The Sevan Podcast - #11 - Corey Allen

Episode Date: May 27, 2020

Prison Covid 19 CrossFit Coronavirus The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Make your nights unforgettable with American Express. Unmissable show coming up? Good news. We've got access to pre-sale tickets so you don't miss it. Meeting with friends before the show? We can book your reservation. And when you get to the main event, skip to the good bit using the card member entrance.

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. Are you warmed up? We're coming in hot. We're coming in hot. Right.

Corey, my mom is Armenian. And my dad is Armenian and my dad is Armenian. But if someone were to ask me if I could speak for the Armenian people, I would be like, not really. Because, you know, I grew up just in a school. I grew up just in your regular public school in the Bay Area. I didn't have any Armenian friends. I forgot the Armenian I know. I'm not saying that as a bad thing either it's just the way it is you know what I mean I couldn't speak to what it's like being raised as a um in the Armenian culture immersed in the Armenian culture uh-oh where's he going with this you are black do you are both

your parents black yes sir could did you do you think sir. Do you think that you represent like a black culture, a black man? Could you answer questions to like what it was like growing up black or is black culture in general in the United States? I think to a certain degree, but a lot of it depends on how you were raised, where you were raised. Right. I don't think any culture. I tend to can speak from my own personal experiences. I could never say I could answer all questions about black people and how they feel on different issues. Right. Of course. So another point is when I went to school, there were like three black kids in the school, right? And so, they hung out with the white kids and the white kids hung out

with the black kids. My wife was telling me the other day that in junior high, like, her lab partner was a black kid and all the black kids and white kids mixed. And as soon as they went to high school, it was like black kids only hung out with black kids and white kids only hung out with white kids. And she doesn't even really know what happened, but she said just at that age, there was just that delineation. Does that, was it like that for you at all? Where do you fall under that? Like when you went to school, were there, was there, were you in a mix with whites and blacks and Asians and Latinos, or was it just all black kids or? I'd say early on, um, in elementary. Um, but once, once I got to middle school, um,

I guess they might call it junior high depending on where you are, but when we got to middle school, it started to separate a little bit, but then high school was exactly, um, kind of what you just spoke to. I feel like high school, everyone just kind of hung out with people that they could identify with or people that look like them. Now there were, I'm not going to say it was completely segregated, you know, but I think for the most part, most people just kind of hung out together. It was a little bit of a, a little bit of a divide. There were exceptions, but it was more divided, more obvious.

Yes. So, sorry. These are a bunch of loaded questions for where I want to take the conversation later. I have this personal thing going on. It's weird inside of me where I'm seeing there's like two different camps. I've been noticing there's two different camps around the COVID. There's the camp that wants to look for like outside fixes. And then there's camps that want to like take personal responsibility and fix themselves. Right. And you're in an interesting place for something that I've been thinking a lot about. I heard Charles Barkley being interviewed by Don Lemon. He's an anchor. He's a black anchor on CNN. And Charles Barkley being interviewed by Don Lemon. He's a black anchor on CNN. And Charles Barkley, you know, is the basketball player. And they were talking to Charles Barkley

and they were basically trying to have him talk about systematic racism. And I don't really know a lot about that, but I looked it up. And so I have like a brief cursory understanding of it now. But Charles wanted to steer the conversation towards sort of what he's done for personal responsibility. And I think, I don't want to misquote him, but I think he said he stopped drinking during the week during the COVID. He only drinks on the weekends and he got an exercise bike and he's exercising every day because he realizes the, that your health is like vital to

fighting this COVID-19. It's like, it is, it's, it's the most important thing. Your skin color, your age, your sex, none of that shit matters. Whether you own two Great Danes or three chinchillas, that shit don't matter. What matters right now is people's personal health and specifically not being obese and not being addicted to sugar. 100% agree there. Awesome. Should be my co-host. What? Say that again? I don't know about that. I don't know if I'm ready to co-host anything. How old are you?

I'm 41. And how long have you owned a CrossFit gym? We are a little over a year and a half. And you have seven kids? Yeah. Seven kids. Seven. One more than six. Yeah, a baker's half dozen, I guess. If you don't have kids, you're like, Sevan, he already said seven. But when you do have kids and you realize that someone has seven, it's amazing. I mean, seven kids, that's, I think a basketball team only has five people on it, right? Correct. And what's the age range of your kids? So my oldest is 21 and my youngest. Is how old, sorry, you broke up? Four. Wow. Okay. So you had, you started having kids when you were 20? Yes. Unplanned?

Unplanned. Although my behaviors would probably dictate that maybe there was, we could argue whether or not it was planned. I mean, you know, you knew that sex made kids. It's not like you were, you knew that that was a possibility. I just didn't realize that every time I had sex, a baby would result. I've only had sex seven times. I'm seven for seven. So Corey, what state were you born? What state and city?

Erie, Pennsylvania. And what's Erie like? Erie is one of those, you could probably call it the stepchild of pittsburgh pennsylvania which was really big steel factory town area area kind of mirrored that um grew up on a lake so a lot of like outdoor activities um very cold and snow all the time um And now just with all the factory jobs being gone, there's literally not much of an economy there at all. There's just, I mean, they put a casino there. I guess that kind of is the economy at this point. If you're not in a, they have a lot of stuff for service because there's a huge senior population. So they have a ton of like nursing homes. And so most of the jobs probably steer that way at this point. But it's a very, very high crime

and a lot of poverty in that city, unfortunately. But if you don't live in the city, people outside of the city, they tend to be the people that do well, but most of the people in the city are, are in poverty. I think a lot of them may not even realize it because it's kind of normal. It's kind of for generations. It's kind of been like the thing. The baseline is to be poor. So they just see it as the way.

Yes. And where is CrossFit Batcave, your current gym that you own? I'm in York, Pennsylvania. Okay. More central PA. So you're born in Erie, Pennsylvania. You're 20 years old. You have your first kid.

Now you're 41. You own a CrossFit gym. How, tell me about the early years of being Corey Allen, like junior high, high school. What was life like in Erie? Um, like I said, I, I excelled at school for a while. Um, excelled at school for a while. I always was at the top of my class. I was a good kid. I never, I didn't get into trouble in school. I was very shy, quiet. I had a lot of stuff, a lot of stuff going on in my household back in those days. So I kind of shut myself off from everyone and kind of, you know, use my, use school as a way to escape reality, kind of. School and comic books, hence CrossFit Batcave. I grew up a big fan of Batman.

But yeah, so we were, we were poor. Grew up in a, you know, single mom. My dad was, you know, he came around enough to sleep with my mom, but he was literally, you know, that whole like rolling stone deal. My dad was never really around. I mean, he did. There were periods where he'd come around for a few days, but my dad was like living a double life. He was married to someone else. And my mom was kind of like a side thing, her and many others. But we can get into that later. Yeah, so I think I wouldn't say I had a horrible childhood. But a lot of it is like, I didn't, I didn't know that we were poor until I got older, and started to get friends in other places and realize like, wait,

to get friends in other places and realize like, wait, everybody doesn't live this way. Both my parents were drug addicts. So I think for the most part, I was probably raised by older guys in the streets that took advantage of me. And once I got to high school, they kind of used me to do the things that they didn't want to do themselves and manipulated me because of my circumstances. You know, with not having a strong father figure around and my mom, you know, my mom, even as a drug addict, she always worked. She was always gone. You know, I grew up in a day where first, second grade, I used to walk home from school and I'd be home alone until five or six.

I could go down to my brother's daycare and go get him out of daycare and come home. So I was responsible for my brother at a young age. And then when the drugs and all that got really bad, I was still responsible for my brother. So I kind of grew up a little bit faster than probably most kids. But where, like I said, where I'm from, the way that I grew up, that was kind of normal. That was kind of, that was kind of the way things went. So, but. Does your brother have the same father? We have the same, yeah, same mother and father. And is that your only sibling? So my mother only had two kids, but my, and this is a story that no one really believes it it's like urban legend but man no one really knows how many kids that my father has like it could be anywhere from 30 to 50 and

and no jokes like you know i'm not a i don't bullshit anyone if if I can say that. My father was, that's why I say he was a rolling stone. My father was a pimp in the 60s and 70s. He's probably 16 years older than my mom. He took advantage of a lot of ladies, my mom being one of them. So, yeah, I have no idea how many siblings. I think my brother and I probably claim about 33. That's the number 17 boys and 16 girls. And who knows if they're all actually his, but these are just, you know, we would literally meet people in school and I'd go home and play with other kids and they'd say, Hey, did you know that like, that's your brother?

kids and they'd say hey did you know that like that's your brother that's so-and-so son and um yeah so my dad was a really popular dude um probably like a legend in the in my community for his prowess with women and you know he he sold drugs used drugs uh he was a really popular dude and for all the wrong reasons um so he was literally a pimp and a pharmaceutical rep. One told me he had 10 girls working on the same corner. Wow. Who told you that? He told you? Guys who say pimp, and they just mean maybe slept with a lot of chicks.

My dad was like, you know, I think they call it white slavery. Is that what they call it? He was running he was running an outdoor brothel yeah yeah in the late 60s early 70s is your dad still alive yes wow actually uh he had a mass removed from his chest um they thought he had breast cancer um the tumor was benign uh we don't talk much i, I don't think we've ever really talked much. It's more like, you know, that distant uncle that, you know, every now and then you kind of give him a hello. Yeah. That's what it's like for me. His brother, my uncle, was probably more of a role model or, and I don't know how positive, he was also a drug addict, but he was a bigger influence in my life he came around

a lot when i was younger what's the drug what was the drug that your mom and dad were doing uh cocaine for my dad and then crack cocaine for my mother okay and what was her day job my mom yeah the bookkeeper which I guess is similar to accounting now. Okay. And then she's worked some other jobs like Home Depot and like a couple of restaurants, I think, at some brief stints. But for the most part, she was a bookkeeper. And then she used to be a telephone operator for Verizon for a lot of years. And now she's a nurse's aide.

She's been clean, I don't know, maybe 12, 13 years at this point. Oh, you must be so proud of her. Proud man. The fact that she's, you know, a lot of my friends, moms who grew up that way, they're either no longer here or they're still screwed up or they're in prison. So for her to at least be a functioning person at this point is pretty amazing. So very proud of my mom. She's a strong lady. And so you grew up fast.

You took responsibility for your brother because you were the older brother and there were no parents doing it. Your mom was either high or working, which is, I want to say admirable, you know, I mean, um, there are a ton of functioning addicts out there, a ton, you know, whether it's alcohol, uh, weed, Coke, whatever, you know, even nicotine, although it's, you know, it's far less, um, we know there's functional carbohydrate addicts, right? 60% of our population. But yeah, it's crazy admirable that your mom pulled through and raised you. Okay. So then, and I'm no psychologist, I'm just making this up. So then basically what happened from there is

you had no male role model and you started looking for male role models and you started finding them in junior high and high school. And the way you said that they manipulated and used you, I'm guessing they were having you peddle drugs for them or hold drugs yeah so you started off oh no go ahead no no you go ahead you started off as a great sentence started I think I was uh 13 or 14 and I used to get bullied and picked on a lot at school because um a lot of a lot of kids made fun of like the clothes that I wear I would have like holy sneakers and we just we were I mean while I give credit for my mom raising me and and that she did her best like we just didn't have money and there were a lot of kids that way so the kids that had things would sort of kind of

make fun of the kids that didn't and I was a little skinny dude and I was I probably weighed 133 pounds until I was 24 years old so I was always like a little tiny guy um so when I was 13 or 14 I started skipping school and how tall are you how tall are you five foot ten okay so listen people listen this is total on the side subject he was 510 and he was 135 now that is skinny but that should let you know how many just fat people there are walking around out there obese people like we've come to accept 200 pound men who are 510 unless you're fucking josh bridges or matt fr or Rich Froning, you have no business being that heavy. Okay, go on. That's my little rant. Mr. Know-it-all has spoken. Okay, go ahead. So you're 5'10", 135 your whole life until you find CrossFit. Okay, so let's go back.

So 13 years old, poor and... All right. So my mom started dating this guy and this guy happened to be a drug dealer. While my mom always waited around for my dad, there was this period when things were really rough and she started dating this drug dealer guy. And he noticed that I was skipping school. And so he asked me why. It's like, hey, man, why are you skipping school? And I told him, like, man, I don't have any clothes. Kids are making fun of me, and I just, you know, I don't want to, you know, I have to fight all the time, and I didn't want to do it. I just, I hated life.

But so he told me to get in touch with him. He said that he might have an idea of some things that he could help me out with but he gave me you know he handed me some money just gave me cash and was like hey we'll chat like a little bit later um so fast forward like probably you know a couple short weeks and he's like hey i have this i have this run that you could go on for me i'm gonna give you x and i need you to just drop it off at z and then i'll give you some cash and if you do this for me every every now and then um you know you can make a little bit of money get some clothes for yourself and you know

get back into school it's like i don't want to justify what he was doing but i think the the message was kind of like hey i'm going'm going to help you, but I kind of, I want you to go to school because you have potential. At least he took that approach. Although now I know. And he gave you a job. And he gave me a job. And that's what happens. Not a legal job, but he gave you a job. Give me a job. And, and then with that came,

there were a few times I did that. And then one of these times I actually took something to one of my older brothers. You know, I didn't know where I was going. And this is back in the like, beeper days, the pagers, the giant pager. He sent me somewhere and it was my older brother. And then he's like, you know, what are you doing? Like, why are you doing this for for him and his approach is, well, why you why you just didn't come to see me? I can you know, if if you needed to see somebody, you should come see family. And so I started kind of working for my older brother and this guy at the same time. other and this guy at the same time um i looked at it i guess now you could say like multiple streams of revenue um but my dealt with like weed and this other guy had me uh move in cocaine for him so i kind of did did they tell you like when you when you take a job like that does it come with okay if you get caught throw it away or if you get caught don't say our names or like do they is there is there preparation do they explain to you or always carry in a brown bag or always put it in

your shoe or is or is that all on the job learning or how does that work i mean this is like a hollywood movie so there's like basic rules um that's explained one when you're that young um everyone knows you're a juvenile if you get caught you're not going to get in a lot of trouble unless you killed someone. When it comes to drugs, you'd probably do a little time in juvie or maybe get some probation. So just have the understanding that that's a possibility. If you do get caught, don't say anything. We'll take care of you. you probably shouldn't walk around with it in your hands. You probably shouldn't tell a bunch of your friends that you have things, keep it, you know, keep it kind of close. And at that time in the beginning, I wasn't doing a lot of like drug peddling necessarily. I was just, I would just kind of middleman take this here.

But then, you know, once I started working with my brother and learning a little bit, I got into that and that's probably when I was I don't know 15 or 16 so. So you were it became busy it became a full-time job started as a part-time job once a week once every two weeks and then next thing you know you were running and selling and you had your own small business going. Yes. And then did you start smoking or doing any coke at that age at 15? I've never in my life tried coke. I saw what it did to my parents and my aunts and my uncles and even the people, you know, that I served. So I used to smoke a lot of weed, which I think most

teenagers at that point, I mean, now it's, it is what it is. But back then, I think a lot of young kids experimented with, like, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, a little bit of weed. But I never tried any hard drugs. A lot of my friends did. But I just kind of looked at my life and said, you know, that's not what I want. I had an endgame, but my endgame wasn't to become an addict, you know, that's not what I want. I had an end game. But my end game wasn't to become an addict. You know, like I wanted to go on and maybe, you know, start a business or something.

You kind of fantasize with that stuff. So I'm gonna go off on a little tangent here and preach to anyone who's listening. They always say don't do drugs, don't do coke, don't do cigarettes, don't do weed. And everyone's right. But I want to tell you why you don't do those things. People are always saying it's bad for you. That's not why you don't do drugs. You don't do drugs for any drugs if you can or anything that's addictive for this reason. One, there's only two end games. You quit and the rest of your life you wish you could do it. So it's taken up some of your fucking headspace. Hasht or two you die prematurely those are the only two things that's why you never want to try nicotine and you never want to try coke and you really don't want to ever try weed because there's only the endings are and there's people like oh i used

to smoke now i hate it those people are fucking lying to themselves anyone who's ever done nicotine wants it back in their bloodstream it's fucking amazing amazing. I know because I used to be a smoker and nicotine is great. And the same with Coke and weed. No one's like, you could have been a Coke addict, but the rest of your life, you're going to be wanting it back even after you quit. So you could just avoid all that and never do it and have all of your head space to yourself the rest of your life. Even if it only creeps in once every three months or when you're drunk at a party, it just sucks that addiction, once you have it, it'll be with you till the day you die. Or the other option is you die from your addiction. So that's my little thing. It's not because it's bad for you. It's because you don't want to give up the headspace and you don't want to die from

it. All right. All right, Corey, back to your story. Now i've done my little pulpit dance um so something something went sideways right how how long do you do this from fifth from 13 you you get into the business and how many years do you do this and how often do you get caught um so i think i was 20 years old the first time i got in trouble like legal trouble um at 20 years old and then you know you you're building your way up to like going for trial and there's like a it was almost a year in between getting arrested um and and actually going to prison. But even in that span, I got in trouble two more times. And I'd get out on bail and I'd go back to what I knew. And so eventually, I guess I just got tired of my shit. They locked me up. So I did about, I think, a little over three, just about three years. How stressful is that to get arrested and be released and having a trial over your head?

Or do you just wake up every morning just fucking biting your nails? I would fucking lose my mind. I woke up every day thinking I got to do everything I can to pay this lawyer so I don't end up in prison longer. In the process, it's like I had a newborn kid at two at that time. I still got to take care of the kids. My mom wasn't doing well. I was still responsible for my younger brother and my mother. I still had responsibilities and, you know, a job just was never, you know, a regular job was just never in the equation. I, you know, my, my, my father had a small pallet recycling company, but you know, he didn't pay you money. I mean, you know,

while I was a teenager, I would work for him for like a couple of weeks here or there, but I would make money and then I'd take that money and then go buy drugs and make more money with it. It was just, you know, kind of like a bridge, but I'd never really had a consistent job or never did I even think that I wanted one. It seemed like people worked a lot, spent a lot of their time working and they didn't have all the nice shit. You know, all the, all the people in the neighborhood you grew up with, all the people that everyone looks up to are the guys with the, you know, the nice chains and all the girls and the big cars and houses. So that was

kind of what we, what we look to, you know. When you got arrested, did someone wear a wire in on you or did you just get rolled up on by the cops or? Well, my first time getting arrested, or well my first time getting arrested um a buddy of mine we we leased a vehicle from an addict um and it turns out that this addict had actually stolen some other one someone else's car when they went to sleep um i guess they were both like binging and then she just like took the keys and then gave it to us for little or nothing so we were just riding around town um smoking weed um and police got behind us and you know we pulled over um you know and you know they searched the vehicle and we both had drugs so they took us in um and then the next day i bought i think maybe maybe about a week i think i spent maybe a week in prison um and then i got out um was it a badge of honor in a way just being stupid was it a badge of honor

at all or was it like oh fuck this sucks or was it like how does that work your first time prison are you like oh jesus christ i'm going down the same path that so many black guys have gone down i'm becoming a statistic no man and oddly enough you're right in that in a way um you get a little bit of credibility especially you know if you didn't if you didn't tell on someone or take someone down with you if you just um so i mean and then there's also the other side of people are like afraid to work with you because how did you get out? Oh, right. I can't really trust you, and rightfully so.

I think it's a little bit of both. For me, it was all my older brothers, not all, but most of my older brothers and cousins and guys that I grew up in the neighborhood with, everyone went to prison or juvenile. When they came home, they would get a huge welcome home reception. I was, it was like a thing. It would kind of give you, I don't know, I guess it's like when a boy scout goes out and does his shit and they give him a badge, it's almost the same thing in that environment. I can't speak to how it is now or anywhere else. Right. Just where I was growing up at that time in the, in the 90s. just where I was growing up at that time in the 90s. That's kind of how it was.

Even when I did do my time and I came home, I was more popular than I'd ever been because people hadn't seen me. And then they did. And, you know, you get the, oh, you picked up weight. You look great, you know, so. My friends who had gotten in trouble with the law, too, it was like that. It was kind of unspoken, but I kind of looked up to them, you know, like you were arrested for having a gun in your car at 17. I was like, oh man, that's pretty cool. I mean, I didn't want to get arrested with a gun in my car,

but I, but I, but I still like, you know, or so-and-so held up a store with a shotgun. You know, when you're a kid, you're like, you don't look at it from an ethical or moral or what's right and wrong view. You're just kind of like, wow, that took some courage or that's pretty crazy or that person's got some balls or it's weird. I guess that's just the testosterone flowing through you. But you're kind of like my friends and I were kind of like just ignorant gorillas. You know what I mean? You're just a chest pounding 17 year old. And if you don't keep these boys busy i mean we we got in trouble i guess

that's what we did now that i think about it anytime we weren't busy we were getting in trouble we were doing some sort of rock throwing metaphorically speaking yeah so you get arrested then while you're out on bail you get arrested two more times then you do three years in jail is that and you and at that point how many say that again sorry but yeah one more time I can't I couldn't hear you a little under three years I think it was like 28 or 29 months and that's in Pennsylvania pardon is that in Pennsylvania and I went to the state prison and is that just horrible um it's better than county jail um state prison um it's almost like going to college in a way um as far as criminal activity um you you you're now placed in front of guys that have been doing this shit a lot longer than you.

And you're able to see these guys that everyone kind of looks up to because of their status. And if you're lucky enough to have one of those guys kind of grab a hold of you and pass some of that information along, you almost feel like you got more tools to do shit better the next time. So in a way, I think state prison probably prepared me for more trouble down the line than actually make me want to change. So it's a mentorship, how to cut your drugs, where to hide them, what to say to cops when you get pulled over, which cars you should drive and shouldn't drive, what time of day you should drive. Everyone's just sitting there just comparing notes and the guys at the top of the food chain are giving the mentorship. Exactly. And, you know, you could meet guys that, you know,

can get shit better or cheaper or can maybe even, you know, patch you in to better resources. And some of it's just total bullshit. And then some of it's actually good information. You just have to hopefully come across the guy that actually knows what he's talking about because a lot of guys are just lying. But I met some really interesting people. So you leave there at like 23 or 24 and you just go straight back to work, straight back to the business? No. So my first time getting out of prison, I wanted to go to school for business because I had spoken to a guy in prison that told me how guys that sell drugs are essentially

running businesses. They're entrepreneurs. So maybe I should look into getting in that. So and they were giving out a lot of grants and stuff for guys at the time, if you did time, to just try to help like reduce recidivism, I guess. Plus I had a parole officer who was, you know, was on me. So I had to work or go to school or go back to jail. So school was, uh, school was the route that I chose. Um, and probably switched my major a shit ton of times and never graduated. I racked up a lot of debt, um, just because, well, turns out school isn't for me. I know that may sound a little bit stupid to people, but I'm not in a classroom listening to someone. I'm ADHD. I need to be hands-on. I need to actually do something. So I think if someone would have told me a trade

back that far, then maybe a trade might've been something that stuck. But, um, yeah, after probably, probably about a good year, man, I didn't, I wasn't involved in anything, um, other than school or working. And, and, you know, I, um, eventually took over my dad's business for a little bit. Um, but. Pimping? Your dad's business of pimping? No, no, no. So my dad owned a pallet recycling company. Oh, okay. Right, right. Okay. You said that. Yeah. So I think, yeah. And I, so one day a buddy of mine gave me a ride and I'm riding with this guy. And in the process of him taking me to school, which was essentially a 10 minute walk. We are riding around and he's smoking and I'm not smoking because I don't want to fucking piss dirty and go back to jail for smoking weed.

That's stupid. Right. I mean, it's all all things. You don't have to tell guys, yeah, I'm back because I wanted to get high. That's ridiculous to me. So we're riding around and in the process of us riding around he's just making deliveries like it's nothing you know i'm at this time now like he has a cell phone i had you know previous to that i'd never owned a cell phone or anything i didn't grow like when i when i went to prison there were cell phones but it wasn't as a big of a thing like you go away for almost three years and come back shit is different everyone has one right everyone so I'm riding around with him and he's like making

crazy money more than I'd ever seen in my life at that point um just within a short time I was with him and then he let me out and he's like hey if you ever need something come see me and I'm like nah man I'm cool man I'm trying to do the right thing. So like fast forward, maybe a month or two later, just I'm riding with them and I'm frustrated. I'm not doing well in school. My grades suck. I'm living with my mom. I got kids. I'm working jobs like for temporary agencies and they're shit jobs. I'm making, you know, seven, eight dollars an hour i mean and it's not enough to even get out of my mom's house um and i'm not trying to justify anything just showing you where i want a picture yep painting the picture so um and just just feeling

like what the what the fuck am i gonna do i'm always like gonna be stuck here I didn't feel like there was anything that I could do and I just remembered him and I gave him a call and um yeah he hooked me up and and I'll give it to him he he definitely did me he definitely looked out in the wrong way but to just give me what he gave me was a really good starter. And then from there, once I started, I did really well. I had learned and seen a lot. And at that point, I probably surpassed all my peers, or most of them anyway, because a lot of guys are just content with having nice jewelry and clothes and cars. And I'm like, no, man, I got fucking kids I want to take care of.

And I want to like get my mom out of this, you know, situation she's in. And, you know, I want I want a better life. So I didn't value material shit. How can I make money? Guys were going out and hanging out, going to concerts. And I would just stay out on the streets and make all the money because no one's around. But this is all stuff that I learned from older guys. So at that point, I was I was doing really well, you know, you know, and I and fast forward having more kids, obviously getting married, having more kids.

And then eventually, you know, getting myself in, like, I think I did a couple of probation violations. I think they put me in like a halfway back program where I went back to a halfway house for six months. I changed my address or something stupid and didn't report it. Two things. Did your wife know that you were dealing? Yeah, when we met. I had already had two kids um okay when i met and so she knew you didn't and when you were in the halfway house did you keep keep working the business out of there no i um you go and do you lose all your clientele yeah because i actually had to move to pittsburgh the halfway house was in pittsburgh which is about a 90 minute almost two hour ride

from erie. So they took me out of that environment. So I had to work because now there's no money coming in the house. My wife didn't work. So I had to, you know, I had to work. So I worked a really decent job. I think then I think I was maybe making $12 an hour, which back then was really great money compared to seven or eight bucks. And then I was in a halfway house, shit ton of expenses. And I could just send money home, you know, to my, to my wife and kids. So it's, it's crazy. You're, you're just, it's, it's interesting out of necessity and responsibility. You just, you chose the job that had made the most money. It also had the most risks.

But from where you sat, going to school and working jobs that paid $7 an hour, which I think was minimum wage back then, wasn't cutting it. And so out of frustration, you got back into the business of not only delivering drugs, but selling drugs. And you were really successful at it, probably because you didn't get high on your own supply and because you worked weekends and holidays. I mean, metaphorically speaking, right?

I didn't even, at that point, I think I might've stopped smoking weed in 2000. So like, I didn't even waste money on that. You know, I was never big on drinking or i had quit i did you know my money just was like take care of family and save every penny that you can um just never know um but so the object is how can i buy as much as i can for as cheap as i can and that's how you make the most money. A lot of people get it screwed up. They do like a little bit at a time. And a guy was explaining to me like, no, man, if you spend this much, you'll make this much. And while it may not seem as much, you're doing it in bulk. So

like all those concepts, you know, that you could transfer to, you know, being an entrepreneur there. I think a lot of guys don't realize the skill that they have. I'm not glorifying what I did, but I can tell you right now as a business owner, a lot of things that I did illegally, I can apply those things to what I do now. I'm really great at sales because I've been selling and I sold because I didn't know like if I didn't what's the alternative like right so so business is booming you have a couple hiccups you go to a halfway house you come out of the halfway house and how old are you at this point? I was maybe 28. Okay. And then I did like a little, another, I think I did a year on a violation.

I tested positive for having drugs in my system because if you touch cocaine, it can go through your pores and you can breathe it in. There's all different ways. You tested positive and you didn't even do drugs do drugs oh shit okay god that must have been frustrating yeah yeah okay and then and then what what and then so keep keep going with your story so you're 28 and this is is this all still happening in erie yeah okay i go away again a little while um and then and this time some stuff happened um with my wife and um so we weren't going to be together and i was supposed to move i wasn't supposed to go back

to erie i was supposed to go to uh to lanc, where I am now, with my family. But towards the end, they wouldn't let me go there for probation reasons. They wanted me back with the same probation officer or in that same office because they knew my situation. And I was kind of almost forced to go back there because they didn't approve my home plan to go. So my ex and I, we kind of got back together. And then, you know, all that pressure. You know, now I got even more kids than I ever had, you know. So, of course, right back at it for, you know, a couple more years.

And then I went to jail for the longest period of my life after that, which was almost six years. Have you been on probation then? I'd either been in prison or on probation from the time I was 20 till the time I was 35, I think 30. Let me see. I've been home maybe 36. God. Okay. So you, and what did you do six years for? Did you get caught with just a huge sum of Coke or weed or was it just because you had such a large amount? It was more, I mean, it was a decent, you know, it was a decent amount,

but it was more because I mean, it was a decent, you know, it was a decent amount, but, um, it was more, um, because of my record, you know, like the more, more shit you got on your record that increases, um, the sentence and guidelines for you. Um, so they gave me, I think it was a mandatory four years, but then also have probation time that I had to do first. So I did the probation time, which was about 20 months of probation time first. And then I transitioned, but I got in trouble in Ohio, the next state over, just doing a run between Erie and Ohio, which was something that I did a lot. Like, you know, you could go to Ohio, get it really cheap and then come back and, you know, make twice the money. It was that kind of deal. And yeah, so I had to do that mandatory four years. I had never done that. My first sentence was, like I said, a little under two years was long.

But man, fucking almost six years, bro. You talk about losing everything, life. And then at that time, six years. It's your prime too. Those are your six. You know, you're the most virile man you could be in those six years. Yeah. So majority of like my. Did you carry a gun?

I, when I was younger, I think someone sold me a gun, you know, for like 50 bucks or something. It was a 40 caliber. And, you know, I, like, I never really needed to carry it. I just had it because someone gave it to me cheap and it just looked cool. I used to, you know, I used to like guns, but I never felt the need to carry one. Although there was a lot of risk and a lot of people like I,

my approach was always to kind of stay out of the way. I feel like trouble can find you, but there's ways that you could just stay out of other people's way and stay out of bullshit that kind of will help you. Now, I mean, anything could happen, but I never felt they actually needed that gun. You know, I think I ended up, when I got arrested the first time, I ended up selling that gun to try to help pay for my lawyer or

something but like as it as an adult male like from from that point on i've never i've never even touched a gun or even considered them i i just remember being around just like someone would buy like a pound of weed you know probably that was the those are the craziest deals but there were probably a dozen times I've been in the room on a pound of weed back in the day, switched hands when that was a big deal and fuck, it was always tense. And there wasn't even Coke around, but man, it was tense. And you did, people didn't know people and like, then you'd go home and weigh it and it wouldn't weigh or like three quarters of it would be weed and the other half would be like stems and it was just always it just i didn't enjoy being around that shit at all was so stressful no one

seemed friendly everyone just seemed on edge like at a moment's notice a fight could break out i mean nothing bad ever did happen but was it always like that and you're in also or i mean you just seem so relaxed if you take in a context of like i grew up around drugs i've been in that my older brothers um they were all like big time drug dealers like i my father was a drug dealer like i've been around and seen drugs since i was since i can remember drugs have always been a part of my life even when I may not have been aware but like in retrospect like holy shit it was like so for me it was fairly normal the only time I ever felt probably nervous was uh a buddy of mine and may he rest in peace uh we went to Rochester New York because he was dating this girl who's like,

hey, I know these Jamaican guys, and they have some really great weed, you know? Oh, sounds scary already. Sounds scary already. We had balls, though, man. We were fucking, I think I was like maybe 17 or 18 or something. And he was a couple years older than me. But, you know, he wasn't scared of anything very unfortunate about his passing but so we went we went to go see these guys and then

we get in and then for the first time ever like they fucking locked the door behind us and they got a fucking 12 gauge shotgun on the table and the one guy's like hey give me the money and he's gonna go get the shit and i looked at my boy like man we, give me the money and he's going to go get the shit. And I looked at my boy like, man, we give him the fucking money and kill us. But then you're in there and then you're like, well, what else do you do? You really don't have a choice. I don't want to lose my life over money. You know, but I mean, it went well. But that was like the scariest. So from that point, I was like, you know what? For one, I ain't going to meet random fucking people.

And two, I ain't going in their house. Right. I'm not going to do things that way, even though we came out of it. And I don't know, the week was great. We made, you know, some money or whatever. But and it wasn't worth it to be in that. But that was the only situation that I can remember that I ever felt tense. Other than that, I usually dealt with people that I know or were acquaintances of other guys that I

knew. So it was like a really cordial thing. And I think probably because I was so quiet and laid back and reserved, I wasn't a flashy, cocky person. I think guys just knew like, I just wanted to make, you know, some money. And that I, I think my track record in that I, I was kind of good at what I did. Guys that knew that they knew that they could depend on me to always come through and have stuff. And then I would get stuff for myself. And then I knew a lot of guys that wanted stuff. So I would middleman. And so I had, I had some really cool connections so you were professional I don't know about professional but professional I was kind of seasoned um I think yeah just years of listening and learning when you're 29 years old and the judge says uh Corey

Allen I'm gonna give you six years in the state pen do you just start crying like i would start crying i think man so i'm in i'm in the courtroom and my dad of all fucking people who never showed up to anything um you know when i say anything i mean nothing my dad came um and when the judge and they gave me four years, but I had probation time, but I didn't get the ex-wife and one of my kids, she was holding one of my babies at the time. Yeah. So I got back to my cell. The sheriff's, you know, take you over to the holding cell before they take you to prison. And I'm like, man, fucking four years. What am I going to do with four years?

And I'm in Ohio. I'm in a state where I know no one. Crazy. So you did four years in Ohio and two years in Pennsylvania or you did all four there? I did. So Pennsylvania came and two years in Pennsylvania, or you did all four there? I did. So Pennsylvania came and picked me up once I got sentenced. I had to do their time first. I was obligated to do that first because it was prior. So I did the Pennsylvania time, and then they came back and got me, took me back to Ohio. Ohio came and got me, and then I did the rest of my time in Ohio,

which if I'm being honest, man, was probably the fucking best thing that ever happened to me. If that didn't happen, I probably wouldn't be here on this podcast for sure. Why? Tell me what happened in those four years over there in Ohio. Going to a place where you have, you don't know anyone.

In Pennsylvania, there's this, you know, depending on what area you're from, people kind of get together. Like if you're from, and it's, I know California is definitely like that. I've heard a lot of stories, but like, if you're from Pittsburgh, you hang out with all the Pittsburgh. If you're from Erie, you hang out with the, pittsburgh if you're from erie you hang out with the or erie and pittsburgh would like stick together because they didn't like philadelphia there was like that kind of thing you mean you mean in the jail in the jail you hang out with people you knew from the outside you're either you're either from the same city or same region as someone you're from the same gang or you're in the same religion that's how prison or race obviously okay prison is a very very and to this day a very segregated thing um but because of that i didn't have any uh i was never in the gang i was never

involved in gang activity uh i was never really into any religion whatsoever i mean i grew up in a you know quote unquote baptist household but i wasn't that was grew up in a, you know, quote unquote Baptist household, but I wasn't, that was never my thing. Um, I, you know, and then the race stuff, I never, like, that wasn't a thing for me. I didn't, you know, I don't hate anyone. My thing was like, I just want to make some money. I don't care if you're black, white, or fucking green or whatever, if you got money, that's the only color matter. i've got an environment where i know no one and it's so in pennsylvania you have like cells so there's like two man cells and then if you're lucky you maybe can get in a small dorm where there's like four or i think four to four or

six guys depending on the size of that dorm um but for the most part it sells but then you go to ohio it's a fucking barn and everybody's just running around kind of doing whatever the the the corrections officers are just there to make sure no one dies i feel like if anything were to happen there's nothing that they could do they would come after the fact um you have maybe two guards in charge of like 400 guys and they're all out in the open you know what i mean so i'm in this environment what do you mean you hang out there all day in a room like that you sleep in a room like that it's just like a giant cafeteria with we're looking at my gym right now right yeah just imagine it's all bunks separated by a little partition wall, maybe about maybe six feet.

There's like a six foot wall. But if you're a bunk, you can kind of see everyone. So like probably like a huge dorm, I guess. And that's where you spend your entire day? So you could go out like, you know, you can go out to the yard. You could go to work. so you could go out like you know you can go out to the yard you could go to work um i was at a at the time in the beginning anyway i was at a medium security facility so you had a lot more freedoms than if you were in maximum i've never been in a maximum security uh facility but um so you could like go to library and like you can go different places. But for the most part, because I didn't know anyone, man, and like there was a lot of like gang shit going on.

And there was a lot of like really aggressive dudes, to be honest. And, you know, I'm not that's not in my nature. I will fight if I need to, if my life is in jeopardy. But I just want to my thinking. I just want to get home to my kids and my wife, you know? Right, right. Me too. But I, I was blessed to, um, my, myself or bunk mate, um, was a really cool guy from Dayton, Ohio.

And he was a really popular guy. So nobody like came in our area. There was a lot of like, dude, you get your shit taken, you go to commissary to buy shit. And by the time you get back to the dorm, you you had a black eye and no bag, especially if you didn't belong to something you were vulnerable. But I was lucky to get this guy and then I started a store there. And they just used to call me the store man. I used to sell sodas. So I would put, I'd get ice from the ice machine and then I would put them in my trash can and keep them cold. And then guys would just give me like, you know, a dollar for a soda. And I think they would be on commissary for like 30 cents. So you really are a businessman.

You could, you could give guys loans. So you could do like two for one a businessman you could you could give guys loans so you could do like two for one so you could buy items and like let's just use like two packs of ramen noodles if i give you one you'll give me two back if i give you two you'll give me four back um and then you just keep turning that over so i had a i had a really big store but after after you had to keep that you had to keep that hidden from the guards, the store. Yeah. Yeah. They'll take your, they'll take your shit. Um, and, and, and you have to like not be too, too open with it because you know, the guys would take your stuff too. You could leave,

you can leave your little cube area and you know, you had like a little locker box with a lock and they just fucking break the box open and take like that. I would see people right next to me where I got like three or four guys would come in there, beat their ass, take their commissary, take their TV. Because you were allowed little flat screen TVs that you could have in there, too. They just take their shit. Like I said, I was I was fortunate. And then I became known as like the cool dude with the pop. So he's called me Pop Man. I don't know if you

guys say soda out there but it's pop here but so yeah they call me pop man but i was only there for maybe four or five months and then i went to an honor dorm which is like a minimal security so now i had more freedoms um and it's really relaxed a lot of older guys that have been that have been down a long time um and yeah that's when i met some friends and i joined the naacp what do you mean you joined then what did tell me what is the naacp and what do you mean you joined it so the naacp um which you know the national advancement or whatever for colored people um they have prison chapters in the state of Ohio. Also, I think the Red Cross has prison chapters.

There's Kairos, which is a religious organization. There's they had like a death club, a stamp club. So they'd have these prison organizations that were allowed to raise money within the gym. I mean, within money within the gym. I mean, within the jail. So you could like sell hoagies, for example, from Subway. And then Subway would give you like a really good deal because it was a fundraiser. And then you could use those funds.

You could donate to outside organizations and you could also do things for the inmates within the prison. Like you could host events or maybe you bring in like a guest speaker, like positive things. I think the staff at that prison was really big on trying to help guys out. And that's something I've never seen. Not in Pennsylvania.

In Pennsylvania, they lock you up and they don't give a shit about you. In Ohio, there was so much opportunity, but you had to want it, it you had to find it and you had to take advantage of it so um i met up with with a guy i started working out with him and we got really close and he's like hey man you should join what do you mean you start working out with him like like like fitness working out yeah yeah so they at the at the why did you start working out with him this is the first time i've heard you talk about working out did you work out did you go to the gym as a kid did you belong to a 24-hour fitness what do you mean i never belong to a gym i think my ex-wife and i may have like had a ymca membership then i maybe went to the y once and like bench pressed or something i didn't i never

i was never in the athletics i didn't play i played recreational sports you know like sandlot and shit out in parking lots in the streets but i was never in this like i said i was really introverted quiet shy low self-esteem kid um i didn't do i was never active well the second time i went to prison, or I shouldn't, the last time I went to prison, at this time, I weighed 237 pounds. Oh my goodness. That's a hundred pounds more than you weigh that. And you're fighting, you're fighting weights 135. So you'd put on a hundred pounds. Yes. And that was a, holy smokes. Eating, I guess, or bad eating. eating right can you do that in the prison can you eat bad in the prison oh my god yes um okay man they sell you ramen noodles potato chips candy bars pop or soda um

kool-aid uh you know crackers like all the shit that we know that you shouldn't eat is readily available for you okay um yeah so just to kind of dial it back a little bit i when i got sentenced the first time when i got sentenced during the probation time i uh i met up with some guys and this is back i'm in pennsylvania i met up with some guys that had grew up in the same neighborhood as me. So I hung out with those guys. One of them was my cellmate. And they had a little workout routine going. I had gone to the doctor because I was waking up.

Like I had to piss like four or five times during the night. And I would wake up and I couldn't see. I would like literally be blind, blurry. So turns out I was pre-diabetic. So then they tested me for all this other shit so i had high high blood pressure um like i've always had asthma or issues with asthma um and then issues with like back pain and like my blood sugar was super high and so the doctor told me like you got to get this down we're gonna have to put to put you on medication. So my thing was like, oh, fuck, I got to start working out and I got to eat better. Before the doctor told you that, did you have any idea that sugar was the culprit, that sugar was fucking you up?

I know this maybe makes me ignorant, but, man, I didn't know. Right. No, of course you're ignorant. We're all ignorant. My grandfather was diabetic, though, but I don't think I even understood exactly what that meant. Like I know he had to take insulin and, but, uh, yeah. And now my dad's diabetic and it runs in the family, but, um, Hey, check this out, check this out. I spoke to a nurse practitioner the other day and she told me she had, when she would meet people,

she would get new clients and they would have been a diabetic for five years and she would ask them do you know what it means to be a diabetic and they would say yeah i have to take insulin and she goes no but do you know what a diabetic is and they're like no but i'm a diabetic so i need insulin they had no idea that it was from eating too much sugar and that they could have reduced their sugar intake instead of taking insulin i mean it's like so you're not alone. And I remember growing up on McDonald's and sodas, like, like my parents would have never given me that if they would have known. Yeah. So, so anyway, so, okay. So that's a trip. So you were at that point when you were, so you were in jail waking up four or five times a night, having to take a piss and you

went to a doctor in the jail and he told you that? Yeah. Isn't it crazy that we would incarcerate someone and take away their fundamental rights as human beings to roam the planet, but yet we would still give them access to ass food? Why wouldn't we just feed prisoners vegetables and meat and nuts and seeds? You know what I mean? Why wouldn't we just put them on the CrossFit prescription? It would save the world so much money. Like, why don't we just force prisoners to eat what would keep them healthy so that we don't have to pay for their medical bills? But prison is a for-profit business.

Oh, right. They make a lot of money for selling guy shit. Unfortunately, that's the the truth is they have deals with vendors that come in and they sell stuff to guys i'm gonna speak out of turn here but i think military bases are the exact same way i think there's companies that have contracts on military bases that feed our soldiers shit and it's fucking disgusting that the government allows that people in power should be thrown out on their ass for allowing our soldiers to eat shit it's insane anyway okay and and and and prisoners because basically what they're doing is they're double

taxing society we're taking these people off the street because supposedly they're they're bad for society and we're not doing anything to help them by by allowing them to eat sugar i mean it's nuts and that's costing us more yeah and guys are really unhealthy unhealthy is that what you said imagine sitting you know in a cell for years just eating shit right there's a lot of like there's a lot of health problems in prison and that somebody's got to pay for that and it's it's the taxpayers so i mean you know you gotta you gotta pay for what you do i guess so so you get a scare like any like any person and it causes you to start working out a little bit so you so somewhere in your 20s when you were in prison you started some routine this was i'm in my 30s now the previous i think i got into running a little bit where i would do

five miles a day in the yard yeah in the yard i would just because i could put my music on and i could just not be in prison for that time how many laps how many laps is how big is a lap are you running in a really small yard i said that say that one, I think three laps was a mile. Oh, that's not bad. Yeah, that's not bad. It was a pretty decent-sized yard. Some of them are different. But, yeah, I would – and not that I ever loved running.

My fucking thighs were chafing and my feet hurt all the time. But I could escape either reading or running. Those were the things that I did to keep myself out of trouble um i didn't want to take part in any of that shit but that was like i said the running that happened the first one but once i got out i had i was not in the fitness at all that was like that's like a prison thing guys go to prison and they get they get buff or they lean out or whatever because what the fuck else are you gonna do right it's there there's like no excuse not to get in shape unless you just don't give a shit okay but this now fast forward

to this time i started working out with this little group and they would just do calisthenics because we didn't have any equipment so it was literally just like body weight shit um and i hurt my back doing fucking toe touches i'm sorry one second so this is this is um after after being two years in pennsylvania and being six months at ohio you switched to a minimum security prison where you started doing some calisthenics yeah okay and why did you start doing them just your your some guys just pulled you into it yeah Yeah, it was more of like I mean, I knew that my health wasn't great. I'd known that. In my way,

my initial response was a guy told me like, hey, don't eat anything white. So that meant like don't eat bread, don't eat rice, which is all the fuck they feed you in prison. If you know, like it's bread, rice, and potatoes, and then some kind of protein. That's literally it every

day breakfast lunch and fucking dinner it's just carbs that's what they give you and they just want to fill you up any way they can um and so um yeah so this on um i meet these guys we start working out and in the process of that i start to get really really cool with them the group starts to get bigger more and more guys are joining in with us. They taught me how to join in the NAACP, which I've never heard of it, like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton and all that shit. But it was never, I don't know, I just thought it was like this thing for black people, a platform to try to respond for change and civil rights and all that kind of stuff. to try to response for change and civil rights and all that kind of stuff. So I, they asked me to come in as I believe assistant treasurer. So what I did was when they had meetings, I would, I would take some notes about expenditures and then I would like whatever the budget was for

different things that we allocated funds for. Like I had to make sure that the numbers matched. So like I said, we would sell food, you raise the money, like maybe you make eighteen hundred dollars or whatever off some subway shit like your profit. And then there'd be different causes that you wanted to give it to. And I just got I had to assist the main treasurer with, you know, getting funds allocated, making sure that whenever we needed to do anything financially, that we would bring it up in front of the membership because it had to be voted on. The membership in the prison? In the prisons, yeah. So we were a prison chapter.

They're all over. I think every prison in Ohio probably has one of those. And when you started doing the calisthenics you were 237 pounds and did you start shedding weight quickly and like nothing um it was yeah and and actually so with the with the NAACP because I was so into working out at that time that was every day at fucking 6 a.m I was out there and I'd be out there like all day just doing and i didn't know what the fuck i was doing i just it was just moving kind of mimicking what you see other guys do and they they had a weight pit there so you could like go to the rec center and and do that but i

was never really into it was all like machine weights and it's just never my jam but every now and then you go there get a nice little pump and you know look look in the mirror, you know, guy shit. But, yeah, so they tasked me to become the chairman of the health and fitness committee. So then I had to get some guys to work under me on my staff. So I created a committee with some diverse guys that I had been working out with. At this time, the NAACP, that chapter was probably like 99% black. There's like maybe, you know, a handful of non-black people, but there's so many benefits because you would get discounts on food and, you know, guys are always going to kind of cheat the

system. So they will kind of sneak in. You pay like membership dues yearly. I think it's like $50 a year or something. So you get in there, but then they have like banquets and like a lot of free shit for people. Um, so I come, I created this committee and, um, we would actually create fitness programs that we would do in the gym. So we would get money allocated for resources to even bring in a personal trainer as a guest speaker or maybe get a little bit of equipment that was maybe broken or ruined at the gym. And so that's how I got into it. And we started doing, are you familiar with like Insanity? Yep, yep, yep. We actually purchased the Insanity, and we were doing that.

And then the sergeant in our dorm allowed us to have that as a program. So we would allow guys from other units to come in and do that with us. And then when does CrossFit come in? So if you know anything about any of those like at home, and I know a lot of people are probably fucking struggling with this now, but those like you mirror what you see other people doing on the video kind of programs, man, the shit gets boring. And at that time, I think there were two DVDs and you do the same fucking workouts.

We did one cycle, but a buddy of mine, Steve Cason, he came to the dorm one day and he was in the back. We had like a common area where you could either read, study or work out. Initially, it wasn't that. But once we started doing the program, they allowed us to like work out in there, which was pretty cool. They like put in a pull up bar and dip station and shit for us. It was cool. So, a buddy of mine was in there, and so he's doing what I now know is Annie, but at the time, I had no fucking clue of what he was doing. I just see him, the jump rope work looked good. It was, like, fast, and he's doing the sit-ups, and I'm like, man, this looks cool, and he's, like, dying, like, in front of me. He's, like,

going super fast. So, so like when he's done i'm like damn man what was that what routine you following he's like oh man this is crossfit um my family sent me these walk these workouts or whatever and i'm like what the fuck is crossfit um like i i didn't know it was a thing um and that was probably 2012 maybe okay 12 13 maybe yeah uh so he started telling me about it um and he gave me a book there's a book by uh tj murphy i think it's called inside the box or something like that uh-huh gave me that book and man i read i think he opened i think tj opened the second or third box in CrossFit. I think when he opened his affiliate, there were maybe only three boxes or two boxes. Anyway, go on.

I'll have to look that up. He gave me that book just to kind of like, hey, just check it out. I used to read a lot. I'd read novels in fucking two days because what else are you going to do? So I got that book and like a couple of days I read the book and loved it. And then he had the Rich Froning's first book. I can't remember that book. So I read it and then I was just really interested in how they talk about

community because like here I was in this place where I fucking didn't know anyone. And the only thing we had in common was that we worked out together. And through just fitness, I built all these relationships. And I was a board member. And I know it's no big deal. It's prison. But I was a board member of NAACP, something that I was pretty proud of.

Right. I was very proud of. And it was just the different workouts. Like, I'd never, you know, I'd never seen or heard anything about it. And then so we would actually we had a little whiteboard in that quiet area, and we'd have workouts up there. And then officers would come in and like, what the like, they officers that did CrossFit, like out on the street correction officers would see the workouts, you know, like like, oh man, you need to step it up. Like, we got some wads for you. I'm like, wads? What the fuck is, so, you know, workout of the day. And they would actually sneak us in, I don't

know, getting, but they would like sneak us in workouts and even like make modifications for us because we didn't have equipment or we would just make shit. Like if we didn't have a fucking for us because we didn't have equipment or we would just make shit like if we didn't have a fucking barbell or so we would just steal a fucking mop out of the mop closet and get like water jugs or whatever and we just make a fucking barbell like we and you would have to those sticks like they'll bend so we'd have to get two of them together tie them up with a bed sheet um like so we we made um we take like old basketballs put stones and sands and shit in them to make wall balls. Like, I don't know if this is 20 pounds, but it kind of feels like fucking 20. But eventually we were able to get a lot of that stuff from our committee.

So we voted and we got a cabinet full of kettlebells. Like our sergeant went to bat for us on a lot of shit. And yeah, so we started doing crossfit um and we started doing that out on the yard and then other guys were like what the fuck are they doing so it just became this this thing that we did um and it just kind of you know we got more and more people that wanted to do it we would meet up every sat Saturday out on a yard, or we would go to the gym. And then we even had some CrossFit competitions in the prison. So it was pretty cool. Yeah, that's crazy. And at that point, did you have access to a computer? Did you go to the website? Man, I couldn't go anywhere. But I'll tell you what, the sergeant of our unit, man, she and others, other like correction, there's like officers that just like patrol.

Then there's like the sergeant of your unit who like runs everything, man. And she was she was one of our representatives, one of our staff representatives that would advocate for us for certain things, especially when it came to programs. And she was really big on anything positive. And she saw this thing that we were doing as something positive. And she went above and beyond to help her. And there were others, you know, there was Sergeant Cruz and a bunch of others who had and and they were all people and she wasn't she used to drink fucking pepsi in the morning i would go in her office i ended up becoming her clerk like we worked together all the time and a lot of guys hated me because i was so close to her but i could like make bed move happen and shit for guys

um but it was it was because she knew um that i was trying to use my time productively and I wasn't ever going to cause any trouble. And I was, I just like to help people. Like I would, we started running programs and we would get referrals from medical. They would send guys to us who were having some issues with their weight. And how much weight did you lose when you were in prison? And think when i when i got out of prison i was probably 180 pounds maybe wow so you so you had lost uh 50 60 pounds yeah about almost 60 and you ended up writing the letter and that was the first time i had ever heard your name you wrote you wrote a letter from prison to crossfit hq? Well probably probably a month we had to draw straws on okay so little backstory sorry I keep taking these little. No no please. There

was a little bit of an issue with the committee that I formed because I had white guys on my staff and there were guys that didn't like it and so when we would try to vote on certain things, they didn't want to make it happen. We were fortunate enough that the staff would like go above and beyond for us. But our thinking was like, well, hey, why don't we just fucking branch off and create our own program that is just about fitness

and not about fucking getting popcorn, potato chips and having movie nights. Because that's kind of what guys were, you know, as long as you're just giving a bunch of free shit, they were happy. But we were like, man, we don't want to do any of that. Like, can we get some fucking protein in here? Like, we just want to get jacked and, you know, and do this.

Yeah, so we went through that process, and guys were really upset. So we had to draw straws. We were like, hey, what organizations could we write that may be willing to donate to help us out? And we wrote like, I think one of my boys wrote like Paul Mitchell or someone's like, they do a lot of shit. Somebody wrote like Monster Energy, the Red Cross, I was given CrossFit. And out of all the letters we wrote, the only two that responded, I think, think oh someone wrote the ymca the ymca responded and said hey we're not interested in working with inmates and then your

wife um responded um so i was fortunate to be the guy to get the letter and i guess whatever i wrote her um resonated because fucking i never thought that i would get a letter from CrossFit headquarters. I didn't think that that would be, you know, like you just, you do it, but like, I didn't think that was actually going to happen, but it did. So. And then, so what happens from there? So you basically, you, you basically, you see a guy doing CrossFit, you take your go-get-it attitude and turn it into a CrossFit group, a CrossFit club, basically, in the prison. We called it Fit for Life. That was the name of our program. What was it called? Fit for Life.

Fit for Life. Are there any prison affiliates? Do you become affiliated inside of there? No. No. Nothing affiliates or do you become affiliated inside of there no no affiliates are you know just you just want to get the workouts and get the nutrition down and you're just trying to figure out how the program works yeah like for me i knew like those workouts they fucking work and even when you got no equipment then like you take what we did with like the insanity and that stuff is fine if you go like max effort but you could do a such a short fucking workout and get it over with but

also what i love most was all the different movements and then i started doing all this shit that i'd never thought that i could do in a million years, man. And, and man, that's just, it gives you confidence. And then to be able to give other guys that, to see people making real progress, there's like progress of like, Hey, I lost some weight. And there's like, Hey man, I got my first couple of pull-ups or, you know, I did a meter lunge around the yard for like, there was like all these different, you know, did people make fun of you guys? Did people make fun of you guys? They made fun. So a lot of guys made fun of me because I was, I ended up becoming like that one black dude that's doing all the crazy shit with the white.

So, okay. So the program, so it was mostly white guys doing CrossFit in prison. Okay, so the program, so it was mostly white guys doing CrossFit in prison? Yes, there were a couple guys that weren't, but for the most part, it was mostly, like, it was mostly. Why is that? I think, well, for the black guys, it was this different shit. It was just weird. And I'm pretty sure a lot of things we did are probably weird i don't know that i would call it crossfit now but you're just creating things with no education um but it was just

different like for guys in prison you do you know pull-ups push-ups and dips and you know and that's you know and maybe some sit-ups that's like the standard workout um but to do that every day, all day, like that just wasn't we like to do different things. But my friend, one of my buddies, there was a guy introduced me and then his bunkmate, his bunkmate was a guy named Chris, who, unfortunately, overdosed in heroin a couple of years back, but Chris became like my best friend. So he was like my secondary, you know, on my staff, he was like my guy, this was the one who he had a lot of resources, he was like my secondary, you know, on my staff, he was like my guy. Chris was the one who, he had a lot of resources. He was like not rich, but his family was well-off. So he had a lot of resources to different things. And his family would always send us like mail

us information. And he was really cool with staff because he was like a clean cut kid. We kind of put him as like the face of what we did. Did he die of heroin overdose in prison or outside? Yeah, he passed away outside. There were four of us. There was the guy who was the president of the NAACP. And then there was Steve who did Annie. And then there was Chris and myself. Was the president of the NAACP chapter, was he white?

No, he was black. Oh, okay. I was like, holy shit. I don't know that that would ever happen in there. It's pretty, I don't know, but, you know, who knows? But, yeah. But out of the four of us, I think aaron um he created a he does like power washing homes and he has an a stake in a uh a bar and then steve who's the guy that introduced me to annie steve um he just

bought his first house in a motorcycle he has uh he works for a paving company um and he and he's in a union and a dude makes a lot of money so but chris was the only one um unfortunately who's no longer with us but everybody's kind of you know doing positive things and i have no suspicion it doesn't you can't you have to tie it to what we did when we were in prison in our mindset then. Like that's where the seeds of what I have here, like that's where that started. And it was something that the alternative was death or prison. So if you approach it that way with that hunger, and it was the same for those guys. But Chris, he always struggled with with addiction and I feel really bad

because toward the end, I didn't even know that it was that bad. And I just got a phone call from Steve telling me that Chris had passed away. But if it wasn't for Chris, I don't know that I would be here either because he was definitely instrumental in helping me understand what CrossFit is and then how to apply it. He was too smart for his own fucking good. He could have done anything. He chose to do heroin. Yeah.

When you were in prison and you were getting close to your release date, did you know that you would continue doing CrossFit when you got outside? And did you know that there were affiliates? And tell me about your first trip to an affiliate okay so the so for maybe i think almost two years hayley and i were talking back and forth this is and hayley works at crossfit hq yes um so for almost two years we were so crossfit was interested in coming in and maybe filming a mini documentary of just a bunch of guys in prison with limited resources trying to make it happen. But also like to maybe teach us some movements and to kind of give us some perspective of what CrossFit actually is. The prison didn't want to make it happen because they thought it'd be like a security risk.

happen because they thought it'd be like a security risk um if crossfit would have came in and said that they were given his fucking cookies though they would have they would have more than right but uh so at the the final straw like everything fell through it wasn't gonna happen like i you know i apologized to hayley because she was like trying her best to, you know, to make it happen with me. And her last letter to me while I was in prison was like, hey, when you get out, just look us up. Maybe we'll, you know, help you out with getting you in a gym or something. So I got home. And now, even though I've been in touch with, like I, I never thought that I would actually continue contact, but I reached out. Um,

I had her email from one of the letters. So I emailed her and she responded and her thing was like, Hey, do you know, do you know any gems? And I like Googled looked up and there were like three or four, I think three at that time. And she's like, wait, I want you to watch this documentary. And that documentary was Fletcher's

documentary. Oh, right. Road to Conviction or something? Road to Conviction, right. So I watched that the first season. I'm like, oh, this is cool. And she's like, yeah, I want to introduce you to this dude. His name's Gary Roberts. He um he has this killing the fat man so i watched killing the fat man um and she connected me with gary gary and i had a conversation and after the conversation he's like yeah man i want to meet you and i'm like yeah you're full of shit you're from california you need a fucking three-time convicted felon like I did but okay um so he actually I think maybe two weeks later he called me and said hey what's the closest airport to Lancaster Lancaster PA I said I think I think Philadelphia is like all right I'm getting the flight right now I'll see

you this weekend we'll talk I'm like what the fuck he serious? So the dude shows up and he takes me out for a steak dinner. First steak that I'd had in, at that point, maybe seven years, six, seven years. Probably close to six. I think six. I did like five and a half, maybe six, six or seven years. So takes me out and he's like, man, tell me your story. So I just start talking to him, kind of explaining what I'm explaining to you right now. And he's like, man,

I think you got a really cool story. And I think we'd be interested. We being CrossFit, we'd be interested in telling your story. And if you, if you allow us to, you know, to tell your story, what about getting you in a gym, finding you a home gym? And then you have other aspirations. Maybe, you know, he's like, I can't promise you I'm going to give you a damn thing, but maybe out of this, something positive will happen for you.

Right, right. So he took me to, I had three gyms like that was the first night we had the dinner the next morning we were gonna go search because he had jet lag and shit but the next day it's like there were three gyms and the very first gym i walked in i fell in love with the owner um and i knew that i didn't want to go anywhere else. I knew, and that was probably the highest, I think they probably charged the most. I didn't know at the time, but I just hit it off really well with the owner. He's, he knew his, he knew his shit. Um, he actually opened up, I think either the first or maybe second affiliate in that city. He, he like started off at a rec center with a bar was it do you remember his

name jeremiah williams okay now has an opex gym he sold his box um he's now in the opex trader individual program design is the route oh please it's fucking a crossfit knockoff everything's individual at crossfit blow me jeremiah sorry jeremiah you're probably good dude um he i think for him um as a business model for him it was just he wanted to go a different direction but i'm you know he was fully you know he was he was into it and um i think i did like a baseline workout um and i almost died because i'd never been on a fucking rower before um so did the baseline workout and then so gary's like all right you ready to go check out the next gym i said no man i think i think this kind of feels like home it's like two miles from my house i can walk here

uh i kind of some of the other gyms are a little bit further away and good on jeremiah that's what he should do right i mean every gym should feel like a healing center to every single human being who walks in there you should feel like home and a place where they can get their health on and so that way he in good on jeremiah he got you to feel that way him and then even while i was doing the baseline like so there's like what we did in prison and then there's like actually walking into a fucking a box like it's right for me that was probably that would probably be like someone meeting their favorite fucking movie star like i never would have imagined that this is going to be a thing like i should have been dead or selling drugs like to be clear that was the only path that i understood but here i am and then all these people were like rallying around

me. So all the things that you hear about community, like to actually, like I said, there's like what we did in prison, which was kind of like, yeah, finish up. But then there's like legit people who've been doing this before, who don't look like me. They aren't from where I'm from, but they don't give a fuck. They just see some dude giving his best effort in the first time he'd ever walked into their gym. And they just kind of route. Now I don't, I can't say it was planned because he didn't know that Gary and I were going to show up. Right. They, um, they welcome me immediately. Um,

and I'm now like working out next to fucking policemen and soldiers and befriending and, you know, like hanging out with people that never never would have imagined man and then i was always a little nervous about telling people my background or my story because you don't know how people will receive you of course of course i gotta tell you when i actually there may be one or two occurrences over the last few years where i tell someone and they're kind of, they're like off put by, and that's, it's fucking America. You could love it. You could hate it. I don't, I don't, um, I would tell people my story. And the first thing they said, man, I can't

believe you were ever involved in anything like that. And then second is like, man, I don't give a shit. Like I see who you are right now and what you do. So a lot of misperceptions I had, and even some of it was with being like with race. I think a lot of those things were kind of dispelled in this place that I called home. And I would literally run to the gym as a warmup every day. And then I went every day. Like if the gym was open, I was in that fucking gym. And even when it came to looking for jobs, was open i was in that fucking gym and even when he came to looking for jobs if i couldn't get in the gym i wasn't taking the job it just like i for me for my mental health and i just needed to be i was happy and proud to be a member and i knew so when i first came in he interviewed me and he's

like hey where do you see yourself in five years in your biggest uh dreams what do you want i'm like man i want to own a gym someday i'd love to own a place like this and you told you told jeremiah this yeah gary has that on film somewhere awesome um so i told him like that was something i like to do you know i kind of laughed it off and you know but i mean to like sitting here talking to you right now, like the shit, you know, that was five years ago. But yeah, my first experience was a really good one in the very first gym I went to. So basically you worked out there for four years and at some point you said, OK, I'm ready to take the leap. I'm going to open my own gym.

I got a job as a personal trainer the whole time I was there I was studying for my personal training certification I didn't know if I wanted to be an L1 coach I didn't even necessarily know what that process was I had talked to a couple of the coaches but I knew one of the coaches had recommended I do like a personal training because it was a good way to like make some money so I did it and I was working at um the YMCA and then I got uh they opened up a gym where I am now in York um I won't even name it but they opened up this other like franchise big box gym and um I was there what i liked about it is because they they were open all the trainers were on equal playing field so i did really well because i i became like the guy

with the crossfit t-shirts on so anyone that was interested at all if they had a bad experience or a good experience or if they heard a friend doing it anyone that was interested in CrossFit when they walked into that place like I was the guy that wanted to talk to and a lot of the other trainers they didn't necessarily agree with the methodology of CrossFit they're like traditional was this was this like at a planet fitness or 24-hour fitness what was this crunch crunch okay so you're teaching CrossFit, and had you taken your L1 yet? No. Oh, okay. I would make that distinction of like,

hey, I don't have an L1, I'm a personal trainer, but I know some of those movements and I can teach you. And I had spoken to Gary about that and he let me know, hey, just don't fucking say it. It's fine. Let me tell you, I remember I posted something on Instagram and I think I might have like hashtag like CrossFit and like somebody got in touch with me from CrossFit legal.

Like, hey, man, you can't do that. That's a CrossFit legal. That's what they're supposed to do. They're paid to do that. Yeah. I was like, you know, I was like, oh, at least I'm paying attention. So now you're an affiliate owner. Now you know why they're there to protect you yeah don't fucking tread on yeah so um i was there just for a few months and there was just a lot of tension between myself and the trainers but also my boss wanted me to like follow their system of selling supplements to people so their thing is like they make a little money off personal trainers but they were big on supplements like so if you can make supplements a part of your package that's kind of what they wanted to do but i was like i don't fucking take supplements like i don't necessarily know what fucking creatine or these

thermogemics or you know it's all a bunch of random horny goat meat and just a bunch of random shit that i don't burners and, you know, pre workouts. And I just I didn't feel comfortable with giving people something that that I didn't know anything about or that I didn't take myself. So we I started to train some people like outside of the gym and then I started a little garage gym. I left my job my boss gave me an ultimatum um and what was the ultimatum no more teaching crossfit movements and selling and start selling supplements or get the fuck out what he said exactly was if you can't follow the crunch playbook um then you can't work here and he said i wanted to talk about this for a week

now i was at a i think i was at 47 conversion on sales i was like the top sales trainer and there was a new gym but like i said the distinction between myself and the others was just that i became the crossfit guy i had a niche and none of them had a niche. Right. It was like traditional, you know, do curls and I'll sit on my phone while you work out where I'm like the loudest, you know, most engaged coach at that time in that facility. I mean, people that like that shit would automatically come see me. And if they didn't, then they wouldn't. And that was fine. So what part of the playbook weren't you following if you were selling,

doing the most selling of conversions, it was basically the supplements and then the movements. So that, and then they have a system where when you do your, which I guess you could call it no sweat intro now, but you do like a free intro and you sit people down and you, you kind of, you create, you help them create like a fitness avatar and there's like this 30 minute presentation that you have to give um and it's it's a presentation by the way that they don't fucking pay you for so you're sitting there with that person actually i'm sorry they pay you

half your rate it was i think you maybe get five bucks or something like that for that half an hour. Now, so for me, it's simple math. I know I want to make X amount of money for an hour. So if I can cut through this whole intro shit and just kind of say, this is how I can help you. I could, I could see more people so I could have a higher turnover. I can get more swings at it and I could be more effective that way so for me it wasn't i don't want to take you down this whole like process where we're here for 30 minutes and then i have to show you all the fucking machine weights that i don't believe in using um that's just not who i am as a coach i i don't even know anything about the fucking leg press

machine i've never used right right it seems to anything about it. And also I know that it probably isn't great for you unless you can't squat for other reasons, but we'll even get into that. But so I just didn't agree with a lot of those things. And then I just knew I had this, I had this feeling that I wanted to do something else. And I had gotten my level one by that time, obviously. And, yeah, I knew that my next venture was either going to be – I wanted to work at that box with Jeremiah. So once you took your level one, CrossFit was just like it had corrupted you. There was no way you could do the crunch shit, right?

Your mind was blown into level one, and you're like, oh, shit, why would you ever do anything else? Yes. Sorry, say that again. You broke up. One more time. I said, yeah, why the fuck would I do anything else? Yeah. Works. Yeah. What if they did that? What if they took all the trainers from Gold and Crunch and just all the trainers from around the world who teach everything but crossfit and made them take the l1 for the weekend i think they could change a lot of fucking lives potentially

depending on you know every coach isn't cut out for coaching obviously but i think if some of them change their perceptions or misperceptions of what crossfit is it could probably help a lot of people oh my god i don't know anyone. I, you know, I took an L one on accident. I took the, I was just going there to film something and then I was, it just exploded my brain. I was like,

Oh my God. And then I had my mom take it and my, and my mom, my, you know, even at, I can't remember if she took it at 69 or 70 or how old she was, but it blew her brain. Right? Like, Holy shit. Yeah.

So, so, so you quit crunch and you open up a little gym in your garage at your house. Yeah. Well, the reason it was at a client's house actually, but the only, so there's here I am again, like backtracking, but when, while I was at crunch, I knew that I didn't like, while I like personal training and the money, like I knew that like in that environment, I wasn't happy. So I went back to Jeremiah and said, hey man, like, can I, so I had shadowed and all of that at his gym and he said I wasn't ready. I took my L1, but this time I went back

to him and I'm like, hey man, could I like maybe train people at your gym and maybe said I wasn't ready I took my L1 but this time I went back to him and I'm like hey man could I like maybe train people at your gym and maybe like coach a couple classes and you know and his thing was just kind of like hey I don't think that you're ready yet um so did that piss you off it it it made me angry um I mean I understand and he has every right, but compared to other people that he brought in to coach who weren't, and I'm not saying I'm a great coach, but just other people that he brought in, I just felt like I could coach better than them. I don't have fucking sleep,

but because I coach for my life versus someone who's just kind of doing it as a hobby right like i was just very hungry and i would do anything i'm always trying to evolve and learn and adapt and i had such a connection with the community there that i was naturally and a lot of the coaches would get upset because i'd be on the floor and people would ask me a lot of and and not that I'm even a great mover. It's just because I could kind of spot some flaws in movement or I had some cues or things that I could do to kind of help. Why do you think, so why do you think that he wouldn't give you an opportunity?

You think it had anything to do with your background? I think there may have been some of that. And also though, I think there was some pushback from some of the other coaches who may not have kind of like me kind of maybe stepping on their toes a little bit. OK, so there was a little bit of what does that look like? Like a class is going on and you guys are pushing overhead and someone has their forearm pointed in the wrong direction. And while you're working out, you look over and you're like hey helen get your forearm pointed behind you girl and then the coach would be like hey uh cory shut the fuck up that's not your job or like they would just approach me after class or they would tell jay and then he would say

like hey like could you just let coaches coach i'm like well they weren't fucking coaching they were um but i wouldn't you know i'm not like snitching on people or whatever i just would say okay but um i eventually left that gym um and then like i was at crunch and then i went off and one of my clients said hey could you would you trade me training to and i'll let you use my garage and i had zero equipment or i just took my first paycheck bought some fucking kettlebells and and then i bought a rower and like every week i would just add shit and i just started training people out of this one car garage until they they made me a cease and desist because uh the hoa or whatever because i was making too many noise that's too

much noise i had people you know flipping tires out in the out front or running with sandbags down the street or you know we have driveways I had like 12 or 15 people out in the driveway working out oh wow so you were you were killing it it was booming there yeah um you know because the thing of it is when you know when you're in that just like in the neighborhood and people are walking by like hey what the fuck are you doing you know and then they see all these you know people doing all this cool shit to the average person like what we do is fucking cool they just don't know whether or not they can do it they don't have the confidence so right you know um but yeah i feel like uh a lot of people saw that and some people liked it, some people didn't. So they complained. And finally, I said, all right, we'll just start doing workouts at the park.

And then so I would do like a weekly kind of boot camp and I would do it for five bucks. But I would get like 20 people, sometimes almost 30 people out there just hauling our equipment up there. And then a friend of mine was like, hey, there's this dude leasing space to personal trainers for like 300 bucks a month or whatever so i moved into his space and then he he was like half into it so i like started to slowly need more space as i had more clients and people. And I eventually grew out of that space and I needed my own. And I've been here since July. I think we came in here July. And when did you, when did you affiliate? When did you? October.

October. Months later. Yeah. We Will be two years this October. It's October of 18. And was it an exciting thing or did it just happen so fast? Have you had any time to enjoy it or celebrate it? Or is it just like, hey, that's what I do now. I'm fucking CrossFit Batcave. It's a lot of work, man.

It's been my life. And just the path to get here you know i mean and then the feeling like hey i gotta fucking kill it because all these people gave me an opportunity i feel like i owe it you know to to guys like you and greg and especially your your wife um and even kathy she's like the one that signed off on a lot of things. So I have that motivation. And then all the people, my members. Yeah, Kathy runs the affiliate department at CrossFit HQ. Yeah.

Do you enjoy helping people? Yeah, man. And even in the criminal element, like i helped a lot of people uh the means in which i did to do it weren't the greatest but i feel like i've always kind of had that that need to to be able to help others i'm gonna give people something of value so to be able to do that every fucking day i wake up now it ain't the prettiest because you don't make money, at least in the beginning. But I don't even think it's about money at this point. And obviously, I own a business. I want to make money. I want to kill it. I want to take care of

my kids. But the connection I have with all my members and even other people in the community who may not actually come in my in my place but they know of me through other people and the stories that they tell i think that's pretty fucking cool for a dude who was like a career criminal um to now i'll go out and have a fucking beer or whatever with policemen um unapologetically, and they know who I am. Like, I've been taken, and I probably shouldn't even say this, but I've, like, gone to the gun range with those dudes and, you know, fired some off and just kind of hung out. We have a program where a chapter of the weekly fight is a program

that helps raise awareness for soldiers that suffer from PTSD. I have just so many great stories, man. And I think that's what a lot of gym owners, like, if people think that gym owners are, like, greedy people, like, you're not going to make a shit ton of money, like, you know, unless you have other things you can offer. But I think most of us do it, especially, and I can't speak for every gym. I can just say what I know from any affiliate owner, I know that they really just fucking love to help people. Like it's, we fell in love with it and it helped us.

And then to be able to pay that forward, man, it's like a fucking dream, you know? Do you have any COVID fear personally? Like, do you get scared when they're like, hey, men and black men especially are getting COVID. Do you have any COVID fear personally? Like, do you get scared when they're like, hey, men and black men especially are getting COVID? Do you have any fear of that? or it's going to go away. And then you start to see all the news for those that watch the news and you see all these bodies and people dying and doctors. So I was a little bit nervous. And then they had that study that came out with, I don't know,

60% of African-Americans or something. So you kind of look at that shit and it gives you pause. But then my mom was diagnosed positive. So then I had to go and get tested. And then at the time, I wasn't feeling well. So I thought that I fucking had it. But it turned out I did have a respiratory infection, as did my daughter. But my mom was sick.

But just watching her go through it, it's – and I don't want to say that it's it'd be irresponsible of me to say that it's not serious because it affects everyone differently but just after watching my 63 year old mother go through it um who i guess because she's african-american or whatever they fucking say is at high risk um and the way that she's been able to handle it and get through and a lot of her co-workers and friends, from what I know, the people that have, you know, had worse are usually people with some really shitty, I shouldn't say shitty, but they just aren't healthy to begin with. But my mom, who doesn't exercise, it's not her thing.

She works a lot. She eats healthy. You could never talk her into any movement other than going for a walk and we do that now um every every other day or so she and i will just go walk just so she can get out and get out of the house this drives her crazy but now man i'm to the good job doing that you are a good son every every son should do that spend every other day with his mom anyway go on sorry gave me life brother yeah yeah we can talk about like was it a great life but without her man i wouldn't i wouldn't be here man she's so she recovered is

what you're saying she's fine um she's actually looking for another job because her job has been pressuring her to get back to work where she got sick because she works in a nursing home where they had i think 80 some people-some people, probably higher now, that passed away. And, like, 10 or 12 coworkers tested positive. So it was a hot spot. And they didn't fucking tell them in the beginning. They just started to, like, section people off and didn't really tell them what was wrong.

So really negligent behavior. So my brother and I have been trying to – Wait, 83 people died in your mom's nursing home? Yeah, residents. Residents. And did any of the employees die? No, no employees have died. So there's things people don't want to be accused of in this world.

They don't want to be accused of being a pedophile. You don't want to be accused of being a rapist. And you sure the fuck don't want to be accused of being a racist. Those three things are like, fuck, you just don't want to deal with that shit yeah and so i think a lot of people like and no one wants to talk about pedophilia because it's disgusting and rape is horrible no one wants to talk about that brings up crazy emotions and then no one wants to talk about racism because um they're afraid they're going to say something wrong. That being said, I'm going to embark on a little conversation here. I listen to the New York Times Daily.

It's a podcast. Are you familiar with it? Yeah. And they had a lady on the other day, and she said that she was going to say the three main reasons why she thought COVID was affecting the black community. She ended up giving four reasons. she thought COVID was affecting the black community. She ended up giving four reasons. And the reasons were, and I don't know if I'm going to say them in the right order, but one, because blacks, because of the types of jobs that blacks have, that they work in closer proximity to people. So that's reason number one. So it spreads faster in their community.

Reason number two was the cities that they live in are ass cities and they have ass air quality. So therefore, their immune systems, I guess, aren't as strong. white doctors and all doctors that they were basically, you had a tendency to help, I guess, white people more than black people. Like if you had to choose, if there was one ventilator, you gave it to the white person. And then number four, which she didn't say she was going to give in the beginning, and I had never heard this term before, she called it weathering. And weathering, if I understand it correctly, and I apologize to her if I'm misrepresenting her in any way, but the spirit of what I'm saying, I think is going to be correct. Number four is weathering. And weathering is the stress that African Americans are put in every day living in the United States that they're always in a, not always, but they often get put into a fight or flight situation

because of the systematic racism that's in the country, which puts pressure on them, which affects their immune system. So air quality, proximity, proximity of where they work, how close they work to people, racist doctors or biased doctors, whatever word you want to use. And then this thing called weathering. So I'm listening to all that. I'm like, okay, I don't really have an opinion whether those things are true or not. And I'm more than happy to actually believe those things. But when I hear those things, it's not the kind of advice that I would give someone if they're standing on the railroad track and the train is coming. Meaning that has nothing to do with, it's actually not, she's not giving anything that empowers black people or white people or Asian people.

When I see what you're doing or what Charles Barkley said, they are actually empowering people. Charles isn't just empowering white people or black people. You're not just empowering white people or black people. You're empowering all people. You're saying, come into my CrossFit gym. The foundation of CrossFit is nutrition. This is what I'm going to do to help you get off, to get off the bad shit and onto the good shit. And then I'm going to get you some human movement going that God created or evolution created, however you want to believe, and I'm going to make you healthy. And it's just interesting to me that the largest podcast in the world has a, I don't know what her title is. I looked her up on instagram

she is a black woman but she is giving advice that doesn't empower the african-american community and at first i was like i was just processing it and processing it and then i was like well shit if someone said that about to my armenian community if someone said hey armenians you're more likely to get covid because you're armenian X, Y, and Z, I would be fucking pissed. I'd be like, you should have used that opportunity to tell all African Americans, all black people in the country to get the fuck off the soda pop. And if you get the fuck off the soda pop, it'll get you to the fucking 85-yard line. you to the fucking 85 yard line. And I'm just wondering what you think about that. Am I full of shit? Is there something I don't understand? Do you have an opinion on the subject? I know you're hearing her story secondhand. I won't even use her name in case I'm misrepresenting her because she was a smart woman and I enjoyed listening to her speak and maybe all the things she was saying is valid. I just don't think you want to tell someone, hey, trains hate black

people. First, you need to tell them, get the fuck off the railroad track. Then after the train goes by, let's discuss whether railway conductors are racist. Do you know what I mean? Like, there's a time and a place to have each conversation. Yeah. So I could understand what some of what she's saying as far as, you know, working in close proximities and because usually people are in people in inner cities. And that's where this shit is happening. It ain't happening in fucking Wyoming. You're pulling it from these where people are just closer together. People just live and work.

Like your mom where she works. Yeah, 100%. What was the perfect example of that? People just live and work. Like your mom where she works, right? 100%. What was the perfect example of that? Getting all the racism shit. I think that that's ridiculous to point that out as there's no way to gauge whether or not that's facts or fiction except for us to call that bullshit as we hear it, because you can't tell me that every doctor that looks at every patient has a racist agenda. And whether a doctor is black or white, I feel like most doctors, most of them just want to help people. You know what I mean? And most people,

I feel like you can't make statements and call people racist and say these are racist behaviors just because the numbers show, like, I'm interested in knowing where do they get these fucking numbers from? And is it because you're testing more black people because they're more exposed because of these areas that you're not testing fucking people in South Dakota or like, fucking people in South Dakota or like so anytime I hear like those things um and and when people don't take an opportunity to give some people something of value um and almost devalue them um I take an issue with that and yeah I guess my point isn't whether what she's saying is true or not my point is is do you think your genetics as a black person makes you more disposed to covid or is it the fact that culturally in the black community there's

more soda pop drinking or there's more you know and i use soda pop as a metaphor for just like like to me covid is just a lifestyle killer just 100%. Like if you have a shitty lifestyle, this thing's coming to get you. And if you're healthy, you're like, I've only heard of one CrossFitter in 162 countries and 15,000 gyms dying. Why is that? Not because we don't eat sugar, but because we try not to eat sugar. My mom pointed out that distinction to me. We try every day to eat a little bit better. And that's why this thing's not killing us. We're getting it. We work out in gyms close to people.

I would definitely agree in that. And obviously, like I said, not all black people partake in those things. Right. But I think how you eat, how you treat your body i don't know what race you are right that that is uh that's what we can see for a fact is it is usually the people that are most vulnerable are the people that don't take care of themselves and i don't think it has a a color or you know covid doesn't give a a if you're black if you're asian if you're white covet is hey you're compromised and i can you up and if you're not then i can't and not

that you won't get infected but maybe that it just won't kill you and i think for people to be so afraid um i think you need to take a look at you know do you have those risk factors and what can you control within those parameters? Like, can I make better choices with how I eat, how I sleep, whether or not I move, even though they're trying to, trying to take all that away from us right now. But I think, I think I would look at that. And if I were someone given that opportunity to speak to people, I would just say like, it has a lot to do with how you take care of yourself. And obviously I'm not a doctor,

but as someone who's in decent shape and who eats good, maybe most of the fucking time I'm in a house the entire time that my mother was sick and I didn't wear a fucking mask. And I know people are going to call me irresponsible or whatever, but I'm not sick and I haven't gotten anyone else sick around me. No one, not one member of my gym has contracted COVID. We're closed now, but like in the early beginnings, if I had any exposures, like no one's gotten sick other than like my mother and and she handled it well so I think if we I hate to say like we as people because it's not my responsibility I'm just trying to help as many people as I can whether or not they're they're black whatever but I think

someone a person of color telling other people of color these things and giving them that information only does them a disservice and marginalizes even further. But that's another topic. But in my opinion, I would tell anybody, like I said, any color, the better you take care of your bodies, the better off you'll be. And that's not only for COVID, but just in life in general. So. My last, my last question, do you, where, where do you see your gym in the next five years? What you're doing? Do you think that business, do you think that the world is going to be like, oh shit, I'm jumping on a CrossFit lifeboat now. So when, cause this thing's going to be here for a thousand years, man. And in some form or another, and I don't think this is the last virus that's going to be

whacking the unhealthy. Part of me thinks we've just reached a tipping point of unhealthiness. Where do you see your gym in the next five years? So I think that people are starting to understand now more than never, unless, unless they keep watching the news, but I think people understand now more than ever how important it is to take care of themselves and i think that for gyms you know places like ours um that are all about nutrition and movement um i think that we have this tremendous opportunity to help even more people than we ever have because people see the value

in that now even if you just look at the way that people are engaging in online workouts or and I don't think that it's just because they're bored I think people really do want to take better care of themselves and maybe you know and there'll be those that don't but I think that we'll have an opportunity to grow we just got to adapt to the times I think there'll be those that don't, but I think that we'll have an opportunity to grow. We just got to adapt to the times. I think there'll be some things that change. But I definitely see this as an opportunity for those of us that can make it on the other end of this thing to grow and to help even more people than we ever have. we ever have. Do you feel qualified and prepared to handle a 52 year old woman who's 80 pounds overweight come into your gym? Can you make her feel at home and, and start her on her journey? 100%. It's awesome. What have you, what's the biggest, I guess you're, you're somewhat a new gym, but have you had any big weight loss stories besides your own one of my coaches who actually started off as a personal training client of mine she had already done some stuff with fitness but she's lost like almost 90 pounds total but with me probably about 55 or 60 pounds

and she's actually become a coach and she's 54 years old. She was never an athlete or, you know, she was, she had a friend died and at 50, her friend died at 50 and it made her scared. So she started to do like group training, like, you know, small group kind of Zumba and which kind of helped in the beginning, but she, you know, got bored with it. And then she saw me at that other gym doing like a small group, you know, we do like small group training. And of course I would 100% do CrossFit without calling it CrossFit. This is just my workout of the day. But she took one of my classes and then asked me about, you know, training and what my thoughts were and she's been with me ever since and been a key contributor in my company so it's awesome well thank you cory that's two hours and four minutes

holy shit didn't realize it man you make it go by um pleasure talking to you thank you so much no thank you brother congratulations you've done a lot of good in this world thank you man thank you