Welcome And Guest Introduction

SPEAKER_02 0:05

Hey everybody, welcome to the Herd Fit podcast with Dr. Stanley and myself, Coach David Simerson. This podcast is aimed at helping anyone and everyone looking to enhance their healthy lifestyle through fitness, nutrition, and most importantly, mindset. All right, welcome back to the HerdFit podcast. I am Coach David Simerson. I'm here with my co-host, Dr. and Coach Sam Riddy. And we have a really special guest today. I've been looking forward to this conversation for days. I've been telling everyone about it. We have the founder of the newest craze in fitness raising. It's called Xenon. And this is Keith Barlow. He's in the airport. He's going to be flying to Dallas today. And he was kind enough to give us about 40 minutes of his time to really dive into what this is because this is still a very new craze that is being introduced to the CrossFit space that a lot of people don't know that much about yet. And I use CrossFit bison in New Jersey as an example, a very competitive

What Xenom Actually Is

SPEAKER_02 1:10

gym, quarterfinal start today. We had 69 athletes qualify for this stage and we need to get it going. And a lot of them don't know this much don't know that much about Xenom. And I'm really excited to expose what it is to them, but also the CrossFit public. Keith, thanks so much for coming on today, my man.

SPEAKER_04 1:28

No, absolutely. Thanks. Thanks so much for having me. Um I'll make like one correction to that intro. This is not fitness racing. That would be my that would be my my my one point. Um look, so very, very simply, if I were to explain Xenom to anyone listening, so Xenom is a CrossFit competition. Um we're a CrossFit partner licensed event series, um, with a really positive relationship with with the CrossFit team. Um, but we are a two-day competition. Over those two days, you do 10 events. So we are the Decathlon of Fitness, um, that's a trademark term. Um and the the goal of the competition across those 10 events is that we have a level of competition in there where none of it's easy, but there is an accessible level for anyone who is training regularly in a CrossFit gym. So there is a compete level, which is kind of your version of a scaled. That is not to say that it's it's easy. Um, the movements are still hard, you're still snatching, you're still doing like pure CrossFit movements, and then that goes all the way through to an elite competition where the weights are super heavy, you're kind of game semi-finals level people looking to compete in there, and then you can compete in this either as an individual or in a pair. So you compete in a pair, and if you do a pair at the compete level, like that's a pretty it's still 10 events over two days, but that's a pretty accessible level. And the goal and the thought process behind it is uh there is this huge explosion of in-person physical events, and there is a real value to them. It is very clear that in-person physical experiences where people can put their fitness on display is something that the market is interested in. And I've spent the last five years running an agency called Fittist, which did the PR and the creative comms for HyROX. Um, I know the HyROX founders, Christian and Mo very, very well. I spoke to them a lot about this concept as I was building it. Um and my perspective was the lessons that we should be learning from HyROX is not how do I make this easier and how do I make this super accessible, and how do I how do I attract the person from outside of a CrossFit box necessarily to come and do this. I think there are people outside of a CrossFit box that will come and do this, but that wasn't the focus. The focus for me was I think based on the research that we did, there are still four million people who are pursuing constantly varied functional movements performed at relatively high intensity and seeking this broad work capacity across time and modal domains that is representative of the fitness that people in CrossFit community are looking for. There are no competitions in the sense that, and that is not to say that I think the open is not a competition or that Water Palooza is not a competition. I was there in Miami, I was chatting with Dylan and the guys from um the team there. That's also not to say that Rogue is not a CrossFit competition, but in terms of this global, standardized, comparable format of a competition that creates these CrossFit games level experiences for, and when I say the everyday athlete, I've heard people go, it's not for the everyday athlete because my grandma wouldn't want to do this. Well, we've got that a little bit wrong. Like people are thinking that I'm trying to make a high ROX competitor and I'm really not. I'm trying to make a product very specifically for the CrossFit community and for those four million people who are already pursuing what I believe to be the most incredible form of fitness that exists bar none, but that which doesn't have a competition. So at the moment, you have people going and doing a HIROX or going and doing a marathon or going and doing a challenge, which represents a very narrow expression of the time and modal domains within which CrossFitters develop capacity. So why don't we create the competition that encompasses all of that and then learn the lessons that we should learn from businesses like HyRox, which is how do we do this at scale? How do we make it global? How do we make it something that the community can can have a have a central pillar by which they can understand their

Why Build A CrossFit-First Competition

SPEAKER_04 6:05

fitness, they can test it, they can come back and try again and see where they progress. Um, yeah, that's the elevator pitch.

SPEAKER_02 6:14

Yeah, hey, that was awesome because I'm I'm getting like fired up just listening to you talk about you are leaning into the CrossFit methodology. You're not leaning away from it. And that's something that it's music to my ears as a coach, as an athlete, as an affiliate owner. That right now we have over two dozen people doing high rocks in New York City about two months from now. And it's cool, it's fun, they're bonding together, it's getting them to work on certain things, but it's getting them away in some ways from CrossFit, meaning we actually have people getting away from some of their CrossFit training and leaning into running more or machining more. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 6:53

I mean, underneath underlying all of this is kind of my personal experience. And for me, discovering CrossFit, I discovered CrossFit about a decade ago, and it was the most transformational thing in my life. Bar none, absolutely. When I found when I found the methodology, when I found the culture and I found the impact it had on me, both in a physical and a mental capacity, like there is a line of my life, and it's like my quality of life, and then there's a point where it just suddenly ticks up. And um my wife would say that's when I met her, but it's maybe a little bit before that. It was very, it was very quick. I met my wife in a CrossFit gym. Um, and we built our first business, we built fittest in that space. And so, underlying everything is like my personal experience and and my belief in this transformational power of training and competition. Um, and then when we were then so about nine months ago, I thought there was an opportunity to do this, and I spent a lot of time thinking then, okay, what are the things that have to be right? Because obviously, our community is has like a uh a self-defense mechanism within it, um to put it politely. Um, so what has to be right that people, if I explain it to them, understand? So I thought we have to do two three things. It has to be good for the individual, I have to create a competition format within the limitations of I want to run 50 of these things in five years' time, I can't do a marathon row, I can't do swimming. There are like logistical elements that preclude us from certain things, but that individual has to feel like the hard work, the virtuosity, the intensity that they apply to their training every day is rewarded then with their big day out, their Super Bowl moment, and they have to feel like okay, this was made for me, and have pride then in what they were doing. Second was and and almost most important, is it had to be good for the affiliates. I spoke to a lot of affiliate owners as we were um conceptualizing this, and uh what you just said is something that thousands of affiliate owners would say. They would say, one of the best things that's happened to us in the last few years is high rocks, I've got 50 new members, it's great, they bring a new dynamic to the gym. Flip side of that, there is now developed this culture of competition, and and the competition is a high rox or whatever it is, and that is how these individuals in our gym who are inclined towards competition develop physical status, develop um kind of personal fame in their life, it's from how they perform in the competition. And so, because they're getting that status and that fame from the competition, they want to do more of what that competition is. And if that is power output denominated, running bias, sled pushing and pull, like that's what they end up wanting to do more of. And it's very difficult then to say to someone, hey, you should really work on your muscle up, you should really work on getting that first toaster bar, you should really work on cleaning cleaning 220 pounds. Like so, for the affiliate owner, if I can then really create this culture and I can really kind of give people this opportunity to go and have this crosswit games level experience, where they then really, that's where they're getting their pride from. They're coming into the gym and they're saying, man, event seven, toaster bar, thrusters, and then it's the muscle up. And I know if I get one muscle up, it's gonna put me into this whole other category of competitor. You know what? The next one's in the next one's in half a year. Like, Dave, I I really want to get this muscle up. Like, that's gonna be the thing. Like, that's what we that's what we want, and I think that's what competition does so well, is it it gives people a direction of travel to to go and pursue, right? And then the third thing was it had to be good for the ecosystem. So I I thought that we've had a tumultuous time over the last few years. I think there's been lots that's gone on, and I think I thought if I came in with like a traditional elite level competition that the 20 best men and 20 best women in the world can get excited about and everyone else can watch, like that wasn't something that was going to be beneficial. But if if like you said, you've got you've got 65 quarter finalists in your gym, amazing. Do they want to come and do CrossFit in the Dallas Cowboys stadium under the lights and bring their wife and kids and have this amazing two days out and complete like we carry on talking about okay if the Pyrox is the marathon, and this is like the Iron Man, like this is this is the thing. Yep, like there are those people, there are those people in our community, and for me, I think at the moment we don't have we don't have that one thing which which people can then coalesce around. And David can do it in New Jersey, and I can do it in London, and Sam can do it in Paris, and I got 4,000 points, David got five, Sam got six, well, Keith wants to get to where David is, David wants to get where Sam is, and Sam wants to get where James Sprague is. Like, cool. We know the we know how that works.

SPEAKER_02 12:17

Yeah, yep, yeah. Yeah, you're speaking the language, absolutely. And I I we definitely want to talk about at some point, I know Sam's gonna ask you a question about just some of the back end stuff, but I definitely want to touch onto like what the athlete experience will be, not necessarily all the bells and whistles, but the actual competition itself, because the first thing someone said to me says, Oh, that's 10 events is a lot. But the programming, after after we talk about what Sam's gonna talk about, I really want to get into how you came up with the programming because I'm a programming snob in some ways, like I'm analytical on it, I love it, and I love the series of fitness tests. So, Sam, touch on what you want to talk about, and then we'll

Designing For Athletes And Affiliates

SPEAKER_02 12:55

dive into that.

SPEAKER_00 12:56

Yeah, this is a quick run-up. It's like literally nine months. Your company was founded February 27th of this year. You got $15 million from Wonder Company, which is like a VC firm, I guess, um, with Jeffrey Katzenberg as one of the primary um owners, and as well as a foundational equipment partnership with Rogue. And so I assume you gave this same elevator pitch to Jeffrey Katzenberg or his group or whomever. How did you manage to convince them this is, like you said, a tumultuous time for CrossFit? There's a lot of uncertainty. This is not a growing sport, right? Numbers are down over the past five, six, seven, eight, ten years. What did you do to convince them? Hey, let's give 15 million to Keith Barlow and get him getting this uh off the ground. Let's do this. That's crazy.

SPEAKER_04 13:48

So I had a background before we ran the agency uh fittest for the last five years. Before that, I worked for a family office, for a Middle Eastern family office and investment, where I'd done everything from kind of acquisitions through disposals. So I kind of spoke the language and you had to make a financial model and knew how to pitch it. And look, I think when when you're raising money from not that this is a VC podcast, but when you're raising money from VC, you have to be able to paint a picture, obviously, of of the future of where you think you can make a really impressive, really big business, but you have to combine that with the ability and like a clear vision and and plan of how to go and execute on that. And I think you can just look at the size of the community that the that crosswit spaces had before and how culturally impactful that has been. There are four million people in the world who love the sport. There are still like you said, you've got 65 people in your gym who are competitors. Yeah. But like the thought that we can't turn that into that we can't coalesce that into something bigger than just like this the competitive team that you put together at your gym and someone else puts together at their gym, the thought that we can't put that in something that becomes a globally impactful business is to me like I can't understand why other people wouldn't see it. And I think when you look at the opportunities in fitness, you just look at Hyrox is presumed is like a unicorn, like a hair's breadth away from being a unicorn, being a billion-dollar company on an eight-year run-up. And I think that so many people now are trying to copy the elements of Hyrox that you're never gonna beat. Like, I don't think that we as CrossFit are ever gonna beat a HIROX on an accessibility perspective. But because the nature of what we do, like if we stick to the methodology and we stick to what we believe is true, and we believe in kind of carving out fitness at the in in the far edges of the corner, then that shouldn't be our prime focus. And so if you go and you get swept up in a high rox, if you go, you get pulled into their gravitational pool, they're the apple of fitness, they have the they have the Berkshire Hathaway moat around them. It is very difficult to make an impact there. Where in CrossFit, I thought that's a white space, like there is an existing use case for the product, there is a proven consumer market, and there is a demand that we know exists. Like, if I go and build something in this white space, people will come into it, and we've certainly seen that now. So we launched our Dallas tickets two weeks ago. Um, with look a pretty expensive ticket, a product that no one's ever seen before. Essentially asking, I'm not well known in terms of everyone the brands would know me because I've worked with most of the brands in this space and and the agents, but like no one in the public knows me. And so, to everyone who's already bought a ticket, like an immense thank you because you're going on the faith that I'm gonna put on a good weekend for you. Um, but that demand has been super strong, way ahead of where we thought ticket sales would be at this point. Um, so yeah, it's given me immense confidence in in yeah, the the capacity for this. And we have a lot more to come in terms of, like I said, just before we got on this call, I'm heading to Dallas now. Um, I'm gonna be there for a week and a half. We'll start our community marketing activation where we'll be bringing Xenon Van, Xenom coaches, putting on one of the events from Xenom in local in in local CrossFit gyms. We'll probably hit 50 plus CrossFit gyms. Wow, I think before we get to the Dallas event. And like for me, there's so much value in there, and and and uh it helps that I've had this transformational experience, and so I'd like I'm full dyed in the wool, like I believe in it. In I think that the value in our CrossFit communities, if you're if you're in a CrossFit gym and there's a hundred, two hundred of you all pursuing this this broad work capacity across time and modal domains, like you're in an elite club, like you are in the best club in the world, and for me, there's so much value in the community. Like, so I'm I'm super excited for this week to to get out, get face to face with people, and like yeah, I think competition, competition brings out the the best, not just in like the people who compete, but you think about like back to regional days and and stuff, like when it's like, oh, like David's competing. Okay, amazing. Everyone go and watch because it's gonna be like a big day out, it's gonna be fun, it's gonna be an arena, there's gonna be a show, and that like strengthens the bonds within those communities.

SPEAKER_02 19:05

Yeah, yeah. Back in the day when regionals were a thing, those those bonded affiliates together as much as much as as much as anything. And so now the athlete side, right? I know I have people watching this right now are they're gonna watch this and listen to this. You know, they're immediately gonna go to the website, I'll screen share it right now. We'll talk about we can't break down every workout, it's gonna it would take too long. But ever as we're talking, I will maybe cycle through for those that are watching on YouTube and not listening, um, Spotify Apple. I'll just go through a couple of the workouts just so you guys can get a feel for what you're looking at it. But honestly, check out their website, we'll put it in the link as well.

SPEAKER_04 19:41

Um the the the athlete how before we start breaking this down, yeah, maybe I'll just say one thing. Yeah, is that please we are slightly different, and there are people who will come into this and look at this from a programming perspective, and they'll say, Why didn't you do this? Why didn't you say do this? My I have two two missions for Xenon. One is to set the global standard for quantifying fitness in a sporting domain, and two is to create this this platform for people to go and express that definition of fitness. Okay. So this is going to change by tomorrow because by none of the workouts are gonna change, but tomorrow we will release the scoring system. Yeah, and I will talk a little bit more, and like this is a great opportunity to start talking about it. So the theory and the reason for the picking of the events that we have is that according to the definition of fitness, which is an algorithm-based assessment using similar to the decathlon um uh a formula, based on statistical regression, based on a huge amount of data work, we believe with these 10 tests that you have at least it's not perfect, it'll never be perfect because there's always like a bit of art in it. But we believe that you quantify fitness with the results

Funding The Vision And Proving Demand

SPEAKER_04 21:05

of these tests in the best possible way that we could find using a combination of art and kind of using a combination of stats and yeah, the art of programming. Yeah, so you have to take everything from that base.

SPEAKER_02 21:21

Absolutely. One yeah, and I I we could probably spend an hour talking about how this is scored. It's incredibly complicated. There's almost like an engineering background to it. We, but um, this is not a classic, where do you rank? That's how many points you get. Um you know, we'll we'll I'm sure you guys will put out a lot more information on that. But as you when you look at events, right? My first thought as a coach, as an athlete, day one has five events. And and as you said, CrossFitters are in defense mode all the time. They try to find holes in this and that. Um, it can challenge us, it keeps us accountable in the mo. But when you say five events in one day, can you give an Approximate timeline of what is a day? Is it eight hours? Is it 10 hours? Is it five hours? Like, how much time in between events do you roughly project on stuff like that?

SPEAKER_04 22:11

So day one is a longer day because you have the run ski workout, which is our longest workout. So that's around like six and a half to seven hours, like start to finish. So that, but in in that situation, like I said, it's not fitness racing. So you're gonna come in, you're gonna do your one rep max snatch, you have three minutes to warm up, and then you have four attempts every 90 seconds to hit your one rep max snatch.

unknown 22:35

Right.

SPEAKER_04 22:36

You're then gonna have like a 40 to 45 minute break, depending on what division you're in. It'll always be the same rest. So everyone has the same amount of rest, and then you'll come into event two. Event two is a super cool workout, it looks super simple, um, but it's a it's a great basic gymnastics test of walk and rope climb. Um, you then have a very short break, you have three minutes of rest before you go into a 60-second uh echo bike sprint uh for max calories. Um, and there are only two responses that we've had to this workout, and that's people in camp A, which is quite small, being like, Man, I love that. I'm gonna go so hard, I'm just gonna blow myself, like, but I'm gonna I'm gonna absolutely crush it. And then like the much bigger camp of people who are like, Why on earth did you program that? That's awful. That's a great test.

SPEAKER_02 23:29

It's a great test, such an underrated test, too.

SPEAKER_04 23:32

You've got to in this, if you want to quantify fitness, you really have to like go back, read the first 10 um CrossFit journal articles, yeah, think about the space under the graph, think about what are the work the um time domains and the capacities that we want to test. And you need to test this short duration, you know, like when first people come into the gym and they do Fran and they get Frank. And then after a couple of years, you don't get it anymore because you've learned to pace, because you've learned to you've learned actually, I can stay in zone three, zone four. I'm not gonna get into zone five. You have to have a test that forces people into zone five to to kind of get them there.

SPEAKER_01 24:13

Yep. Completely agree.

SPEAKER_04 24:15

So then you have then a big gap. You have a you have a big rest here, which people will need. So again, you have like another like 40 40 minutes to an hour, you're into then um this five-minute barbell amrap, um, which is at like a mid-heavy weight. So um in the you're gonna ask why everything's in kilos, not pounds.

SPEAKER_02 24:37

Hey, hey, we we I I think you're not Americans get a little too uh spoiled with how it stuff's always in pounds. So that's a that's approximately DT weight, right? Maybe a little heavier than DT.

SPEAKER_00 24:49

Yeah, it's like 155, 105 yeah, for the R for the Elite for 12 deadlifts, nine front squats, six shoulder overhead, three thrusters. Then it looks like 135.95 for um RX and then 11075 for the compete weights.

SPEAKER_04 25:03

So we'll just explain. Yep, because most competitions don't have to think about okay, cross geographies, how do I ensure that the events are fair? Yep, the Olympics lifting kilos, and there's a very specific reason, I believe, why why we do that, and that's just like plate loading. So if you do this workout at 70 kilos in Europe, and then we did it in pounds in the US, in the US, you'd have three additional plate changes, which makes a huge difference, not necessarily in this workout, but later in the competition, both in the snatch and in the clean workout. And when you're in a time domain limited event where you need to change plates, you don't want to end up in a position in two years' time when people are really competitive in this work. I'm gonna go to Europe because I only have to change, I can change the plates three times less. That's a great point. So that is the reason. Um, which most people don't have to think on the logistics of like globalizing something. Yep. So then you've done your five-minute barbell cycling, um, and you're then into event five, which is a super cool workout. And I think we've learned lessons obviously from Hyrocks and bringing running into these events and and using chip timers and making it super cool um is a really valuable piece of the is a really valuable piece of the pie. So in this, you do a 3k chip timed run, you come in straight into a 2k echo ski. So this is obviously the the the biggest kind of aerobic capacity in endurance test that we have.

SPEAKER_02 26:43

Right. And so this is just the the visual logistically at a whole different level of logistics here. There will be people in different age groups, different groups, different heats, all these. If you're as a spectator, you're gonna be seeing all this go on at once.

SPEAKER_04 26:58

Yeah, so you all compete together. So if Keith's competing in male RX, um, he's in a wave, um, he might be in a wave with Sam and David at the same time, and we would all be competing in the male compete category. So you'd have an overall winner of male compete, but then exactly the same way that triathlon or high rocks or lots of other sports run, you'd also be competing within those. Sorry, I don't know if you can hear that.

SPEAKER_02 27:27

You're good, you're good. I can hear I barely hear it, and you I hear you very well.

SPEAKER_04 27:31

So okay. Um, so then you'd also be competing within your age category. So Keith would be I'm 34, Keith would be competing against um everyone in the 30-34 category. Um 40 if you're 47, you're in 45 to 49. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:48

Okay, that's awesome. So day one's done. So you're full. I mean, my back of the Mac napkin math is that's about a five to seven hour commitment, nothing too crazy. Um, yeah, yeah, yeah. You come back the next morning, you say it, and you know, you have not released event six yet. When did when should we expect to see that? Or is that is that a last minute surprise?

SPEAKER_04 28:09

Uh it's not a last-minute surprise. No, the nature of it's known enough. Like, that's the whole shtick of the event. Like, we all know what they're doing, and I I'm not gonna release an event six that suddenly people are like, oh god, like it's a it's like a yeah, it's like it's like maximum underwater swim lengths for distance, hold your breath for yeah, like we won't be coming in with something like that. I think event six. So the plan, so we released the scoring system tomorrow. Okay. The rule book is ready to go, and the plan is we release it next week. So the rule book then would have season structure, like we want everyone to understand exactly what they're doing. And then so event six is we've got a few other things to do. Obviously, we've got a big partnership with CrossFit that we haven't really talked about very much, so there's a bunch of stuff coming on that. Um, so yeah, then event six, probably in the next three to four weeks. Um, but it's cool, it's a twist, but it will be very familiar to people as well. It won't be something that they're like, oh god, this doesn't make any sense.

SPEAKER_00 29:14

I know you're gonna talk more about scoring, but I just want to ask really quickly. So if you look at decathlon scoring, there are benchmarks, right? So you get a thousand points per event. Um, for example, for the decathlon a 400 meter run, you get a thousand points if you hit 46.17, uh, 900 points if your time is 48.19, uh, and then so on and then so forth. And so my guess is like you're gonna have a benchmark time or wait for like say your one rip next match. Like, let's say it's 300. Yeah, and then you get a thousand points. But if you go over that, you can actually make more than a thousand points, right? Because there are people in the decathlon who run faster than 46 and they get 1100 points or something like that. So, my guess is you're gonna do something similar to the decathlon. Exactly.

SPEAKER_04 29:58

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So the the scoring system is pretty much exactly the same, slightly different. Obviously, the decathlon is seeking to identify the individual with the greatest athletic capacity by testing them across 10 different athletic disciplines. We're seeking to find the person with the greatest work capacity by testing them across 10 different disciplines. So slightly different in terms of our intention, and so we really are focused on on work capacity.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

Can you tell us what the benchmark is for the one rep max snatch? Can you reveal that for us? I want to know what a thousand points is.

SPEAKER_04 30:31

I mean, we're gonna release it tomorrow. So it'll it's um it's 153 kilos.

SPEAKER_01 30:37

Okay. So now I gotta do the math.

SPEAKER_04 30:41

So we're not setting it, so we're not setting it like, oh, it's 225 kilos because that's the Olympic gold medal. Obviously, that's that's 330.

SPEAKER_00 30:49

That's 337 pounds. So yeah. Oh so that will earn you a thousand points in the one rep max.

SPEAKER_02 30:55

Whoa, yeah. Okay, no problem.

SPEAKER_00 30:57

Yeah, let's do it.

SPEAKER_02 30:58

We'll start we'll try we'll start our snatch cycle tomorrow, Sam.

unknown 31:01

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 31:02

Look, there's a combination here of um we we did a combination of elite athletes testing, we did a combination of like quite

Day One Flow And Event Logistics

SPEAKER_04 31:10

a length, quite a lot of statistical work on okay, what are historical records, what do we based on physics, based on biology, what do we think is feasible that kind of the the best performer in the CrossFit community can achieve in this event for a thousand points. That is not an obviously you say 153 is crazy, but if if an Olympic weightlifter just comes along and says, Okay, well, I'll come and do it because I know I can snatch 180, they might come in and get 1200 points in that, but then they get 200 points in the running workout, and the the the the way that we've worked the algorithm it accounts very much for the statistical outlier, um, because you're and it and it gives you the answer. So across the 10 events, David is like, okay, I think that my biggest hole in my fitness is my Olympic lifting. I'm gonna go and I'm gonna hammer the snatch, and over the course of six months from your last competition, you had seven kilos onto your snatch. Okay, fantastic. But you did 30 seconds slower in the endurance workout, and you did four less muscle ups in event seven, the muscle up workout, and actually your total score came down. Well, you have the quantification of did your fitness improve? According to our understanding of it, because you lost capacity in somewhere else, you didn't, or maybe you did, but we've never really known what the answer is there, yeah, because we've not had this test where it's you versus the test, and this gives you very much that. I love it. I think it'll it'll present such an interesting job for the coaches, it'll present such an interesting job for the people whose whose job it is to to figure all this stuff out. And like, yeah, I'm not the I'm not the coach, and I'm never gonna tell anyone how to get ready for Xenob. Like, that's that's not my job. That's the job of the coaches in in the gym and the affiliates. Um, but yeah, do you do you want to do day two as well? And I can explain the rest of day two.

SPEAKER_02 33:17

Yep, yeah. This is the event seven, right?

SPEAKER_04 33:21

Yeah, this is event seven. So um at the elite level, it's toes to bar, jewel dumbbell, hang snatch, and then it's muscle ups. And I can maybe explain a little bit here in the scoring system. So you have something, so so you have an algorithm and and you have something called a C-score. So a C score is the progressivity component of how we award points. So you can have a C score, which we have in this. So in the first section, so if you're looking at compete here, you've got toes to ring, single arm dumbbell snatch. But the way the C score is applied is the C score for the reps in the first part of the workout is lower. So your your athlete the first job is get through these three rounds, and in exactly the same way that you have it in the open or something, where you get to a certain point and then the challenge is to get to the next one. You then start to progressively accrue more points for the workout, for the um elements of the workout that are higher value. So by the time you're getting into the bar muscle ups or into the ring muscle ups in the elite version, that's where you're then banking your bigger points. And you want that because you want to reward those people with the the higher capacity about it. We kind of looked at okay, theoretical development of an athlete, metabolic conditioning, gymnastics, weightlifting sport. Like, are we rewarding people in that in that system? Are we rewarding people on a pro rata basis? And we believe, and we've done an awful lot of stats work on it, that that is representative in in this system. And so from tomorrow, you'll be able to come on the website, plug in what scores you think you will get, and you'll be able to see what your potential EPI score is. Oh, that's and then the sport element of it is come and do it on the day.

SPEAKER_00 35:10

Yeah. Now, these were programmed by Motion, which is a UK-based CrossFit team that finished fourth in 2024. Did you get any input from CrossFit HQ at all or anyone else, any other consultants, or did they do it solely by themselves to figure out these 10 events?

SPEAKER_04 35:26

Uh so they did the programming. Um, and then we have done quite a bit of consulting, but more on the stats side of things, then to make sure that okay, so obviously, when you start something like this, you have a thousand different events and different ideas. And do you do a do you just do like a max gymnastic? Do you do I just do max toaster bar? Is that a better test? And we then ran through from a stats perspective, lots of different combinations of these tests. And these were the tests that we found in combination, for whatever reason, gave us the most balanced results.

SPEAKER_00 36:02

Did Dave Castro give his blessing?

SPEAKER_04 36:06

He yes, in the sense of I had two pretty long phone calls with him, um, ran through everything, but he did not say, Yeah, I like these workouts, or no, I don't like these workouts. Like there was no like yeah, direct input from him.

SPEAKER_01 36:25

Okay, interesting. All right, this is uh this is event eight.

SPEAKER_04 36:30

Yep. So um this is like a pure metabolic conditioning workout. So burpees over the line, um, and that's like a lateral step over burpee or jump if you want to, but we have no kind of two-foot landing rules or two. Two foot take off rules. I'm not I'm not I don't want to get yeah, I don't want to get you have done cross it for a long time. Yeah, um, so you're into then echo ski, bike, burpees again, echo bike, ski, um, and then you finish again with burpees over the line as an amrat.

SPEAKER_02 37:04

Okay, yeah, that that's that's like that's a good gritty one. I that's like where a lot of the high rocks people will kind of get into that one, the machines, the body weight stuff, how hard can you go? And yeah, 12 minutes like 12 minutes is like that average time domain of cross at workouts slash cross at open workouts, and like that's where that's just a pain cave type. Um, very inclusive on that. So now we got two more. Nine nine scares me. This is where lifters here you have your time. Everyone that's complaining about the quarterfinal workouts. Here we go. This is this is gonna be a huge, this is a fun one to look at.

SPEAKER_04 37:37

Yeah. Um, so obviously, this is the elite, and I I think um I don't want people to look at this and and think, oh god, like I have to come in and and do that way. Like, obviously, you don't at the compete level. This is a much more reasonable workout, and um at a level that most people in a CrossFit gym are gonna be able to work through, like it's not a super long time, it's eight minutes, like gonna be able to work through through these barbells.

SPEAKER_00 38:02

Um, but yes, on the US side, it would be 135.75 finishing at like 220 slash 155, which is like we've reasonable we've produced a really simple like kilo to pounds conversion document that you have there so that you know like what the plates are.

SPEAKER_04 38:21

Um yeah, so you know like what the plates are um as as you get into this, but yeah, you hit here 10, 8, 6, 4, 2, and then you have an amrap on a on a heavy bar. Um, and yeah, reward the lifters here.

SPEAKER_02 38:36

Um visually is this are you changing your own weights? Is that part of the workout?

SPEAKER_04 38:44

Yeah, okay, which is why it's so critical then that everything is in kilos, because then you have a uniform system of of changing this.

SPEAKER_02 38:53

Yep, and I like the fact this is this one lasts because this to me, when I'm visualizing doing this workout, I'm like, wow, this this would be a tough workout. Where is it? Oh, there you go.

SPEAKER_04 39:03

Yeah, so if you look if you go and read your like L1 or something and you obviously look at the time domains short, medium, long, like you need to make sure that you have these these long tests in there. And we we we obviously thought quite carefully, and uh, and obviously, look, 10 events in two days is a lot of events. Um but if you look at like the amount of eccentric loading and the amount of the number of short workouts there are in there, um, I think like it's a fairly balanced approach. Um, and obviously in this workout, you're hitting your high-rep gymnastics, but you're disrupting them as well with the lunges that kind of limit a little bit the ability to just obviously. If you had something like a Cindy in here or something, then people are just

Decathlon-Style Scoring And Benchmarks

SPEAKER_04 39:55

absolutely flying through reps. Um this way we we still reward the gymnasts, we still reward the the higher level of proficiency and conditioning. And I think that's such like a huge part of can of gymnastics at the higher level. Like lots of people can do six-handstand push-ups or eight chester bars, but how good are you at cycling those? Right. Again, I didn't program it. I'm not the programmer in competitions, but I like the way that this then that this then pulls through and yeah, uh at the compete level um with scaled movements.

SPEAKER_02 40:30

Great workouts, like top to bottom, really. I mean, I I do think it sounded like you went really deep into the weeds of finding the most perfect combination of workouts, loading, skills, time domains. Like as I'm reading through these workouts, like he definitely read the level one guide because that's you really do touch on anything. I mean, the fact that you put the 60 cal 60 second bike in there, like that that is a huge thing that I think a lot of programmers missed out on. That that one minute pure, like you will taste blood after time domain, and then everything else, the loading, I think you know, it it really does look like it wasn't someone that was programming on their computer on a Saturday afternoon one time. That that put a lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of thought into it.

SPEAKER_04 41:13

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and look, it's it's crossfit. People are gonna say, I would have done I would have done overhead pistol squats, because that's like the most complicated, that's a true test of unilateral and like cool, like go make your own competition.

SPEAKER_02 41:30

Yep. Yeah, I mean, you're you I mean, I'm really I'm really like one of support you guys and and see you guys do well as you get more popular and as you get better, it it comes with that criticism that people love to give. Like, I bet at some point Hitler's gonna have a field day with some people and standards. Have how much are you thinking about the judging component? Like, how are you finding judges? Is this volunteers? Are they pay judges? Where are you trying to source that from? Because I know that is going to be a big part of what you guys have to deal with in the coming months.

SPEAKER_04 42:07

Yeah, absolutely. Um, so we have a a range of roles available, everything from kind of volunteer through to stipended paid positions. Um and super critical for us that that the the judging in in this like meets the standards of the industry, meets the standards of what we do. Um, we've we've hired recently Wilson Pack um as our events and ops lead in the US. Great guy. Um super happy to have him on board. Um working with frameworks who are one of the agency partners who put on Rogan Votational and the NFL Combine. And so like on on between the two of them, super confident that we have uh a really strongly staffed and a really well-trained um yeah, set of set of judges and volunteers on the on that front. But for me, like we're a premium product. Like we're a premium product, we're doing it in a really, really expensive venue. Um premium for me then means everything has to be premium, like every moment of the athlete experience then has to be premium. Right. And so, yeah, we're we're super focused on on the game day being the first game day being like a level above what people have expected, unless they were people who were going to the crossroad games, and that's again like it's kind of the thing that you're trying to answer for, is like, okay, the 20 best people in the world get this incredible experience. Like, how can I give that to thousands of people? How can I give them that that moment under the spotlight and and that moment on the floor?

SPEAKER_02 43:48

Yeah, so I mean, to to wrap this up in terms of of future, I know right now you're so focused on Dallas, but uh you sound like you have a a big time vision. Can you touch on what the the goal is? For how many races you would want throughout the year? Are you already looking at other locations specifically?

SPEAKER_04 44:06

Um, so we're we're already contracted for two more. Um, so London, um, one other, um, and then we'll do basically four in 2026. So we'll definitely do we'll definitely do London, we'll definitely do Dallas, um, two other two others for sure in 26, and then across the next 12 months, the plan is 11. So and that would be six US, five euro.

SPEAKER_00 44:34

Is it Miami and Paris, or are those not for sure at this point?

SPEAKER_04 44:38

It is most likely Miami and Paris. Okay. I'm not gonna I'm not gonna say that it's a thousand percent, just there's like little with all of these, there's like little bits still to do, but yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 44:50

Quick question. Um, what about safety for athletes? Like you have 2,000 athletes at these places, they're doing complicated movements. Um, there is some risk, more than say, I would say, high rocks in terms of some of these movements. So, so what are you doing to ensure safety for athletes during the competition?

SPEAKER_04 45:07

Yeah, absolutely. Uh look, we need to follow absolutely the the um industry best standards for athlete safety, and that's everything from kind of pure medical, um, and ensuring that we have a team on site, not just like obviously you do an event, you legally you have to have ambulances and everything on site, but um yeah, plugging into, and there are some incredible people in the space in terms of the medical safety and and medical procedures,

Day Two Tests And Judging Standards

SPEAKER_04 45:35

but not even not even just for like the big things, not even for like the big disastrous moments, but someone gets a sprain, someone gets a someone like making sure that that is all really looked after. And then from the flip side of that is then like from a logistics and ops perspective is health and safety. Um there's a Bible. There's a there's a Bible for these events, then um that that again you've you've got to look at like the best practice within the industry of CrossFit, but you've also then got to look at like where are the other where are the other big global series of events and how do they approach things and speak to tennis, speak to football, speak to other organizations and understand how they approach things. Um yeah.

SPEAKER_00 46:20

Real quick question also Are you going to let's suppose Xenom really takes off? Are you gonna offer like certification like Hyrocks does to affiliates? Are you gonna have coaching resources or continuing education, any of that sort of stuff to help support affiliates with this?

SPEAKER_04 46:35

Look, I I think the future of the business is relatively unknown. I I know what we're gonna be doing over the next five years, which is building competitions, building community, giving people an opportunity to go and compete. Um, I do not have an interest in opening gyms and in running affiliate. Like you have to think with all of this, what can I do better than anyone else? And there's so many options for an affiliate owner right now, whether it's their CrossFit affiliation or whether there's their Hyrox affiliation, or like what do I add in the mix of that that no one else can do? And unless I like was thinking to myself, oh, I've got I've got a I think I've got the answer from a competition perspective, I'd rather invest all my time into yeah, creating something amazing on that front.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Great. Yeah. So yeah, Keith, thanks so much for the time in. I know, I know your your head's probably all over the place about the travel and what's coming up, but I'm really impressed by by this, by you, um on so many different fronts. I've never talked to you before this, other than just asking you to give us some time for the podcast. I'm really impressed by this. I'm really pumped. Like just learning about what where your kind of North Star is and the inception of the idea, it really does seem like this this big throw, this this Hail Mary, if you want to call that, is in the right hands. And like I really do think that you can have a lot of success with this because it does fill like, as you said, it fills a white space in the market that people are absolutely desiring. Um one of the issues.

SPEAKER_00 48:11

Well, I I agree with I just want I forgot one last question really fast. I'm sorry, we'll never have an opportunity to ask again. What about integrity? What about sporting, anti-doping? Good question. Uh in terms of legitimacy, like some guy comes in and he's so like jacked and juiced, and he destroys this. Like, what kind of measures are you going to be taking to like to protect Xenon's integrity in terms of the sport?

SPEAKER_04 48:44

Yeah, obviously. So look, we we released the full rule book um next week, um, and and we'll go into detail on all of that. Um obviously, we're in the infancy

Expansion Plans Plus Safety And Integrity

SPEAKER_04 48:55

of this thing. We're not necessarily coming in with everything 100% dot on um dotted um and the the T's crossed. That said, the intention 100% is the way that kind of wada and and drug testing and everything works is you can either be the tool member or you can sign up to the rules and work yourself towards that. Absolutely the approach that that we need to take. Um at the same time, it's it's that funny piece of mass participation, and you have to really think very carefully about how you put these structures and and rules in place to ensure that they work across um everyone who's participating and they capture people in in the way that you want them to. So um we've still got a little bit more work to do on that. Um, and yeah, we'll have more details coming out, obviously, with the rule book next week and uh on an ongoing basis. But again, the intention is let's look at the global standards, let's look at what the most legitimate sports in the world are doing. Let's take those examples and let's follow them.

SPEAKER_02 50:02

Thank you. All right, well, thanks again, Keith. Yeah, I don't I won't recycle everything I said, but you know, from bison from New Jersey, we'll definitely I can almost guarantee uh you're gonna see some athletes signing up. I don't know about Dallas because it's uh so so soon, but I can almost guarantee, Dan Coda, I'm looking at you uh that you will uh you'll see some bison athletes there and whatever we can do to support you guys as you take off because I think this is really gonna feed into making CrossFit affiliates stronger, CrossFitters as athletes stronger, and just give everyone else just another thing to train for. So really appreciate all the effort that you put into it.

SPEAKER_04 50:36

No guys, thank you so much for having me on. Really appreciate it. And yeah, um, hopefully we see you at some of the events.

SPEAKER_02 50:42

Yep. All right, thanks, Keith. Safe travels, my man.

SPEAKER_04 50:45

Cheers, guys. Bye-bye.

SPEAKER_02 50:46

Bye. Thank you, everybody, for taking the time out of your day to listen to the Herd Fit podcast. Be on the lookout for next week's episode.