LIVE | Colten Mertens takes on Quarterfinals

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Now,

that blew out someone's speakers for share.

Ladies and gentlemen, Taylor Self, Sean Magger,

how about us wrap Matt Sousa and myself.

We are so lucky once again to have access

to the great Colton Mertens as he moves on

after winning the 2026 CrossFit Games Open.

He moves on to the quarterfinals very shortly here.

We are going to see him do workout number two.

Oh, you ask, how can I support Colton

in his generosity in doing these publicly?

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I'm getting the don't try it on me pair right now.

I'm so glad I didn't say don't interrupt me.

The workout that supposedly he's going to do.

We won't know until we see him on the stage.

80 dumbbell hangs squat,

cleans 40 bar muscle ups, 15 minute time cap,

50 pounds for the boys, 35 pounds for the girls.

JR how how's he split him up?

How's the hog doom?

I think he does kind of do what me and Taylor and Bryson,

and what it sounds like you guys were talking about

also in the update show.

Can't you just take credit for anything?

Why can't we know you're the smartest guy in the room?

Just say you came out with this shit for fuck's sake.

Stop fucking glaze and Taylor, the Cyclops thing.

Okay, go ahead, sorry.

I spit on it a little more.

No, I do, no, I do, I do think it's smart

for the novice athlete who just made the quarters,

the most elite athletes like Colton,

to do a chunk of the bar muscle ups

when you're feeling the best,

which is right when the workout starts.

You can always put your hands on the dumbbells.

You don't have to establish the hang.

So you can,

okay.

Taylor's overriding the system.

His robo cop is coming.

Okay, okay, J are you turned into Optimus Prime or Megatron?

All right.

I've even had more of us like a decepticon.

Your stunning personality, J are just went

from got diminished by 50%.

And you are now frozen.

Mr. Davido, I bought the five pack baby last week

and let me say the sweet tobacco is the goat

that said here is some more cash for my, wait, fine.

Okay, thank you.

I fucked that reading all up.

Take $2 for the stream because all is well.

Thank you.

Thank you, Mr. Davido.

Okay, since JR has vanished,

we need to go hard and make up for that.

Taylor, do you like to tell us about this fine product?

Yeah, Colton's hog scrub.

Listen, when you know you guys, you workout,

some of you eat tacos with Doritos in them.

So even though you don't work out that much,

you smell like shit.

And some of you guys roll around and pig poo.

And that's kind of the lifestyle that you live.

So when you're at the gym and you're on the skier

and your buddy next to you is holding their breath

because your pits stink so bad,

I want you to think about this moment

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I put a rooster in there in a horse.

Yeah, how about don't interrupt me

next time I'm doing that there?

Oh, damn.

Oh, wow.

Oh, I knew it was too bold.

I knew it was too bold.

My rooster's like, okay, Sean Mack,

any chance he just knocks off the 40?

He was, I think joking on his Instagram story

when he said 40 and 80, let's go.

But I agree with what JR was coming out saying.

I think he was agreeing with Taylor.

It's the only one I haven't done yet.

I'm not able to sign up this year.

So I did him ahead of time just to give our gym athletes

some tips and stuff.

And if I had done it,

I was planning to maybe do about 10 reps

and then start picking smaller chunks to go with.

So I think he may approach it the same way

and do like a 15 to have more manageable sets

and just have less, less of a break

the rest of the way through.

JR is 15 big enough?

Yeah, I think so.

I wouldn't do more than that.

But what if you were called Nurtins?

Wouldn't do more than that.

Taylor, thoughts on it?

No, I agree.

I don't think Colton goes crazy

but I think he gets a pretty substantial chunk out of the way.

I think he chips away going back and forth

until the muscle ups are done.

And I think he finishes with a large set of squat cleans.

The key for him is just going to be keeping the transition

times really short.

And the reality is I don't think you have to do a big set

to start to do really well in this workout.

The key is just keeping transitions so fast

and breaks as short as possible.

So we may even see a different strategy.

We may see smaller sets to start from

and then we all think, I mean, it's tough to say.

Suza from the outside, it looks like the places for mistakes

would be taking too long in the transitions

or maybe having a no rep on the hand clean,

maybe letting the dumbbells down too soon.

And anything you think Colton specifically

has to worry about?

No, I mean, I think he's going to go,

I think he's going to attack the transitions.

We actually heard him talk about it

on the sport of fitness podcasts yesterday

when he was like, hey, there's fast in the transitioning,

fast in being aggressive.

I also agree with these other guys.

Colton is going to play this smart.

One of the things we saw when he did the last open workout

was we were like, he's going to be on broken

on the barbell, he's going to do all this

and he was strategic and smart from the beginning.

So I think we're going to see fast transitions

from no mistakes in being smart through this workout.

Sean Mack, so he opens big.

Let's say we'll go with that narrative.

Opens big with the muscle ups.

Does he finish big also with the hand cleans?

The monster set like Taylor was maybe suggesting.

So yeah, possibly, I think that's something

that is up to the best and like where there's strength lie.

I was practicing with the dumbbells

and like they're heavy for me.

So I would use my muscle ups as like a rest in this workout,

even though bar muscle ups are one of the higher

skilled gymnastics we do.

But I think for the elites, they still

are probably a little better at one skill versus the other.

So I think for Colton, I mean, he's elite at both,

but maybe if the grip is limiting,

it could be a little bit more on the dumbbell.

Depending on how good he's able to hook grip the handles.

So he may finish, he may just get through the muscle ups

first with them being a strength

or he may try not to like finish it out

with a smaller chunk at the end if that dumbbell

is going to add up if he's if he's test around this.

Look, it's cool boy.

He goes 10 rounds.

I'm calling it now.

No big chunks.

He's just going to move so fast with his transitions.

Taylor, self.

I reading that I think it's, I mean,

I think that's a viable possibility.

I'm not on, I hate taking this position where you know,

I'm sitting right in the middle of the fence

and that thing's jamming me right up the center

and I got one leg on either side.

But I could see him doing either.

The problem with doing big sets like I did when I tested it

is inherently you want to arrest a little longer

than you probably should before jumping up to the bar

or before picking up the dumbbells.

Colton's a lot better than me.

And he's a lot better than both of these movements.

So he may be able to do that and not rest.

But I still think like personally,

I could have gotten a lot better time

just going 10 rounds of 4 and 8.

So in some scenarios,

I could see Colton feeling the same way,

whereas yes, he could get a faster time

than me doing big chunks like I did,

but he might could do better than that for himself

if he just went 10 rounds and kept the transitions

and the brakes really small.

So I do think we could see that.

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JR, any traps?

Do you think he'll be able to stick to a game plan

or do you think something happens

and he has to be flexible and ready

to not do a movement is big a chunk as he wants?

Yeah, I think historically he's even talked about it

where this is a workout where he's not

going to be limited by his fitness.

So I think for Colton,

it's probably going to be a situation

where he looks at a previous workout.

Maybe it's like the thruster chest of R

and the thruster bar muscle up that he did against Taylor.

Maybe it's a workout from another competition.

Maybe it's a workout from the games

where he knows it's all muscular for him.

And he thinks about how can I make this more fitness?

So what I mean by that is he can make up half a second

per rep just in his cycle rate because of how fast he squats

and because how fast he gets the support

on his bar muscle up.

So because of that,

he can choose to do the smaller sets back and forth

because he knows he has the fitness not to rest

and he's going to preserve that muscle stamina

as long as he needs to.

Suza doing it at proven with the other athletes

going simultaneously win for Mr. Mertens or a loss.

Absolutely win.

I think he's going to thrive under that

and he even talked about it again on yesterday's podcast

saying that like, hey, he was a little more nervous

about traveling out to the other place in back.

I think he feels at home at this point at proven.

I think those are the athletes will help him push more

than if he was doing it at home.

Hey, shout out to them.

Shout out to proven for allowing us to watch this beautiful

effort that we are about to witness from not just Colton,

but the other guys, what a sick camp.

Nick Johnson, great a CEO in the game other than Seven On,

of course, and then obviously other than myself.

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Thank you, key for guys.

We love you.

Prove it's better than anybody come close.

And especially the owners of the camp, Tia Tumor.

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The ghosts, Shane or she says the effort more than I do, guys.

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There is a subscription button now.

This is how Colton makes ends meet.

We had Ty Jenkins on this morning.

You know, it's not easy.

Thank you, Brad.

Brad, move your finger a little more.

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No, other way.

Yes.

Yes.

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Can you not see that, Brad?

No, mine's the other way.

Oh, it's right to left, dude.

It's all right to left.

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The subscribe that you are good?

Yeah, nice.

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Yeah.

jar Colton has his own unique way

of doing things.

Is there anything that people are going to be able to

people are going to be able to glean off of his approach and handling of this workout

moving forward.

Is he going to give away some secrets or is it just cold and you shouldn't you shouldn't

try to steal any of his ideas?

Uh, really, I think the only people that should be watching this and maybe trying to get

some insight into how the workout is going to go or the other people that are in the top

10 in the world.

I think everyone else, this is a bad person to watch through the workout, just like the

open workouts because it's just going to make it look a lot easier than it is.

I even think, I even think if you're watching Colton, like there's, you shouldn't really

take into account any strategy in this workout in relation to yourself, even if you're

Jeff, even if you're Jay crouch, um, I mean, who's the athlete in the field calling

boss hard?

Maybe is one of the, even he's not that small, but like this is just, I think the strategy

on this workout, the person who wins it is obviously the person with a fitness to do it,

but who gets the right strategy for them.

I think there's probably, obviously there's a million different ways to do it than whoever

nails the strategy relative to their capacity right on is going to win the workout.

Sean, Colton seems like he wants to also win quarter finals, uh, let's say he does this

workout and he finds out that, um, someone got a better time than him or he feels like

he can do better.

Is this one?

He can repeat even with those 80 squats with a hundred pounds.

How could he repeat this is late as Monday?

With the duration of the competition window, you can repeat probably one or two at that

level.

This one's definitely going to, um, put a lot of impact on a lot of people's bodies,

but I think for Colton, he's just so good at squatting endurance that he's not going

to feel as much sornous with, you know, games level training, um, and the way that he trains

and lives his life.

I think he, he could recover and redo it if he hears about other, you know, rumors of scores

that are faster than his Taylor, do the muscle ups take anything off of anyone, these

40 muscle ups moving forward.

I definitely can see how the squats, the hand cleans would take some off.

I know.

I think it's the opposite for everybody at the top.

I think everybody in the top 1%, the soreness from this workout is in your biceps and

lots.

That's where I felt it.

And I squat, never, and I was worried about the squatting.

It was not squatting at all.

It was all grip, all biceps, all lats.

It is entirely a grip workout.

And I will say this.

I also think everyone in the top 1% has the fitness, like top 2000, top 1500 in the world.

They all have the fitness to make this workout hurt.

The energy requirement of a bar muscle up and a dumbbell hangs squat clean, especially

in conjunction, conjunction or impairing with one another, it's a nasty workout.

This one hurt way more than the double under deadlift.

I think it's just the movements are long.

So it'll make these guys will make it hurt.

JR, do you agree?

Yeah, I agree.

And what the only thing I was going to add to that is every athlete has a strategy.

With the order, they want to do these workouts.

They should all do the order that they think is going to maximize their total performance

on all four.

There's a reason why Colton is doing this one first.

He either thinks that he's going to want to redo it because he knows after doing it

once, just tweaking his strategy a little bit is probably going to yield a faster time

and he wants to win quarters.

Or he wants to do this one because he also thinks this might be the one I finished the

lowest of before.

And I want to go ahead and get it done first so that if I need to repeat it on Monday,

I can.

Whether he knows if that's who or not.

So it would be interesting to ask him why, why did you, why did he get this one first?

Well, we're going to post it for final work out number two.

Nice.

Wow.

Look at the four ground dumbbells.

Jam.

He's here.

He is using the stream for eight blind five feet from the rig.

Beautiful.

Wow.

Good camera.

I think he's, I think he's filming with it.

Oh, that's his phone.

That is his phone.

So he's going to use this stream as his video.

Maybe Colton's stream.

They better have a backup.

They'll have a backup.

It's proven.

Yeah.

For the video.

No, thank you for the rest of the video.

Guys, wait and for winning prize money, correct?

We will be back in 30 seconds to watch this performance.

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Did someone switch that back?

Or did that happen?

It was when we.

Is when we.

Are you doing anything right now?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Can I steal you just to start a walker timer?

It's going to judge him.

He first about twice as tall as Colton.

Okay.

No one touch anything while he's doing the workout.

No pull up comments or anything.

I don't know if it's out there.

Oh my God.

People.

It's not a.

It's stream yard.

Nobody's touched anything that time.

I'm leaving.

I'm leaving and then coming back.

Did you get your.

Don't do that.

No.

I don't think that's going to change.

Let's just swap it and then.

And see unless you're not going to fully leave.

Right.

You're just saying remove yourself and then pull yourself back on stream.

Yeah.

I was just going to sign out leave studio and come back.

I don't know.

I don't know.

For.

He thinks we go.

Right.

We are moving headquarters.

Wow.

It's working now.

Right.

He's in the big screen.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Exactly.

Don't pull up the comments.

But.

Yeah.

That's right.

Someone didn't pay the one ninety nine.

That's why that's happening.

So if you guys want to.

Only up here.

We got enough of the one ninety nine is a quality stream.

So let's get work.

Work out number two.

2004 quarter finals.

It's 40 bar muscle ups.

I got it.

I'll stay on top of it.

If it switches again.

I'll switch it.

Perfect.

Yeah.

You're.

You're.

You're.

Switcher.

From the clock.

And we're.

Yeah.

It's everytime jr rotates his phone.

Alright, he's on 10 cents.

They are stop rotating.

Yeah.

I saw that time.

I saw it.

I saw it the first time.

Two without confirmed it.

One.

One, one.

Here we go.

One bar muscle up.

Two and how many we think he does.

Here.

Once out.

We'll find out.

Both.

So quiet.

There.

That's six reps.

Oh, congratulations.

You're doing the hybrid.

That's right. Yeah, that's it. That bench is crazy. You got a UK world.

One ninety nine. Thank you. Now we've seen him. We've seen him cycle these faster.

Lesson Asian. 12. Oh, 13.

He's going 20. 14. 15. Oh, K.

That's like he crawled. Yes. And let's see what he's got.

What do you do with the wrist traps there? He just wrote to

he turned him around. Oh, he's going to do a huge set, a intentional, intentional

pause at the top. He could be cycling those way faster. That is, I think

Taylor's right. I think he's going to rip a big set here. Six.

Seven, which surprises me because even just supporting them, that's eight in

the front rack position. I think it takes a lot out of your shoulders, but he has

crazy good shoulder stamina. And this takes a lot off the grip. Was that 10?

That was 10. Yeah. Oh, wow. So he's going to do it. He's going to go, what do you

think? I think he can again here. No, I think he goes 10 again. Then 10 and 10

and 10. Then he finishes four. Five. Oh, five. So he went 15. Then he's

going to go five and 10. I'm calling five and 10 reps, you think? That makes

sense. 11, 12, 13. So he's got 20 muscle ups done. This is his 14th

squad queen. 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20.

15, 10 and five and 10. I'm a little worried, guys. This is a little too

methodical for me. One. You did this one, Tyler. 23. Yeah. 24,

25. I'm on Colton. I wonder if he had someone test and give him some insight.

We'll see something late. 32. He's a little faster here. 33. Yeah. 34.

45. 35. Wow. Hasn't his grip been suspect before? Maybe six.

37, 38, 39. And this is what I think we should have seen in the start.

Is the quick reps like this? And it's fine. That's not 40. That's 30. He did

a 15, 10, a five 10. Yeah. Now we're second guessing. Yep. Yep. Four, seven's

right. So he's at 30 bar muscle ups now. 30. Yeah. So he's at 30 and 30.

That's good speed. 34. Was he not warmed up enough? 35. That's the cycle. Right. See,

and his set of 10 is going to take the same amount of time with this break as the early one. Six,

37, 38, 39, 40. Okay. So he's at 40 and 30.

Oh, so he is going to rip a big set at the end. Yeah. I wonder if he's doing those five,

so he can just go huge after these are done. Two, three, four, 35. Yeah. 35, 40.

Well done. Do not need that. He showed no signs of slowing down the right. He's just

getting a little bit faster each time. 43. His cycle rate's great here. 34.

35. That's a big rest. Wow. He could be sub seven. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. Okay. 35. He's got five muscle ups left. Yeah. He's got five muscle ups left

and he's got 30 squat cleans left. This is 36. 37. 38. 39. He could be sub six, 30 and 40.

I think he's going to be 30 here. 30 to go. Is he going to be just unbroken now?

I don't know. I don't know. Maybe, maybe, maybe he's been setting himself up for this.

I want him to be 30 without putting the dumbbells. It says 51. 52. I don't know. 53.

55. Two seconds of our throws. No quick sets of five. I think he's doing five for us the way.

56. 57. 58. He's got to do more than five. 59. And 60. He's got 20 left. He's got to hurt.

He's got a lot of grit. That's a lot of grit, man. I think he's going for us.

Have you done this, Jar? No.

63. 62. 63. 64. 65. He's 15 reps. Come on.

61. 66.

89. 70. Oh, he's getting close to failure.

There we go. Guys, like and subscribe. If you want them to go sub seven, 30,

you have to click the like and subscribe button now. If you want to see Colton go sub seven, 30.

He's got eight reps to go. Like and subscribe.

You can see he's trying to be so methodical on the way down.

Oh, shit. Wow. He pays that perfect, huh?

Yes. Yes, shy of failure. That was great.

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Here we go with Colton and Merton's sub row Colton.

Oh, he got us. Well, Merton's.

He just walked towards the camera. I wonder who else is going right now.

I'm guessing we're going to have him here in a second.

Yeah, he might be cheering for the other folks.

I know. There you go. There you go.

Oh, okay. See you. He's gone.

I think he's not happier. He's tired.

I think he's a little tired. What? I don't know.

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We will get Colton on in just a minute.

There he is.

Here we go.

What's up?

Can you hear us?

Yeah.

How are you feeling?

Fine, I just...

All grip.

Yeah, hook my hair.

Who was going with you?

Who's going next to you?

So nobody was next to me, but...

Chris Olivia and Sydney were going on the other rig.

Sorry, I had that one to myself because I wanted to use

chocolate grips.

Yeah, yeah.

What's that mean, chocolate grips?

Because you still use chalk.

They're like rubberized.

He used that on his hands for the dumbbells.

Yeah.

Colton, did you beat those guys?

Or can you say even that not be appropriate?

I shouldn't say.

Okay.

And what did you think about your time, 7-16?

Did you have a time in mind?

I definitely wanted to be sub-8.

Whether or not I wasn't sure.

So I know I've seen...

Branded and lucky.

I went, I think, like, 7-40-something.

So I think that's okay for me.

Being a grip limiter workout.

That's been a weakness from me in the past.

The grip...

Grip felt okay.

It definitely felt better other days, but I mean...

Yeah, I think it went about as well as it could have,

considering we're not getting a major de-load in peak for it.

So I think...

You know, and obviously the athletes aren't either.

So everybody could probably go a little faster.

So I think it went about as good as it could have.

I mean, how's that failure on the last rep?

Yeah, I saw that.

Did you change your strategy purposefully when you started breaking the dumbbells

and you picked the cycle cadence up and decided on a quick break?

Would you have done that from the start if you could go back?

I think so when I was practicing it, it felt like

doing the squat clean and then coming up and resting for a second.

Opening my hands.

If I had three quarters of a second or so,

and then going into the next rep,

helped save my grip more than when I tried doing it fast.

But today, it just felt like

opening close to my hands was just

putting more blood flow into them.

So then I decided to just go fast and get the dumbbells off me

and reduce the time and retention.

You broke it up into a 15-10-5-10-5-10-5-10-5-10-5-10-5-30?

Yeah.

Was that the plan going into it?

Yeah, that's what Chris was doing.

Sorry to copy Chris.

He told you that ahead of time and you're like, okay, I'll do that.

Yeah, we were talking about it beforehand and

yeah, that was his strategy.

I didn't, I kept going back and forth and what I was going to do

all day yesterday and this morning and I decided to just go with that.

I think it was fine.

I think if you can get the grip,

hold on to the dumbbell for bigger sets,

then maybe it's worth doing like

15-20 reps on the dumbbell but you've got to have a really good grip and

mine isn't that good.

Is there any world where someone would start with the hand claims first?

Yeah, I definitely thought about it.

But I think that kind of the rationale is like, you want to be able to

I guess I wanted to be able to have a chunk on the dumbbell.

So at the end, if I had it in me to hit big sets, it was there available for me.

Um, and if you're going to break on the dumbbell, you can do a lot quicker

break than a bar muscle up and you know, if your grip fails on the dumbbell too,

it's low consequence.

So if you fail on a muscle up, you might smush your noggin.

How close were you close to failure on any of those?

On the muscle ups was probably like 8 out of 10 as far as getting the failure

but the dumbbell, the last set was really hard.

Anything you would, anything you think you'll change if you were to revisit this one.

Um, no, maybe quicker cycle rate from the beginning, but in that now,

just need to, I would need to have a stronger grip to go faster.

It's interesting you say your grips the week link because I mean, you work with your hands

all day and it's not like, is it more hand sized than grip strength?

Well, I have very thick hands, so I think that's like, I don't get as much coverage going around

objects because the thickness reduces, I guess, the, um,

circumference that I can cover, so maybe that's part of it.

But maybe it's also like, uh, doing too much yard work earlier in the week and tired out my hands.

Going to, uh, what was the logic for starting with workout too?

We were trying to think maybe you chose that because that might be the one that you might

consider redoing.

Um, no, I just, I showed up and they had a white board of when we were going to,

what workouts we're going to do and when we're going to do them.

So I said, okay, I think everybody here started with either two or four.

And I was in the group that did two.

And um, did you go and go into this?

I don't have a plan to redo any of them.

Probably the only circumstance where I would consider a redo is if I have like three

really good scores, I think I could win it, but I once score that I could improve on,

then I might redo, but other than that, um, it's very unlikely that I redo any of these.

So unless there's a video malfunction or something like that.

And, and did you have, I'm guessing you had people there video in it?

Yeah, so I have this.

So hopefully we can, hopefully we can download this and use that.

But also, um, uh, Caroline's brother Ryan, uh, video, uh, another one for me too.

So we've got two videos.

Hey, I was going to say, Sevan, when he was filming and he, he just showed the timestamp

on the iPad, and you ran the commercial, I was like,

Yeah, we got it back up.

Um, did you do any more today?

Um, no, I think some athletes who did the road,

ancient push-up one are going to come back to Sevan and do another.

Um, but for me, I think the group who did event two, I think we're done for the day,

and then we'll hit two tomorrow and one in Saturday.

Okay, and do you have any idea what time you're doing those tomorrow?

Um, I'll figure out, and I'll text you like five minutes after we get off here.

I'm not sure right now.

And, and, and how is that, um, doing it live?

Is it more palatable than when you did the open, or are you getting a little more used to that?

Um, today was pretty low stress.

I think just because I was doing it here with like, like, against other people, um,

yeah, I didn't really think about, thinking about it too much.

I wasn't stressed out about it.

Probably like a three out of ten stress level for today.

So it's pretty low for a competition for me.

Um, so yeah, it was easy.

I think that it's just different doing it, uh, alone.

Just like, you start having crazy thoughts like, uh, if I just quit, no one will know,

I can redo it later or things like that.

But there's people around me, um, like you just had to go.

So with the live streaming, or people being here, it's kind of the same.

So I'm doing it with like, uh, you know, Chris Olivia Sidney,

Lucy Anthony, like a ton of proven outfits.

We're all doing it together.

Do you have any advice for, um, any of your, uh, competitors who are going to do it, uh,

tomorrow, you mean like the boys are often.

You're asking them, uh, uh, if you got a good grip, you're going to do well.

So it just kind of comes down to that.

I think how grippy are you?

Yeah.

Yeah, I think Justin and Jason are pretty grippy.

So really that was it.

So you're saying like, if it wasn't for the grip, you could have gone harder on the muscle ups

and you could have gone harder on the squats.

Like that was just all grip was limiting factor.

Yeah, there never came a point where like my pulling was fatigue on the muslups

or my press was fatigued on the muslups or like my legs were fatigued on the squats.

It was always just grip.

It never became like a heart rate or long thing either.

And, uh, I talked to Caroline.

She went right before me and she said the same thing.

Interesting.

Um, you guys think it's going to be different for anyone else?

Is anyone else going to, it not be a grip issue?

I think it depends on your fitness level.

If you are good enough to find raced it, it's going to probably be mostly grip.

But um, if you're somebody that's so down because of like heart rate or you're not as

proficient in muslups, then you're going to have different live winners.

But I think for the majority of athletes, um, probably like the top 10 percent,

it'll probably be grip on this one.

Uh, we're not having any, um, uh, sound issues.

Yeah, this is good advice.

It's YouTube.

Yeah, I mean, it's just, uh, yeah, it's on YouTube's end just drop and, um, come back.

Uh, Dale, I love the humanity of this format.

Great to hear Colton has some thoughts as well.

Uh, Slay, uh, got my hog scrub in the mail.

Black Vanilla is awesome.

Autograph from, uh, Colton and Allie was better.

Wow.

Wow.

I think we don't, we don't, we don't sell a black Vanilla.

If I think I know what you mean,

um,

Is it

Barnwood Vanilla and black

but that's it.

That's it.

Thank you, Jared.

Barnwood Vanilla.

He just squished his two bars together.

Jared, you look like you're dying to say something.

Uh, did you have something to say?

Yeah, actually, I had two questions for Colton.

First question, um, which, uh, how comparable was the road toast of our

road climb workout to this one?

Even though there's such different time domains,

were they similar in last year's semi-final online?

Yeah, I was similar in that grip was a limiter and you never, um, for me, um,

that workout, you never got to the point where like you're breathing super heavy or hard

at your heart rate, so high, even on the row,

if it came very grip intensive for me.

So I say it's pretty similar in that domain.

This one was way more potent just because it's shorter.

Yeah, sorry, it blew up more quickly, but yeah, definitely pretty similar.

Yeah, another question is,

are any of these four workouts everyone else is chasing you?

Like, do you think that if you don't win one of them, it's a surprise to you and which one is that?

No, because I think, um, there aren't any,

for the top athletes in the world, like the top 100 or so, there's not a lot of major separators.

Right. Um, so like workout one is such a sprint.

It's really hard to gap anybody on that.

Um, this one, this one to probably the one where you could see the biggest gap,

but it's not going to be probably for me, just because my grip isn't the best.

For some, like the best people, the best grip could gap people on this, um, event,

three of the dead lifts.

Again, it's going to be so quick and people are going to go and broken.

It's going to be the top 100 athletes.

It's going to be a transition and cycle rate race.

So it's going to be hard to gap people there.

And then on the final, um, it really, I think for the best athletes,

the rows are all going to be relatively similar.

The handstand pushups are going to be unbroken or two sets.

And then I think the biggest place to separate

for the athletes at the top is probably going to be on grace.

I think it's hard to really separate on, on that one either.

What do you think your pace on grace should be?

Um,

140 to two minutes problem.

I was 146 on the rower.

Two minutes even on grace, 145 on the rower and then 24 and six.

And I think just the break was like the last six were hard in the first 24.

And I'm fat and a little tubby right now.

So I think, I agree with you.

I think there are people that will go sub 10 or be or be very close to it.

Just for racing.

I think there will be, yeah, many sub 10.

So if you go, if you did hold a 145 on the row and put you at seven minutes,

two minute grace, put you at nine.

And if you could go unbroken on the handstand pushups,

that's easily under under a minute there.

Uh, what's the rest of the day?

Look up for you.

Do you just chill now?

Do you go back to your hotel room and just throw your ticket feed up?

Yeah, I'm going to hang out now and refuel.

And then I'll probably go back to the hotel and when the other athletes come back

to do another workout later, I'll come watch further than that.

I'll just hang out at the hotel, read a book.

Any, any, a naked, no naked reading?

Probably, yeah.

Any training, um, this during these, uh, Friday,

Saturday or Sunday or Monday outside of the workouts.

Yeah.

So if we're not going to read you anything,

when we finished up Saturday and then I imagine we'll get into some training

there Saturday and then a full training day Sunday as well.

So, um, yeah, Chris and I were talking about that earlier.

We'll get a chance to train together after these are done.

Crazy.

All right, dude.

Hey, thank you very, very much.

Uh, really appreciate it.

Yeah, thank you guys.

And you guys have anything for Colton?

Sorry, I didn't mean to just end it.

You guys have anything for him?

Yeah, well, obviously we got to know what he's reading.

Um, going to finish the meat racket tonight.

I have like 20 pages left.

And then I start.

It's about, uh, now it's about, um, like,

Tyson Foods in the meat industry.

Kind of how they became an oligarchy with like vertical integration

and how they kind of control the food system.

Um, I was thinking of a different racket.

Then I'm going to start, uh, I was at Barnes and Noble for like an hour last night.

I couldn't find a book.

I wanted it.

So I got a

talking to strangers by Malcolm Gladwell.

Oh, hi.

Well, see, I've read a few of his books before.

Um, yeah, they're usually pretty interesting.

Is that going to teach you how to talk to strangers?

Or is it him talking to strangers?

I think the teachers have been had to avoid

conversations.

How to end this quickly as possible.

All right, brother.

Thank you so much.

All right.

I think, well, I think I'll be able to raise some other people in this next one.

I went on a different rig.

Just because of the pull-up bar.

But I think, uh, like me and Chris might go together on the next one on the screen.

All right.

Hey, dude, thanks for doing this.

Yeah, thank you guys.

You're the man.

Thank you.

Thank you.

You should.

Peace.

Uh, ladies and gentlemen,

Colton Merton's, uh, visit Merton's homesteadproducts.com.

Did we lose, uh, uh, there he is.

JR, uh, we will be back in just a second with our, uh, final thoughts.

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Sean, that shot of the garage door opening with the trees on the other side.

Is that real or is that AI?

That's AI.

Oh, is that that that's Alan Iverson's gym?

Yes.

Alan I've asked him for sure.

Number three, uh, JR.

How does anyone be Colton?

I think JR had to go.

I think he's caught in the in the in between in the matrix.

Okay.

Uh, I definitely think something beats Colton.

Uh,

by a significant margin.

Uh, he was 715.

I think probably the, I think the best time is probably around 650.

I know we mentioned that it was going to be grippy.

Did you think that that was going to be the, uh,

Linchpin Sean that we were going to hear it so much that that, I mean,

that was it for Colton.

For sure.

And then I mean, that's what Taylor was saying right before we started.

And if that's the case, we know that, you know, grip,

he just doesn't have the biggest hands.

Like he was saying, he can't get as much

grip around with how, you know,

think his hands are from all the, the work on the farm.

So I think, uh, if the grip workout, he's going to manage.

But I mean, he literally, I think he timed it perfectly for himself.

He only hit failure with one, like that final rap had to kind of reload the dumbbells.

So that might have been just about everything Colton had.

And to, you know, to his point, someone with bigger hands and a stronger grip

might be able to just go four and eight the whole way or a big chunk and,

and fours and eights and just, you know, rip another 30 seconds faster.

I think Jay Crouch is someone to watch.

Jay Crouch is really good at bar muscle ups.

He crushed that open workout.

He also has a really, really good grip stamina.

And he's crazy good at squatting.

I think he'd be someone to watch.

Ricky has good grip and it's pretty strong in bar muscle ups.

Not the best squatter, but again,

I didn't really feel like it was a squat workout.

But I definitely think we see some people who are

the tough part about his performance is all the guys who have so much better grip

have so much more range of motion for every single rep.

The bar muscle up rep and the squat reps.

So that helps Colton a lot.

But I think someone like Jay, Ricky, those guys aren't enormous.

They're not like Jason's.

I'd like, hey, if Jason was 510, he'd win this workout and know what touch him.

And maybe he still does.

He probably has some of the best grip and crossfit.

What was it?

What do you think the total, uh,

Susan? What do you think the total brake time he took on that was probably 30,

30 seconds, right?

Yeah.

Chalking up in the brakes.

Yeah.

The chalk breaks and he got a little bit more aggressive, but like,

I think we all agree here that when we see those final two reps from him,

I think all those breaks in the timing of the breaks were probably necessary.

Because if that started to occur, occur like any sooner,

you could all of a sudden it's like one of those catastrophe things, right?

We're like, he's cruising, he's cruising and then he loses almost a minute

because he can't just get together.

The dumbbells roll off.

He has to, there's nothing but time at that point, right?

To like let his grip like get back into, uh,

be able to hold the dumbbells.

So I think all the, all the breaks there were appropriate.

Oh, I forgot to ask him if he hooked grip.

He had a time of 7, 16 or 7, 17.

You think we're going to, you think we're going to see it at 645?

Yeah, I think that'll be one of the fastest times.

Like Taylor said, like a 650,

in between the 640 and the 650, I think is right about where we'll see the fastest time.

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Beautiful layout. Thanks Brad for doing that.

Thanks, Sean for getting the bit for us.

Thanks to Patrick Rios also for getting us the great commercial that he whipped together for

the Merton's homestead products.com.

Taylor for the regular Joe's.

Guys who can't make it to the games but made it to the quarter finals.

The guys at the bottom of the heap of the quarter finals.

Thoughts for them?

Yeah, I think 20 rounds of two and four or even 40 rounds of one and two I think for a lot of

people. I think if you're outside the top 10% a strategy like that is a good idea.

I think if you really really really struggle with bar muscle ups it's probably and you're not

sure if you're going to be able to finish in 15 minutes.

It's probably a good strategy to just chip away the dumbbell squat cleans and then with the

time remaining aim to get some bar muscle ups.

Because you know if you're not finishing the workout it's total reps and a lot of people

like oh man I don't you know do I have a bar muscle up today or not?

I don't know if you waste any time with that because you know you can do dumbbell squat

cleans so get all of those done and if you have time left we'll try to get one.

But I think yeah I think 20 rounds of two and four is a solid strategy for a lot of people

or for people who know they have bar muscle ups but just really want to play it safe

40 rounds of two and one just back and forth.

Sean he gives that strategy but then you got to pick the dumbbells off the ground you know

20 times. Is that a problem?

It's going to add another element to the workout that the elite athletes won't have to do

adding a little range of motion but what you what these athletes that are you know

down in the 90 and 85th and 75th percentile lack is probably skill with the muscle ups for some

it might even become a little bit about quad endurance and heart rate and then if grip becomes

a limiter you're going to just be better off not hitting failure complete failure on your grip

or you're just going to be standing there forever. So I think those small sets are definitely

the ones and twos and twos and fours sound like they're going to be perfect for a lot of people.

If you don't have any muscle ups like Taylor we're saying I think you're the tiebreaker at 60 reps

I think that's like the halfway point so just burn it to 60 squat cleans and then maybe

chip away at the next 20 slowly and then see if you can get a muscle up if that's where you're at.

Suza you want to do this workout tomorrow in your affiliate and you're running an affiliate workout

what's the version you give the class? Do you replace the bar muscle ups with something?

Like what are you doing with movements? Yeah yeah I mean obviously just scale the weight on the dumbbell

and I would just go to probably a chest bar pull up for majority of the people or a jumping bar muscle

like we have adjustable pull-ups here so we have the ability to make it toward people to use their

feet to do a jumping bar muscle up. Is it a good affiliate workout if you if you alter it like that?

What do you mean with the low reps or just to keep it changing it like you still you like that

let's say you change it to a 40 and 80 but you change the dumbbells to 35 and you change it to

chest bar pull-ups still good workout and then choose your own adventure. Yeah I mean it's just

like anything else right like if you're gonna if you're gonna scale like Amanda or something like

that right with the ring muscle ups you still gotta have have the appropriate scale in there

and keep this stimulus and so I think for most people you want to see them be able to hold on

to the pull-up bar a little bit so the chest bar or a pull-up option is is also good.

Tomorrow we will see you twice from Tia Tumi and Shane or Jim proven in Nashville Tennessee

to watch one of the greatest whoever did it continue on his journey in the 2026

goal to make it and win the CrossFit Games called Merton's make sure you visit

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