Latest / Clydesdale Media Podcast / Corey Borolien - 50-54 Year Old Division | Clydesdale Champions Series

Transcript

Corey Borolien - 50-54 Year Old Division | Clydesdale Champions Series · Clydesdale Media Podcast

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  On Clydesdale Media, where we bring you the widest array of content here on our YouTube channel.
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  Hit that notifier so you first know when new episodes are available.
• 0:32
  What is going on, everybody?
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  Welcome to the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
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  My name is Scott Schweitzer.
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  I'm the Clydesdale.
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  I've got my co-host Jamie Latimer with me.
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  And we have, we're so honored to have with us Corey Borling, champion in the
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  Oh my gosh, I forgot what age group you're in.
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  50-54.
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  50-54 year old division at Legends.
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  We're going to sit back and relax and get to know him a little bit.
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  So Corey, welcome to the show.
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  Thank you.
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  Thanks so much for having me on.
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  So as is typical with the Clydesdale podcast, we are Canadian bias.
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  So we have another Canadian winner here.
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  Actually, you know, Canada is becoming a hotbed for high end athletes in the CrossFit space.
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  Do you have a sense of pride about that?
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  Yeah, definitely.
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  I mean, it's it's noteworthy considering that our population is about a tenth the size.
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  So if you adjusted it for population, it'd be a lot more.
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  Yeah.
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  And also a lot of people don't realize, but the geography of Canada, like because the population is centered in just, you know, several large cities.
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  That's an issue for athletes, traveling and developmentally-wise and stuff like that.
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  It's really noteworthy that Canada is putting up a lot of good performances and a lot of high-performing athletes.
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  The weather, there's a lot of things that make it tough, but they persevere.
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  Do you watch the elites?
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  The Canadians came so close on the men's side to taking the entire podium at both the Games and at Rogue.
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  Yeah, everybody was pulling for a Guadalupalooza repeat, I think.
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  Yeah, pretty amazing.
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  Well, enough about them.
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  Let's get into you.
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  You have done sports your whole life.
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  Yeah, I've been an athlete.
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  Well, I guess an athlete, but I've done sports since I was, I can remember maybe 12 years old, starting to do cross country in middle school.
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  I was never like a high level athlete or anything, but I've always been active my whole life.
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  um what what gravitated you to the running sports right off the bat I don't know if there's anything in particular um I didn't like my parents didn't put me in competitive sports like ball and hockey and stuff like that I just my earliest memory is just being maybe seven or eight years old and telling my mom one day is like I want to try to run around the block without stopping
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  I don't know why I thought that or why or where that idea came from, but I just liked the idea of a challenge.
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  It seemed, you know, when you're little, your neighborhood seems like such a big space.
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  And I'm like, I want to see if I can go all the way around the block and not stop.
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  And I think maybe just in our elementary school, we had to do
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  there was a thing back then we had to do Canada fitness tests every year.
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  Everybody in the class had to do all these exercises and I, I don't know, I seem to do good at running.
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  So I guess it's just, just as what I did.
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  I don't know why, but just, and I like doing things on my own.
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  I was never really a team sports person.
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  I liked the challenge of doing things on my own.
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  So, uh, running, I guess, seemed like a natural fit or a natural place to start.
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  And you did that in the whole way through high school.
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  Yeah, I ran track and cross country in high school.
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  I was middle distance.
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  So eight hundred fifteen hundred three thousand meters and then track or cross country in the fall.
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  And like I said, I wasn't I wasn't like high level or anything like that.
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  I did OK at some of the local meets.
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  And at the same time, I was discovering triathlon.
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  I remember my mom, I get my mom to take me to a bookshop.
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  It was the only place in the city you could buy triathlete magazine.
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  I was like 15, 16 years old.
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  And I was like, this is such a cool sport, how fast these guys can go and everything.
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  And, you know, I lived in a small rural town where it was either hockey and softball in the summer.
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  And that's, that was all the sports.
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  So I was the oddball, I guess, in that sense.
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  So we were talking before we went on air that Jamie has a very similar background, right?
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  Jamie, what was the pool to the running sports for you?
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  I don't know.
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  I'd say kind of what he's saying.
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  In elementary, you ran around the school and you earned little shoes for your shoelaces.
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  I just would rack those up.
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  I just feel like
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  naturally right like whatever you're good at that's what you're going to like put your heart into um i got like a lot of joy and reward out of that at a young age i felt like i was naturally gifted at running and endurance in general and so that's kind of where
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  my time was spent um so i'm sure that like you found early success capable of doing it you know and you just kept chasing that high of running further running faster that kind of stuff once i got into you know ninth grade tenth grade like i was never a big guy i was a skinny kid and so i was never gonna be like great at football or something like that or shot put or whatever events and
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  Yeah.
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  I mean, you're in school, you just do all the sports, whatever's in gym class or whatever everybody else is doing.
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  And that seemed to be what I was good at.
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  And like I said, I was kind of starting to really notice triathlon and like endurance sports in general.
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  Like when the Olympics were on, I would love to watch like the cross country skiing or something like that.
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  And where the long, long track speed skating and different sports, like all the, like the endurance stuff.
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  Cause that's what I related to.
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  Yeah.
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  Same.
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  So what was the natural progression for,
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  to triathlon?
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  Um, well, it was the 84 Olympics actually, uh, when it was on TV.
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  So I was 14 years old at the time and a Canadian placed second in the road race.
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  And it was, it was really close.
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  And I just, that's the first thing I remember about watching a sport and just being enamored by it and thinking like, wow, that is really, really cool.
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  And then triathlon was kind of coming of age in the mid eighties at the same time.
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  And, um,
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  because I was already kind of into distance endurance sports.
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  I just thought it was super cool and something that nobody else was doing.
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  It was unique.
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  And, you know, I didn't have any opportunities.
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  They didn't have a bike.
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  It had like just a junker that I would ride around the neighborhood.
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  But I remember in like 11th grade is when I kind of saved up some money and got a bike.
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  And then then I could start like riding a bike and running as well.
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  I didn't know how to swim yet, though.
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  Yeah, that was going to be my question because I also got into triathlons, but I was not a swimmer.
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  And like we have tons of lakes around us in Michigan, but I just I didn't ever swim for like I would always have like a floaty device on me.
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  Right.
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  So like I was curious if you had lakes or pools near you that you were able to regularly swim in.
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  Yeah, like I was fortunate in my dad was into scuba diving.
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  So my dad was comfortable in the water.
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  And so right from when me and my sisters were young, I remember swimming.
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  I was going to the swimming pool and he would just, you know, throw us in and play with us in the water.
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  And I was always comfortable in the water so I could tread water.
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  I could dive to the bottom of the pool.
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  I was, I was, I would like holding my breath and all that kind of stuff.
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  So it never, I was never scared of water and I never remember not being able to swim.
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  It's just that I never took any lessons and I never learned how to do it properly.
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  So whatever I did, it's just like most kids, I just figured it out and splashed along, but I was never scared of the water.
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  And then I,
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  um like I said it was latter part of high school when I got a bike and I was like oh I really want to try doing a triathlon and uh I'm like oh I gotta learn how to swim and I wasn't going to sign up for swimming lessons with the nine-year-olds so I just got a book out of the library like swimming technique and I just remember reading the book over and over again and then I'd close my eyes and try to visualize like the stroke that they're talking about and then I'd ride my bike down to the lake and
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  lock it to a tree and I'd go into the lake and try to tell them and like, Hey, this is what they said to do.
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  And I try to figure it out.
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  And that's all I ever did.
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  I just learned on my own like that.
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  By the time I did, I did my first triathlon on my summer holidays between grade 11 and grade 12.
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  And that's how I learned to swim.
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  I didn't have a wetsuit either.
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  It was freezing cold water.
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  I think it was me and three other people that didn't have a wetsuit.
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  I didn't even know about wetsuits.
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  What was the first distance triathlon that you did?
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  It was a one case swim.
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  And the bike was like 70 kilometers and it was like 18 kilometer run.
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  And it was because it was at a lake that our family went to in the summer.
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  And it was like a really, it was kind of one of the early races.
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  And it's still one of the most well-known races in Western Canada has been going on since the early eighties.
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  And that's what the distance was.
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  And I remember watching, you know, all the pros on TV, Ironman and stuff like that.
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  And like, well, this is what it is.
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  And I never even thought about, you know, it's four and a half hours of racing and I've
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  16 years old and I don't know what I'm getting into, but I finished way near the back, but it was cool.
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  But you finished.
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  Have you done it?
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  I've done a couple of 2007 and 2008 Ironman Canada.
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  I was more prepared for that.
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  It's so funny because my perspective is I always wanted to do one, but I grew up a swimmer.
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  So for me, and I biked everywhere, I would bike probably 12 to 15 K a day, um, to work and back when I was, when I was in high school and, uh, and then it was the running for me.
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  Yeah, everybody's got their thing that they like.
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  Yeah, and the thing that you don't do is the thing that has all the question marks around it and the trepidation.
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  Like, that's completely understandable.
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  Like, I've helped lots of people or tried to talk lots of people into doing triathlon, and for most people, it's the swim.
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  It's just...
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  you know, it's overpowering the fear sometimes people have of water, but once they get into it, like it's a struggle for people, maybe for, maybe it's always a struggle, but it's like anything you can learn it if you apply yourself.
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  And once you get into it, maybe it's usually not as bad as you feared.
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  So here's my last triathlon question.
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  There have been people that have said that it should be an event at the CrossFit games.
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  Your thoughts.
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  They, uh,
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  I think was it 2010 or 11?
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  They did.
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  I remember they did.
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  It was a, they had a mountain bike and a trailer run, but I can't remember if they swam first.
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  This is when they were at Camp Pendleton or around that area.
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  They may have swam.
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  I can't remember now, but it makes sense.
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  I mean, they've done biking events.
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  They've done running.
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  They swim.
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  I can see them combining it all in one.
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  No problem.
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  I mean, they've even done specialized cycling events, cyclocross.
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  And they did a criterion one time, like,
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  When they had the crit in the games, I was pretty flabbergasted because I was a bike racer.
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  I considered myself a cyclist and a bike racer more than a triathlete for most of my adult life.
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  And a criterium race is a pretty specialized race in terms of like, there's a lot of potential for things to go wrong, like crashing and stuff like that.
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  And, you know, if you don't know what you're doing, or even if you're efficient at it and you know what you're doing, you can have quite an advantage.
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  So, I mean, a triathlon would be,
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  relatively simple event compared to that.
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  Not logistically.
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  They're hard.
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  It'd be hard to organize, but it'd be cool to see.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  So you go from that to, you said cycling, why the switch to cycling?
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  And then you, you actually put some power on that bike and went motocross for a while.
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  Yeah.
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  Yeah.
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  Well, I, when I was a kid, we lived, uh, we, we lived in a rural area.
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  So I just had a dirt bike, like all the kids, my age.
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  And, um,
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  That's that was the sport that I loved the most when I was maybe like 12 to 17 years old.
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  I was really into dirt bikes and motocross.
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  I never really raced maybe one or two times, but I just loved riding my dirt bike all the time.
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  Fast forward later in the conversation, I'll tell you how I got into it as a 40 year old again.
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  But cycling, I never I always considered myself a cyclist and more so than a triathlon triathlete.
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  I just loved cycling.
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  And I had had a couple of years where I'd like, oh, this year I'm going to do some triathlons.
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  This year I'm going to maybe do some bike races.
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  But I always considered myself the cyclist first.
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  I always rode all the time.
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  There was never a time when I wasn't like biking year round.
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  And so the bike was always my strong suit in triathlon.
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  And that's if I did well, it was usually because I was biking well.
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  But yeah, so that's that's kind of what was for all my late teens till
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  My 40 till I turned 40 basically.
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  Um, and that's when I did Ironman a couple of times.
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  And at that point I was like, kind of just wanted to try something different.
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  Um, I had been two years of training for Ironman.
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  I was a little bit burnt out and we were planning to build a house and I knew I wouldn't have the time to dedicate to it.
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  And I'm like, this sounds like a good time to just try something completely different.
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  That I hadn't done before.
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  And I look, I was looking for a challenge, something I could start from like the ground up and learn from square one.
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  And I'm like, you know, I haven't had a dirt bike in 20 some years.
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  So I did that for a couple of years.
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  Just went and I raced locally at the track here every week for the summer and did that for a couple of years.
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  Got it out of my system.
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  It was fun.
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  You know, it's I just like the challenge of learning new things, trying something from the very beginning and trying to figure it out and and keep moving up.
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  That's that's the thing that I really enjoy doing.
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  If I'm doing the math right, you and I are the exact same age.
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  Yeah.
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  I, uh, you said you're, you're almost, you're turning 54, like right away here.
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  I think I saw that from another podcast or you just did.
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  Yeah.
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  So you're, you're about, you're a little bit, yeah, you're a little bit older than me and my birthday's in September.
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  So I'm 53 now.
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  Okay.
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  So it appears that you started CrossFit, uh,
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  Well, all the way back in 2009.
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  So you were like a very early adopter to the CrossFit world.
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  Yeah.
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  Like, like I said, kind of the time I decided to take a break from triathlon and cycling, like racing.
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  And I wanted to try something different.
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  I had spent, especially training for Ironman.
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  I had spent year, a couple of years trying to be as light as possible, especially because I was racing.
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  I was training for Ironman Canada, try to qualify for the world championships.
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  And it's a,
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  It's a very hilly course with some mountain passes.
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  So I was trying to like be as light as possible.
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  A friend and I, we would joke as a cyclist, you want your arms just to be buggy whips because they don't do anything for you.
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  They're just dead weight.
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  So we would try to be as skinny and thin as possible to race as fast as possible.
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  And so I decided when I was stopping that and do something different, I said, well, I should try something that requires strength and size because I know nothing about that.
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  I've spent the last number of years trying to shed muscle mass.
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  Maybe I should try something different.
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  I didn't know where to start.
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  I got the P90X DVDs and did P90X a couple of times.
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  I didn't know anything about progressive overload.
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  I knew nothing about eating, calorie balance, gaining weight.
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  I didn't know anything about anything.
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  I mean, there wasn't even like YouTube wasn't even like what it is now.
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  There was not the easily available sources of information.
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  So I was just winging it.
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  And I stumbled across CrossFit just from a local newspaper article.
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  thought it looked kind of cool and i went to crossfit.com and just started looking at things and figuring stuff out and it was funny because at first i was i was reading through the main site forums and reading some workouts of the day and at first i didn't even understand what they were talking about like it was like reading a different language wads and amraps and this and that like didn't it seemed weird to me and then i started figuring out some of these these workouts are doing are like seven minutes long like this is a 10 minute long workout and i remember thinking like that's
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  Why would I do a 10 minute long workout like cycling?
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  I wouldn't even get dressed to go for a ride if I couldn't go at least an hour.
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  It was like a waste of time to do anything less than an hour.
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  And there's telling me this workout is 10 minutes like I'm not going to waste my time with that.
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  So at first I learned a little bit about CrossFit and I wasn't interested in it.
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  But then I started watching some of the videos on the main site and the nasty girls video is the one that like, you know, it's a famous one that people see it and they kind of like
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  draws them in.
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  So then I started watching all these videos and I'm like, yeah, this is pretty cool.
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  This is completely different than anything I've done before.
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  And I just started doing workouts with stuff.
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  I had the first CrossFit workout I ever did at my place.
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  We we got an old railroad tie I had sitting around my acreage.
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  weighed a hundred and pound, a hundred and some pounds.
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  And I was working with my nephew.
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  We were just figuring this out together.
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  We had to pick it up and carry it.
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  And then we had like some stones.
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  We just picked them up and put them in a wheelbarrow and push them.
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  We did burpees.
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  Like we just kind of were making it up on the fly, but this was all based on videos we saw.
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  And I'm like, this looks cool.
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  Let's try this.
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  And I think a lot of people from the early days, maybe have stories that started out kind of like that.
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  And it just,
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  Kept going from there.
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  And eventually I was like, well, I've got to buy some actual real equipment and figured out, found out, found rogue fitness.com, started buying stuff.
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  And eventually more friends and family are coming to work out with us.
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  And we had six or seven people come in three or four days a week.
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  I built a little rig in the backyard out of lumber and we just kept faking it.
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  And it was fun.
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  So the obvious question is you live in Canada and,
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  a rig in the backyard is good.
• 18:34
  How many months of the year?
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  Yeah, well, exactly.
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  And it's funny because at the time my wife and I were building a house and the house wasn't going to be ready to live in until springtime.
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  But when we designed the house, I had set aside a spot for a gym in the basement, but it was going to be for like a trainer and a treadmill and yoga and P90X and stuff like that.
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  And in the summer we had gotten into CrossFit and,
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  And I told the builder building the house, I'm like, do the gym first.
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  You have to forget the rest of it.
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  Make sure the gym is done by October because we need somewhere to work out.
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  So we finished the gym and I said and put all the walls and ceiling plywood because we're going to bash the crap out of them.
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  So we finished the gym.
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  So we had some we were working on in the gym in an unfinished house.
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  We just had that one room was insulated and heated and they were still building the rest of the house.
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  But we needed a place to work out.
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  So we did that first.
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  So you were Colton Mertens before Colton Mertens.
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  Yeah.
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  And in the summertime, the acreage that we live on, the previous owners boarded horses.
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  So they had a big hay shed, just a roof and post walls, like no walls, just posts.
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  So we put a bunch of horse stall mats in the floor and that's where we worked out in the summertime.
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  And in the winter, eventually we outgrew the little gym in the basement and we just parked the cars outside and turned the three car garage into a gym in the winter.
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  And in the summer we worked out in this hay shed with no walls and a leaky roof.
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  And that went on for several years.
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  I never joined a CrossFit affiliate till I was like six or seven years in when we eventually sold that house.
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  It was just all me and friends and family training at home in our yard and our garage.
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  And I took my level one pretty early on because I figured, oh, you know, all these people are coming to work out.
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  I want to make sure like I'm not doing something silly with them.
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  So I took my level one pretty early on and it just kept progressing until I was I was essentially running a gym out of my home.
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  But I never charged anyone any money.
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  I just wanted to
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  training partners and they didn't want to charge people because then it felt like a job and a responsibility.
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  I just wanted it to be fun.
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  So I said people, you know, I'd say if you want to give me something, just donate a piece of equipment or something.
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  But as long as you come and give your best effort, that's I just want people to work out with and I want everybody to have a good time and really enjoy it.
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  And that's what we did for several years.
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  So when did the competitiveness start?
• 20:56
  I can only imagine that if you're working out with family and friends, it probably started there.
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  Uh, yeah, of course.
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  Like, you know, I was the old, I was the uncle and I had my young nephews who were 18, 19 years old working out with me.
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  And so I'm always encouraging them to chase me.
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  Cause they're, you know, they're young, they're growing into their bodies.
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  They, they didn't have a sports background.
• 21:18
  And I was getting older and I had this endurance background, but I'm just trying to gain strength as well because I was weak and couldn't do anything.
• 21:25
  But at least I knew how to push myself.
• 21:26
  I knew what competition felt like.
• 21:28
  I knew what intensity was like.
• 21:30
  So I could push myself and these young guys were chasing me and sometimes they get close and I would keep encouraging them.
• 21:35
  So it was awesome because we really built each other up.
• 21:39
  Cause I'm like, man, like I don't want these guys to beat me.
• 21:41
  But at the same time, I'm like super proud if they do.
• 21:44
  So I was encouraging them.
• 21:45
  But, um,
• 21:46
  But of course, I'm a competitive person, so as soon as I saw a local competition, CrossFit competition advertised, I said to me and my nephews both, I'm like, hey, boys, we're signing up for this.
• 21:57
  We've been doing CrossFit for maybe four months.
• 21:59
  We're like, we're going in this competition.
• 22:01
  Now we got something to train for, so we'll get ready for that next.
• 22:05
  So it was good.
• 22:06
  I really like competing as a way of goal setting and forcing you to focus on what you're doing.
• 22:15
  I find it fascinating that you did this local stuff.
• 22:21
  You've really only been on the big stage a couple times.
• 22:24
  Legends at Mayhem last year, Cannes West, which had its own debacle associated with it, and then Legends this year, which you win.
• 22:38
  Tell me about your thought process through all that.
• 22:40
  I...
• 22:43
  I just enjoy competing period, like whether it was racing bikes or CrossFit or anything, I love competition, but I don't always love the training for it.
• 22:53
  So that's kind of why I sign up for competitions.
• 22:55
  It kind of forces me to be consistent with exercise, which is how I trick myself just to be healthy and fit basically.
• 23:03
  But, um, but I really love competing.
• 23:05
  So if there was a competition, like I was going to sign up for it just because it was a way of goal setting.
• 23:12
  Um, and you know, after doing CrossFit for a couple of years, I was like, okay, well, you know, I've never done a weightlifting meet.
• 23:18
  Let's sign up for a weightlifting meet and then we'll shift the focus for a few months and we can get better at this.
• 23:23
  And eventually I did a power lifting meet.
• 23:25
  I had never done anything like that before.
• 23:27
  So it was just a way to always kind of add variety and try new things.
• 23:31
  Getting with that idea of kind of like starting from the bottom and, and figuring it out as you go.
• 23:37
  Um, but yeah, I don't know.
• 23:40
  I just, I just enjoy it.
• 23:42
  And I would go in phases sometimes, you know, there was a couple of years where I'm not really doing CrossFit.
• 23:47
  I'm kind of more into weightlifting, but I would always do wads, but it was just to kind of stay semi in shape.
• 23:53
  You know, if you remember maybe in the early days when
• 23:57
  You know, there was the CrossFit Journal article, like CrossFit with a strength bias or something or whatever the term that they use when all of a sudden people were like, oh, you know, we need to be away a lot stronger than what we what we have been.
• 24:09
  And then that progressed to there was the popular websites like Lift Big, Eat Big and 70s Big.
• 24:15
  And these guys are really pushing the idea of like, you know, get big and strong, big and strong.
• 24:19
  So.
• 24:20
  It was funny in our little home gym, we started having a challenge like how much weight can you gain in a few months?
• 24:26
  Like who can eat a dozen eggs the fastest?
• 24:28
  And we were doing this and like trying to squat and deadlift heavy.
• 24:31
  So, you know, I'm trying to gain all this weight because I've been a skinny guy and I'm like, I don't know what it's like to be big and jacked.
• 24:38
  Let's figure out how we do it.
• 24:39
  And so at the time I was like.
• 24:41
  not really doing a lot of wads and I would do something different with a different focus.
• 24:45
  So there's a couple of years where I didn't even sign up for the open and I'm like, yeah, kind of doing CrossFit, not really.
• 24:51
  But I would always stay in touch and through it all.
• 24:55
  I mean, eventually I would always do like decent, it seems.
• 25:02
  And then I was more, you know, last few years, more CrossFit pretty regularly.
• 25:07
  And I was making it to like the age group online qualifier.
• 25:11
  So like top 200.
• 25:14
  Would have been in semifinals a couple of times.
• 25:16
  I took a couple of penalties just from ignorance on my part.
• 25:19
  Rules I didn't understand or wasn't aware of.
• 25:22
  And I was only doing...
• 25:23
  a class a couple of times a week.
• 25:24
  And then I've always programmed for myself.
• 25:26
  So I was doing a lot of my own stuff as well.
• 25:28
  And in the summer, I'd kind of goof around.
• 25:30
  I'd bike more.
• 25:32
  I take a few weeks off if I didn't feel like it, like I was never really training was never really a focus, but I was still kind of doing relatively well, like it make it to the online qualifier.
• 25:44
  And then after two years of kind of should have been in semis, but I wasn't and I wasn't really focusing on it, I thought,
• 25:53
  Maybe I should like actually try for, you know, like actually get a training plan and actually follow the plan and focus on it and like push through the slow, the hard times.
• 26:03
  And, and, um, so that's what I did only really about a year and a half ago.
• 26:08
  I started, I decided like.
• 26:10
  you know, I should really give this a shot.
• 26:11
  And I never really considered going to the games.
• 26:13
  And that's why I had never really pushed myself because I'm like, there's such a huge leap from where I am to what it takes to get to the games.
• 26:20
  I always considered it like such a non-possibility that I was happy with where I was at.
• 26:27
  And it didn't seem like a goal I wanted to push for.
• 26:29
  But then once I was kind of top 30, top 40 worldwide without really making it a focus, I thought, well,
• 26:39
  I should try this for a year or two seriously and see what happens.
• 26:43
  Cause maybe I'm underestimating myself.
• 26:45
  So yeah, so far so good.
• 26:50
  So this year they've opened up the qualification spots for the games.
• 26:56
  We go from 10 spots to 40 spots.
• 27:01
  You've been in the top 40 in the world before.
• 27:04
  Does that change your goals for the upcoming season?
• 27:08
  Yeah, definitely.
• 27:08
  It's 30 for our age group.
• 27:11
  And so obviously I could have a much better chance of getting to the CrossFit Games now.
• 27:15
  And so that's going to be my goal for this year.
• 27:18
  And if I don't make it, I mean, as long as I give my best effort and, you know, I've been dealing with some injury issues that I sometimes don't have control over.
• 27:29
  So I'll do my best, but it's good because it gives me something to focus on.
• 27:33
  So between now and semifinals, that's really the only thing that
• 27:37
  that I'm working towards so everything is kind of geared towards that and I like to I've always done this where I like to break the year up into into like phases or periods where I kind of focus on something I love the change of seasons that we have in Canada because once winter hits all the busyness of summer and the travel and all that slows down to me that's like that's time when I can focus on like some really specific goals and I'm going to be indoors more and
• 28:02
  I can shift my focus and then come springtime, it's like, okay, now I'm outdoors more.
• 28:06
  Now I have these things to work on.
• 28:07
  So I always kind of like to break things up into periods where I have goals to work on.
• 28:12
  So as soon as I was back from Legends, I decided between now and May 8th when semifinals start, that that's my goal and that's what I'm working towards.
• 28:23
  I know you have to take off soon, Jamie.
• 28:25
  Do you have any questions before you head out?
• 28:28
  I guess.
• 28:28
  So I find, I always found that like, I would, when you said you would compete a lot, like I would race my way into shape.
• 28:36
  Like I would run five Ks and I would start in April, terrible, like 25 minutes.
• 28:41
  And I get like,
• 28:43
  30 seconds to a minute faster each month until until like October would hit and I'd be like 19 minutes.
• 28:50
  And I noticed that that kind of mentality has transferred into the sport of CrossFit for me.
• 28:56
  And I Scott knows us like I like I like to compete and I do much better in person.
• 29:01
  So it's been the same way for me.
• 29:02
  Like I would like to compete my way into shape.
• 29:06
  And people are always like, you're doing too many counts, you're doing too much.
• 29:09
  But like,
• 29:10
  I find, for one, I just do better, and I don't know if it's the competition on the floor.
• 29:15
  And I know you said you haven't made it to, like, semifinals yet.
• 29:21
  Like, there's a mistake that's made or just something.
• 29:23
  And you did say you haven't, like, put your whole heart into it.
• 29:26
  But I'm wondering if you find you just compete better on the floor live than these online stuff.
• 29:32
  Definitely.
• 29:33
  Yeah, definitely.
• 29:33
  That's one of the things is I don't really, I don't like doing online qualifiers.
• 29:38
  I don't do relatively well in online qualifiers.
• 29:41
  And if I make it to a live competition, like I always do much better in a live competition.
• 29:45
  It's just, it's because it goes back to what I said, where I love competing and I love racing, like head to head competition is,
• 29:51
  Live on the floor where you're strategizing on the fly, where you can like try to get in people's heads.
• 29:57
  Like, you know, I love all that part of it.
• 29:59
  I love, I love calculating how I'm going to get through this workout and watching your competition.
• 30:04
  If you're in a spot where maybe your time doesn't matter, what matters is how you're doing relative to the field, which completely changes how you strategize for a workout.
• 30:14
  And then, you know, some people, they do great in the comfort of their own gym, surrounded by their friends and family, sleeping in their own bed every night, eating the same food, can redo the workout three times.
• 30:26
  In a live competition, you don't get any of those things.
• 30:28
  And so I much, much prefer that.
• 30:30
  And also with my background, my endurance sports background, it seems that the longer a competition goes on, the better I seem to do.
• 30:39
  So three days, four days,
• 30:42
  Two workouts a day, give me three workouts a day.
• 30:44
  Because even though I'm getting tired, I know everybody else is getting tired too.
• 30:48
  And Legends last year in Tennessee, it was particularly noticeable.
• 30:53
  It's just like I seem to feel better every day as it goes on.
• 30:57
  Yeah, my legs are sore or whatever.
• 30:59
  But once I get warmed up and moving, I feel better.
• 31:03
  So I would much, much rather do live competitions than online.
• 31:08
  Yeah, I totally relate to all of that.
• 31:11
  Well, I have to jump this one.
• 31:12
  Let Scott take over.
• 31:13
  Super nice to meet you.
• 31:14
  Great meeting you too.
• 31:15
  Take care.
• 31:16
  I might have to leave this up again.
• 31:21
  I can't leave Scott.
• 31:24
  Take me out.
• 31:33
  Are you muted Scott?
• 31:37
  Whoops.
• 31:38
  So I love the fact that we got to figure out how to get Jamie out of these interviews.
• 31:47
  So I love the fact that you admitted that you love the competition, not so much the training, because I think every athlete I've ever talked to said it the opposite way.
• 31:56
  And it's hard for me to believe that because I'm very much like you.
• 32:01
  I have to set like competition goals ahead for me, for me to get through the training.
• 32:08
  When I'm in it, oftentimes I enjoy it, especially if I'm at the gym with other people and the vibe is good and you're pushing each other.
• 32:17
  Don't get me wrong.
• 32:17
  I really do like that.
• 32:19
  But a lot of times it's a case of it's 4.30.
• 32:23
  I haven't worked out yet today.
• 32:25
  I'm hungry.
• 32:26
  It's almost suppertime.
• 32:27
  Am I going to blow off the workout or am I going to do it because I really love being in the gym?
• 32:33
  And if I don't have anything to train for,
• 32:36
  A lot of times I'm just going to like, eh, you know what?
• 32:39
  I'll do a little more tomorrow and I won't work out today.
• 32:41
  Like realistically, that's the way I've, I think about things a lot of the time, not all the time.
• 32:47
  And so sometimes you just have to push through, you know, in bike racing, it's cold and it's wet out.
• 32:53
  Do you really want to go for that two, three hour training ride you had planned?
• 32:56
  The weather's going to be nice tomorrow.
• 32:57
  Maybe I'll just do it tomorrow.
• 32:59
  That's so
• 33:00
  Yeah, I do like and I love being in my gym.
• 33:04
  I have a home gym.
• 33:05
  I have a nice setup at home and I love hanging out in my gym.
• 33:09
  But I do a lot of I do a lot of tinkering is where I do a lot of thinking.
• 33:15
  I'm not always pushing myself.
• 33:16
  I just like the gym environment.
• 33:19
  But yeah, like anybody, a lot of times I just don't feel super motivated to train.
• 33:24
  But if I have a competition coming up, then I'm much more likely to just buckle down and get it done.
• 33:29
  Because the days are counting down and you only have so many days to still try to get ready.
• 33:32
  And you know the people you're competing against are getting ready.
• 33:36
  So that's kind of what, that's why I like signing up for competitions.
• 33:40
  It forces me to work out when I normally maybe wouldn't work out.
• 33:45
  So you talked about your injury history this year, trying to get through the game season into legends, but you suffered a very, I'm guessing big knee injury 15 years ago.
• 33:59
  And it's almost like you're on a ticking clock.
• 34:03
  Yeah, that's exactly what it feels like, because I had what's called a tibial plateau fracture, which is a traumatic injury as a result of a motorcycle accident where essentially it shears off a portion of the top of your tibia, which forms half of your knee joint.
• 34:17
  So that was surgically repaired.
• 34:18
  So I have still have plates and screws in my leg holding that in place.
• 34:23
  But the problem is that it leads to osteoarthritis eventually, which I've got quite progressive osteoarthritis and I have had for quite a while.
• 34:30
  And like I definitely will need a total knee replacement at some point.
• 34:34
  And so it's always a limiter because I don't have full flexion in that knee so I can I can barely squat below parallel on one leg.
• 34:42
  And also I just I'm weaker on that side.
• 34:44
  I just can't work that leg as well.
• 34:46
  And so it's always an issue.
• 34:48
  It comes and goes.
• 34:49
  I've learned to manage it pretty well.
• 34:51
  But this year I had, I don't know, some something I don't know.
• 34:55
  It was probably a torn meniscus.
• 34:57
  But, you know, that knee is degraded to the point now where it's just prone to bad things happening.
• 35:02
  And so what happened actually during the open in February, I was barely able to get through the open and you know, it's, it's been getting better, but it's, it improves.
• 35:14
  Then I'll have a setback and it improves and I'll have a setback.
• 35:17
  So trying to get it coming to the legends qualifier.
• 35:20
  Like I haven't, I really haven't done any heavy squatting all year.
• 35:24
  I haven't done a heavy clean since February.
• 35:27
  Anything more than body weight, very little squatting.
• 35:30
  And so a lot of question marks going into legends, especially once I saw some of the workouts, I wasn't sure how it was gonna go.
• 35:38
  I mean, I barely squeaked through the qualifier.
• 35:42
  I mean, there was 24 spots in our age group and I finished 25th and I got in because there was some guys, you know, the spots rolled down to people that didn't accept the invite.
• 35:51
  And I had a setback during the qualifier.
• 35:55
  So some of those qualifier workouts, I was doing like burpee box jump overs basically on one leg.
• 36:03
  Power cleans, 80% on one leg.
• 36:06
  So, I mean, it was tough just to get through that.
• 36:12
  And, you know, it is what it is.
• 36:14
  I've learned how to deal with it over the years.
• 36:17
  Thank goodness for anti-inflammatories.
• 36:19
  That's what got me the four days and got me through the four days in Phoenix.
• 36:24
  But yeah, going into some of those workouts, it was definitely a big question mark.
• 36:28
  Like I have not cleaned this much weight in 10 months and I have no idea how this is going to go.
• 36:36
  So we go to Phoenix, right, for Legends, and it's really warm.
• 36:41
  And it's not really warm all the time in Canada right now.
• 36:45
  Did that help with the knee at all?
• 36:49
  No.
• 36:50
  No, that doesn't really affect it.
• 36:51
  I mean, I can put heat on it and stuff like that, and that helps somewhat.
• 36:57
  But the cold can affect it.
• 37:00
  If I'm biking outdoors in the cold, sometimes it makes it a little more stiff.
• 37:03
  That's just kind of a general stiffness.
• 37:05
  The the issue is just like the lack of mobility in that joint and the way I have to compensate and kind of work around that.
• 37:14
  Thank goodness we didn't have pistols because I don't know if I could still do a pistol on this leg at this point.
• 37:19
  Hopefully I will be able to again like it's it's improving gradually.
• 37:23
  So I have put off any surgical interventions to try to fix it at this point and see how it goes.
• 37:30
  So far, so good.
• 37:31
  Hopefully keeps improving.
• 37:34
  Well, it's got to be exciting for you to come in as the first alternate and then win the competition.
• 37:44
  So it's got to give you that fighter's mentality that if I can just get in, get into the game, I have a shot.
• 37:51
  Yeah, and that's what it was.
• 37:52
  But the weird thing is, well, is because Legends does a blind leaderboard, you have no idea where you're at.
• 37:57
  So I didn't know.
• 37:58
  I was like, okay, like last year I qualified in the sixth spot and I finished sixth last year.
• 38:04
  So I wasn't too worried about not qualifying.
• 38:06
  I should have been because the quality of the field is deep.
• 38:11
  And, of course, I had a setback during the qualifiers, which affected some of them.
• 38:15
  But still, with a blind leaderboard, you don't know where you're going to be until –
• 38:19
  until it shows.
• 38:20
  Right.
• 38:20
  So when I saw where I was, I was like, Ooh, that is cutting it really close.
• 38:25
  I may.
• 38:26
  And then you're all of a sudden you're like, Oh, should I have redone the workout?
• 38:28
  Should I have done this?
• 38:29
  But I figured there, I figured there'd be a few roll down spots.
• 38:32
  So it wasn't too worried.
• 38:36
  So I want to kind of go through the event itself.
• 38:41
  You start off
• 38:43
  Um, and let me start with this, right?
• 38:45
  You, you said like when you were triathlon, like biking that you didn't want to build your arms up, right?
• 38:51
  Because you, they were just, it was excess weight.
• 38:54
  And you said you wanted to try something from scratch and build it up again.
• 39:00
  So strength had to be one of those things that you were starting from scratch when you started CrossFit.
• 39:08
  Oh, definitely.
• 39:09
  I mean,
• 39:10
  I mean, I'm 193 ish pounds now.
• 39:13
  And I was one 65 when I did iron man.
• 39:16
  And, uh, when I, and of course no mobility whatsoever.
• 39:21
  Like you sit like this on a bike for four hours, several days a week.
• 39:25
  It doesn't do wonders for your shoulder mobility.
• 39:27
  When I started CrossFit, like there was no way I could overhead squat an empty bar.
• 39:30
  I would just fall right over.
• 39:32
  I had no mobility whatsoever.
• 39:34
  And but of course, back then we didn't have the knowledge we have now about mobility and soft tissue work and all this stuff we know now about how to take care of our bodies.
• 39:44
  So, yeah, I definitely I mean, I was good at body weight stuff.
• 39:48
  I could I mean, if I have some of my if I look some of the times that I could do for certain body weight wads now versus then, I mean, I could probably do 100 burpees for time faster then than I could now.
• 40:03
  Yeah.
• 40:04
  Well, the reason I bring it up is in your first three events, heck, first four events, it's second, 13th, second, first.
• 40:14
  And the only one that's out of the top 10 or out of the top two is a weightlifting event.
• 40:21
  So is that something you're still working on or is it the knee?
• 40:26
  For that one, it was more so my knee, but also my,
• 40:30
  something I work on.
• 40:31
  Like I was, I did bring my strength up to a point where I don't feel it was really a relative weakness anymore.
• 40:38
  Like I, like I said previously, I had a couple of years where I kind of focused on weightlifting.
• 40:43
  Um, I took a few months and trained for a powerlifting meet, put on 40 pounds of weight, body weight to try to build strength.
• 40:55
  Um,
• 40:56
  Yeah, my deadlift is relatively weak compared to other guys in my age group.
• 41:00
  But yeah, the biggest thing with that was I have been able to snatch, mostly power snatch, but clean and jerks have not really been happening this year for me at all.
• 41:13
  Power cleaning was going from like knee flexion to that violent extension of a power clean seemed to bother my knee.
• 41:19
  And during the qualifier, I tweaked my elbow.
• 41:21
  My hand slipped on a muscle up and I tweaked my elbow.
• 41:24
  So holding a front rack position was really difficult.
• 41:28
  So I haven't done a full clean below parallel with heavy weights since the open last year.
• 41:36
  So warming up for that max clean and jerk.
• 41:39
  I only I powered 205 and I'm like, I'm just going to go with that because I don't know how many.
• 41:45
  Maybe I only have one good clean in me and something could.
• 41:48
  be could be bad so i'm not going to push it so um i ended up doing 225 which was which was a power but it was the jerk like my elbow issues and so it gets in your head you know when you when you haven't been able to you haven't held heavy weight in a front rack for a while you haven't done heavy jerks for a while like the timing and the confidence just isn't there and that was it was difficult um i mean there were some big strong guys in our group don't get me wrong i mean we had
• 42:16
  I think Greg Anderson like power cleaned and kind of quasi pushed your 295.
• 42:21
  So there were some strong guys.
• 42:24
  And there was a lot of guys throwing up like 250, 265 in that range.
• 42:29
  But coming out of it, I knew that was going to be probably my weakest event.
• 42:34
  And 13th, I was satisfied with that.
• 42:37
  I figured I'd be in that 15th range mid-pack.
• 42:40
  So I was happy with that.
• 42:43
  Yeah, because the swim up your alley right from your training days in triathlon, second.
• 42:50
  Hell's Bells, you took a second.
• 42:54
  And then the jump, first place.
• 43:00
  Yeah, those were good events for me, those second two.
• 43:04
  Because with my knee history, I don't do a lot of squatting anymore, but usually I can lunge.
• 43:10
  So I do a lot of walking lunges.
• 43:12
  And so when I saw a workout that had a big chunk of walking lunges in it, I was super pumped about that.
• 43:18
  I really liked that workout.
• 43:20
  But, of course, as soon as they looked at it, I knew it was going to be about grip.
• 43:25
  Started on the lunges.
• 43:26
  So, yeah, maybe some guys maybe aren't as good at lunges, but you start it when you're fresh.
• 43:30
  Everybody's going to get through the lunges probably unbroken.
• 43:33
  The deadlifts, everybody's going to get through that, no problem.
• 43:36
  But the big question mark was how people are going to handle that.
• 43:40
  24 unbroken squat cleans that far into the workout when grip is going to really be start to become an issue.
• 43:47
  So my whole plan for that workout was how am I going to optimize my grip?
• 43:53
  And I took the deepest, hardest hook grip of my life on those dumbbells all the way through.
• 43:58
  Like I wanted to feel like my thumbs are pulling out of the sockets.
• 44:01
  So it was like all on my thumbs as much as possible.
• 44:04
  And Andrew and the people that were with us that I had some friends that were competing as well.
• 44:09
  We made sure we all like, you guys have to hook grip the heck out of this dumbbell because grip is going to be a limiter.
• 44:16
  And it was.
• 44:17
  And I did it all on broken.
• 44:19
  Yeah, the grip was dicey towards the end, but my grip was okay afterwards.
• 44:25
  Like 10 minutes later, I felt fine.
• 44:28
  So I talked to Jamie right after Hell's Bells.
• 44:32
  Her forearms were blown up.
• 44:35
  Everybody was, if you would have seen the ice bath, there was like a lineup for six people at a time to go armpits deep in those ice baths.
• 44:42
  Cause everybody's grip was, was shot.
• 44:45
  And all knowing that you had a rope climb event coming.
• 44:51
  So I love rope climbs.
• 44:52
  That's one of my better movements.
• 44:54
  And I've been working on my skipping with those ropes and they were, they were in small chunks.
• 44:58
  So I wasn't too worried about getting through that.
• 45:00
  And that's a workout that going into it, I was like,
• 45:03
  If there's a chance I have to win a workout, it'll be this one.
• 45:08
  And so you talked earlier about the longer an event goes, the better for you.
• 45:15
  Do you recover quicker from like a grip event like that to that rope climb event?
• 45:22
  I don't know if...
• 45:23
  It's grip grip specifically.
• 45:25
  It's hard to say.
• 45:26
  My grip is definitely not something I would say is a strong suit when grip and it's like everybody when grip goes in a workout like it's it's gone.
• 45:33
  It's like doing push ups in Murph.
• 45:34
  Like once you're down to doubles, like they're not coming back.
• 45:38
  So I definitely don't wouldn't say I have a strong grip, but yeah, I don't know.
• 45:45
  In terms of soreness, like just Dom's sore legs, all that kind of stuff.
• 45:51
  Once I, yes, I'll have sore legs walking around the venue, back at the house in the evening.
• 45:57
  But once I get moving and warm and warmed up, that goes away.
• 46:00
  Or if it's there, I don't think about it anymore.
• 46:03
  And that's like, I just remember from cycling, no matter how sore your legs were, no matter how shot you were, the best recovery is always to jump on the bike and go for an easy ride.
• 46:12
  And so that's what I'll always try to do is some movement.
• 46:15
  And usually that'll take care of issues like that.
• 46:22
  So I'm assuming at that point you were in first place, just guessing at the scores.
• 46:27
  Yeah.
• 46:28
  After day two, I was sixth place after day one.
• 46:30
  And then at the end of day two, I was in first.
• 46:35
  So do you approach the event differently knowing you're in first at that point?
• 46:41
  Not that early in the event because there's so many things that can happen.
• 46:45
  It's still just about executing each workout the best that you can.
• 46:48
  And I don't want to get sucked into head-to-head race with somebody because that leaderboard can change so much.
• 46:54
  The person that you think is a threat on day two might not be around on day four.
• 46:59
  So it's pointless to try to gauge your workouts on that.
• 47:03
  The very last event, when it's right down to it, then yeah, that is maybe a factor.
• 47:08
  But early on, no, I'm trying to execute
• 47:11
  The best that I can, and I'm not really paying attention to what other people are doing.
• 47:14
  I'll let the, I'll let the energy of the people in the lanes next to me drive me.
• 47:18
  And I'll look to see who's ahead, who's pulling, but that's just more to just kind of keep pushing me myself.
• 47:27
  So day three, you take a 10th and a sixth.
• 47:33
  Where does that leave you on the leaderboard?
• 47:35
  I still had the lead after day three.
• 47:38
  Um, it was that, that handstand walk workout shook things up a lot because some of the bigger, stronger guys suffered on some, on those long sets of handstand walks.
• 47:47
  And so I was fairly consistent, but the guys below above and below were moving around quite a bit.
• 47:54
  So I can't remember now what the leaderboard looked like after day three, but it probably changed a lot from mid day two till the end of day three, based on a couple of those workouts.
• 48:05
  Uh, and.
• 48:07
  Yeah, I can do the barbell cycling and the bar muscle up workout would be an okay one for me.
• 48:14
  I'm not very fast at barbell cycling.
• 48:16
  And I think that's the only one I would say like I didn't execute very well.
• 48:20
  I normally in competitions and even when I work out, I'm very, very measured.
• 48:26
  i i having an endurance sports background i'm always about pacing and how i want to pace workouts i always want to try to negative split a workout where i finish stronger than how i start so i'm always kind of measured and holding back at the beginning but with this event this competition i decided like i'm gonna especially once i was in the lead and and i was like i have a chance to win i'm really gonna push it
• 48:50
  I wanted to take some risks and start exploring the idea of going out faster than maybe what I normally would consider comfortable.
• 48:57
  And so that workout with the snatches and the clean and jerks, I started going on broken and then went five and three for sets of eight all the rest of the way through.
• 49:08
  And grip was becoming an issue at the end of that.
• 49:12
  I don't think it was related to the previous day's grip workout.
• 49:15
  It was just holding on to that barbell that long, trying to move that fast.
• 49:19
  And then after I saw some of the other age groups and everybody was doing singles or small sets,
• 49:25
  I probably could have done better if I would have broken it up a little differently.
• 49:28
  But I learned something from it and goes in the notes in the notebook.
• 49:32
  And I have a huge Excel huge spreadsheet that I track all this kind of stuff.
• 49:37
  I'm a numbers nerd, so I keep detailed notes on everything.
• 49:40
  So I'll have something to refer back on to the next time something like that turns up.
• 49:44
  I learned something from it.
• 49:47
  So in those events on the main floor, they gave the leaders the opportunity to be in, I think it was lane one or 10.
• 49:56
  And so you could see the whole field as opposed to being in the middle, only being able to see half the field.
• 50:02
  Did that help or hurt you?
• 50:04
  Yeah, that was on Sunday for the last event when they, when we were facing lengthwise down the floor and the way they seated us first place was in that first square at the back.
• 50:12
  So you could see, I mean, you had a line of people in front of you, so you could only see one or two people in front of you, but you could, you could take a good visual.
• 50:20
  And that, that mattered in that event because by the time we got to the last day, knowing the structure of how, how those two workouts back to back were, were going to happen, um,
• 50:30
  I was very, very nervous for that workout because I knew that there was a chance for things to shake up a lot.
• 50:36
  Like guys could fall far down the leaderboard and lots of guys could shoot up because 200 points for essentially one workout, six minutes and three minutes.
• 50:47
  And both of them, you have to try to sprint.
• 50:48
  So you have to try to sprint all out for six minutes, get a minute rest and then do it again.
• 50:54
  It's hard to pace that.
• 50:56
  Should you pace it?
• 50:56
  I mean, what do you do?
• 50:57
  You go all out and just
• 50:59
  You know, you're going to be shot for the last one.
• 51:01
  You hold on.
• 51:03
  But being in first and being able to see the second and third and a handful of guys close by, it did help a little bit because I was thinking, okay, like maybe these are light dumbbells for the second portion.
• 51:16
  I was thinking maybe I could go on broken.
• 51:19
  But once I got started, I was like, there's no way I'm going on broken.
• 51:22
  But Denny Ferreira, who finished second, was in the square right next to me.
• 51:26
  So he put his dumbbells down.
• 51:27
  I'm like, oh, good.
• 51:28
  I can put mine down and rest too because I'm not going unbroken.
• 51:32
  I mean, that's about all I was doing.
• 51:34
  I was just kind of keying off of one or two people that I could see.
• 51:36
  I could see somebody else that was close to me falling off the pace.
• 51:40
  They were hurting.
• 51:41
  So I'm like, okay, I can kind of put that out of mind and I can focus on these one or two other guys now.
• 51:45
  But that doesn't really come into play until you're at the very end when –
• 51:48
  pacing doesn't matter anymore.
• 51:50
  And there's no more changes to the leaderboard after this workout's over.
• 51:53
  Like, so you do everything you, everything you can to optimize your position at that point.
• 51:59
  It's different than early workouts early in a competition for sure.
• 52:04
  So what did this win mean to you?
• 52:07
  Did it give you a confidence that you didn't have before?
• 52:10
  Did you learn something about yourself?
• 52:14
  Yeah, definitely.
• 52:15
  Definitely a confidence booster.
• 52:16
  I mean,
• 52:18
  At the Legends event last year in Cookville, up until that point, I had never really considered anything games level as like something I would ever attain to or try.
• 52:31
  And then I realized like, okay, like I'm not that, I'm not really that far out of my league here.
• 52:37
  And so I kind of had already gotten that confidence there.
• 52:41
  And this kind of verified that for me that
• 52:46
  You know, what I'm doing, I'm a year further along in training.
• 52:50
  It's showing me that the plan is working.
• 52:54
  I'm still showing regular progress.
• 52:57
  And yeah, learning in terms of like, you know, we always learn something in a competition.
• 53:03
  You learn how to deal with maybe unforeseen circumstances, movements or weights or different things that you haven't tried before, you know, different ways of strategizing work that we haven't tried before.
• 53:15
  And that's always going to be useful in the future.
• 53:18
  But yeah, definitely make me, it makes me hungry to, to want to keep, keep moving forward.
• 53:27
  So what is the goal for this season?
• 53:31
  Well, the only goal is to try to qualify for the CrossFit Games.
• 53:34
  At this point, there's nothing else that would...
• 53:37
  satisfy me now.
• 53:38
  I mean, sure, if I don't make the games, but I do my best, I'm not going to be heartbroken by it.
• 53:42
  I don't pour my life into this.
• 53:43
  I don't define my life by it.
• 53:45
  This is my way of forcing myself to be healthy and fit.
• 53:49
  So if I don't make the games, I'll shift focus and, you know, maybe I'll do a triathlon or something.
• 53:54
  I don't know, something different.
• 53:56
  But definitely between now and semifinals, that's the only thing that I'm working towards.
• 54:08
  So you've been around this sport for a long time, 2009, 15 years.
• 54:16
  Are you a, are you, how much have you learned in those 15 years to make you a better athlete today?
• 54:25
  Oh man.
• 54:25
  Well, a lot.
• 54:27
  I mean, a lot of that just comes with maturing, you know, being a master's athlete, especially as you move into the older age categories, um,
• 54:37
  You have to be very, um, smart about your training and your recovery.
• 54:41
  Of course you ask any masters athlete, they're gonna, they're gonna tell you that.
• 54:45
  Um, the biggest thing is I've learned how to moderate intensity.
• 54:49
  That's the thing that I have to be careful about.
• 54:52
  Um, but having been an athlete and training my whole life, I feel like I'm pretty in tune with my body and I'm also not at all concerned about pulling back if I feel I need to.
• 55:07
  I don't, I'm not one of those people that will push through pain or discomfort or overtraining or anything like that.
• 55:13
  Like I've, I've learned that it's never, it's not worth it for me to push through things like that.
• 55:20
  So I try to keep a pretty mellow attitude and take a longer term view of things like, okay, like you had a workout plan today or the next few days and this is happening.
• 55:30
  So we're just going to shift focus and we're not going to stress about it.
• 55:33
  So being a little more chill about things, um,
• 55:37
  is good, I think, in the long run.
• 55:39
  Yeah, I'm comfortable with where I'm at.
• 55:45
  And like I said, I'm hungry in the sense that the more work I do, the more I realize
• 55:52
  how many areas I have for improvement.
• 55:55
  And a lot of it is just refining things like small little changes, little little tweaks to a technique or ways that you can, you know, like I said, I keep a lot of detailed notes on
• 56:08
  every workout and and all my training.
• 56:10
  And so I can go through that and I can maybe see patterns and find ways to optimize things.
• 56:16
  So that's part of the fun for me is I like to say that sometimes like I kind of punch above my weight in the sense that I'm not always the fittest guy, but I try to be the best prepared in terms of
• 56:28
  eking out every little bit of efficiency I can anywhere I can.
• 56:32
  Like in cycling, I would call that free speed.
• 56:34
  If you can have a more aerodynamic position on your bike, it doesn't cost you any money, but it makes a huge difference.
• 56:42
  It might not even make a huge difference, but it makes any difference, but it didn't cost anything.
• 56:45
  It just took paying some attention to detail and some effort.
• 56:49
  And so I try to apply that same attitude to my training now.
• 56:53
  People that I work out with, I'm always, or if I'm coaching, I'm always harping on people like,
• 56:59
  Be as efficient as you can in your movement.
• 57:01
  These machines that you spend so much time on, dial in your efficiency.
• 57:07
  Make sure you understand all the metrics that the screen is showing you.
• 57:10
  Don't just close your eyes and turn on music and not pay attention.
• 57:13
  Always pay attention to what you're doing.
• 57:15
  Always find a way to be more efficient because, like I say, it's free speed.
• 57:20
  I just try to have that attitude in everything that I do, really.
• 57:27
  That close your eyes piece, I feel like you're calling me out, Corey.
• 57:30
  Yeah, I called a lot of people out.
• 57:36
  One last question.
• 57:38
  When you started this, you were working out with your nephews, family, and friends.
• 57:43
  What do your training partners look like today?
• 57:47
  I'm super lucky to have good training partners, games, athletes.
• 57:53
  I train with Laurie Masichnik, who's won the games a couple of times in the age group above me.
• 57:58
  And we recently started training with Trenna Gessel, who is a teen athlete who qualified for the games this year, is the youngest athlete to ever qualify for the games.
• 58:05
  The three of us train together quite regularly at the same gym, CrossFit Ashlar here in Saskatoon.
• 58:11
  And it's awesome because
• 58:15
  what I was saying previously, how a lot of times I lack motivation.
• 58:18
  These girls don't lack the motivation.
• 58:20
  If there's a workout that's written, they're doing it and they're not questioning it.
• 58:23
  So I know if I'm not in the mood to work out, I just have to go meet them for the workout and I'm in it and I'm gonna get pulled along by them.
• 58:32
  And that really helps.
• 58:34
  It gets me through some long, hard workouts where if I was on my own, I would have sloughed off halfway through and like, eh.
• 58:41
  maybe tomorrow.
• 58:43
  So, so good training, good training partners really make a big difference.
• 58:50
  Well, I just want to wish you the best on the upcoming season.
• 58:52
  I wish you congratulations on your victory at legends.
• 58:56
  That's a huge win for you going into the season and we can't wait to follow your journey.
• 59:04
  Well, thanks, Scott.
• 59:05
  I appreciate you having me on.
• 59:07
  And I really and I speak for probably all Masters athletes really appreciate the spotlight that you try to shine on the Masters community because CrossFit isn't doing a good enough job of it.
• 59:17
  They're leaving a lot of they're leaving a lot of motivational content on the table here by not promoting these older athletes who really can have stories to tell and inspire people.
• 59:28
  So I'm glad that you're you're getting those stories out there.
• 59:32
  Like I say, every time I go to one of these events, I'm with my people when I'm at these Masters events.
• 59:38
  Yeah, we understand each other.
• 59:40
  Yeah.
• 59:42
  Yeah.
• 59:43
  Well, with that, thank you so much for being on with us.
• 59:45
  And we'll catch everybody next time on the Clansdale Media Podcast.
• 59:49
  Bye, guys.
• 59:50
  Thanks.