The Sevan Podcast - #18 - Kelly Starrett

Episode Date: December 29, 2020

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. I'm never ready for a podcast, no matter how much I prepare. Well, I really appreciate the transparency of your anxiety. I was watching the Ready State last night, just video after video after video being like

maybe this roller could get me ready for a podcast maybe if you just voodoo floss your whole body and then did one snatch or like isabel plus voodoo floss then you'd just be limber and ready to go and hopefully oh look at you drinking out of your like ice cup i know what that is so when i used to drink all day this was the cup i use now i drink all day and it's not And hopefully, oh, look at you drinking out of your like ice cup. I know what that is. So when I used to drink all day, this was the cup I use. Now I drink all day and it's not the same drink. Now it's just coffee. Now it's an herbal soy chai decaf latte. Does this copy reek of, hey, you're an alcoholic?

I mean, this cup? No, what it means is that's one of those cups that you freeze in. I mean, this cup? No, what it means is that's one of those cups that you freeze in. I'll tell you that Juliet and I, because we're children of the 80s, we loved the Diet Coke Slurpee at 7-Eleven back in the day. And we actually tried, we bought one of those cups to just see if we could reproduce the Diet Coke Slurpee, even though Diet Coke is obviously the best thing in the world for you. I actually took this from a friend's house one night at a party.

I left the party and I didn't want to give up my drink, so I took this home. Well, there's this old saying, stand and borrow, kneel and beg the return. So if that guy wants it back, he's going to have to come to you. It's not your fault. It's him. I agree. 2,193 five-star reviews and when i say five-star reviews i'm not talking about like almost five stars i'm talking every single star is filled in and that is for the supple leopard yeah that book is a unicorn isn't it supple leopard yeah that book is a unicorn isn't it crazy right place right time um you know i don't think you can reproduce that today you know we um 15 years ago i found crossfit um

the world was just different i've said this before but you can't buy you couldn't buy a kettlebell and um in san francisco i had to drive down to the play against sports in Santa Cruz. How many people are doing pull-ups? I taught myself to Kip in my backyard. You know, when I showed up at my level one, I actually could Kip. And they were like, like Rob Wolf was like, where'd you learn how to do that? And I was, I was like, I learned karate from book. Like I was like, well,

I had to figure this out because people were going so much faster than me. So the world has changed radically. I mean, at my level one, we all, a bunch of us did a fight combat and the highest score was like three 30, right? I mean, 300 is what we think for like 13 year old junior varsity girls who've never exercised before. Right. And as people became more sophisticated of understanding, Hey, if I'm going to really engage with a formal strength conditioning program where I have to have an express full range of motion, and that's part of the deal. And you, if you show up at CrossFit or show up swinging kettlebells and learning how to Olympic lift and do the basics of gymnastics, tumbling, body weight control, you better have access to your physiology. Otherwise you're going to suck.

And it's not about injury. It's about, you can't achieve the positions. Um, Dave Lee's one time turned out, he was missing a ton of internal rotation in his shoulders. And, uh, he did a workout where he had to do a bunch of overhead squats and stabilize, and then jump up on and do the ring dips afterwards. And he, after doing his first set of overhead squats, his, his ring dips went from like 30 to like three. And that wasn't a function of his strength. It was a function of his lack of control in those positions because he just didn't have access to his physiology. So what suddenly happened was we had a whole bunch of people who were like, tell me more. Why, why am I, is my time sucking? Why can't I access this position?

Why am I missing the bar in front of me? And that was where we started to see this relationship between incomplete position and also noticing that people who had a lot of common low level musculoskeletal pain related problems got better when we restored their position. So it turned out we were starting to see for the first time ever, this relationship between you don't move well as a human, you don't have full access to your power and capacities as a person that may also contribute to why your shoulder hurts. Let's go ahead and chase the highest expression of the movement, right? This is why we teach to the highest expression of the movement. Why we always don't say, hey, this is good enough. We

always say, this is what the Olympians do. This is the best way to teach. But when we gave people their access back to their positions, we focused on biomotor output. How do we get people to express more wattage, more poundage, more output? That was the game. But it turned out that was the same language as restoring people's range of motion and improving their tissue quality. And lo and behold, apparently that book resonated with some people because what we did was pull the physical therapist out. We pulled the doctor out and we said, it's on you to be responsible for your positions. And when things pop up, you need to know how to take care of it. And let's not freak out about that. You know, if I ask the average person, you know, who owns,

you know, is pain a medical problem? The traditional idea was yes, pain is a medical problem. And so we'd say, well, just go see your physical therapist. If something hurts, go see your doctor. So it hurts. Well, I'm like, raise your hand around the gym. Who's pain-free? If you're one of your children, perhaps you're pain-free because you're wrapped in bubble tape and you have toddler joints. The rest of us have histories of being humans. We're imperfect. We don't always eat great. Sometimes accidents actually happen. And so what we realize is now that there's a bigger responsibility for the coach and the athlete engaged in a physical practice, which is you got to own your crap. You got to own your sleep and nutrition and stress and tribe. You've got to own your movement quality. And then

you've got to own all of these sort of systems approach to what may be keeping you back from expressing the movement. So when we started to have that conversation, that really resonated with people that they could, you know, take a crack at fixing themselves instead of waiting until it got so bad for them to go see a doctor, which was the old model. Kelly Starrett, the number one expert on the planet when it comes to intersection of mobility, movement, and human performance. And that was a great explanation about the intersection. And that was a great explanation about the intersection. When I started CrossFit in 2006, you were already in the scene and our path started crossing.

It was a very small community. I think there were 300 gyms and it seemed like everyone knew everyone. Everyone, and I'm speaking a little bit in hyperbole, I apologize, but everyone was an overachiever. and I'm speaking a little bit in hyperbole, I apologize, but everyone was an overachiever. Everyone was there for the same reason, to get better and to make themselves the best they could humanly possible. It was a really, really amazing time.

The club was small and tight and it had a ton of momentum. Everyone was running in the same direction. It was heavy. And then as the community grew, people started separating from the pack. It was heavy. And through those years from 2006 to 2011 or 12, mine and your friendship continued to grow as we kept crossing paths at all of these events. And then in 2011, I came and visited you at your house and I did a 30 minute video on you, which I watched yesterday. And man, I don't mean to pat myself on the back or you on the back too hard, but man, that thing still holds water. It's so good. People still quote it at me all the time. It's so good. Um, unfortunately you have to be a super Google star to find it because,

um, the CrossFit journal a few years ago is banished into the deep, deep far galaxy. But, um, if you, if you Google a little bit Kelly and CrossFit and stuff on, you'll find it. Google a little bit Kelly and CrossFit and stuff on, you'll find it. And then, um, and then my words, not yours. This is not Kelly speaking at all. There was, um, our friendship kept growing and growing. And then there was a breakfast you and I had, it was me and you and Rory McKernan. And I can't remember. Yeah. I can't remember what the topic was, but somehow my something happened at that breakfast where i my insecure and lack of confidence in myself was offend not offended too strong maybe my feelings were hurt something happened where there was like like a and between you and i in my perception and we started drifting apart at that point. And so

when I, when I, I was in the shower this morning, panicking about the podcast and I keep pounding myself, why are you doing this podcast? Why are you doing this podcast? And it's, I'm like, I think this podcast is to rekindle our friendship for me. I'm not saying that any of that stuff that I said is true for you, by the way. But so, um, thanks for coming on. Part of me was like, why the hell is he doing this? Why would he come on a podcast with me? Not part of me, all of me. I appreciate that. Well, you know, let's just say this. Um, and I don't even remember what the topic was. It was nothing deeper. It was, it was strictly around um an idea it wasn't even like hey you fuck my wife or it was it was it was nothing whatever it was it it was about sort of

at the time it was it's hard for people to appreciate sort of the intensity of the original crossfit crew you know i coached you at your level one, right? But Juliet was there. We've known each other. We all grew up together for a long time. The original kids all were, you know, we were very tight. And then CrossFit exploded in a way that became very difficult to understand all the pieces and everyone's motivation. And that breakfast, you point out, I was making the case that we had this great diagnostic tool, but we could improve position. But at the time, the perception at CrossFit HQ was very much that I was trying to subvert the program and that I was taking away from something where I was a dangerous idea person. And it was complicated because I had the number one SME, right, at the same time. And yet, you know, there was zero opportunity for voices of dissent or improvement in CrossFit at the time. And at the time, you were so close in trying to manage. And in full disclosure,

I think one of the things that is tricky is that there was a time in CrossFit where everyone was trying to use CrossFit to propel themselves off. And CrossFit was always under attack and always people were trying to steal it and make it their own. And I think if you're on the inside, it's really difficult to, especially if you're not in proximity, to appreciate where people are coming from in terms of their motives. And I think there was definitely a definitive time in there where it was just intensity is everything. Stop talking about restoration of position because it's anathema to our idea of getting people moving. So one of the things that I think it's tricky when you, you know, you, we've known each other a long time. And, you know, I was just thinking about, I was a regionals up here in Northern California, and I was doing some broadcasting. And you texted me during the broadcast, because it was one of the first live broadcasts that was being presented with video

and audio. And you texted me, you're like, I had grown a nascent beard and you were like, you look hairy and skinny. I mean, that's how long. I remember going home being like, Oh, I'm going to have to either get fatter or shave this beard off because my friend, that's all you said. You look hairy and skinny on the, on the bucket. And that was the first time I talked to you in years. Well, no, it was just, but just at the time, you know, you were there. So it's, you know, By the way, in my book, skinny is good. Skinny is a compliment. In my book, skinny is, is, is the meanest thing you can tell someone, especially.

Oh God, I'm an asshole. I'm so sorry. With body dysmorphia, right? Like everyone is, I'm anorexic. I like you and I are the same size. You're strong. I'm always the worst athlete in the room these days. So, you know, as I've gotten older, this is what happens to me.

So, you know, I think, you know, we weren't making the case around or well enough or at the time we were just out of phase with HQ. And subsequently, it was easy to, you know, be pushed off with, with the heretics because there were plenty of people. And, you know, and I think, you know, here we are 15 years later where the experiment has run itself a little bit, you know, and people now we can be like, okay, there's, there's enough pie. Let's chill where we go with this. And, um, you know, it's, you know, I never stopped owning a CrossFit. I never stopped CrossFitting, but definitely, you know, was perceived as an outsider threat for a long time, you know, and when we took our course back, that really sealed the deal in terms of ending a lot of relationships.

So this was a great chance to have these conversations again. And this is one of the reasons because we've known each other forever. And I think it is difficult for people to separate out family squabbles over a decade. You know what I mean? Like, you know, some of this is just growing pains and, you know, and I've even, you know, uh, before, uh, the CrossFit blow up, um, you know, the summer, you know, I had even texted Greg one time ago and said, Hey, I was a really shitty teenager in your house, you know, growing up, you know, and I'm, I'm sure I could have been a better teenager, you know,

because it's, it's complicated. Although you have two data points of me being a douche. I only have the one of you, the breakfast hiccup. But I always enjoyed your company. You're super like anyone who knows you. It's like immediate friendship and it's ridiculous for there to for from my perspective for there ever to be something that could happen at a breakfast that's not even personal and by personal i mean um you you didn't say anything

about my wife you didn't come into my house and steal the last piece of cheese like it was ridiculous and And I think proximity is what took so long also, because if we saw each other every day, we could have talked about this five years ago, but we don't. That's exactly right. And, um, you know, I think one of the great things is now, and this is, this is what you see around the maturity of people who've worked together and in the same field, like we've been dancing around the same ring for, you know, a long time now. And what we, we really started to reconnect to is the work on your kids and sort of the

transparency of you and play. And I think that's, that's what we're seeing now is that, you know, Hey, I, you know, have have a voice around sort of inclusion and performance and mechanics, but also boy, we can agree on a whole lot of other things. And we can begin to agree by saying what we're doing as a country isn't working. What we're doing as a society isn't working. And we, boy, we pretty have, we have a pretty good template to get people going. And then you can dial that up and dial it down as you need the same way we've always done with sort of the CrossFit methodology. You know,

I think if you, if you step in from the outside, you know, CrossFit looks very intense and I'm like, well, my mother-in-law gets on the assault bike and then does step-ups. Is that really intense to you? You know? So I think what we have this opportunity now is to sort of refocus and recalibrate, you know, in this pandemic, in this, in this society where we're, we're seeing a lot of change and say, okay, what are the real problems that we're going to do? Because it's, you know, without, I mean, just frankly, without the exposure, you know, early on with CrossFit, you know, there's no Kelly Starrett, or there's a different Kelly Starrett. And then secondarily, you know,

unless I was exposed to the number of coaches and athletes and, you know, you know, I just I now get to go everywhere and see everything as a result of speaking gymnastics and speaking Olympic lifting and speaking powerlifting and all these things. So, you know, I think what we need to do is refocus and say, what are we getting right? What are we getting wrong? And also, what are the interesting conversations right now? Cause there are some really interesting conversations, you know, I'm going to go back to something you said in the beginning here, you were talking about basic, the daily story. When someone, I think you said he did 30 reps and then he went back and he could only do two. So it's, it's funny you say that. Cause yesterday as I was going through all your videos, I saw on the,

one of the Google choices was 13.5 Jason versus Rich. And I clicked on it and I watched a few seconds. And it's just mind-boggling how they connect so many chest-to-bar pull-ups in a row. And they're doing this minute after minute after minute. Even when they're just connecting three in a row, I'm like, how are they doing that, right? Because when I'm done, I'm done. Like I can do one at a time. And I always thought just because from, I don't know where you hear this shit, but that

it was just my muscles were tired and I had lactic acid buildup, whatever that means to me. But you're suggesting, you're saying, you know, that actually position can change that. You're saying you know that actually position can change that. Yes, because we, you know, first and foremost, there's no like when we when we look at any of the cues or any of the techniques that come from our high level of sports training, it turns out it matches the physiology beautifully. The problem was training. We never always, we always thought sort of training was about physiology. Just get on an exercise bike and suffer. And you become a little more insulin sensitive.

That doesn't make you a skilled, coordinated person. And it took us a second for everyone to appreciate what we had when we got, like, I just, I said this recently on someone's podcast, but let me explain constantly varied high intensity functional movement, right? You are exposing yourself to your full physiologic motions, the normative range. I'm not talking about uber gymnastics craziness, being able to do the splits, although the splits are part of the fitness, a hundred words or less, just so everyone knows, right? The idea of being able to own your positions there. But what we see is when we get into the bottom of that, there's no difference between gymnastics or throwing or jumping and landing or Olympic lifting or sport.

And what we can begin to do then is really appreciate that coaches over hundreds of years have figured out how to get the most out of people. And initially, we were all so weak and so unskilled in CrossFit because, and I mean CrossFit, I'm saying just the pantheon of skills we had to develop at, we were all limited by our fitness and limited by our skill. There was a time where Adrian Bosman and I didn't know if we could do 135 snatch, 30 snatches at 135 pounds. Like I didn't know if we could do 135 snatch, 30 snatches at 135 pounds. Like we didn't know if that was even humanly possible. Now, like my 12 year old can do that, right? I mean, it's really like the world has changed radically. I mean, honestly,

like Caroline was, you know, she's 12. She was, had a long busy day, wasn't able to get outside. So she wanted to chill, watch TV. So she swung the kettlebell, the 35, the women's kettlebell a hundred times and did Turkish get-ups in between. Like that's how the world has changed. Like, I mean, it's just a different world now. And so when we, when we first got into CrossFit, we were all protected because we sucked and it didn't matter so much because you weren't very fit and you weren't very strong. You didn't have a muscular endurance, but as you've seen the volumes increase, the strength increase the, you know, one of my coaches or friends, we were watching the games. Cause I recently had a knee surgery and I watched a hundred percent of the CrossFit games this year, start to finish. And we were talking about, I i love i love how you justify that your knee was hurt and therefore my knee wasn't hurt and i did not watch the games

and as i was like well i'm gonna just i'm just gonna deep dive here and um one of the things that we saw was that the real let's be honest and let's be honest you don't watch the games you watch bodies move you're kelly starrett right right you watch bodies move i You're Kelly Starrett, right? You watch bodies move. I want to see, you know, it's what we're, what's interesting is that's very true. What's really interesting is it doesn't matter, you know, this is how I think, you know, the pool assault bike ball slam workout was one I had made my 12 year old daughter do this summer, like 10 times on our pool. So, I mean, I'm like, we're all in. I think that this is just a wonderful GPP model that also, and I'll get back to my idea, can be spun up to become sports preparation.

And this is where we lost the narrative a little bit in sort of the conversation at the breakfast where we sort of diverged, is that I quickly was realizing that when we put a little bit more emphasis on foot position, we put a little bit more emphasis on some of these skills that we were doing, we could go beyond GPP into, I teach these universal skills that aren't just physiology, but are movement skill-based so that when someone can apply this technique, the stability, grabbing something, creating rotation, grabbing a gi, well, it turns

out that's the same rotation as climbing a rope or pulling on something. And when we're conscious about the principles underneath, then the people connect the dots and it becomes less physiology. I did more work in this shorter time, so I'm fitter, to I'm a more skilled, transferable athlete, right? And if I'm, and I think maybe some of that comes from the fact that I work in so many professional sports. Choose a professional sport, choose a tier one military group, I get to go behind the scenes and see everyone's stuff.

What I realized is like, well, what's going on with this division one school or this, you know, NFL isn't that much different than what how I'm training in my gym. The difference is some of the nuance of technique around foot position and foot pressure and skill. And so what we were able to do then or what I was starting to see is that this instead of just saying GPP suddenly, because when people come in initially, it's GPP. Like you're not fit, you're not strong, you're not skilled. So what the hell are we talking about? Like, why are we doing all of this precious stuff? We need to get you up and spinning. But then all of a sudden I can transfer all of that movement training into something that looks a little bit more akin to sports preparation training, which is not sports specific training. Sports specific training is on the other end of the spectrum, which is I am an elite level athlete playing soccer or rugby. What's the minimum I need to do or what things do I need to do? So my only outcome is that sport, right? That's how we

measure the outcome. Not that I do better at Fran, that does not translate. Fran is a tool to do better at the sport. So unless you're getting better at your sport, it doesn't matter. But the GPP thing with CrossFit, because we're rooted in these fundamental movements that are the training lexicon of all formal training, all of a sudden I was like, oh, we can take this and we can spin it up and zhuzh it up and see the incomplete mechanics. And what you've seen over the years with the games, which is the highest expression of the CrossFit, is that people have gotten better and better and better. Like, do you remember this inane conversation about feet out versus not feet out, like right knees out? What a stupid fucking conversation, right? Because you can't run, cut, jump, land,

have full expression of your hip, jump the highest with your feet turned out like ducks, comma, if it's just about GPP, it probably doesn't matter as much, right? There's at lower intensities, at lower thresholds, it matters less, right? That's why like Franz Bosch, who's this incredible Dutch coach, he says there's more variation in waltzing than there is in sprinting, right? So you'll see that the fundamental principles add intensity, which is why this thing became the greatest diagnostic tool ever because all of a sudden… When you say this thing, you're referring to… I'm talking about CrossFit. Okay.

Being exposed to these movements is that there's no place to hide. you know, and I see the technique of, you know, uh, in between the games this last year, um, they would, they would highlight some games with like Rob Orlando and, and some of those guys. And they're out on the, I think it's 2010. They're showing some of those highlight reels and they're just gassing, like snatching 75 pounds. And I'm just like, wow, we, you know, two toes, the bar catch your breath, you know, and everyone's wearing skins. And it's just like, I'm like, we were really, really not very fit or very strong there. Right. And if you took, you know, Carrie Pierce and dropped her in, she would have destroyed all of those boys back in the day. Right. I mean, just choose any woman destroyed last night. I was like, Tia is going for her second Olympic sport. That's pretty crazy. She's a pretty good athlete.

Remember she was an Olympian? It's easy to forget that because she's won the CrossFit Games. Remember she's the Commonwealth champion? Yeah, it's easy to forget that. So what we're seeing all of a sudden is, man, this language of GPP can be high performance if we start to argue about biomotor expression through mechanical efficiency, and that is the techniques and the language. And because I'm my own, the, I think my only way, the only good thing that my brain does is I'm pretty good at pattern recognition. I can see where things overlap, right?

So we go from Greg saying, I think you need to do these things. People who are good at gymnastics, good at Olympic lifting, became good athletes to specifically here's the relationships in the technique and the positions that we're doing. So I suddenly became totally agnostic about the training modalities and completely just obsessed with the positions that people are in so that you could begin to see the overlap of handstands, pull-ups, presses, jerks. Suddenly you could see these overlaps. And more importantly, the way the world had worked previously, the only way that we evaluated your position was by adding more load, right? Maybe adding some speed. But suddenly I was like, well, show me you can do

that when your heart rate's high. Show me you can do that when you have to do more than five reps. Show me I can do that when we're competing. Show me you can do that when there's a time pressure. Show me you can do that when you have to change modalities. Suddenly you have to do it not only with a bar, but you have to do it with a dumbbell. You have to do it on a gymnastics ring. You have to do it with a kettlebell. And what you suddenly see is a very skilled person emerge out of that where you cannot hide your movement deficit. I have so many ways to challenge your position and make you

make mistakes that there's no place to hide in my gym. And that really is the heart of what it is we're doing. And then tomorrow we'll get the rest of it. And the next day we'll get the rest of it. Is this an appropriate metaphor? When the car was invented and they could only go 17 miles an hour kelly starrett said hey man we should put seat belts in there and there wasn't a lot of attention given to you because it's like dude what's he talking about this guy's out of his fucking mind and now the cars are going 200 miles an hour and not only did you have you had already spotted and developed the seat belt the the helmet, the roll cage. And then now you can see, holy shit.

That was important. The car being the elite athlete and, you know, the 17 mile an hour car. But basically you've contributed to at this level that was always important, but is really, really becoming more and more important as humans are pushing their bodies further and further and further. I think I'm so proud of that. Please tell me it's good. I really, I like that to the, to the extent that, you know, I didn't have the language to describe what I was seeing, right? There was no seatbelt. There was no seatbelt. You had to fucking invent it. And, and by the way, Kelly's innovated a ton of stuff. This podcast is never going to be able to go into everything he's done, but he did, he did invent the seatbelt and he told you where to put it on your chest and how tight it should be and how thick it should be and all that. that taught me day one, test, retest, share, right? That it's gotta be observable, measurable, and repeatable,

which meant not just about, can we measure fitness? Because that is a tricky thing to do, right? Especially with the application of that, right? That's really recursive thinking sometimes. I do more pull-ups so I can do more pull-ups so I can do more pull-ups. We're now at a place where like, you can do a lot of pull-ups

unless you're going for the CrossFit games. Maybe we can develop some skills to other places. And by the way, there was a second where we all became hyper obsessed with the gym. It was super fun. And now I'm like, Hey, you probably should go outside and do this thing that we've been talking about forever from day one, which is learn and play a new sport, which I think is some of the language that gets lost or is misunderstood from the outside, that the idea was, boy, you can do this really intense training by upping the intensity, by upping the degree of difficulty. You didn't have to eat another thousand calories and rest. You could actually have a strength and conditioning program that supported your sport, right? That didn didn't take do you remember the day when early on because so i have a near photographic

memory and i remember all of our interactions i remember all the things i read and where i was and one of the things greg said early on was that wow that explains a lot about you that's amazing i don't have anything like that by the way i can only um no no kidding i can only imagine i have to make something up when someone tells me they have a photographic don't have anything like that, by the way. I can only, no, no kidding. I can only imagine. I have to make something up when someone tells me they have a photographic memory. I have to like make something up to understand what that means. Like I have no, I have no, I have no, I can't even visualize. I don't even see pictures in my head. This is the way this has made me a terrible student because I'm like, Oh, I sat in class and I read it. I got it. Right. So I'm good. Let's, let's do the other thing. Like I, I had a, when I was in

grad school and physical therapy school, I had a baby and I opened the gym, you know, and people, people were getting divorced and moving into the dorms to try to keep up with physical therapy school. And I don't think I was necessarily brighter. I just could assimilate the information. But what that does is it makes me a really good coach because I remember how you move. I remember what's going on. I remember all our interactions. Like I can identify who's competing just by how their movement signatures, like the length of their limbs, not the things they do wrong, but like, Hey, this is how this person is solving this movement problem. So, you know, as we're, I don't remember what we're talking about here, but you were going to, you were going to bring, I'm kind't remember what we're talking about here, but.

You were going to, you were going to bring, I'm kind of enticed by it. You were going to bring up, I think an interaction that you and I had, something that was in your memory. Do you remember this? What I was going to say was that what Greg was saying was the person who spent the least amount of time in the gym made the fastest progress, right? Remember there was an old, like testosterone peaks at 55 minutes. I was like, Oh really? What's happened? Is that why you're spending three hours in the gym now? Right. Remember, there was an old like testosterone peaks at 55 minutes. I was like, oh, really? What's happened? Is that why you're spending three hours in the gym now? Right. The idea was to get in and out of the gym and improve your life. And I think because and I'm guilty of it, too. The gym is so fun and it's so easy to track progress that we made the same mistakes potentially that the track and field athletes had made years ago. So Bondarchuk is this incredible throws coach,

one of the best throws coach on the planet. And what he would finally say is, look, you are strong enough to throw the shot put. What you need to do is throw the shot put more, not get better at bench. And what we haven't done necessarily with CrossFit because it is just feel, you know, Greg said a long time ago, GPP can continue uninterrupted for 10 years. And I'm like, well, I don't think that's true. I think it's infinite. feel, you know, Greg said a long time ago, GPP could continue uninterrupted for 10 years. And I'm like, well, I don't think that's true. I think it's infinite. Like, I mean,

are people getting less strong, less fit, less, more, I mean, it's crazy that everyone is snatching 300, no big deal. Like that's just the thing that people do now, right? Like everyone's, you know, they're, they're almost cleaning and jerking 400 and they can run 5Ks and do those things. And what we saw even in the evolution of the CrossFit Games was that someone constrained the system to say, by the way, you better be really competent at running. You'd be really competent at swimming. You have to be better at these other sports and the application of fitness. And I think that's the thing now where our next task is, okay we we know what sort of the minimum dose is to manage this we know how to eat now let's go into the world and apply it and then we can come

back and say what do i need more of not i need more of everything forever because that that's a different need than we are in initially which was like you can't do 45 pull-ups like what the hell are we talking about like that's only 45 only 45 pull ups. Now, you know, this is not that big a deal. You know? Does everyone eventually have pain? Like, can you can you? Okay, yes. Oh, thank God. I love hearing that. So you can't be born and die at 90 and be like, wow, I never had a bad back or Oh, my shoulder never hurt. Eventually, something does break on everyone. Please tell me. It doesn't. Oh, fuck. But let's say this. Let's, so this is, these are important things because if you've been in the gym, uh, chances are you've overdone it,

or you've gone drinking, overdone it, or you had previous history of injury. Cause you played soccer in college and you know what I mean? So the idea here is just like I can identify when you suck, like you show up and I get you on the assault bike or we're doing some wattage or something. And I see that your splits are down or you're weak, you're slow today, or you're unskilled. I can be like, Hey, what's going on? You're like, well, I'm super stressed at work. You know, I had a fight with my wife. I didn't, I've really been eating my nutrition. I haven't been taking care of my soft tissues. Well, I have this immediate connection between your behavior and your output, right? The problem with pain potentially is that the processes are hidden, that pain does not mean tissue damage at

all. Pain is a request for change. Pain means, hey, I need you to pay attention to this. And if you're not sleeping, if you're stressed, if your nutrition isn't great, then you're going to lower your brain sensitivity to the onset of tolerance. It means you're, you're actually your tissue. None of your tissues actually generate pain signals. It's about your brain perceiving what's going on with your body. So imagine in your training every day, it's hot. It hurts the training that everyone does. We, I mean, what's the old saying CrossFit for everyone, but CrossFit is not for everyone, right? It is hard work. And one of the things I think happens is our belief effects around pain,

our culture around pain, all of those things influence how we perceive what's going on with our bodies. Hey, my back is super sore. Why? Because I did 10,000 kettlebell swings and ran 15 miles because that was what I wanted to do once a month. And it's super fun. I don't panic. I'm just like, oh, I'm sorry. I overdid it, right?

The average person is like, I've slipped five discs, even though that's not possible. And I have back rabies and must be cancer of my spine. And they catastrophize. You're describing me. You're describing me. You're describing me. They don't have A. We haven't empowered people to say, here's how you're going to take care of it. Make yourself feel better.

Self-soothe without THC, without drinking, without ibuprofen, without, right? We have all the tools to manage these simple problems. And simultaneously, let's appreciate that based on genetics and movement, right? Just because your shoulder hurts and pull up does not mean you're impinged or have, like you've just say, hey, you may have tripped over the line. And that is the conversation where we, it's this tug and play. And, but if we ignore the pain, then it becomes persistent pain or my brain starts, I start to work around the problem. It can become a bigger problem. So part of what we're trying to do here is say, hey, let's treat pain just like information, like you sucked today, right? So instead of catastrophizing

because you ran and did a bunch of lunges and now your kneecap is sore, that's the same thing as you couldn't do a muscle up or your pushups on rings suck or you weren't skilled enough. So something when we just change that, that is a revolution in pain science and shifting the whole conversation about who owns it. Because I believe what we've been saying forever is what? CrossFit that the coach is the new healthcare practitioner of the future, right? Who's talking to you about sleep and nutrition and movement?

Well, who has the most interaction? Well, it's the coach. Well, I'm also saying that coach should be a combat medic and have a whole bunch of tools to help you self-soothe. And if something's sketchy, we can kick you to the doctor. Hey, that smells like, that's not just soreness from bench press and burpees. That's something else going on. Let's triage that and get you out of here. So if we, what I'm realizing is that we canage that and get you out of here so if we what i'm realizing is that we can up regulate the role of the coach and we can down regulate the sphere of pain because pain is going to be happen to you whether you like it or not and it doesn't mean anything is ever going to be injured you may get through your whole life and not have any pain

right or have an injury but things are going to be hurting because you suck. And what we have confused for a minute is your immense genetic tolerance and your body's tolerance for silly bullshit. Like we, in 15 years, we've seen in and out Fran, we've seen crazy volumes, pain storms. We've seen people throw their bodies at crazy things and we get away with it for a long time. And in GPP concept, that's good enough, right? We need to get you spun up. Then we can have the next conversation. You don't have to be perfect. We're getting into the best position with the best appropriate movement pattern today for you under some intensity, under some load. But simultaneously, we cannot confuse people's

genetic tolerance with the fact that they're doing it right. Just because you're jumping and landing and doing wall balls and your pressure is all off and your knees cave in and you're round and your neck cranks back, doesn't mean that's the best position that transfers to the most things. And when people have pain, that is an oftentimes a great way to say, hey, I think we can improve your mechanics. How much, how much pain, sorry, this is a horrible question, but I got to ask anyway, how much pain is caused by stress? So like this morning, I'm getting ready for the podcast, pacing around the house, making sure my coffee's ready, making sure I'm getting you the zoom link, making sure my kids are out of the house, making sure the lighting's right. And my mom texts me,

Hey, my washing machine slid forward. Can you come over right now and push it back? And I feel my back start to hurt. That's that's it. Right. But that's like, God damn it. And I'm no dummy. I know I have to let it go and I know I brought it upon myself, but of course my instant reaction is, is like she knows I have a podcast with Kelly Starrett and I'm taking it

serious as a fucking heart attack. Like, why is she doing that? There's no, they're there. there's no end to that blame game i'm saying so i reel it back in take a few deep breaths but how much in in the in the world you see how many people are are fucking themselves by not being able to manage their stress oh what we've realized is that most many of us in this high intensity community are managing our stress with exercise. It's exercise addiction. We are smashing ourselves. So now I think I'm having to face that now. I think I'm having to face that now at 48.

Yes, I'm 47. How much volume is enough volume? What is the minimum therapeutic dose? My body looks great. I've been doing CrossFit for almost 17 years. Right. Wow. Yeah.

It looks a little different for me now than it did before. Right. Oh, way different. And there's some things I cannot do and don't need to do so that I can do my thing. And why? Because I have the experience just because we have 150 movements in our, our Pantheon, just roughly we'll just say, doesn't, I know I need a hundred to go to the Olympics or, or be rad or look good naked. Right. You know what I mean? So what really I hear in that is, do you feel safe in a community?

Do you feel appreciated? So the shutdown has shown us that our gym wasn't about training. And our gym is closed because of the crazy behavior of, you know, gyms are dangerous places. Warehouses with tons of ventilation are dangerous, but you can go shopping at Best Buy. Right. We've lost our minds. We got shut down. We call it flattened by the curve. And is that hard for you to say you're not afraid of the mob coming after you? Like like I can say because I don't have a job. But no, I because I I still, but we,

we, we, but you represent so many people. Can you say that? Sorry, go ahead. We squandered this opportunity to, it's easy to wear a mask. It's easy to socially distant. It's easy to be safe. It's easy to have rapid testing, which we don't. It's easy to like, I mean, there's a whole bunch of things that we, we, we squandered

some opportunities here. And I'm not saying that like that this is a gigantic conspiracy to drive people out of California so we can turn red states into blue states. I mean, that's not what this is about. This is about, is this, if we really are saying, is this best practice, then, and we need to shut things down, everything gets shut down. So here's an analogy. The War Powers Act made it really difficult for us to go to war as a country. We have to get Congress involved, and it takes us a minute, and we have to roll. And then you lose your UPS driver, and your fifth grade teacher is deployed. And it is a pain in the ass to everyone.

The problem with what I'm seeing right now is that it's not a pain in the ass to everyone. We've indiscriminately shut down small business, and we haven't made everyone pay. So if you want to pay people's attention, everything is closed except grocery stores, pharmacies, and gas stations, everything. You cannot shop at Urban Outfitter. You can't go to Best Buy. You can't shop at some of these places. And what we're seeing is this sort of unequal application of this protocol of trying to protect people. And that is the thing that has driven me stinking crazy. But without an aside, because it was brutal to break up our community, what we saw was this was the only place in people's lives where they got some unconditional positive regard.

They felt safe. They could touch base with someone, our coaching staff, our physios, Hey, something's going on or what? Like we were the place where people could come in and sort of recalibrate their lives, nutrition, sleep, all those things. And to the point that we sort of made the beginning, we now have ways to begin to identify, are we training hard enough? Or are we training too hard? Because in the beginning, no one was training hard enough. That was the problem. And now it is easy to do so much volume that and cover up an addiction or a control need with more and more volume, which is, by the way, CrossFit is not the first community to do this. Let's go look into triathlon and running and swimming and any other obsessive group of people.

But now we can, we have whoop and we have all these other ways where we can say, hey, look, your resting heart rate sucks and you're not getting the most out of the buck, right? Used to be, I had a better, same, worse. If your Fran time went down or your, some of your benchmarks, you know, all of a sudden you're getting weaker, we can ask the question, what's going on? And now we have sort of another set of metrics that help us understand, and we're just more experienced. I think some of the criticism leveled at us early on was valid because it was brand new and we didn't know how to talk about it or dose it, right. So from the outside, it looked

crazy and we did some crazy stuff. Now that is not the game. No one just sails in off the street and gets thrown into the meat grinder because you can't handle it. You know, do you remember pukey the clown? Yeah. Intimately. No one pukes anymore. What happened? So now pukey the clown is no longer pukey the clown. No one vomits in, in the gym anymore. Why is that So now pukey, the clown is no longer pukey. The clown, no one vomits in, in the gym anymore. Why is that? Why is that? Because we have soul cycle because we have Peloton because we have orange theory because they're getting prepped before they come in. You mean, I mean, they've done two years of soul cycle first and, uh, everyone's been exposed to high intensity exercise early on with us, man, it was the first time anyone had ever

worked at that threshold at that intensity. Right. And, um, and you know, it's, it still gives some surprises, but no one vomits anymore. Why? Because we've gotten more comfortable, you know, I mean, look, look at what's happening with TRX. TRX suddenly has kettlebells and slam balls and wall balls and ring rows. And I'm suddenly, I'm like, oh, I know what this is. I've seen this before. And they're right to do it. I get it, right? Because they're like, hey, we need to introduce some of these other things. I totally get it. But suddenly drop into anywhere and you're seeing couplets and triplets galore, you know, and you can call that whatever you want. metabolic conditioning. We've lost sort of the tidal wave that was the movement is now an inch deep and miles wide, and it's influenced everything. And it's hard to appreciate where it started and how radical it was when it started.

Completely, completely. And that's a whole podcast in itself, just what people take for granted that you couldn't take for granted 10 years ago. I want to go back to something you said about conspiracy theory and about what's going on here and is whether to change red states or blue states. Even if there's conspiracy everywhere, what the really the only important thing that Kelly said there, not the only, the most important thing that Kelly said there is it's a squandered opportunity. Don't waste your time looking around for who shot the arrow. This is my wife. My wife told me this. Don't waste your time looking around and trying to figure out who shot you in the eye with the arrow before you pull the arrow out. Like tend to yourself, right? Don't worry about who's driving the train. you're standing on the track get the fuck off

the track that's right then look at the train it's so and what you're doing is you're distracting yourself and you're avoiding the truth and you're avoiding making yourself better and you're avoiding personal responsibility etc etc etc i mean it's what it's pretty frustrating. So right now, this is a great opportunity to go trans party, trans affiliation and say, let's give ourselves a score, right? Because the fitness community, and frankly, one of the benefits of the shutdown is that some of the silly bullshit is going to die. Because right before the shutdown, it was feeling out of control. I mean, definitively out of control what we were seeing. I was like, I was like, Oh, CBD nail polish, right? All this.

Is that true? Are you making that up? I'm making it up, but it was just the amount of stuff we were trying to sell people and the, and the, the, preciousness, I would say, okay, what's the goal of a wellness community? Are we truly a wellness community? Well, let's go ahead and look around the world. Well, it turns out we're the fattest country. We're the least fit country. And those are big, complex problems. That's not just an issue of will. But if you have a solution or you need to go into a community and start that solution, look what Sin is doing with the NYPD in predominantly

communities of color in New York, right? Black Puerto Rican communities. He's like, hey, let's create a club. Let's get cops working out with kids. Let's teach these kids to become coaches. Let's give them jobs, right? That's the bottom line, because this is now about national security. We can't actually deploy an army because we're too fat and too out of shape. That we're seeing that COVID is ripping through communities of color. Right. And all of a sudden, if you take a step back again and say, okay, fitness community, I'm going to give you a grade and you get a D minus. Why? Because you haven't changed shit in the world. What you've done is made it so that, you know, you can have better abs on Instagram, or you can do your, you know, your fit spo thing,

right? But what you haven't done is change the culture and community at all. And, you know, however you want to get there is fine with me. I really am an agnostic. We can argue about what we think are the best tools to have the best outcome, right? How many days a week do you need to squat? What kinds of training do you do? Do you expose yourself to this position, right? That can be ongoing. That's a conversation about tactics. But fundamentally, we have failed the people around us. And we're trying to do it by saying, hey, look at how much fun we're having. Look what's going on. But we are, to your point, we're going to have to wake up and realize that we're going

to bankrupt our health system if we continue on down the path. We're going to have a whole lot of people who aren't going to live to a hundred without severe help with all the drugs and all the dialysis and all the things. It's like a tidal wave that's coming. And what we've realized of course, is that, you know, my next door neighbor is this hilarious writer. She's been on, she's a writer for famous shows. She's now diabetic. And you know, she was like, she's like, Kelly, I've changed my diet. I'm walking. And I was like, you need to go walk further and walk up hills and breathe hard. Like, and I was like, and here's a backpack you can carry, right? And here's two walking sticks. So you don't fall down and you feel scared. Right. And she was like, oh my God, my blood

sugar is better. I'm like, oh, welcome to intensity. Welcome to the thing we learned drives the wheel. So what we, if to the point that you're saying about pulling the thing out of our eye is how do we create a more metabolically intact society? And right now, man, it's so bad. And instead, we keep selling shit to people and gimmicks and fixes. And the fix is you need to be in a community. And every day, you need to do something for your body as a start. And then we need to make sodas illegal on school campuses, like bring a soda on campus, like bring a gun on campus, right? We need to have some interventions. CrossFit needs to become a high school sport. The Spartan race needs to become a thing that every community puts on themselves. Like we have to really fundamentally change.

You know, I've been, I've been working with, you know, look, you're going to unfollow me, fine, whatever. I started working with president Obama in the last year and a half of his administration. Right. And then I've been working with Joe Biden for the last year and a half, two years, trying to get him spun up and part of his professional team. And there's a chance that Juliet and I will be on the presidential physical fitness council. And one of the things that we're seeing is we are going to go right after elementary school, middle school, because that's where this starts. And what we're seeing now is by the time you come in and you're so metabolically deranged and you're two or 300 pounds, and it's really hard to turn And eight years old and eight years old.

That's right. That's right. It's hard to turn that ship around when what we know is it's got to be fun. So we can gamify fitness. We can keep people's exercise ADD. Like my wife has exercise ADD. She likes to be entertained. And I'm like, great. We don't have to go put your arms over your head in this way today. We can put your arms over your head in this way today. Right. There's so many ways to make this entertaining, to bond people to each other. And we can start to strip out some of the carbohydrates, start to get people more insulin sensitive. Look, people show up with crazy autoimmune diseases all the time in our community. And I'm like, great, you have two choices. You can do a whole 30. You can go plant paradox, or you can go carnivore. Which one of those things speaks to you, right? I don't care.

It doesn't matter because they're all going to say, so if you like to do soil cycling, I don't care. You want to go to church and do Pilates and press kettlebells, it doesn't matter. But at some point, what we're getting back to just the same way we can say, these are the things you have to train. This is the way you have to move. We can now say, these are the things that make you human and you either engage them and they're not. And what we're going to have to do is start to say, Hey, look, this is a society. We're gonna have to change this. And shutting down gyms is maybe not the best way to do that. It's, it's, it's funny that you say, uh, uh, go ahead and unfollow me. So in the last few months, I've lost a thousand followers because I've just been pounding

the missed opportunity and the show, the no sugar thing. And it's so funny. I've been a thousand followers because I've just been pounding the missed opportunity and the no sugar thing. And it's so funny. I've been doing that, you know, I feel like my whole life, but I've really ramped it up in the last year, the no sugar thing that sugar is really killing you and how serious it is. And that basically, in my opinion, like if you quit sugar and refined carbohydrates, COVID just passes by you. You don't even have to look at it, in my opinion.

But someone DM me just two days ago goes holy shit i've always thought you're a quack but i saw this article talking about how bad sugar is for your gut and i'm like that's not even my battle what it does to your gut right i'm just talking like it's it's everything and going back to what you're saying about this if you actually have some muscle right you can actually tolerate a little bit more sugar. Whoa. Right. I mean, like there's, if you have, if you have no capacity in the system, sugar is just like a fire. If, if you have a huge engine, then you can dabble with a little bit of sugar the same way you can dabble with some alcohol once in a while, or, you know, like, that's not the glass of champagne that's killing you. That is not the problem. It's not the wine you have with your dinner with your family two times a week.

That is not the problem. It's the two bottles of wine that you're drinking every night to cope. It's the sugar that you're using to cope. It's the, it's, it's, you know, that is the problem. And to your point, I think it's fair to say that like, we can't talk about the fact that you and I went to high school, chances of us being diabetic, one in 4,000. Now, your kids and my kids, I am 100% Caucasian, upper middle class. My kids have a one in four chance of being diabetic. It doesn't matter color of skin.

It doesn't matter how much money your parents make. It's that prevalent. Then add in the fact that if you're a black woman, the chance of you being diabetic are two out of three. If you're a Latinx man, it's two out of three. So at some point, we're going to have to have a bigger conversation about systemic racism and structural racism where you don't have access to parks and the only food around you is cheap, shitty food. And the fact that you're stressed because we live in a racist country that where you don't have access to parks and you don't, and the only food around you is cheap, shitty food. And the fact that you're stressed because we live in a racist country that sometimes makes it very difficult for you to be engaged, right? Those are all part of the

conversations we're going to have to untangle. And that starts by being a community, this communitarianism idea, like, look, federal, it's important. We have a strong federal government. I even believe in the power of state government. Maybe right now I'm a little bit disenchanted with our state government. But where we can make changes is in our community and in our neighborhoods. Open up your gym, make it the, you know, the Savon Home Health Center and start bringing your neighbors over. And that is the only way we're going to actually transform society, not big down. It's got to be bottom up. bringing your neighbors over and that is the only way we're going to actually transform society not big down it's got to be bottom up what do you think about like arguing people's limitations for them when you said about you're talking about like eating healthy and people not having access to healthy food i think there's a misunderstanding and i think it comes from a lot of um like people think organic is healthy when the truth is is if you go into a store if what i'm saying unfuck me if i'm

wrong if you're hungry and you don't have a lot of money a pack of hot dogs with the lowest amount of sugar and some hard cheese is a thousand times better than a bag of fritos and a baby ruth bar and a seven and of course of course the shittiest burgers you can get at McDonald's. Like go to McDonald's, get all the burgers, throw the buns away. Yeah, okay, good, okay. And that's something that I keep. We can argue food quality next. We can argue how many times a week and which bench press variation is best once you're benching, which is how we started this conversation, right?

First things first, let's go ahead and get our shit organized around this. Then we can start to turn the dials a little bit, right? And then we can argue like who's got the best macro counting system, right? That is a high level conversation versus, hey, you haven't eaten any protein today. And, you know, the first thing you did was chug a liter of bottle of soda when you woke up. You learn that somewhere. That's conditioning somewhere, right? Everyone comes out of an environment and experience, whether that's a training environment, a nutrition environment.

How your parents thought about exercise deeply influences your experience with exercise. How your parents think about nutrition deeply influences that. And what I'm saying is we're going to have to think slightly differently, which means we're going to have to go into our elementary schools. Right now, you know, Juliet and I have a nonprofit called Stand Up Kids. And it's about shifting kids from sitting sedentary desks plus all the sedentary sitting homework into standing dynamic desks. Let's just change the environment. So if you don't want to have cookies, you don't want to eat cookies, don't buy cookies. Right. If you don't want your kids to sit all day long, make it very difficult for them to sit

all day long. Have them sit on the floor or stand. And they can go back and forth and back and forth as they want. Total autonomy. You want to stand and fidget? You want to sit on the ground? Great. You know, that's a Turkish get up 100 times a day, right?

So, you know, chain your daughter's phone to the corner of the bed so she has to get up and get to the phone. I mean, there's a million ways we can do this, but you know, what we have to be thinking differently about is where we're going to apply these problems. So our nonprofit is engaged in some long-term research with Cal Berkeley worth with title one schools about trying to unravel this obesity epidemic. Cause we feel like, look, it doesn't

matter where you live, what color state, what color your skin is. Fat kids, we've normalized fat. We tell everyone it's okay. People don't even identify themselves as fat anymore. The obese people are the fat people. Now we have a new category for children called supermodely obese kids. And what I'm saying is we have to start this problem and this education earlier so that we can give people a fighting chance to at least make the decision versus unprogramming them and unfucking them later on, which is so hard. It's so hard to change behavior. So let's just change the behavior or have a different behavior from the start. The baseline is so fucked up. So every time the media reports healthy person died of covid

i begin to google them and my list is 97 long and 95 of them i have found and and two of them i couldn't find and of the 95 93 of them were obese like minimum 50 pounds overweight. The other two, one of them was a pro cyclist. And we know what they eat, right? And we know that they're notorious for not having strong immune systems. And the other one was a guy who I would guess is hypertensive and juiced on steroids. I mean, he was massive and red. But the others, there was a kick, right? Right, right.

But CNN reporting or Fox reporting a kid who's 100 pounds overweight, 16 years old, so fat you can't see his eyes, so obese his ears are sunken into his head and to report it as healthy is malicious. You're basically resetting the reader's baseline is that is healthy. And and it's it boggles my mind that they can get away with reset. I mean, it's abusive and negligent to civilization. And what we have to then say is, this is a system that failed this child. This system failed. So the anger isn't at the kid or why didn't this kid make the decision? And I want to be really clear. I know what you're saying because of the work that you do and how you talk about this. because of the work that you do and how you talk about this. But it's crucial, crucial that we really begin to have a very difficult conversation about these things. And, you know, we're going to

have to unravel the system that allowed or created that kid or made that kid. And it's going to become more and more tough, like, you know, technology more or less, you know, time on laptops at school, more or less, right. You suddenly see that, you know, we're not doing things like walking anymore. We're not doing things like, you know, playing. I mean, everyone recently, like they said, it was New York times put out a piece about, you know, losing weight, 300, 300, like getting to burn 3000 calories a week to really change weight. That was something that came up. A day or a week? A week. And what I think is interesting is of course, calorie in, calorie out, whatever. That's not really the truth. But more importantly,

sort of in that greater context of, of this thing is that people say, oh, 40 minutes of intense exercise every day is required. Yeah, that's fine. I get that. And they're like, no, you did not get 40 minutes or 60 minutes of intense exercise six times a week. You're not even close. And so what we've seen is we have not made the case for the things that make us human. We've not been able to have a real honest conversation about and a conversation that doesn't blame people. Like, look, if you are a triathlete and you came into CrossFit early on, you got your ass kicked and it's not your fault. It's not that triathlon is dumb. It's that you were never exposed to some of these training things. Right. And so let's take that same humility and apply it towards, you know, apply it to some of these other kind of problems

or those issues. There is a gigantic hole in who owns what, who owns pain, who owns health of their family, who owns food quality. We have just completely shot the bed over it. Big industry, big soda, big chocolate, big agribusiness. It's a disaster. And how could the average person who had no experience with this possibly wrap their heads around it, right? So you can begin to see how what complexity there is in trying to untangle this Gordian knot. But all you need to do is work on your corner of the knot. Rob Wolfhahn worked on his corner of the knot. Diana Rogers worked on her corner, right? We can come in a thousand different ways. Amy West, you know,

is working with her physicians trying to change her side. Like, you know, we need more grassroots gyms where people are hanging out together, dicking around in the gym. That is how we'll unravel this thing. Or we won't. And this is what we deserve. We't we haven't um um we've reached an hour

mark are you gonna run away from me should i ask my last question no no let's i'll talk as long as you want buddy okay um let's say let's say you're let's say you're uh 10 years old and your parents do something that pisses you off and you hold on to it until you're 12 and you're 14. Nothing major, but – or whatever variant you want from the worst horrific thing to just not so bad, but you pissed at them because they got a divorce or whatever. And at some point, you reach an age where you – living with that is – there's no value to it. I don't that is there's no value to it. I don't think that there's a value to it. You have to, you have to forgive. You have to transcend. Do you do that before they're dead? Do you wait till they're dead? But at some point,

your happiness is your responsibility. Is that fair? I use the parents as just the example, because so many people have issues with their parents as they get older. I think that is absolutely true. I think that is absolutely true. And as difficult as it is to change your diet and to lose weight and to get healthy, the people who are on that path, I think, need to share the information. It's sort of their obligation to keep sharing information and be good role models and good examples of it. But it's also important to tell the truth that, hey, at some point, it's all going to be on you. I can never do 100 burpees and be like, hey, Kelly, I know you're tired today. I'm going to give you 50. Don't worry about doing them like this. That's the crazy thing about this

journey, right? Because at some point and you kind of nailed it for me, too. I used to be addicted to movement and working out, but now I'm older, I can't do it as much. So now I've really started focusing on my diet, like crazy focusing on my diet. And I didn't realize, and I didn't realize that until you just explained to me, it's because I'm, I'm hurting more and more physically. It's kind of pushed me to start watching more what I'm eating. Um, and that that and i feel like that's the real that's that's that's like the crux right there at some point you have to take ownership a hundred percent responsibility to take this is no nobody can make this journey for you uh this is hang on one second. My dog is being crazy. One second. Yep. Yep. So

personal responsibility versus being a good role model versus not enough. It's not enough because people are worried about getting through their day and surviving, right? They're just trying to cope. Okay. So how much willpower do you have coping at the end of the day to change everything? We, people can't even begin to unravel that. What I'll tell you, because I know, because I live in a community of people who think our family and our friends are insane, right? So what you have to do is appreciate that there's no, until we incentivize systems approach, until children have to have movement competencies to pass on with PE until corporations start, they're not penalized, but until they're incentivized, right? Physical therapy is a really great example of a system

where you come in, everyone gets paid, your problem maybe gets solved or doesn't. I don't actually change anything. I just get you out of pain and you can go about your life again, right? And I'm actually not even paid as a physical therapist and the traditional model to actually restore your full range of motion because you ran out of visits and your copay was $30 and you're not, you're like, did you do your exercises? Sure I did. Right. I mean, it's just, there's no incentive in the system. You know, one of the things I've seen is, you know, I was at a breakfast at the CIA talking with all this senior leadership and some of the military groups and paramilitary groups there had started assigning a dollar amount to the every the amount of training for every one

of the soldiers and so when that soldier went out because her knee hurt or hurt his back hurt they were like oh that's a 3.7 million dollar line item we crossed off and then suddenly everyone in command was very interested in keeping that person engaged, right? As soon as companies begin to appreciate that wellness, as long as we work on this provider payment system, right? That as long as you're getting your health insurance through your work, that system is a choice that we're not, and the people wake up, we're not going to change the system because the system doesn't reward what we're currently doing. The system, right, is not incentivized

until people realize that, hey, if I make a better work environment because this person's on my dime and I have fewer absentee days, I have fewer presidency days. The number one reason people go see a doctor now, musculoskeletal pain. That's the number one reason. Over 50% of the problem is musculoskeletal. So what we can say is, I don't care what's going on. I don't care if you think you have the secret school program. What you're currently doing is not working. We're demi-humans right now. And you can see how you lose your mind or you can go down and chase a rabbit hole like big soda is the issue or exercise intensity is the issue. It doesn't matter what you think the problem is. It's part of the greater problem. Until we change the incentivization and where we begin to expose kids to these thinking, it doesn't matter. Nothing's

going to change. So you can be like, you've got to take personal responsibility. I agree. But until you're incentivized to do that, until you see the upside, don't do this because you may get cancer when you're 70, right? If all these people are like, hey, you know, you will get COVID. You'll get some mystery disease because you're insulin insensitive and you don't move your body. It makes you much more likely to die as the only, you know, breadwinner in your family. That doesn't change. It's not enough to change behavior. There's no incentivize there. So we have to structurally think about constraining the environment. You know, and I think this is one of the ways we stop, we start talking. I was like, look at your kid's feet jumping on the ball,

right? They suddenly you constrained the environment. So the kid has to do the right thing. And then that right thing becomes the normal thing, the modeled behavior. But this health thing is a gigantic, gigantic problem. I was just talking to my wife about it this morning. Punishment never worked on me for as a kid. My mom would, my mom would tell me you can't watch TV. So what would I do? I would wait until she turned the TV on and sneak to a spot in the house where I could watch it. You tell me that I can't go out on weekends. I sneak out the, cause I'm in trouble. I sneak out the window. But whenever I

incentivize my kid, like I told him, if you ride the skateboard a hundred days in a row, well, actually I didn't tell him that, but after he rode the skateboard a hundred days in a row, I surprised him with some ice cream, the ultimate drug. And he said, when can I get more? And I said at 200 days and guess what he's doing? He's going to make it to 200 days. And I'm not suggesting ice cream is the best incentivizing, but he would have never done it if I would have done it with through threatening, right? Now he has some sort of reward. He's been incentivized. And at first I was like, I didn't want to tell anyone that I did stuff like that because I thought it was bribing. But another parent goes, no, no, that's incentivizing. Like, all right. Yeah. And it doesn't even have to be that. Sorry,

one more thing. I also also he asked me one time he said how can i get strong like you and i and i didn't tell him i wasn't strong but i said you just have to exercise a lot and eat right and especially stay away from sugar and that stuck you're like that incentivized him he wants to be strong you were like you mean strong like me and matt frazier totally yeah yeah right right that makes perfect sense i totally get that yeah totally you want to be like me and tia no problem problem. Yeah. Right. One of the things that, you know, has come up in this is I get a lot of questions from parents saying, how do I get my kids to do X exercise? And I was like, it's all about play. It's all about. So if we come back

to the CrossFit gamification, we, you know, men will die for points is a classic Greg ism. And what we saw was, yes, people will cheat, move like shit, win at all costs to get a point. Right. And so maybe that wasn't always the best thing to, to value 100%, but it gave us a way of incentivizing people to work hard because you don't want to be ranked last. Right. We can still have movement quality. We can still still but we can recalibrate that so with your kids you know if you want your kids like my daughter caroline she is going to be 5 10 she's this amazon she can put out she's 12 years old she put out 600 calories on the assault bike right like she's 5 10 and 12 years old no not 5 10 yet she's only 5 7 and. And, uh, so, but you know, my other daughter, like Caroline will do some workouts and stuff, but my other daughter, as soon as she's in a group, as soon as there's play, as soon as it's social, then she gives a crap. Right. And for me, I'm like, we're going to go do front squats and salt bike. And they're like, dad, that's the dumbest, most boring thing.

But if there's five kids around and it's a game, we can give it context. And that is what we've done. We've stripped down exercise out of its constituent parts, which is competing, fellowship, community, humility, fun. We ripped out the fun out of the gym. You have to do eight sets of two at 72.4%. That's workout A, B is this conditioning piece, C is your assistance work. Dude, that sucks. That is just like, I eat them. That's like eating like Neo did on the Nebuchadnezzar where that food came down the tube

and had all the vitamins and minerals. That's what we've done with fitness instead of giving it the context of, man, that was really fun. I saw my family. I saw my friends. I gave people shit. We,

I played around. Fitness will happen as a side effect. That is where we have lost our mind. Metabolic fitness, weight loss will all happen as a side effect of the fact that we forgot what it's like to play. And if you want your kids to do those things, incentivization is great,

but context and playing community is everything. I don't do traditional CrossFit workouts with my kids. I mean, they're only four and six, two four-year-olds and a six-year-old. And so the only one we've done is maybe something like Grace or Isabel, but something that's just so basic. But I don't usually write wads and here's the stopwatch or

anything yeah but but a few days ago they came in there all three of them together and they said they want to do a workout that lets them use the marker because they see my wife and i write with the marker on the board counting our reps and i go oh okay so I started making them these simple wads but they didn't care about the workout they wanted to use the marker right they wanted in between rounds to be able to write on the wall like mom and dad I'm like yeah no problem and they and I made them two six short I made a one couplet they did it I made them another couple they end up being in there for two hours and did six workouts so that they could keep writing on the wall. And there you go. There's the fun piece, right? It is that I, you know, that's where, look, you know,

we can begin to really take a crack at what's going on. You know, I think, you know, I made this case in the, uh, knees out podcast, you know, uh, with Russell that, um, you know, I was like, Hey, women are turning their ACLs at four to six times the rate of men, six to eight times you know, I was like, Hey, women are turning their ACLs at four to six times the rate of men, six to eight times the rate of men. Like, what are you doing about it? You know, and what we're doing about it is, is a whole bunch of apologetics. And at that level, it's really important that the feet become straighter and that we work on those positions and mechanics so that we don't contribute to the issue.

It's less important for my children who are learning to play and I don't need to suck it out, but I can constrain the system. So what we're seeing in like motor learning and motor theory, for example, and you'll see this with your kids, kids love, you know, kids sit, they need a little bit of skill. You'll start to see them. They'll be moving with their feet out, right? As soon as you have them move things on one leg, make the system higher, the brain will be like, nope, can't absorb force with that foot out. So you'll see foot start to turn out. So when we add complexity, when we add constraint, when we add play, the brain begins to solve it. Or you say things like, well, you have to jump and land with your feet together until you have the control.

And I'll tell you when. And so we either constrain the environment by making it so difficult that the brain protects itself, or we constrain the environment by adding in one movement that blocks. And all of a sudden, you will get practice and repetition and practice and repetition. And then it's not something that we have to untangle later on. And what we're seeing is that it's not just about working hard, which was the original ideas that none of us are working hard. But now we're saying, hey, it's okay to put skill and be limited by skill in this position for a moment. That's okay.

It's okay to say that some of the benefits we got in CrossFit weren't because we did more work for less time. It's because we became more skilled and more coordinated people. That was part of the side effect of the kinds of training we did, and that lent itself to a whole bunch of other things. What year did you meet your wife, Kelly? I met her in 2000 in Chile at the World Whitewater Championships. And now it's 2020.

Yeah, we're coming up on our 21st year together, 22nd year together. Is that right? 21st year, 22nd year, I think something like that. And she is the CEO of the Ready State. She is the boss lady. Her brain, her beautiful brain. Juliet's an attorney. She was the CEO of San Francisco CrossFit.

She ran such a badass business there. Her brain works in ways that mine an attorney. She was the CEO of San Francisco CrossFit. She ran such a badass business there. Um, she, her brain works in ways that mine don't. And I'm so lucky to work with my wife because the things that she gets away with or the things I'm able to get away with because her brain is this beautiful CEO brain. It's insane. And she's the greatest training partner I've ever had. Is it, is it a training partner? You guys work out together. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. Um, was there ever a period where you guys stopped and then came back together? No, no. Because once we had the, my wife and I used to work out every single day together and, and then we had the kids and now we've drifted. That's different. There's sometimes you're like,

it's time to go. You need to go. Yeah. I'll do this. You go get it done. Otherwise. Yeah. That's different. There's sometimes you're like, it's time to go. You need to go. I'll do this. You go get it done. Otherwise, yeah, that's very different. But over 20 years, Juliet has been my number one fact. We won't pick up a new sport or activity without the other person because we don't, we're like, look, life is crazy enough that we don't need to train apart, exercise apart, create other skills apart. We need to do things together. So people are like, you should come kiteboard. I'm like, well, unless Juliet's into kiteboarding, I don't have time for that shit. So, you know, we, we, we both are heavy duty mountain bikers. Mountain biking is our jam. That's interesting. You say that. So my wife came up with this idea to just fast one day a week, 24, 36 hours without eating one day a week. And she wanted to try that for a while.

And so of course I was like, yeah, I'll jump on that bandwagon with you. And then she's like, Hey, I'm switching my day from Monday to Sunday. You don't have to. I'm like, I don't have to like, of course I guess what is she talking about? Of course I have to. Yeah. That's, I think it's that exact same thing because, um, if the, the thing is someone walks into the gym for the first time and I'm like, and I tell them like, hey, you're going to be doing an Olympic lifting competition in like three weeks or a month or, you know, and you'll change the way you look and you'll buy these crazy CrossFit shoes and, you know, they'd be like, you're nuts, right? And what's hard to appreciate in the moment for all of us is the length of the experiment. So one of the things

that I'm a big fan of is asking people, I'm like, do you know the inputs and outputs of your coaching or your work? Because don't like, I worked with an athlete for a year, six months, like I don't own the whole thing. I don't really know. I have people who've been crossfitting with me since before we owned San Francisco CrossFit for 16 years, they've been training with me. So I own all of the bullshit. I own all the movement mistakes, I own all the incomplete positions. I own like I own 16 years of training with someone. And what's difficult for people to appreciate with food or movement, health or coordination or quality or skill is that the timeframes are so long. It's really difficult for us to apply the black box model, say inputs and outputs. And so oftentimes what looks like an outlier

is actually just a normal expression of the system if you've given the system enough time to express itself. So yes, that will be a problem for you in 20 years, but that's not why I'm telling you to do it differently now. In the now, I incentivize you because you can go faster and you can work out harder and you can do all these things, but it's really difficult for us to appreciate as humans, the long scope of it. So even if you reduce your sugar one day a week, that would change your life, right? Like, you know, getting people to eat vegetables and fruits again for the first time can change their life. So, you know, instead of saying, hey, those blueberries are full of sugar, I'm like, well,

you know, what did you pull out? And then let that experiment run for a long time. You know, I am now 236 pounds. Last year, I deadlifted 605. I, I did a hundred mile mountain bike ride. I like, I am more skilled and a better athlete now, but people are like, how'd you get so strong? I'm like, well, I've been lifting weights intensely since I found CrossFit. I was lifting weights beforehand and deadlifting and doing Pablo stuff, but I have been doing this thing three to six days a week to seven days a week for over

15 years. You just need to let the thing run and it will work. In some days, you don't have to be heroic. Sometimes I just go in and press, a strict press, and I get on the slack line. I'm like, well, that's what I had today. It did something. I'm taking you back to your wife again. I'm taking you back to your wife again is 20 years of just super duper close right super duper close proximity work workout raise kids basically you've been glued at the hip for 20 years yeah tell me about managing a relationship like that is it easy is it hard is it like how would you describe your relationship with your wife in terms of its success and, and, and, and how you did it? Uh, you know, business partner and boss and employee, and just you guys have all the different hats you wear. Uh, you know, a couple of things. One is, um, you never have it dialed.

Like when, when did you win fitness? Let's, let's discuss this for a second. Like when, when did you decide you won health? Because this is how we're playing this game. There's a great book called Finite and Infinite Games, which looks at sort of the problems of complexity of modern life, applying some aspects of game theory. And not that we should gamify everything and like, hey, I did the dishes, so I get points, right?

I get sex points or something like that. That's all I'm talking about. It's about if you apply and look at every problem is I can win this or lose this. And that's what we did with fitness for a minute, right? I'm winning fitness. I took my shirt off and I look good on this Instagram post in my abs one second, right? This max PR, everything's going to be okay. As soon as I can bench 300, that is never going to, you're never going to get there. And so the problem is that those games, finite games have clear winners and losers and clear rules. Look at your life. Look at your relationships. What are the rules there? How do you define winning? You don't. The only way you

can win a finite game is to play by the rules when That's soccer. An infinite game doesn't have rules. The only way to win is to keep everyone else in play, which means that you're never, ever going to arrive and be able to ghost ride your relationship and be like, hey, I nailed it. I'm the best husband today because tomorrow you're going to have to be the best husband that day and the best dad, and you're going to fuck it up. And what you need is a system where radical transparency, radical honesty. And we have this thing called the feelings meeting where we sit down and we say, how am I doing as a husband? What, you know, where are you going? Because it is a lot. And I don't think everyone is, is set up to be able to work with their partner. But I'll say that for me, I can't imagine working with anyone else or having any other partner in this situation.

So, you know, I'm married to a Titan. She is one of the most extraordinary, badass, driven women I've ever met. And that doesn't mean it's easy. I mean, that doesn't mean she's not, you know, a complex, you know, nurturing person, but it also means like, I don't get to bully her

or rant railroad over her. And what I've had to do is, or learned to do is a couple of things is one, appreciate that Juliet and I are on the same team, always. She's on my team. So sometimes in my man brain, I'm like, my wife's keeping me down. She doesn't want to let me express myself to my school.

I gotta, you know, but I realized that when Juliet has an objection or see something, she sees something that I don't. It's like having this coach all the time that like, hey, you may be missing this. But instead of like fully self-actualized language where she's like, hey, hon, she'll be like, that's a bad idea or you can't do that. And instead of me reacting, I'm like, I wonder what Juliet's seeing here that, you know, that she's appreciating that I'm not appreciating or not understanding. And that mindset is really, really crucial. So one is we have a mechanism by which we can sort of auto-regulate. We can talk. Two is that

I really try to shift my mindset where I can appreciate where Juliet's coming from and appreciate that she's got my best interest at heart. And that really is the operating principle. And then three, I learned to say this thing like, you may be right about that, you know, or tell me more about that. And so my, my, instead of my defensiveness or my, you know, cause I'm a maniac too, you know, we can just be maniacs. You know, one of us has to be, you know, Hey, I can hear that or listen to that in a way that maybe, you know, you don't have that capability. So that, that is what's allowed us to continue to get better at being married, get better at running these businesses. Because it's a lot.

In the COVID crisis, this summer, I developed hiccups for nine days. I had nine days of hiccups. What? Because I developed this ulcer from being so stressed about the gym being closed, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. I get an ulcer. I get the heartburn. The heartburn would cause the hiccups, which would cause more heartburn, which would cause the hiccups, which cause more heartburn.

And I had, they put me on Thorazine. Hey, that didn't work. Oh yeah. I was on a horse trank level dose of gabapentin. That was finally the thing that knocked it down. Like I was on a freakish amount of gabapentin to try to stop this spasm because I was like, Oh my God, I am now going to hiccup the rest of my life. How did you eat? How did you eat? Sorry. I know that's digressing. I lost 11 pounds. I mean, I really like, I was, it was super, super gnarly. I was disabled. Couldn't just take two tums. I try that a lot. Um, you know, Julia had to sleep in the other room because the hiccup, I basically would hiccup like six, eight times a minute. And, you know, it was just crazy whole body convulsions. And, you know, my point is that

is a side effect of the amount of stress we're under. And, you know, like every family, we're under the stress. So what is your mechanism to cope with that? What are your coping strategies? Is it alcohol? Is it THC? Is it sugar? Is it, is it, you know, saunaing? Is it, you know, is it exercise? What was yours? What was yours? Well, we, we sauna a ton, you know, cause it forces us to shut down and then we exercise and we've, we prioritize our sleep. Like we are, I mean, I mean, my daughter Georgia is over here right now and she'll tell you like,

she has to turn her phone in by 10 PM during the week. It has to live in our room. And last night I was like, it's nine 40 time to turn your bed and your phone. And she's like, I still have 20 minutes. We're like, you got to go to bed. And so we prioritize sleep. Like it's our job in this family, because frankly, it's one of those first principles that if you're not sleeping at least eight hours a night, I can't really tell what's going on. You know,

whether it's pain or performance or anything. the night, I can't really tell what's going on, you know, whether it's pain or performance or anything. When, uh, a couple, uh, a couple of weeks before I lost my job with CrossFit, I started, I decided I was going to give up drinking and then like somewhere. And thank God, because it was, that was a great mechanism. When I, when I was under the stress of first losing my job, I immediately just started taking control of my life. Like I became an internal control freak. And it was probably one of the greatest things that happened to me because I was losing control of my external world, right? And so basically I'm just sharing that that was the mechanism that I used to sort of manage my stress. I start just really dialing in everything.

Sleep is not one of those things. I kind of just work until like my eyes are burning and then just crawl on the bed. That's worked for you for a long time. And I think that's one of those things that speaks to some of this greater conversation we're having is that it's difficult. Well, you're like, well, look, I'm the best affid in the room.

Like, screw you. Like, I don't need to change my technique. You know, one of our coaches was a former gymnast and i'll i can talk to her about this she'll be fine you know we've been working on her control she's very strong she's now up in a different gym she moved away but she tore her acl trying to jerk something heavy but her she ended up with a snake back under that jerk and in that position of snake back where she's literally like got a curve in the middle of her back, she doesn't have any hamstring control because her pelvis is cranked over. So her hamstrings and glutes are turned off. And so

when she jerks without hamstrings and glutes, because of the pelvis in that position, she ends up just going right through and shearing her ACL off. Why? Because she's so strong. She's jerking like 250 pounds at like, you know, 130 pounds. Like she's freakish. Right. But that's something where she's like, well, this has always worked for me. Look how strong I am. And all of a sudden I'm like, well, that bit you in the butt. You know, you can not get away with sleep because it's worked for you. Now you can get away with eating like shit until you can't and get away with exercising until you can't, you can get away with your shitty hip mobility until you can't. So instead, that's why we have to be pointing positive that we have to give people tools so they can make better decisions. Have you been getting, uh, and, and just to, and just to finish that previous thought I was having, by the way,

so my life actually has been one, especially since I found CrossFit increment, like none of it happened overnight, but my life has incrementally got better and better and better for 15 years. And what do I mean better and better? I'm more, I've, um, I mean, there's a lot of factors, but basically working on my health. Like when I came to CrossFit, I smoked and drank Coke. and then after a year of crossfit i stopped smoking and stopped drinking coke because they didn't mix and then there was some peer pressure and just all of those things but slowly it's become you know better and better and better and now i don't think i'll ever eat i mean i can't see myself i have no cravings for sugar since i started the carnivore diet i do have cravings for greens and i shove them in there but um in this 20-year relationship i mean it's it's fascinating because this is this is why i keep coming back this because it's fascinating because i do believe that two matches brighter do burn brighter than one and i believe that if you can find a mate who's an amazing teammate like you found and like i found life can be just incredible but i also think that it's important that people

know that it's not easy by not easy i mean when, when it's easy, it's fucking easy. Like you're on a six month streak and you haven't had one disagreement and fucking your high as a kite. And it's just awesome. But there can be sections in there that you have to push through and maybe push. There's not even the right term, but every single time my wife and I have a hiccup and we make it through to the other end, Every single time my wife and I have a hiccup and we make it through to the other end, it was always worth it. Why is that honestly different than any other relationship that you have? I think the key is if you look at this as like fitness is easy, work is easy, all my relationships are easy. I mean, the thing is it's a practice.

And the second you stop appreciating it as a, you know, and you, you can hear all the maxims like, um, you know, straight, you know, married in the bedroom, strangers in public, right. Where like the formality and the respect and the kindness, you know, you can, you can be intimate and let your guard down what you're in the bedroom, but the rest of the time you should should treat that person like you've met them for the first time. You're trying to woo them, right? Not, you know, that I think is an idea around that you'll never win this. You better work on it every day.

And some days you're going to really suck and you need to figure out what's going on. And, you know, if you want the great tranquility, be prepared to sweat the white hot beads. If you want a really deep, meaningful relationship, be prepared to work your ass off. It's much easier to go on Tinder and never have that. That's easier. It's terrible. I think that's a terrible, it would never work for me. You know, we laugh. You've never even seen, you've never even seen Tinder. Twice. And I was like, this is a bad idea. And, you know, what I think is, you know, I laugh all the time.

We, you know, the Onnit kids are all into this polyamory thing, right? And I'm like, Juliet, can you imagine managing one more intimate relationship with another adult? She's like, nope. And I'm like, let me have, I mean, I'm like, I'm sure, I'm sure for two seconds, the sex is wild. And it's, and then all of a sudden you're like solving problems and doing laundry and arguing who's picking up the kids and right. And, and there's a lot going on in enough to meet the needs of a single family. You know, I, there's just, I can't imagine spreading myself out any further because I'm at my limits of trying to do a good job with the family I have

currently. And it's easy. It's easy to mess it up. It's easy to fall asleep at the wheel and do something, take your partner for granted. And that's why you've got to be engaged every day with play. Juliet and I love to ride bikes. We love to paddle. We love to run rivers. We love to train together. And that's one of the things that gives us that moment of where we're not just working, we're not just CEO, you know, founders. We're also like, we remember why we like to hang out with each other. And Juliet is my best friend, you know, and she's not the only person with which I derive emotional security. But, you know, that is the thing. And the more I feed that relationship, the more freedom I have, the more security I have, right? If I, the better job I do at taking care of Juliet and

nurturing our relationship, the easier our relationship is. Isn't that weird? Yeah. The energy. Thank God my wife taught me this before we had kids that I would be like, man, why did the dogs like you so much more? And she's like, because I put more energy into them and I spend more time with them. I was like, oh, that was, wow. Hold on a second. Let me figure that one out. I spend time and I care and I scratch them and then they'll like me more. And when they like me more, I get more out of them. That's right. So weird. These dogs are great. These are the greatest dogs ever. Not to make everything a fitness journey, but your needs. My dad was basically the great Santini, was captain of the football team and flew F4s at college and estranged from me. And a lot of trauma as a kid. And seven years ago, I was carrying around this anger and I got into therapy to feel

my feelings because the things that were allowing me to get up in front of groups and drive hard were also destroying me right things work until they don't work and when i started julia was like hey i think you need to talk to a counselor because you were super angry and it's not great for you and uh you know now i have all these feelings and they're so annoying all these beautifully put by the way and it's not good for you oh yeah like she told you that yeah it's not good for you man and thank god you know i went and talked to someone and you know the stories are just about my childhood that came out when she was like i don't know and the therapist like you know and my point is like fundamentally the the problem with what's going on right now in society is that brains are social organs. So if

you want a brain to actually be a brain, it has to be around other brains. Otherwise it's not a brain. So there's a TV show called alone right now, where everyone goes off into the woods and lives for three to five months. And what drives every single one of the persons out is that they're alone. They're not alone. Other people, it doesn't matter what kind of sociopath you are. is that they're alone. They're not alone. Other people, it doesn't matter what kind of sociopath you are. You have to be around other people. And, you know, what I, what I want just to appreciate for everyone is, you know, you need that sensitivity. You need those feedback makers. You have to be around other people and that's work. It's just going to be work. So you better have some kind of shared experience and shared value system. Otherwise it's not going to work. It's just going to be work. So you better have some kind of shared experience and shared

value system. Otherwise it's not going to work. You have, you have two daughters. I do. And how, and how old are they? Georgia is 16 in April and Caroline is 12, just turned 12. So, so you guys were together four years before you had a kid. Yeah. Is that a good amount of time? I don't know. Julie didn't think she'd get pregnant. Juliet, you know, honestly, she, she, you know, Julie had thyroid cancer when she was 19 and Willie was convinced that she wouldn't be able to get pregnant. And lo and behold,

she talked to her endocrinologist about this. Hey, Kelly, I think about having kids and, you know, I'm really worried. And he was like, no, no, no, you don't have an endocrine problem. You just don't have a thyroid. There's a big difference. And she's like, you don't understand. Like, and she's like, well, call me when you get pregnant. And then Julia got pregnant like the next day.

Hey, there's a monkey. So in short, you know, we, you know, Georgia wasn't surprised because we tried to make a baby and made a baby. You know, there's no surprise there, you know, and we know how the birds and the bees work, but you know, we were also critically poor at the time. I mean, you, you know, when we were in the Mercedes, you know, Daniel, life of a star when we were in the Mercedes, that was the car I could afford.

It was a $2,900 Mercedes. You know, we had just bought this house, emptied every bank account, you know, didn't get any help from family. We just like we were super broke. It wasn't that long ago. And we're still feel super broke. But it wasn't that long ago that, you know, we had a whole different set of issues. You know, it's just the world. The world has changed a lot, you know, for sure. And, you know, Juliet and I have, you know, we met each other and we were both dirtbag rafters and river runners. And then she went to grad school and I went to grad school and we just started working at it. And it's amazing the size of the ditch you can have if you dig a little bit of a ditch every day. You're, you're such a good, um, human and role human because you're a great role model on so many levels. You're you've had a relationship for 20 years. You've raised two daughters. Um, your, your profession is giving to people and making them better. There's thousands of videos on YouTube that you've given away for free. Oh shit. God, I have so many questions for you. Um,

it's, it's really, it's really, it's, it's really remarkable what you've done. You should be so, you should be so, so proud. And, um, yeah, just congratulations. It's awesome. It is really awesome. I really appreciate that, but it doesn't feel like that. It feels like this is the only thing I know how to do. I love coaching.

That's it. So, you know, it's sort of that effortless effort. Like you don't have to motivate me to go to the gym. Like I love to do. I love coaching. That's it. So, you know, it's sort of that effortless effort. Like you don't have to motivate me to go to the gym. Like I love to train. Well, I also love to do this. You know, I, a few years ago, I got a tattoo below the elbow. By the way, one of, one of the nicest tattoos I've ever seen on human being. You did really a good job with that. Yeah. It's cool. Well, you know, now that I'm, now that I'm bald and have a tattoo, uh, I finally have my like full coach. Like, you know, you can tell I'm a coach cause I have tattoos and I'm bald and now I'm growing a beard again. So you need a whistle and shorts or that are too short too much. So, um, you know, I got this tattoo below the elbow

cause I was pretty sure I never wanted to work for someone ever again. And that was me officially like burning the bridge. Like, look, I'm not even, you couldn't even hire me because I have a tattoo that sticks out below my shirt, my t-shirt. Right. And that was the reminder that I'm all into this thing because this is the thing I want to do. I love coaching. I love teaching. There's, we haven't moved the needle enough. There's so much work and opportunity. There's so many other communities that we need to serve. You know, I appreciate that. But also, I feel like I've just have enough experience now to really make my case clear. And I've had enough relationships and enough, you know, enough travel where I can finally have the language and the lexicon to sort of talk about what's important and vital.

And I feel like I'm just getting started. Like the last 15 years have really just been my apprenticeship and okay. I'm not, no longer a beginner. Now I feel like I finally understand a little bit. Like I remember being, you know, early on Mike Bergner was very nice enough because of Eva T. I was able to go down and, and, and assistant coach with Mike Bergner's early Olympic lifting workshops, right? Like I ran the workshop or ran the workshop. I was able to assist the workshop with when OPEX came through, like OPT, when all those guys, AFT were there. And, you know, what Bergner allowed me to do was sleep on someone's couch, show up and keep my mouth shut.

I remember watching him coach thinking, I'll never be able to be as fast or know as much as this human. I need to absorb as much as I could. And now I'm like, oh, no wonder he could see so much. He had 10,000, 20,000, 30,000 hours of experience. And he was able to distill it down into the simplest ideas. I mean, this is why Mike Berger was one of my early senseis because I really appreciate that. And now I appreciate even more because I feel like I've just logged my 20,000th hour, you know, and I am beginning to become competent at this thing. That's not true, but I understand that that mindset of yours is what makes you you've been competent

since the day i met you but i understand and i know you're being sincere and believe that because that's why you're you know you're a guy standing someone's saying how kelly how did you get so good at walking and then they they look down at your feet and they see that you live on a treadmill like like like you were saying it's the only thing you know how to do. And it's like, yeah, and you live and breathe it. There was a, feel free to correct the story. There was one point that we were talking many, many, many years ago, or I heard through the grapevine or whatever, and you were like, hey, I'm going to make a video every single

day for 365 days. And I remember thinking, and they was all going to be around supporting mobility water. What's now is the ready state. And I remember thinking, Oh fuck. He's so smart for doing that. That's discipline. That's structure. That's practice. That's boundaries. And, and you got it it and it all is fucking he's gonna bounce it all on the fucking head of a needle because it's all going to be focused on this one fucking thing how did you tell me about that journey was it hard how'd you come up with the idea were there days that you were like fuck it i want to quit was it like i mean tell me about that because i think that's should be kind of the lesson plan for anyone i kind of tell people that story all the time

they're like how do i get started i go make a video for 365 days and post it. I mean, it's like, it has everything in there. Now my children are so good at that. Like, you know, TikTok, you know, Snapchat streaks, you know, that kids are doing that. You know, when we started the video a day, iPhone didn't have a video camera. You couldn't automatically upload. So it was actually kind of a pain in the ass. And my video friends who are actually like, you know, people forget that you made great documentaries, more than one documentary. You know, I love the documentary about arm wrestling. You know, it's one of my faves. But, you know, what I realized is that I had to get good at one take, that I didn't have time to edit, and I didn't have time to really fuck around with sound and quality.

And I just needed to be topical. And I was so transparent in where I was, what I was doing. And YouTube was barely a phenomenal. So it was very new. So I'm lucky I saw this idea. I'd done that before with a poem a day. I wrote a poem a day for a year. I saw this idea. I'd done that before with a poem a day. I wrote a poem a day for a year.

And so I knew that it got, once you get into the mode, suddenly you start to see content and you are having ideas and it's always running in the background. So you don't have to like, what am I going to talk about today? Because, you know, at day 275, you already have a list of things you want to talk about. And the discipline is actually doing it, of course. But you know, it was actually Tony Budding, bless his little heart, the original media director, you know, we were flying back from an affiliate gathering and we were making some content with Hollis at Across the Sand Cruise that would drip out like the original two minute drills and would drip out like I made a whole bunch of content. But every three weeks or something, a video would come out. And I remember being like, Tony, I need, I have a lot more to say.

And he was like, what the hell are you going to say? You don't have that much to say. Like, you think you can make content every day? Kind of challenged me. He's like, I was like, I need a section on the CrossFit main site about self-care and mobility. And he really was just like, nah, it's not really, it's never going to work. And it's not enough content.

And I was like, fine. So I went home like the next day and started MobilityWOD. And I was so clever because no one used the word mobility. And now that word, I don't even know what that means anymore. And I was the first. I do. I do. I do. I looked on the ready state. Oh, there you go. I know what it means. I was the first WOD anything. There was no WOD. There's no, you know, sobriety WOD, faith WOD, mentality WOD. There's no, there's 10,000 WODs. Giant WOD. Dude, they're all of them are there. And so, you no, there's 10,000 wads, giant wads, dude, they're, they're all of them are there. And so, you know, one of the reasons we changed our name was that

there was just so much confusion about what wad you were and they must be the same because they have wad in the background. And, um, so I started making a video a day and some days I missed, but most of the time I didn't. And sometimes I would get home at 10 o'clock, you know, pass out on the couch because I was exhausted and we had babies and Juliet would be like, you know, you need to film something for today. I'd be like, oh yeah. Okay. And I'd be like, welcome back to mobility. And so the discipline. So she was the boss. So she was the boss back then too. Well, she, she was the, you know, she used to have the world record for most internet stretching videos for for sure, filmed. Like she was a cinematographer for internet stretching videos.

And then, you know, a couple other people have that title now. Eric Maciel is probably the current world record for most content of Kelly Starrett ever. But what's amazing to your point is, you know, I got my, I got my beginnership out quickly. I became much better at looking at camera, talking, incorporating, thinking on my feet and the practice volume. I mean, we've made what four or 5,000 pieces of content now, and maybe more plus all the ancillary stuff. You just get good at it and i understand why like justin bieber can go play in front of a you know he's played in a hundred malls a thousand times and man you just can't you can't replicate that practice there and thank goodness because you

know it's so difficult to make a piece of content um you know edit it that i we do everything in one take so i just have a concept. I talk about it one take. I don't stutter. I don't stop. I just, you know, get it out. I don't say shit. I don't say, oh, I'm an end, you know, and I do. That sucks. I do. God damn it. You, you will do better when you're on the other side of the camera. You know, you have this both sides piece, but I only have one job. I'm not looking at the other thing. And so, you know, thanks for Tony for really saying, hey, there's not room in our CrossFit universe for that. And we're not interested in that. That was what he told me flat out, right? Otherwise, you know, there's a real potential that MobilityWOD would have been

part of the CrossFit ecosystem. But he was like, you know, it's not something we're interested in because no one knew it was a seatbelt back then. And he was like, I don't think, I don't think we need seatbelts. Oh, thank you. Wow. Thank you. That's good. We're only going 17 miles an hour. Like what's the big deal? Eric Maciel works for you? Oh, he is the master. You lucky son of a bitch. I didn't even know that. You know, he, uh, uh, you know, uh, Eric, Eric is a mad genius. You know, I don't even know that. Right. You know, he, uh, you know, uh, Eric, Eric is a mad genius. You know, I don't,

I don't think people realize that you can, you know, if you owned across the gym back then, you know, we, you, there was no rogue. We made our own squat racks.

We, you know, we will that our own pull up bar. We, you know, you know, uh, Adrian Bosman made our first prowler,

you know, those, those things that was the day. And, and now, you know, to run a successful gym, you really have to be very sophisticated about membership and tracking. And, like, you can't just sort of wing it now. People expect sort of a level of professionalism. It's very difficult to run a good, tidy affiliate. Have coaches, health insurance, do it on the legal.

Well, the same thing is true on the other side. You know, it used to be just Juliet and I and Mobility WOD, you know, health insurance, do it on the legal. Well, the same thing is true on the other side. It used to be just Julietta and I and MobilityWOD and some coaches and then one person. And now our daily staff is nine people. We have a huge organization plus our affiliate partners who help us with social media and internet advertising. And if you want to play the game now, you have to become very, very sophisticated. I mean, have you seen our new setup with the, we call it the super cube. Our lighting is better. Our content is better. The cameras are better. If you're going to play the game now, you have to be a little bit more sophisticated. It's hard.

By the way, the website is beautiful. I'll tell that to Juliet. I have nothing to do with that. Yeah. The ready state is beautiful. Everything about it, to Juliet. I have nothing to do with that. Yeah, the ready state is beautiful. Everything about it, the colors, how the text moves around as you scroll down through it. You know, I think that was really the, again, you know, you're never going to arrive. You're not going to say a one business, right? So if you apply that, the key is to go out and practice and get a little bit better today. And you'll get the rest of it tomorrow.

I mean, really, you know, the way you do one thing is the way you do everything, you know, and that can not be more true about how you run your family or being a member of your family, you know, training in your garage, you know, thank God. I mean, thank God I discovered CrossFit because all the gyms are closed and I have a full garage gym at home and I know how to train and everyone, everyone in my community knows how to train themselves. I mean, just thank goodness we, we, we had a little time to practice and be beginners. I don't think you can just be beginner anymore. I mean, I don't know if, if I write supple leopard today, anyone

even notices maybe, you know, I'd like to leave on this note that if you want to become smarter in terms of increasing your vocabulary increasing your self-awareness increasing what you can offer to other human beings how to make yourself a better person how to make people better people you can go to the ready state at YouTube and see all the free videos you want. If you'd like to dive in deeper, Kelly offers four courses and a ton of other stuff on the website. You should go to the Ready State. I was on there for four hours. I didn't see one thing to buy. I'm sure there's something in there, but it's basically just a place to land and just start getting, um, making yourself a better person.

And it's not even if you're just a movement person or it's not even just for yourself, or it can just be about yourself, but really like as a parent, I was like watching the videos. I'm like, Oh my God, I need to pay attention to this. I need to pay attention to that. There's life lessons in there. It's kind of everything. You're a really dynamic human being. Um, your relationship, uh, that we should do full episodes. I'd love to know just tons about your relationship. We both are in relationships for 20 years and I never thought that was a big deal. But as I look around me today, I realized it is a big deal and having, and being, having a loving wife and being a loving husband is important in raising kids.

I would love to talk about a whole show about your history with CrossFit, how you found it to the end, get, you know, even, even dip into some of the hard times that, um, that CrossFit Santa Cruz had with CrossFit HQ, all that stuff. I mean, there's a ton of stuff to unfold, but we're at a hour and 51 minutes. Uh, you know, hopefully, Hey, how dare you? How dare you? How dare you can find some sound bites that are worth, you know, you know, it's, it's amazing. You know, we, the, the process, like I said, the way to think of it is we're a bunch, a lot of us who are around for a minute,

we're a bunch of kids who grew up together and it's difficult to appreciate how much we didn't know and how much experience we have now. And then also appreciating that sometimes, you know, you have, you hang out with different people at college and then you come back and you work together and you realize that everyone has a common language and there are some misunderstandings, but we're also adults now. I'm just, I'm an adult and I can put my ego more, put my ego aside better than I was able to before. You know, I don't need, you know, I've had enough success where I can, you know, it don't have to, it doesn't have to be about me all the time. I mean, I like it to be about me, but it doesn't have to be about me. And I'm happy to be on team queen,

you know, like, I don't know if you watch the crown, but the metaphor for me is like Prince Philip, you know, was such a little whiny bitch. He's married to the queen. He's like, man, what about me and my career? And I'm like, dude, you married the queen. Get on team queen the whole time. I'm like, get on team queen, you little whiny bitch. Like, he just kills me, that guy. And then I'm like, well, am I on team queen? You know, can I, you know, and now I'm, I'm better able at 47 to get on team queen, which means I think we have an incredible set of resources and tools and friends. And if we don't take the next step and try to continue to transform our society and our communities, shame on us because we, we figured some things out and it's, it's easier than we think, but we, you know, we all grew up together and it's okay to say, man, you know, I lost track of you or we had that misunderstanding or, you know, you know, you know, I was blacklisted for a minute in CrossFit, you know, and it's great to be back in the community talking

about the things that I've cared about for 15 years. CrossFit transcendence, CrossFit resurgence. That's right. Kelly, I feel like my selfish reason for doing the podcast of rekindling our friendship. I see the spark. I win. You win. I win. We both win. And thanks for giving me the opportunity to talk to you for so long. It really means a lot to me. I really came into this thinking, why would he do this? But I really appreciate it. Well, because I don't want to be hairy and skinny my whole life. So, um, well, you're not, you're beautiful. My friend, it is great to see you. It's so, Hey, I love hairy and skinny. I'm hairy and skinny as shit right now. It was my goal.

Well, you know, what I realized just juliet and i are mountain bikers um now i carry around these quads and i'm like do i really need to deadlift 600 you know like to be able to be like i'm the biggest fattest mountain biker in the world right now like you know and uh you know i really i'm like why am i so big i'm like a circus bear russian circus bear on a mountain bike and i'm like, maybe hairy and skinny was the way all along. All right, brother. Thanks. Thank you. Yeah. Tell Juliet I said hi. Done and done. Okay. Bye.