NOBULL's Film Festival and Dress Shoe, Internet Bullying

NOBULL has released a dress shoe and is going to host a film festival in New York. Rich Froning underwent a hair transplant. I have words about bullying.

Tuesday, October 1st, 2019

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Tuesday, the 1st of October, 2019.

The countdown timer says nine days until the 2020 CrossFit Open starts. Join WODDITY to watch the 20.1 Open announcement with Scott Panchik and Rich Froning. I’ll kick off at 4:30 Pacific, 7:30 Eastern with a pre-show. We’ll live-stream the Rogue announcement with Froning and Panchik 30 minutes later, add commentary, and stay on for another half hour for a post-show. The link to the 20.1 stream is in the show notes at WODDITY.com. Click the “set reminder” button to get an alert when the stream starts.

NOBULL is in the news twice this morning. The athletic lifestyle company makes everything from training and running shoes to clothing, bags, hats, and other accessories. 

Their first big announcement is the release of their first dress shoe. Instead of a wide release, they’re being custom-made on a per-order basis. It is a handsome black leather with a gum outsole and they’ve been nice enough to put a seven-millimeter drop in them, just in case you need to do some heavy lifting in your tuxedo.

Big headlines were made earlier this year when NOBULL attracted big-name athletes, many converting from Reebok sponsorships. Katrin Davidsdottir and Tia-Clair Toomey are among them. They also opened their first brick and mortar retail location and have started building their second. What will they do next? Well, the answer is: a film festival.

Mark your calendars for Saturday, November 23rd. NOBULL is hosting a fitness film festival in New York. Toomey and Davidsdottir will be joined by other athletes like Brooke Wells at the event. According to NOBULL’s website, the festival will include the premiere of NOBULL’s first short film, and showcase original content created by the fitness community.

You can get more details by visiting fitnessfilmfestival.com. 

Remember that gossip thing I really hate doing? Well… Rich Froning got a hair transplant. This was actually more than a month ago. The reason I’m sharing this isn’t clickbait or gossip - that’s why I didn’t put it in the podcast headline. The video brings up a really important topic I think we should talk about. 

Rich Froning is a four-time fittest man on earth and the leader of a three-time fittest team on earth. Taking into account his second-place finishes, he’s been on the CrossFit Games podium every year for a decade. He owns a gym and travels the world for his Train with Rich series. He has his faith. He’s the husband to Hillary Froning and the father of three adorable and fierce kids. All of that and Froning is not impervious to gossip, bullying, internet trolls, and the like. In the video, Hillary and Rich talk about years of internet comments on his hair loss slowly got to him. 

Male pattern baldness is a very real thing, it affects his father, it affects my family, and someday it will affect me. 

But, this isn’t about the balding and it’s not about the hair transplant. This is about hatred. I have a challenge for you. One time today, take your thumb off the send arrow or the enter key. Re-type your message to say something uplifting, inspiring, and beautiful. Nobody is impervious to internet bullying, but everyone can prevent it.

And that’s it for news about CrossFit on Tuesday, October 1st. Thanks for listening. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. It’s the best way to give back to the show, because it helps more people find us. I’m Ben Garves.