clarion was, like,
they were kick-ass back in the day.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Yeah, well, I mean,
Pennsylvania wrestling in
general is pretty big.
Yeah, Penn State's been killing it lately.
I lived here in Buckeye land
and it's like my only bragging rights.
This is the wrestling.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
That's a kale.
Kale is a really turn that around.
I wrestled him twice in college.
Actually.
Kale Sanderson is the head
coach at Penn state now.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
he was 159 and 0 in college
so it didn't go well he uh
what's that it that sums it
up pretty quick yeah um you
know I think I've I've
wrestled well against them
especially my second time
um you know it just to put
in perspective I think my
senior year in wrestling uh
he was a sophomore that
year I wrestled him his
freshman year and his
sophomore year was my
junior and senior year and my senior year
he took me down 15 times in one match.
And I believe that was more
takedowns than I got,
gave up the entire rest of
the season combined.
So he's, he's, yeah,
it was something else.
Is it like,
is it still a feather in your cap though,
that you took them on?
Like, uh,
cause you have to be good enough
to even get on a mat with them.
Right.
I guess, you know, uh, no, I mean,
I'm glad I wrestled them.
I, I, you know, is,
I looked forward to the opportunity.
He was just obviously on a
different level than everybody else,
and especially me.
It's funny because I was a
swimmer growing up,
and I had Olympic
aspirations until reality
hits you in the face and
you realize that that's not
going to happen.
But one time I beat a guy
who eventually won two
silver medals in the Olympics.
Wow.
That one time is what I've
been living on for 40 years.
Yeah,
what I can say is I almost took Cale
down one time.
I was underneath, I was coming up,
and I turned the wrong way.
If I would have turned the other way,
I think I would have gotten the big down.
So I almost took him down one time.
It is.
So how much do you attribute
to your success in CrossFit
with what you learned in wrestling?
Because I've talked to a lot
of wrestlers like Chris Feeler.
Yeah.
And they say that the big –
and Scott Tetlow and some other people.
And they all say that you
are uncomfortable in wrestling.
That is the job of a
wrestler is to be uncomfortable.
And so it helps you when
you're uncomfortable in CrossFit.
Yeah.
It –
it's very,
it's similar in a lot of ways
and it's different in some ways.
Um, you know, to be a high level wrestler,
you have to be able to put
in the work and work hard.
Um, it's, it's just a grind.
I mean, CrossFit's a grind too.
Um, I think I've,
I've worked harder in
CrossFit than I did in wrestling.
Um, just in terms of, you know,
I'm on a training and hours put in, um,
uh,
but the kind of the
difference I say for
wrestling is it's like,
you're a one-on-one out
there against another guy
against another person.
And so he's trying to tear your head off,
you know, and you're trying to,
trying to beat him.
And if you relax, you know,
he's going to slam your
head against the mat, do something,
you know, so you can't, if I, if I coast,
if I'm in,
if I'm in CrossFit at
competition and I get tired
and I slow down,
I'm just going to go slower.
These guys are going to beat me.
Nothing bad is going to
happen to me in a wrestling match.
The guys trying to,
at least in a high-level wrestling match,
they're trying to beat the
crap out of you.
It's a grind in that way
where it's a different kind
of physical grind.
Wrestling practice,
you have college wrestling.
Sometimes we have half-hour
to an hour matches where
it's just you against another guy
and you're just going at it, you know,
and that's just a mental
grind that you break
multiple times and try to push through.
So, so yeah, it's a,
it helps for sure with mentality.
I think for CrossFit.
So I know you're on a phone
and your screen is smaller, but who,
who is this guy?
I can see it.
Yeah.
Yeah, that doesn't look at me.
Yeah, my kids, my kids, my girls.
Say that again.
The flowing locks.
Yeah, exactly.
That's what I was just going to say.
My,
my girls like to refer to that as to
the era when dad had hair.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
I had the treat to watch an
episode of Fear Factor in
which you were on,
and you ended up winning.
Yeah, I did.
One quick comment.
It was before HD existed,
and 4K was something the
aliens were going to do.
Yeah.
It was right before high-deficient TVs,
so...
like literally a couple of years,
a year or two before.
So, yeah.
So how old were you when you
went on that show?
See 2003.
So I was 25.
Yeah.
20, 25.
Did you,
did you watch it and think that's
something I can be good at?
Um, well,
I'll try to make this story short, but,
um, a girl I was dating at the time, uh,
saw that they were doing
tryouts at the mall of America, uh,
And, and she's like, you can do that.
So I'm like, sure.
You can give me a ride down there.
I'll go try out.
So, um, went down for a trial,
a casting call at the mall
of America to get on.
I mean,
it was the first step of many steps,
but yeah.
And, uh, in your episode,
the first event is you had
to go into a submerged bus
and mannequins and,
Your second non-elimination task,
which you had to pick up
Madagascar cockroaches with your mouth,
put them in a bowl,
and then drink two cups of stuff.
Yeah.
One was lard and something else,
and the other was rotten milk.
Yeah, they called it blended milk.
Lard and cow parts.
So they call it lard and
blended cow parts is what
they called the first glass.
And then the second glass
they called Fear Factor Rotten Milk.
And that was by far the worst part,
drinking that glass of Fear
Factor Rotten Milk of the whole show.
That was pretty bad.
That was my next question.
Because then the next one
was you had to sift through
cow brains to find yellow
discs with your face.
Yeah.
I mean,
you didn't have to ingest it there.
That was the difference.
You're just going through.
You couldn't use your hands.
You're going through with
your face and your mouth.
As they said,
brain spinal fluid is what
they called it.
It was dripping down on top
of you and the table.
But yeah,
you had to get the 10 discs and
transfer them with your
mouth into the jar.
And then the finale was just
a heights thing.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah,
it was a heights thing with beams
that were dropping,
and you had to zigzag
across them and pull off
flags before the beam
dropped to get to the other
side of a U-shaped apartment building,
nine stories up, I think we were.
And Joe was infatuated with
the fact that you were a wrestler,
and that gave you good balance.
Yeah, it was kind of funny.
This was before Joe Rogan blew up.
I mean, obviously he was famous,
but he wasn't the Joe Rogan
that everybody knows now, you know,
a lot of people knew him,
but he wasn't huge like he is now,
but he was just starting to
do the UFC announcing stuff.
Obviously he has a huge
martial arts background.
He wrestled in high school.
He said one year.
And so his knowledge of
people that were in MMA,
it's just unreal to me.
Like he knew guys that I
wrestled with in college
that were just doing like
local fight scene stuff.
Um, he knew those guys.
I'm like, how do you,
how do you know these guys?
So he just knew, knew everything about it.
And so we clicked right away
and just bonded over that.
So it was a week's worth of taping.
Um, I mean, not, we didn't tape every day,
but, um, it was over a week's period.
And so we kind of just
clicked and it's just him
and I were just standing
there talking a lot of the
time as the other
contestants were kind of
just standing around, standing around.
Cause there's a lot of downtime, um,
resetting the stunts and everything.
Um, so yeah, it was a good experience,
but yeah.
Yeah.
So the question I've always
wanted to know is,
they say it's cow brains,
or they say it's... Now,
the bugs were the bugs.
There's no faking that.
Were the brains brains,
or was it just something
that looked... No, it was brains.
It was definitely brains.
The spinal fluid, I'm sure it was.
I don't know.
My guess is it was.
The rotten milk, it was bad.
It was bad, whatever it was.
I mean...
I don't know.
It was pretty bad.
I mean, the lard and cow parts,
you could see stuff floating in there.
So I'm sure it was.
I don't know what,
maybe intestines or something.
I have no idea.
I was shocked at how fast
every contestant went
through the lard and cow parts,
and then the milk stopped everybody.
Yeah,
it was a bad reaction trying to get
it down.
So, yeah.
So I think back then what
the prize was 50 grand,
something like that.
Correct.
Correct.
Yeah.
So I was on a, it was a special show.
Usually there's three stunts and it was a,
a 90 minute show is an hour
long show usually.
And so they did a 90 minute
show with four stunts.
And that, like you said,
the second one was
non-elimination and the
winner got a trip to Brazil.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was out in the lead on that.
And then, yeah.
Guy came from behind.
So you won 50 grand in Brazil,
but instead you just got 50 grand.
Correct.
Yeah.
At the time.
Yeah.
Like you said, 50 grand, 2003.
I mean, 50,
$50,000 is a lot of money anyway,
but you know, I was teaching at the time.
Uh, and I think my salary was $29,000,
you know?
So that was like almost,
almost two years worth of salary for me.
Um, so that was a big deal, you know?
Yeah.
Yeah,
so how often does this get brought up
or do most people not even know?
Yeah, in the CrossFit world,
not as many people know, I don't think.
But in the wrestling world,
because I was wrestling at the time,
so anybody that knows me via wrestling,
yeah, it gets brought up.
It's been over 20 years now,
so not quite as much anymore.
But yeah, I did a lot for a while.
Yeah.
So you said you were a teacher.
What, what took you into teaching?
Did you want to like,
the only reason I ever
wanted to be a teacher was to be a coach.
Yeah.
So, I mean, that's kind of it.
That's kind of part of it.
My, I come from a big family of educators.
My dad was, uh, he was a teacher,
but he got into administration, um,
pretty early on.
So he was a school administrator.
Um, by the time I got through there,
he was a super superintendent of schools.
Um,
but um so I kind of had that
at the background I started
out college as a pre-dental
major and and after the
after the first year it's
kind of like um I was doing
okay in school you know I
wasn't doing I wasn't doing
great you know I think I
graduated with like a three
three or three four or
something like college so
that's good but you know
it's like is that gonna be
enough to get me into
dental school and do it you
know so I i didn't
probably put enough time into studying, um,
as I should have to, to do for that.
And it's like,
why do I really want to be a dentist?
Um, you know,
I was just thinking about it.
And so I just kind of fell
back on what I liked and I liked science.
I was really into infatuated
with astronomy at the time.
Um, and so I'm like, well, let's see what,
what's that there is in that field.
And, um, yeah,
there was earth science education.
So, uh, yeah.
And then I could coach, you know,
along with it.
So, so yeah.
that's kind of what the,
what led me into that path.
And then eventually you left what,
what was the precursor to
that or just found a different love?
Um, so I taught for 10 years.
Uh, I was, um, you know,
I taught middle school and
high school a little bit and I was,
I was out of the classroom for,
I think three years.
It was a really cool, cool gig that I had.
I was teaching at the
biggest school district in
Minnesota and they had an
observatory at their, um,
one of their middle schools
and I ran the observatory, um,
teacher on a special assignment.
And so that was, that was pretty cool,
pretty cool gig, uh,
running the observatory.
Um, so, um, my, um, so when I had my son,
who's now 13, um, at the time, uh,
my wife, um,
was working and we've decided, Hey,
why don't I stay home for a
little bit with him?
And so I took leave from
teaching and then we had
another girl and we had another girl.
And so my youngest is now five.
And so I kind of have stayed home,
stayed home with them and
become more or less a full-time dad.
I have my real estate license as well.
We have some rentals that I,
that I manage and do things
like that as well.
But,
but more or less a full time,
full time stay at home dad.
So that's pretty awesome.
And it's sad that like the
easiest salary to replace
is a teacher salary.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Well,
my wife's definitely the breadwinner.
So I, um,
it was kind of the easier choice.
She put in a lot, a lot of,
a lot of time in her education.
So what does your wife do?
She's a physician.
Cool.
That's awesome.
So when you, when you get hurt in CrossFit,
she's, she can fix you.
Well, well, her,
her specialty is a colon rectal surgery.
So, so hopefully not.
Yeah.
I just,
I just signed up for my first
colonoscopy.
So I had my first one last year,
a year ago.
So, so I go in the games, the prep,
the prep, you know,
obviously is the hardest part, but yeah.
now so what got you into uh
diesel mechanic so um uh
for my master's program um
when I was teaching I was
it's a degree in natural
science and environmental
education and I got really
interested in alternative
energy um and alternative
fuels and uh I learned that uh diesel
diesel engines originally
ran on vegetable oil and I
read about these people
that would uh collect waste
vegetable oil from
restaurants and filter it
and use it as fuel or turn
it into biodiesel one of
the two um and so I started
just researching that and
um bought my first
my first diesel Mercedes in 1984,
300 SD diesel Mercedes in 2007 and, um,
converted to run on vegetable oil.
And I did that for about
four or five years.
And so I kind of, I figured, you know,
if I'm going to convert a
car to run on vegetable oil and I, um,
I'm going to be driving it, you know,
an old car, um,
It's going to need
maintenance and I'm going
to need to know how to do it.
So I just started learning
about it and I kind of fell
in love with it.
So that's what started it.
And I don't do vegetable anymore.
I haven't done vegetable oil
since like 2011, 12.
I try to buy biomass,
biodiesel at the pump to
run in my diesels now,
but they just run on regular diesel.
I don't do the vegetable oil thing anymore,
but that's what got me into it.
And I just kind of fell in
love with the cars.
And, um, I still have, well,
I shouldn't say I still have, I've bought,
I've been,
I had some on and off over the years, but,
uh, I bought,
I got a couple old Mercedes now that,
that I work on and I've restored, um,
that I've sat for a long
time and restored them.
So yeah.
It is so funny because my
daughter's boyfriend, longtime boyfriend,
is a diesel mechanic.
He actually works for Mack
Trucks in Pennsylvania.
But they're looking for an
old Mercedes so that he can
work on it and do the
maintenance on it because
the parts are really cheap,
according to him.
Yeah.
Well, the problem with these...
Well, I guess when you say old,
you got to define what old is.
I'm talking like early 80s Mercedes.
You're talking more like early 2000.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So the ones that I run,
a lot of the parts are no
longer available from Mercedes.
They don't make them anymore.
So you have to go to the
parts yards or there's a
whole network of people
that have cars that they've parted out.
online and on the forum.
So that's kind of what I do.
But yeah, there's, I think, uh,
for the 2000, probably still out,
still making them.
Yeah.
They've done a lot of research.
The hard part is they're
young and trying to get a
loan for a car that old, uh, has been,
you know, so, but yeah, that's what,
that's what he's trying to do.
Um, okay.
I,
I know like something that's really
important to you is your faith.
Mm-hmm.
So with,
and then I talked to a lot of athletes,
like being a CrossFit athlete,
take some selfishness,
especially competing at the
highest level.
How do you balance the two?
Um, yeah, that's something I've,
I've really reflected on a lot lately.
Um, specifically in the last, uh,
month or so.
And.
Um, I, I haven't had a lot of epiphanies.
I haven't come to a lot of conclusions,
but kind of where I view it right now is,
is, um, I've been given this life and, um,
these gifts and it would be
a waste not to use them to
their fullest and not to
live my life to the fullest.
Um,
And so that's kind of where
I am at on my journey with
that right now and how I
view my athletic
performance as using the
gifts I've been given and just trying to,
um, pursue excellence.
Um, and from what I've in my life.
So
was that something that drew
you to mayhem with faith
being part of their key tenants?
Hmm.
So we're, we're going a little deep here,
I guess.
Um, I, I feel like I kind of, um,
drifted away from my faith
for a while and not feel like I did.
And, um, I grew up very,
very faith driven.
And, um, even through my,
20s and and 30s early 30s
but you know for a while
there it wasn't something I
focused on um and
questioned a lot with it um
obviously still do um but
trying to um understand it
all and and um make it all
work but um so no at the
time when I went to mayhem
I don't I don't think I i
was I don't think I wasn't
reason at all um
honestly but I think it's
been something that has
made it easier for it to
come back into my life um
being a part of mayhem uh
so this will be my last
question I promise and that
is whoop lost you for a
second um thought you hung
up on me no but no with all
the background you have in science
Is that a natural tug in two
different directions?
I don't think so.
I think it can be if you
allow it for the person or
a person can use science to
say why they don't think
there is a God or a God exists.
But science is about trying
to understand everything
and understand how things work,
which I don't know if we'll
ever be able to do fully to
the extent leading to faith.
I don't think that's probably possible.
But there are things that we
can't explain.
I've come to realize that I
don't know anything.
There's so little that we
understand and so little that we know.
You just look at 100 years
ago of our understanding of
the universe and our
understanding of how things
worked and how much it's
progressed in the last 100 years.
So science is continually
evolving and continually
gaining knowledge.
Um, so, so my, my interpretation,
my understanding of it knows, no,
they don't have to be conflicting,
conflicting things.
Um,
I do understand out there that there
are people out there that
are very science-based and
so they're very concrete
and they need proof.
And so that was part of, part of the, uh,
my struggle that I dealt with as well, uh,
a few years ago and trying to, um,
understand it because
In a lot of ways,
there's not a lot of proof of faith.
But it's something that I
think I've been able to
overcome and make it work
in my understandings.
Okay.
So moving on to the games,
this year you finished fifth last year.
Realistically going in,
What are your expectations this year?
Um,
so my expectations are to do the best
that I can, um, form, um, well,
and everything to be,
to be better than I was last year.
Um, not necessarily in terms of placings,
but just in terms of better performances,
um,
My goal is to win.
My goal is to take first place,
to be the CrossFit Games champion.
And I feel like I've been
training and preparing to do that.
Whether that happens or not,
I can't control that.
I mean, I can control it to some extent,
but there are other things
that are out of my control.
But I feel like I've been,
the last three months,
have been doing everything right,
have been preparing myself
as best as I can.
And I really do feel like
I'm the best version of myself,
CrossFit self, ever.
So if I can keep it up,
keep it up for another few weeks,
keep my mental clarity, my mental focus,
I'm hoping it's going to go well.
21 years ago on Fear Factor,
Joe Rogan asked you,
are you going to let these
ladies beat you?
And your response was,
I'm, I don't let, and I don't like any,
but I don't like losing to
anyone regardless of who they are.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He was kind of, uh, uh, you know, it's the,
I'm sure the producers were
in his ear and tell him the question,
like, uh, you know, they want to,
they want to, they want,
they want to see if you
open your mouth and stick your foot in,
you know, cause I was the final stunt.
It was myself against two females.
And so they wanted me to say, yeah,
I'm going to,
I'm going to beat these
girls or something like that, you know,
cause that's going to be a great for TV.
But, um, so no, I just said, I said, uh,
you know, losing is bad period.
So, you know, I was 25 and a CV.
Um, but yeah, I, you know, it's, it's,
I'm a lot wiser.
Hopefully I'm, I think I'm wiser now, um,
and older.
Um, you know,
a lot of these guys that I
compete with are really,
really good friends.
Um,
and so I don't feel like I'm going out
there to try to beat them.
I feel like I'm going out there to try to,
um,
do the best that I can um
you know because their
performance in crossfit for
the most part doesn't have
to have any direct impact
on my performance it's a
little different with
wrestling because it's
one-on-one you the physical
nature of you against
another person is you're
trying to beat the other
person but in crossfit it's
your performance you know
it's you against the
weights or the bike or or
whatever you're doing um
and so the other people's
performances don't have to have
a direct impact on you.
So it's all about focusing
inward and creating the
best performance I can and
the best preparation I can for myself.
So hope that made sense.
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
My last question to you is
just kind of a fun question
to finish this off.
You tagged me in a post you
made on Instagram.
I think you were just
cleaning out a car or went
to a used store or something,
and you found cassettes of
U2 and The Police.
Uh-huh.
What is the ultimate music
to listen to when you're working out?
Oh, I...
So I've gone through a
couple of different phases.
I would say about five, six years ago,
I was really listening to
when I was working out was
maybe like 80s rock, like foreigner,
foreigner.
I listened to a lot of
foreigner when I was working out,
even the slow jams when I
was working out.
And so that's what I was
doing at the time around then,
I would say.
Probably before that,
probably heavy heavy stuff
like more more current
current at the time so like
you know heavy metal from
like uh you know 2000s that
kind of stuff but then it
kind of evolved into to
country and I was listening
to country for a long time
while I was working out um
but I would say the last
six months to a year I've
gone back to like 90s
grunge and that's pretty
much what I've what I've
been listening to my my 13
year old um started playing guitar
And, uh,
has a rock band at school that
he's in and he's gotten really into,
into nineties, nineties grunge.
And my wife's kind of a fan of that too.
And so it's just kind of
been something that I've
gotten back into.
So that's,
that's what I've been listening
to a lot while it's in the
background while I'm working out lately.
How does that music change
when you're driving an old Mercedes?
Um, I don't know.
You just, I, I, you know,
that's what I kind of like about it is,
is it's,
from the era, you know, the older music,
that's what kind of like what the cars,
um, just a little bit nostalgic, um,
you know,
for that time for timer as the
older you get, um,
kind of more nostalgia you have for,
for those, uh,
younger years and the
things that go along with it.
So that's probably part of
the draw for the, um, for the cars that I,
that I like and drive.
So do your old Mercedes
still have tape decks?
Yeah.
Yeah.
My, um,
So I have two of them,
one that I've been driving,
one that's not quite ready to drive yet.
I'm still working on it.
But the one that I was
driving has a tape deck.
It has an original 80s tape deck in it.
So that's where the wanting
to buy tapes again has come from.
So we can play those in the car.
What's cool to me is,
and I don't know if people
younger than us would even
understand this,
is my nostalgia for that
music isn't the hit songs.
It's the deep tracks on
those albums that never get
played anymore,
that I haven't heard in 30 years.
That's why I started collecting vinyl,
because I work from home,
and I just put a record on
and let it play.
That's so much more
enjoyable to me than the radio.
Yeah.
Because the radio picks two
songs from a group,
and that's all you ever hear.
Yeah.
So I've been listening to
Sirius XM a lot lately.
That's what I put on when
I'm working out here at home.
And I've been doing Lithium.
And they have something
called Lithium Deep Cuts,
where they play the lesser
known songs from the band as well.
And then I'll finish with this.
This is just a personal story.
So I have a guitar.
It's sitting back here somewhere.
And before I got into all this media stuff,
I tried to play.
Well, I'll leave it at that.
And I love 90s grunge,
but everything is drop D tuning.
And the guitar I have to reset that is so,
it's a Floyd Rose tremolo
and it takes so much to reset that.
And so I just didn't learn
them because I didn't want
to have to reset the tune.
Change and change it back.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yup.
Yeah.
I,
I tried to play guitar a little bit for
a while too.
I had a guitar and I,
I never took lessons or anything,
but I was,
playing some trying to learn
some led zeppelin and stuff
like that too and it didn't
last very long maybe six
months nine months I was
doing it but and do it a
little bit now helping my
son doing that and that's
why I was remember that
talking about the drop to
and he's trying to learn
some nirvana songs and yeah
yeah yeah I was trying to
do sound garden and uh foo
fighters yeah all that and it well yeah
it's all, it's all down there.
So I actually bought a cheap
other guitar that I could
put in drop T tuning.
And I took three years of lessons,
but I never,
I never got to the point
where I felt I was good.
Yeah.
But it was fun.
Yeah.
I still, you know,
I was playing with my son.
I was trying to,
we're going through some
online tutorials and stuff.
And I was,
learning a little bit more
again and I was like oh
maybe I should start taking
guitar lessons here too and
I'm like no you don't need
any more hobbies ryan you
don't need you don't need
any more hobbies
Oh, Ryan, this has been a blast.
I want to thank you so much
for your time out.
And we'll see you in Birmingham.
We got granted full access
to do a behind-the-scenes
of the Masters CrossFit Games.
So we'll be back in the area
at the Grouse getting up
with you guys and talking
to you back there.
So I can't wait to catch up with you guys.
Thanks so much for having me on,
but also thank you so much
for putting the spotlight
on especially the Masters
CrossFit and doing the work
you do for that.
You guys have the coolest backstories.
People who aren't tuning
into this are missing out
because Justin Medeiros was
an unfair factor.
No, he was doing CrossFit.
And with that, everybody,
thank you for being with us.
We'll see you next time on
the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
Bye, guys.
See you later.
Bye.