Can Statistics Make CrossFit More Fair? (w/Tyler Watkins)

Today I’m talking to accountant, stats guru, and CrossFitter Tyler Watkins. He’s on a mission to help identify where competitive CrossFit — which is still a very, very young sport — can level the playing field to be a more holistic, consistent, and fair test of fitness. Beyond Tia-Clair Toomey winning every year, how can organizers and programmers really set out to find the fittest athletes? Tyler takes a numbers-based approach, and his learnings are relevant to any fan of strength sports — CrossFit, weightlifting, powerlifting, you name it!

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In this episode of The BarBend Podcast, guest Tyler Watkins and host David Thomas Tao discuss:

• Tyler’s athletic background and figuring out David and Tyler share Bluegrass State origins (2:00)
• Building tools to help people "compete better" (5:10)
• A small family of CrossFit statisticians (8:00)
• Other pioneers in putting numbers to CrossFit competition (9:20)
• What a lot of competitions get wrong about elimination and cuts (12:20)
• The counter-argument to changing how the CrossFit Games currently works (14:20)
• Other numerical areas of interest in CrossFit competition (19:00)
• The difficulty of weighing CrossFit teams against each other — is it even possible to quantify? (20:30)

Relevant links and further reading

• Follow Tyler Watkins Instagram
• Follow David Thomas Tao on Instagram and Twitter