Chopping it Up with Coach Krispy Kreme and Clydesdale Media - Quarters are Over, Thoughts?

In a new series we are getting an elite coaches perspective on different facets of the CrossFit Season.  Triston Patrick is the Head Coach with Ascend Athlete, Most famous for coaching Kelly Baker to the 2023 CrossFit Games but took Several Athletes to the 2023 Semifinals and a team.  This year he has even more athletes on the roster and is hoping to take a handful on to the 2024 CrossFit Games.

What is Clydesdale Media Podcast?

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.

We wanted to start this.

is one I've gotten to know

Tristan pretty well over the last year.

One of my best friends in

the world is Jamie Latimer.

Tristan is her coach.

And I even got to know you a

little bit before that

happened with Kelly Baker

and following her through last season.

That's probably what made

you most famous as a coach

is taking Kelly Baker to

the games for the first

time as an individual athlete.

Yeah.

And then the chaos that

ensued at the games.

Yeah.

It was a good follow-up to

the chaos that ensued at

semifinals in the last event.

So it was on brand.

Yeah.

So what I wanted to do is

kind of periodically check in with you,

get a coach's perspective

on what's going on in space,

and we'll create new

backgrounds and bumpers and

all that for that.

But it's been a crazy day.

So we were going to start with

You were in the chat with

Jamie and I a couple weeks

ago and said quarterfinal

programming is the most

important programming that

CrossFit will ever do.

We're scrapping that for now.

We're going to touch on it a

little bit later in the show.

But since we talked,

there's been some scoring

adjustments going on on the

leaderboard from quarterfinals,

and we're going to talk about it.

So at last count,

there have been well over

300 scoring adjustments to

the leaderboard from last

night at about seven ish.

Yeah.

My phone started exploding

around six o'clock my time.

Yeah.

That's seven my time.

So right around, right around there.

Yeah.

So, um, so as a coach, um,

you get your athletes

through quarterfinals weekend,

scores are submitted,

then where is your head at

from that point till today?

You know,

people at the affiliate who

watched us go through quarterfinals,

they kind of said, hey,

your stress is gone, this, that,

and the other.

And I'm not stress-free

until everybody gets validated videos.

I don't think there's

anything as a coach –

I'm more terrified of in the

middle of the night than a

major penalty from HQ on

one of their videos.

That whole process is just so stressful.

I mean,

the floor plans were looser this year,

so there wasn't as much of that,

but just...

I never want that to happen

to any of my athletes.

I never want them to have

done the workouts multiple times,

perhaps put in their effort.

You know, we think we did it.

We think we did what we set out to do.

And then the hammer comes

down and your season's over.

So I had already went

through this a little bit with some teams,

um, you know,

Madison and Taylor on a team, they, um,

did not get a penalty,

but two of the teams that

one of our coaches carry,

Tobias and her gym, they're Ascend teams.

They both got penalized.

So I had already kind of

been through the ringer

with that with them.

So I knew that I had a

feeling after what I saw

happen with the teams that

that we were gonna see some

hefty penalties on the individual side,

obviously nothing.

I did not expect anything

like what we have seen, but for me,

the stress doesn't really

actually go away until they

get that email inviting

them to go to semifinals

and pay their money.

And the way it works that

I've heard is that, um,

the athlete gets an email

as they approve each workout.

So like go get an email

saying your workout one has

been validated and is good to go.

Yeah.

They get an email and then

about the same time they get that email,

it updates on their app on

the CrossFit games app.

So it all kind of happens in conjunction.

So let's start with stress I

know you've gone through this week.

And that is when an athlete

types in a score that is not accurate.

So that is the first phase

of what happened.

And it wasn't just that

athlete that did it.

It actually turned out to be

a pretty common mistake

around the world where people did not...

add in the first 30 reps of

workout four they only did

the max reps they did on

the last barbell yeah so a

lot of people cut

themselves short 30 reps

you reached out to me like

hey do you know anybody at

HQ we can talk to this was

messed up we can't get the

score updated when did you

know that those scores that

CrossFit went in and

globally added those 30

reps in for those athletes

So I saw that Grace Walton's got changed.

I had caught a snippet of

Siobhan's show after it was

that evening or the early

the next morning,

saw that she had put hers in wrong,

was obviously just

refreshing the leaderboard over and over.

And I saw that hers got

changed to her correct score.

So that made me feel at

least better that we were

going to be able to get

Hattie's score fixed up.

and what that did for your

athlete hattie is that she

jumped from way out of

qualifying to ninth place

in the west yeah I mean

that that was and the same

for grace the same for um

marjoram in in europe like

they none of them were

qualifying and then they

were which was awesome yeah

that was that was pretty

stressful I felt really

really bad when I had to call hattie

Um, you know, we had talked,

she crushed it waiting for

the leaderboard to come out.

Leaderboard comes out.

I refreshed the leaderboard,

scroll down through the first page.

Don't see Hattie scroll back up.

Still don't see Hattie

realize something's wrong.

Search her name, see the wrong score.

And then I immediately called her like,

Hey, really sorry to ruin your night,

but here's what you need to do.

Um,

So T. Cain says,

imagine the stress these

athletes are feeling.

CrossFit needs to have a better system.

Hattie reached out to me

after I talked to you,

and she was beating herself up so much,

saying she checked her score three times.

It was just a simple mistake.

And I cannot imagine the

stress they go through.

Their whole year depends on

these qualifiers.

And if they don't make it

through to get to that live

competition where you're truly assessed –

For your fitness,

the year's a waste almost.

Yeah, I agree.

As a coach,

I fall pretty squarely in the

camp with Coach Kotler on

this whole thing.

I don't think there's

anything more important for

the sport side of CrossFit

right now than getting rid of the –

qualifying process to the

second highest level of

competition in our sport

not taking place on the

internet I don't I don't like

Every year, we have some kind of an issue.

A bunch of elite athletes

didn't put their score in correctly.

They got it fixed.

Some people say they should.

Some people say they shouldn't.

It was a clerical error.

Most of those athletes have

a video proving that they did the reps.

That's one issue.

Now we have all these

penalties that are coming down the pipe,

right or wrong.

I mean,

I'm sure we'll get into more of

that with like judges who

went out to help with camps, this, that,

and the other,

the stress of the video review,

the human error of it.

It's online setups, floor plans,

measurements.

It's just the, it's,

it's just ridiculous at this point.

Like I,

I understand creating a structure

where there's some sort of

a circuit or in-person

competitions for points, whatever.

I understand that's a lot of work.

but I just think this is

ridiculous at this point.

I think that that'll be show two,

like how to change the

season to make this better.

Cause I have,

I have a lot of thoughts on that.

I was actually talking with

Justin's wife this morning

and we were solving all the

world's problems.

Yeah.

I ironically enough, my fiance and I,

we drive to West Virginia every year.

That's where she's from for

either Thanksgiving or Christmas.

And I,

we were driving back this year on

our way back and,

Overly caffeinated and many

hours of the road in,

and we just started coming

up with this whole system

for different comps can get

you different points based

on the programming and the

strength of field.

And you have to get this

many points and you can

still get points through quarterfinals,

but it's like your last chance.

And it's really heavily.

It was just,

we went on like a tear and

then it was hilarious

because the next day we

couldn't remember anything

we came up with because we

were just so tired.

Um, so.

And Chelsea, I see your comment.

I do not know what's going

on with Caitlin.

I don't know.

CrossFit is not disclosing anything.

So it's really hard to track

what's going on unless...

And I do know her coach.

I could reach out.

But a lot of times coaches

like to keep that private

until they know a final resolution.

So...

So now we go through this penalty thing,

right?

And it's like nothing we

have ever seen in CrossFit before.

You know,

usually you get the list of penalties.

It's maybe 15 names long.

Yeah.

Either it's major, minor, or rejected.

But this time, like we talked,

well over 300 scoring adjustments.

It was so bad.

I was trying to figure it out.

And thank God for Mike

Halpin and the known and

knowable Instagram.

I would not have been able to keep up.

He's been running these

reports about every eight hours.

So you can track what's new, what's not.

But some of the best movers

in the sport are getting

dinged major penalties.

You as a coach...

Does that put fear in you

that that's happening?

Yeah.

Yeah, for sure.

I mean, I don't know.

The entire quarterfinals

process of judging is so difficult.

I do, I think,

a good job of telling my athletes,

because a lot of times I am

also the person judging

them for the quarterfinals.

And I tell them, I will no rep you.

And I tell them,

I will no rep you because I

don't want you to get a

penalty from video review.

And I kind of try to scare

them straight basically in

terms of you need to move perfectly.

Like you have to keep your

movement together as best you can.

But even then it's still, it's just so,

I mean, Patrick Vellner,

one of the best movers in

the sport got hit with a major penalty.

Like I don't think he's ever had a,

video penalty before at all, you know it's,

it is pretty stressful.

And I, I don't know.

There's a lot of different

thoughts that go into my

mind and different things

that I think play into the

video penalties that we're

seeing potentially.

And we can dive into some of that stuff,

I guess,

once we get into the more nuanced

side of it and why we think

this might be happening, but it,

it's quarterfinals is the worst.

Like, I don't know.

I don't know how other coaches feel,

you know, like, you know,

last year you called me the

new kid on the block.

I don't know a lot of the other coaches.

Well, I'm not in with the, you know,

the clicks yet or anything like that,

but yeah,

I quarterfinals is the bane

of my existence.

It's the most stressful time of the year.

I mean, semifinals is obviously stressful,

but it's just this different thing.

And with it being as long as

it was this year, it was a week of just,

just stress.

Well,

you go into the weekend with a blind

leaderboard and,

Does your athlete redo?

Do they not redo?

Is the score good enough?

Is it not good enough?

Then you come out of it and

you've got this going on.

Yeah.

It's, it's insane.

So T Kane says page powers,

top 10 at the games doesn't

get to compete because her

head was looking down at the box.

I think that's been misinterpreted a tiny,

tiny bit.

Yeah.

From my understanding,

it was not the head.

It's the shoulders.

Yes.

you can be looking down as

long as your shoulders were

over top your hips, which is, you know,

difficult.

I don't,

I don't disagree with what he's

getting at.

And I'm sure you've heard,

and I've heard step overs

would have solved this.

I don't disagree.

I also don't disagree that I

have seen videos from

athletes who got penalized

and they did not hold the

standard that was in that scorecard.

So I have,

I have two thoughts about this one.

We've been begging for

CrossFit to hold the standard forever.

Yep.

Now they are and everybody's pissed.

Every.

Yeah.

I, I said the same thing.

I was talking to Jacob this

morning earlier and you know,

a large part of me agrees with that.

We have been yelling at the sky,

how it's not a judge competition and,

this that and the other and

now they drop the hammer

and nobody likes it now my

my counterpoint to that is

the shoulder head area has

never been a point of

emphasis as something

that's being judged even at

a live competition

Yep.

Right.

So if you're going to make that change,

then announce that that

will be a point of emphasis

that the extension must be knees, hips,

shoulders.

Yes.

Must be shoulders.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again,

I think this just comes back to the

online qualifier.

It's hard to pick movements

that are easy to judge at

maximal velocity.

in an online format.

It's just difficult.

You know, I think J.R.

said it or somebody else

about why we haven't seen

shouldered overhead.

Very hard to judge at maximal velocity.

yeah I just it's it's it's

kind of six one way half a

dozen the other like you

said I think step overs

would have been a much

better movement I think if

they could have let people

know about the head and

shoulders because that is

to me also kind of an odd

standard you're loading the

arms the muscle action

portion of the movement is

not the thoracic spine like

as long as your hips knees

are extended and you're standing tall

why why are you getting that

much more metabolic work

and work capacity out of

that little bit of the

movement I don't think so I

don't know yeah

Yeah, and I do not debate this either,

Jay Birch.

Soft knees.

I've seen videos, lots of soft knees.

Lots of soft knees.

Right.

I think where people are

upset is the shoulder

aspect because it has never

been an emphasis before.

Now it is.

Something I noticed watching

a couple videos,

a lot of people cornered the box.

And depending on how big

your feet are and how big

the box you're using,

you don't have as much real

estate to plant that off foot.

And I think while athletes

were doing that as a way to move quicker,

some athletes that might

have actually been part of

the reason they didn't.

put the weight on that other

foot and extend all the way

because they had most of

their weight on that other

foot and there was just a

little less real estate

than they might have been

comfortable with when they

were super fatigued to put

all their weight on the

other side of that on that

foot potentially

potentially because that

was the cornering was a

whole thing for me and my

athletes most of my

athletes did not corner the boxes um

I know that eventually it

came out that that was okay.

But the first thing I

thought of was uncommon movement clause.

I'm not playing with that.

I'm not the picture.

She's flush.

We're going to be flush.

Like I'm not doing that.

Right.

So, yeah, but here we are.

When we talk about this,

a lot of times the picture

and the words don't match, right?

in the standards right so

you know it's really hard

to know what to go by and

I'm and I was camped out

with jamie all weekend yeah

and we had that discussion

like is it worth cornering

and I'm like how much time

you saving yeah yeah and

then if they do say

something yeah chelsea I

just saw nick matthew was

out in the latest run yeah

I saw crazy the number of

games athletes that are out um

So, so we have that.

And the thing that's frustrating,

and it goes back to what you said,

the second most important

qualifier to get to the games is online.

If you have a judge in a live competition,

they're going to tell you

no rep and you're going to

correct it online.

You don't get that feedback.

So you don't know what's wrong.

And then you get a major penalty.

Yeah.

And well, and that leads us to the,

I guess the other part of

this that started to come to light is,

you know,

camps or individuals having

people out there to judge

them that are qualified.

Right.

In whatever sense of the

word we can actually say

that is in the CrossFit space.

Cause I don't think the

judge's course actually

qualifies you to enough to

judge people that a little bit.

Right, because you have experience judging,

yeah?

So the AFJ is a group of

people that I used to judge

with who have organized.

And they're the people that

volunteer their time and go

to all of these, like go to Rogue,

go to Waterpalooza,

go to all these events.

They usually are the ones

doing semifinals.

And then they do some of the games.

Now,

they don't usually get to go into the

final heats of the elite individuals.

That is the red shirts.

Right.

But they do all of the other stuff.

And I have contended for a long time,

I think they're better

judges than the red shirts.

Well,

they might be judging more frequently.

And I would contend most of them are.

are better than the red

shirts right most of them

um you get a couple

one-offs that that make a

bad name for them they just

their their organization

just got ruined yeah why

would you right why hire

them if it's not going to

guarantee you anything yeah yeah it's uh

I just think this all

alludes to the greater

issue of it's not optimal.

It's not best practice to

have this qualifying

competition be online.

Um, and I,

I understand that there's

constraints in the system.

I understand that, you know,

CrossFit has a small staff.

I understand these things, but geez,

Louise, man, um,

It's just – I mean when you have athletes,

every spectrum of athlete from a –

know the afj judges coaches

who have been coaching in

the space for a decade the

professional coaches at the

highest level all the way

down to you know people who

might be just trying to

qualify for semifinals

their first time and they

just had their buddy who's

an l1 judge them I venture

to say most people are

doing their bet they're

they're attempting to hold

the standard now the degree

in which they're being held

to the standard could

probably vary based on the

person judging them

But when there's this many

penalties across that range

of people who have been

judged by those types of judges,

it just – where do we go from here?

Who do you get to judge you?

I try to be a very harsh

judge with my athletes here

at quarterfinals,

but I always tell them I am

not the final authority.

right?

And it's obviously difficult

for a coach because you're

emotionally invested to some point,

but it's also,

I can't freeze frame in real time.

I like to think I have a

good coach's eye and a good judge's eye,

but I'm human.

I have human error, right?

And if somebody can zoom in,

slow down and freeze the frame,

I can't save you from that.

Only you can save yourself.

And we hope that

you know,

the athlete has to hold the standard,

but it's still just not optimal.

So Jay Burch says that

depends how many AFJ

members were judging people

with a major penalty.

So where this comes into play,

Jay Burch is, Hiller put out a video,

and on that thumbnail,

he has Paige and Brooke, Brooke Wells,

Paige Powers.

The AFJ judges are right behind them.

I know both of those people.

And I can tell you they are

some of the best judges in the business.

Yeah.

Um,

both of those people got major

penalties on that workout.

If it's,

if the major penalty was the

shoulders and head area,

we've never been trained

that I've never been

trained to look for that in

a competition.

When you have your judges

meeting and you go over the

standards of movement and

what you should be looking at,

that's never a point of emphasis.

So if you've changed that

point of emphasis,

it doesn't matter how good

the judge you bring in is,

they don't know what that

point of emphasis is.

Right?

Yeah.

Just this crew they hired to

do video review.

Right.

So now we're not on the same page.

Yes, Corey.

I do know everybody.

I don't, but I actually,

they actually came out of my region, uh,

during regionals.

So I knew them before cause

they have both been

promoted up through the judging ranks.

Okay.

So they're not even just

like your regular ordinary judge now.

Yeah.

They're like leads and heads

of judging at events.

And when I,

when I got to know them in the

regional world,

they were just my P on level.

Yeah, it's such a weird, nuanced thing.

Going back to what you said,

we want harder standards,

we want people to get penalties,

and then everybody gets

penalties dropped on them,

and they're massive

penalties that are taking

games athletes out of going to semifinals,

and then it's, well,

we have these professional judges,

why did that not do any good?

I feel like it's, on one hand, yes,

we want the

video review to be thorough

but then the other hand is

well I had this

professional judge what do

you want from me so we

already have a couple shows

coming up now because we're

going to do new season

format the other one I want

to bring up is standardized

rule book for the season

that that if you're going

to do a burpee box step up

this is the standard for the season yeah

Every other sport has that.

The NFL has a kickoff rule.

They have a penalty for this.

And if it changes, it goes to committee,

and that committee has to

vote that that change is being made,

and then everybody knows

that that rule has changed.

I think here we are.

We're sitting where some

people got the news that

they wanted to emphasize

something different,

and another group didn't.

And that other group isn't just the AFJ.

It's you as a coach.

It's the athletes.

That whole group didn't get word.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's kind of a mess.

I feel bad, obviously,

for all the athletes that

are getting major penalties.

I do feel like I'm glad

there is such a thorough

video review being done.

Um, and I, yeah,

I think I would say I could see more,

I would give more empathy

to the head and shoulders

issue versus the standing

up of the hips and knees at

full extension.

Cause that was in the

standard clearly demonstrated.

Um, I mean, I think so.

Jake Chapman just said

they're so used to getting

away with skirting the lines for so long.

I don't think everybody, okay, I get it.

We've wanted good standards, right?

But for the most part,

the athletes move well.

You have a couple outliers

that get focused on in

different videos and

YouTube channels that don't, right?

It goes back to the old adage.

If you're in a class and 95%

of the class fails...

Is it the students or is it the teacher?

We have never, ever,

ever had a competition

weekend that had 300 plus

scoring adjustments on one workout.

I bet we clear 700 by the

weekend if they're going

through three and four.

I bet we clear 700.

Well, okay.

First, the first thing,

I think it's hard for

coaches to no-rip their

athletes in the

quarterfinal stage on qualifiers.

I think they don't want to

have to do that.

And you're right.

Most of the athletes do move very well.

So I think you can kind of create a,

and also it's unideal for a

coach to be judging their athlete.

But a lot of times at the

quarterfinal stage, because of manpower,

that's what has to happen.

Right.

Uh,

like there were many examples over the

last week where depending

on who was going,

I was not their judge or I

was their judge and I

wasn't their kind of emotional support,

pace keeper person.

Um,

I judged Jacob on several of his workouts.

And when I'm judging Jacob

for 95% of that workout

that I'm judging him,

I'm not his cheerleader.

I'm just trying to be as

robotic as possible about rep.

Like, did you stand up?

Did you do this?

Did you do that?

Did you do whatever the

movement is supposed to be?

But it's very hard.

It's not ideal, right?

So I think there's...

a little bit of play there I

think it's a little grayer

than just saying athletes

skirt the standards all the

time and now they're

getting hammered and that

is what it is um and I

don't think because he also

said it's not 95 of the

students it's probably not

95 of the students but it's

also they're not video

reviewing everybody so to

your point about the school right it's

we can look back.

I mean,

ideally when this is all done and

see how many people got

penalized of how many

people got video reviewed

and then we'll know.

Yeah.

If we ever know how many

people got video reviewed,

cause that's probably a close secret.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So,

so then I don't even know where I want

to go anymore.

Do you think they're going

to look through three as

hard as they're looking through one?

I'd steal my answer from JR,

where JR thinks that

they're going to make sure

that everything was measured properly.

Sure.

then it'll get a quick

cursory look over and then

they'll probably hit four

as hard as they hit two or

hit hit one yeah I could

see that I I'm I'm leaning

toward they they might go

through three really hard

because for the teams they

dug in those muscle ups on team event one

Most of a lot of the

penalties I know of for the

teams were event one muscle ups.

I think, I think because that's a,

what that one was the 15 minute cap,

right?

Yeah.

I think that when you have a 15 minute cap,

it's tough to get through

as many videos as you need to.

see and that's an

interesting point because

because workout one you can

fast forward through the

rest sure you can probably

fast forward yeah and

you're just really doing

the snatch and the box step

up so I guess this is a

question I don't know the

answer to but it's

something that I got

curious about during team

quarterfinals because i

I had a team in the East.

I had a team in the West.

I was helping with two other

teams in the West that are ascend teams.

And I also know a lot of people.

So friends of mine would

send me their videos and Hey,

do you think this is good?

This, that, and the other, you know,

do you think the score will

play stuff like that?

If I was judging those videos,

I only need to watch as

long as it takes to get to

a penalty threshold.

don't have to watch the

whole video I only have to

watch the whole video if

you don't mess up yeah

because once it hits major

penalty it doesn't matter

if it's a major major

penalty because it's the same right

So it's like I guess I would

have to watch through to

see if you hit a minor penalty threshold.

I would have to continue to

watch through to see if you

hit a major penalty threshold.

So I guess you – but if

there was a video that

accrued a major penalty,

I only need to watch until

you hit that threshold,

and then I'm done.

So I see both sides of that,

but obviously the video

review process is largely secretive.

And the other thing is on

that muscle up workout and

you're only talking the top

X number that even got to the muscle ups.

Fair, fair.

There was also to be fair,

a lot less teams.

Right.

Um,

and they were doing muscle ups from the

jump, right?

First interval.

We had muscle ups.

Those muscle ups don't occur

until the end.

Um,

outsource it t-mobile that's

hilarious um what did tk

now do you think there's

hope for page and other

athletes outside the top 40

have you have you ever

heard how many appeals have

you heard of being one very very very few

So I have, as a coach,

filed two appeals or

assisted an athlete

technically in filing two appeals.

And I won one of them.

And it was Madison last year

on the GHD row VF workout.

She does GHD sit-ups very

fast and she flicks her fingers down.

So where the camera was set up,

To see her rower and her GHDs,

you couldn't really see her

fingers touch the plates at full speed.

So I screenshot every single

GHD sit-up showing her

hands touching the bottom.

And then I put it in Google

Drive folders or in folders.

And she sent that in with her appeal.

And we won that appeal to me, to me,

filing an appeal with

CrossFit HQ is like going to court,

except you are guilty until

proven innocent.

You have to,

the way I think about it is

you have to present beyond

any refute that they were

wrong and you did it right.

And that's just a tall ask.

So I don't know.

I, I,

I don't know how many of

those athletes will win the appeals.

I am not confident in that.

Yeah.

Which sucks.

Right.

Which really sucks.

Because we've lost already

probably four games

athletes at this point.

Paige, Nick Matthew, Sidney Wells,

Sidney Wells.

Brooks on the teetering edge.

I mean,

that's the thing with them going

through three or four.

Vellner, Bill Leahy, not a games athlete,

but relatively high profile.

Everybody wants to see what he can do.

If you got a penalty and

you're down in 30th, if you get a minor,

you're out on anything else.

Because the separation value

was so low in these workouts.

Scores were so bottlenecked,

especially four.

couple in Europe too Lazar

jukic took a pretty big hit

is he out uh he's not out

at this time I knew he got

a penalty but I hadn't

looked to see it was a

major he dropped like 27

spots um so I like I've

been following this all day here's

Mike Halpin's Google Doc.

As you can see,

it was last run at noon today.

Okay.

And then if anything

happened different from the 7.30 run,

he put a new beside it.

Oh, Samantha Pugh.

I didn't realize she was out.

Yeah.

So everybody in red is out currently.

Jeez, Brooke Wells is still in.

Paige Powers out, Zoe Warren out.

Yeah.

Oh, Lena Richter's out?

Dang.

But she was going team anyway.

Oh, that's true, yeah.

Her and Mathilde both got major penalties,

but they're going team.

There's Tia's penalty.

Yeah.

Amy Kringle dropped, but she's still in.

Hope Cicero,

she's on the Masters leaderboard, too.

Sarah Sigmundsdottir dropped five spots,

but still in.

She's still in.

Ashley Wansney's still in.

Yeah.

A lot of the newer ones were

minor penalties.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Like Kyra Milligan was born,

but didn't even change a place.

Interesting.

Cody Vitito,

someone I followed last year

in the semifinal series,

didn't move a place.

She got a two-rep penalty, but didn't.

Scuds,

the person in the picture showing

what the movement standard is,

got a minor penalty.

I love that.

I love that.

Yeah.

You know, it's James Hobart got one too.

So yeah.

Arguably like the poster boy

for CrossFit movements.

Right.

Right.

And Allison Scud's the female poster girl.

Yeah.

The only thing would be

better if Tola was doing

Indy and he got one too.

Oh man.

Yeah.

Grace.

So here Kaya.

Yeah.

gabe there's gabe townsend

yeah tiffany rocker

samantha tolbert yikes

yikes yeah and then with

the men there we go poster

man he's old now fair

enough wad zombie poster

man poster gentleman how's

that uh casper got a bit

major penalty gamma mark 76

places kill my torres

Dallin Pepper was one of the new ones.

It was a minor.

Didn't even change a place.

Medeiros got a minor.

Henry.

Henrik Hapelainen got one,

but it didn't change him.

913 spots he fell.

That can't be a movement thing.

That had to be me.

There's something wrong with the video.

Yeah, there's something wrong.

There's James Hobart.

Fell 588 spots.

I would be so curious if

James would tell everybody

what he got a penalty for.

One more minor penalty for Brooke Wilson.

She's out.

Yes, correct.

Well,

and what's interesting about this too

is – okay, so let's say you were 43rd.

Now you're 39th.

You better hope your video

is squeaky clean because

they're going to get down there, right?

Because they're going

through – Cody Vitito was

not in the top 40 before

she got a penalty, right?

so I don't know who's having

a more exciting afternoon

what uh jay birch had to go

uh I think some frogs there

you go games of course game

legends will be lined up

next to some dude you've

never heard of hey maybe

it's an opportunity for

people to get some exposure yeah I mean

I do not know what's

happening with either of them.

I'm a big fan of Freya.

I've been friends with her

for a couple years.

Really hoping she gets through.

And no, I did not see Heppner's story.

I saw him destroy the wall

ball burpee boxer burpee workout, though.

Yeah.

Disgusting.

I feel like it's going to be

a very long and...

anxious weekend because they

are supposed to be done

monday but it can also go

longer than that so you

need to pull it up he makes

a hell of a good point I

like I like when cory

directs my show is he your

uh unknown producer

It'd be better if he was

somewhere near a computer

and he could pull it up for me.

Right.

Okay.

I think there's been some

penalties in the age groups as well.

Yeah,

I don't know if that's... I think

those are on Halpins as well.

All right.

Let's see what we got here.

This is riveting, Corey.

Corey, there was nothing there.

There's only two stories, Corey.

I went through both stories, man.

Can't be that.

It probably expired, Corey.

Probably expired.

Is it a real?

Oh, it's a real.

An opinion from a guy on his

baby's moon in the Bahamas.

Here we go.

Two thoughts.

CrossFit controls the sport.

They can do whatever they want.

That's the thing you

probably don't want to hear, right?

They can do whatever they want.

It's their sport.

If you don't like it,

All I can do is really cry about it.

I learned the hard way in 2018.

It takes a lot of forearms.

But here we are.

Now,

because they can do it doesn't mean

they should do it.

So my second thing is,

what's the fix for it?

If you're going to give that

many penalties for something,

then at a minimum, at least,

you need to be looking at

the highest penalty given

by gender in each region.

What does that mean?

That means if you're going

to give Paige Powers a 600

and some odd placement on Event 1,

you need to be looking at

all the 600 and some odd

placements in front of her in her region.

Because I guarantee you,

I'll make a bet on this

virgin pina colada that...

200,

300 of them didn't even video the

workout and didn't even do it correctly.

And if Paige Powers did it wrong,

then probably 400 of the

rest of them did it wrong too.

It's not fair to the other athletes.

So if you're going to hold

everyone to a standard,

then hold everyone to the standard,

the same standard.

But what do I know?

I'm just a mathematics guy

who never competed a day in

his life in CrossFit

drinking a peanut clod on the beach.

All right,

who's ready for some unsolicited advice?

Now I'm jealous, right?

So he makes a great point and,

but there's no way

CrossFit's ever going to do that.

My answer to his point would

be let less people do

quarterfinals so you can judge everyone.

There you go.

That would be my answer.

Um,

but me not being a fan of top 25% is

not new news to anybody who knows me.

So whatever.

Yeah.

And that ship,

that ship has definitely

sailed with the money that

they made on this.

Oh yeah.

Oh yeah.

Um, it's funny.

You brought up the different

season cause Ashley Kotler

and I were talking this

morning that we had the perfect system,

um,

We had the sanctionals.

CrossFit didn't even have to fund them.

People were willing to line

up and do it for them.

Yeah.

I think it would be good to

have a degree of oversight

on the sanctionals in terms

of the programming,

at least to some degree.

And that's why I think...

But why it was okay is you had 30 shots.

Yeah.

Yeah.

if you didn't like the

programming at this one,

you got 29 other opportunities.

Yeah.

I don't disagree.

I also, I mean,

it would drive way more media.

It would give people way

more opportunity to compete.

It would be great for

developing athletes who, you know,

are trying there kind of the,

I guess what now would be

the 40 to a hundred, 120 range,

depending on the semifinal.

I don't,

I don't know why that was

tossed out as quickly as it was.

COVID.

Well, that's true.

It was COVID.

Yeah.

The old Rona.

We had to go backwards to

get through COVID,

and then we just stuck with it.

The sanctionals, I do think,

were a good start to having

a really cool circuit and

system of competitions to qualify.

Did the sanctionals qualify

you for the games or semis?

I would even be fine with

the circuit only qualifying

you for the semifinals.

I would be fine with that.

So that CrossFit still has a

degree of control over the

second highest and the

highest stage of competition?

And I think that there were

too many sanctionals anyway.

There was a ton.

So make a couple of them

like they did this year.

The semifinals, you know,

West Coast Classic and Syndicate Crown,

which...

loud and live and that crew

that had the mac they were

actually sanctionals back

then make them the

semifinals and then so you

work your way through the

regular season and get to

that postseason just like

the college bowl series

right like yep then you

move to the the new year's

day six and then you move

to the games yep yeah I

would I would love to see

something like that I think it would be

much better for the sport.

And TK brings up the, you know,

injured athletes,

giving them another shot to compete.

But I mean,

the one that always sticks out

to me is if you get sick,

like if you get sick during

quarterfinals or you get

sick during semifinals, I mean,

hell in a sanctional season, like,

at least if you got sick during semifinals,

you had gotten to do other

competitions prior, compete in person,

get some swag, get some notoriety,

go do that stuff versus you

get sick at semifinals and

there goes your whole year.

Poof.

Corey,

they have not come back to regionals.

No regionals.

There were like what?

Six in the United States,

eight in the United States.

And only three or five made it?

Making a semifinal is

exponentially harder than

it was to make a regional.

Anybody in the top 40 going to a semifinal,

if we broke them down into

their individual regionals

of what the old system was,

they would have walked into a regional.

No problem.

Yep.

And you took away the fan

base because now the fan

base has to travel.

Back then,

they could do an hour drive to a

regional and cheer on their

local favorite.

Yep.

And so we've kind of ruined

what was great about the regionals.

Yeah.

Right?

Yeah.

It's crazy.

I feel bad for all those

coaches too because as a coach –

I mean,

I know I would do anything to do

what I could to try to fix

a penalty and get an appeal

through and so that, you know,

their season didn't end in this way.

And it's just so stressful

and there's only so much you can do.

And it's just tough.

Like I just,

I feel a lot for the athletes

and the coaches.

Like,

I fall on both sides of it.

I want to see the standards upheld.

If you didn't hold the

standards and you got hammered, hey,

that's on you.

If you did hold the

standards and you can prove

it in a video and you still got hammered,

that freaking sucks, man.

Yeah.

And again,

because everything is kept cloak

and dagger,

we don't get to see these videos.

We have no idea how

egregious any of this was.

I said something to my fiance last night.

Do you think it would be out

of turn if they penalized a video,

they then made that video public?

You end up in a whole court

of public appeal potential situation,

but they are the governing body.

They can do what they want.

If they've already – the

penalty is done and dusted

and they deny the appeal

because everybody is going to appeal.

Everybody who got a penalty

is appealing for sure.

So it wouldn't be until after the appeal.

And if CrossFit is like, no,

this penalty stands,

then they release the video publicly.

Do you think that's unfair,

like leading into unfair scrutiny?

Because part of me wants to

see these videos so I can

make a note like, all right,

we got to really dot our

T's and cross our I's with, you know,

dot our I's and cross our T's.

You know what I meant?

With stuff like that.

But then it's also,

do you just bring in a lot

of potential hate Cheeto

finger people on the athletes?

I don't think I can come up

with an answer to that in

this short amount of time.

But what I will say is,

I think it's on CrossFit to

have a press release.

that says we're having an

unprecedented amount of

penalties or scoring adjustments.

Here are some of the reasons why.

Yeah.

Because right now, everybody's speculating,

and they're making outlandish accusations,

and we don't know if any of that's true.

Yeah, we don't know anything.

We don't know.

Because, I mean,

an athlete gets a penalty.

The first thing that happens

is they go radio silent.

Do you remember the year

that people miscounted the

crossovers and then Boz

went out on Instagram,

did a video showing how to count, right?

If they did a press release

with a video that said this

was the standard and it was

missed because this body position,

and that way you're not

even calling out an athlete.

You're just saying these are the reasons.

Yeah.

Yeah, I would like something like that.

I would also personally like

a real press conference

when they do that.

I want somebody up in front

of the freaking podium or

whatever you call it.

Whoever's in charge,

come tell us what's going on.

If Dana White can suck it up and do it,

so can you.

So, love or hate Justin Berg,

when he was in charge,

there were quarterly press conferences.

That is true.

to take part in those we got

to ask questions um they

may have danced around an

answer but at least you got

to ask the question yeah

since dave has taken back

over the only press

conferences are at the

games and then I did they

did have one at the west

north america west last

year oh did they I had no idea

Yeah, Don Fall came in.

Don and Dave did a press conference.

Gotcha.

Chelsea,

I think that's what everybody

wants to know.

How egregious are the reps?

We don't know.

And what constitutes minor, major?

Did soft knees get you the major?

Did the shoulders get you a minor?

Did...

I can actually read that to you, I think.

Hold on.

I have the rule book open.

Oh, it's in the appendix.

Hold on.

Well,

I know the major for so many reps

that are in question.

But it's still even a little vague.

Right.

Which is kind of tough.

You would think they would

make that stuff at least

relatively clear in the

in the rule book.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

What does it say?

Penalties?

I think it says like a minor

penalty will be assessed if

it's below some threshold.

And then a major penalty is 15%.

But even the minor penalty,

I know it's like the way

they calculate it is like

the rep speed times two.

It's so like,

It used to be,

it was like if it was five

or less questionable reps,

it was a minor.

Right.

If it was up to like 20 reps,

it was a major.

And then beyond that was rejected.

Yeah.

Well, and that's, I mean,

we haven't seen anything

close to a rejected video in a long time,

but we're seeing at least

things that look similar.

900 spots.

Yeah.

Something got rejected.

Exactly.

yeah I'm sure he's not the

only one too I'm sure

there's some other people

who have fallen really

really far well homer fell

500 spots yeah so that has

to be if it's not a

rejected video they're

taking away all the reps of

a movement right

would be the only way I

think you could have that

kind of a fall off points

wise or score wise on a

workout like the intervals.

Like if you did no step ups,

like if they counted none

of your step ups or none of

your row calories for some reason.

Yeah.

Cause majors are supposed to

be a percentage, right?

Right.

Yeah.

It's 15%.

Yeah.

I don't,

Be nice to know what their

thinking was on this in

some shape or form.

Like, this is what a major was.

This is why we did it.

Here's a demo.

That way you're not calling

out the athlete,

but you're showing the

example of what was done

and what wasn't done.

Yeah,

that would probably be a much better

way to do it than put out

the video publicly.

I think I've just, as a coach,

I'm just so curious to see

Cause I'll put a video of my

athlete going in a video of

somebody who got penalized and look,

try to see what the

difference is between the two.

Well,

I'm all for like public submission of

videos.

Yeah.

I just don't know if I like

just the penalized being released.

I agree with that.

Yeah.

A little bit unfair to those athletes.

Yeah.

I think if at the beginning

you say you have to make

all of your videos public on YouTube,

I'm okay with that across the board.

If you're a good mover,

you should not even worry about that.

Hiller would have so much content.

Well,

hopefully the standard would improve.

That would be the hope, right?

That would be the goal.

Yeah.

Well, yeah, it's wild times.

We are up on the hour.

So this was the first

episode of hopefully many.

Yeah.

This was fun.

Getting a coach's

perspective on what's going

on and who better than

coach Krispy Kreme himself.

I've got to get another shirt.

So mad.

I lost that shirt.

Yeah.

I'm just glad I was able to

make a thumbnail that I

could steal the logo.

Yeah, for sure.

Right.

Yeah.

Replace donut with a send athlete.

Yeah, like the A. That would be good.

Could do that.

In the greens part where it says donut?

Uh-huh.

Does it say ascend?

It says ascend.

Oh, I didn't even notice that.

No way.

Yeah.

On the thumbnail.

Heck yeah.

Oh, yeah, it does.

That's awesome.

That's sick.

Yeah, this was fun.

I would like to do this more.

All right.

Well, sounds good.

And we will say everybody in the chat.

You've been awesome.

Yeah.

Thanks guys.

So much feedback.

It makes the show go by really fast.

You guys are always the best with that.

We'll see everybody next

time on chopping it up with

coach Krispy Kreme.

Here we go.