The Sevan Podcast - #231 - Ben Bergeron

Episode Date: December 14, 2021

Father, business owner, author, and coach of champions. Ben Bergeron trains some of the world’s fittest athletes. A former Ironman triathlete turned CrossFit Games competitor, Ben has coached athletes to six world championships. As coach to the reigning Fittest Man and Fittest Woman on Earth, he is considered one of the top coaches in the sport of CrossFit. The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Episode Videos https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC59b5GwfJN9HY7uhhCW-ACw/videos Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by car and other conditions apply. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app, you'll get PC Optimum's best price for your grocery items.

Simply add products to your shopping list in the app, and it'll show you similar items at a lower cost. Add coffee to your list, then swap it for one that's cheaper. Craving chips? The app will suggest some on sale. To get started, just open the app. It's as easy as that. See the PC Optimum app for details. Bam, we're live. Hobart, gotta go.

I'm upgrading to Ben Bergeron. Bye. Was that James? that was hobart oh man i don't know if he's ever called me it's so weird it's a good dude he is a good dude good you know i always get him confused i always think that um for a second i always think that he owns crossfit um new england oh yeah you pay taxes on that joint right i do yes yeah yeah yeah it's so he was a part of this ride for a while though yeah it's because there's a there's a there's kind of like that iconic picture of him with the um cfne red shirt on like anytime you go to google images and he's all got his arms crossed and oh yeah cool that's that's the picture what's up brian that beard is fiercer brian i haven't

seen the beard at all man this is my first life i was like damn good morning guys fierce i like it thank you brian's brian's a grown-up um ben do you know matt souza he's the owner of crossfit livermore what's up matt hey ben how you doing i've seen the name before. I've seen it floating around. I've actually attended your immersion in January of 2016. Whoa. Yes, sir. It was actually a very pivotal point coming back as well. So thank you for that.

Yeah. And how do you know Brian? How do I know brian how do i know brian yeah because brian's a celebrity in the crossfit space no no no seven do you know that i think the celebrity i think either the i think the third podcast i ever did with you ben bergeron was on it it was at the 2018 regionals that was podcast number 15 okay you know ben i had my first bad podcast last night and um and and then and and then right after my podcast i watched a bunch of ben bergeron stuff and like it really it helped me it was like fucking crazy it was like for real oh dude for real crazy helped me i got i was just looking at some videos of you and grandpa patrick cummings um not because his voice is weak but because it's soothing holy crap that guy's got

that guy he he's a genre in a mood how is he not doing professional voice work does he do professional voice work he's done some voiceover stuff before he used to do um like really early crossfit stuff you know like when it got faster was a thing yeah i totally remember all that he produced all those videos and did voiceovers i'm talking big time shit like uh like the notebook too you know what i mean like some like romantic thing where it's like with ryan gosling and shit like some tearjerker crap or a christmas story remake of the christmas story i mean he's good okay anyway what else is back to me you're talking christmas story remake of the christmas story i mean he's good okay anyway what else is back to me you're talking christmas story like the one with the little kid like i can't put my arms down no yeah yeah because he's but that was different oh there was a voiceover though yeah yeah he could

be santa yeah or uh or something with uh the coen brothers could use that voice i'm telling you yeah he's artsy too he's good such a clean but you don't have the same way i don't have brian's name on this oh this is not the direction of the podcast was supposed to go the same way i don't have this is the seven and brian podcast you don't have it as the patrick cummings and ben bergeron podcast you don't give no love to patrick no i don't think we call it the ben bergeron but it's not that at the bottom bottom. At the bottom, buddy, on that red screen. Yeah. Isn't yours called the Savant Podcast?

Yeah. Hey, hey, let's stay focused on you. This show is about you. Let's talk about how you're fucking your guy, not how I'm fucking my guy. The Savant Podcast. Oh, my God. Ladies and gentlemen, I know that this man's tagline right now in his life is operating at the speed of trust, and I think I'm dropping the ball. I'm not building trust.

I'm building walls. Lots of withdrawals happening right now. This is a brilliant line. I want to tell you guys something about Ben that I think, that doesn't know that I think and he might say is totally wrong. Life is a record and it's just spinning and we have different size records. And when you get to the end of your record, your needle picks up and it starts at the beginning again. And your record is like fully written by the age of like two or three. And then the record just plays over and over and over. And you have no chance of getting out of it.

Unless, unless there is one way to get out of that record that plays over and over. And some people have really big records and some people have small records. And Ben built a big record. And now he, at the center of that record is something that's calling all of us. Like it's, it's like's like where the battery exists and some of us get the desire to see that battery and if you see that battery there's a stillness that occurs or if you become that battery if you make it to the center of your circle for a split second and you can actually allow a new story to build on your record that's the only way to rewrite your record, if that makes sense.

I think Gandhi said it in a different way. He said, if you don't stop thinking, you'll always have the same thoughts over and over and over. And what he's saying is you need moments of silence to channel in new thoughts. It's like, do you want to be a radio that's always getting new, fresh transmissions, or do you just want to be a tape that plays over and over? So Ben built this record and from the outside, it looks like a dope record. It's a good ass life, helping people, making money,

beautiful wife, kids. But for some reason, he's having the itch to get to the center of that circle and see what's there. So he has started a very intense and serious meditation practice and breathing practice. He suspects there's something there for him. And when you get to the center of the circle, it's like one of those restaurants that's on a needle. That thing doesn't spin. And so when you put your foot on it, you get energized and you feel all this power and safety. But it's so hard picking your foot up from the outside circle that's still spinning and so slowly it rips you in half until your anus gets bigger no it's just that's just where the visual goes bad but that is um i think

that is what ben bergeron is doing now a lot of people don't even try to ever make that attempt to make it into the center of the circle um they they know it's there they sense it's there and that's not what this podcast was going to be about but then after digging into ben i'm like holy shit he's going to make a run for the center and i should have noticed it right away because he made a post a while back about um michael singer untethered soul he's like hey these are the last five or ten books i've read. And then someone wrote in the comments, what's the best book? And he said this one. I'm like, what's this nonsense Ben's reading? Holy fuck. There's no nonsense there at all. This, if you have not read Michael Singer's Untethered Soul, I listened to the audio book

and it's fucking, it's hilarious because a thousand other yogis and gurus and all these people have said it with all this spiritual blah, blah, blah, and this guy just gives it to you. Like, look, just put flour and egg and water and throw it in the oven at 350. It's so fucking great. And here we are. Here we are. Operating at the speed of trust. And so in this – I know I'm supposed to be interviewing Ben.

In Ben's world, when he describes trust, one of the things he would describe it as, and this is in the record, in the outside world, in the record, trust is like, hey, we're going to meet at five. And, and you show up there and your wife's not going to cheat on you. And your kids are going to bring their report card home. But in the center of the circle, trust is something totally different. And trust at the center of the circle is hold on. Maybe I can get maybe I can get a famous seven quote started here. I wrote it down when I was on the assault bike last night. Trust is when you set people free from your expectations so basically trust is free from

all expectations so trust in the center of the circle is someone doesn't show up for dinner at five and you're like yeah that's they weren't supposed to i guess how the fuck is ben gonna bridge those two worlds especially because he made such a great record. And, you know, you feel any of that, what I'm saying, Ben? I didn't know. So whenever we talk, I never know where this is going to go. Me neither. I was taking a shower, and I'm like, oh, fuck, am I really going to go? I really just want to know what happened between him and Matt Fraser.

But, fuck, we ended up – I'm like, holy fuck, this fucker is going to make a shot to become enlightened, and how is he going to do it? And I was just with Fitness Lonnie. Do you know him? Yes. And he just came back from being in the forest for five years. And he hung out at my house for 25, you know, a day and sent me to the moon and back.

You know what I mean? Don't you think it's so crazy that this is like this? Because I know that you're into this as well that we're all this is kind of the thing that we're all chasing now that no one was none of us were really talking about this 15 years ago i tried i tried to did you had this yeah well so i so i used to make these chris spieler videos back in the day now i put the put the dow to ching stephen mitchell translation like underneath it like words and shit and i used to explain to greg and lauren that um crossfit is actually forcing a spiritual revolution because of the focus it puts on breathing and even though i love miko to death

i think the greatest thing you can do when you're fucking wounded is fucking lay down and watch your breath and stop thinking and all your problems go away i mean crossfit forces you into this daoist mindset and they thought I was fucking nuts. And I had this conversation with Greg one time when we were driving, and I love Greg to death, and we're driving to Prescott and he said, hey, if you can't be measured, it doesn't exist. And he told me the five measurements that are in the world.

And I go, but what if there's a measurement that we don't know? And he said, don't be fucking ridiculous. And of course, he drug me into the conversation. That's a form of ad hominem and that's where the conversation stops right but um but i'm i've always been um sorry i don't mean to refute i don't mean to refute you but i i am a uh yeah i mean i love that i was a i mean i was a homeless man who stumbled into crossfit i have i have real faith so i think i what think I came, I think I came the other way. So I kind of, that's what's crazy. I kind of have a huge record.

I had a small little record. It was easy to give up. You got this big motherfucker. I still don't know what you're talking about with a record, but I'm going to play it over. You will, my friend. No, I do like in terms of we are, we are, we are, um, everything's pre-programmed from our past conditioning, and it just – everything that we do is basically – the matrix sets it up for us. So we're just kind of like experiencing life that we don't get to see the real realities, and I'm with you on all that stuff. Here's the way –

You said it to Patrick. You said that there's the same story over and over in your head in one of the podcasts okay that's what i'm referencing as the record i get it yeah um but you know i kind of got i try to meditate like years ago every every year or two you try to meditate everyone tries to do because they know it's supposed to be good for you but it felt so forced and so hollow and not rewarding. And I was the type of person that was like, well, I'm very introspective. I grew up like an extreme introvert, spend days, it seemed like the way I remember it, days upon days of high school, not talking to anybody. So I felt like I was really comfortable in my own head. And because

of that, I was like, that's why I don't need to meditate. Because people are saying like, you have to do this to be able to like slow your thoughts down and be able to think about certain things. And, um, and I got, I got tricked into a little bit because I started reading stoic philosophy because it was kind of bad-ass. It was a little, it translated really well to my athletes and this space that we're in of this like hard charging um you know um i'm in control of my life figure out what you can control what you can't control death is coming to us all make the best of it as you can all of those type of things and then while i was kind of like uh sitting with atza for a lot i I got introduced to, we have one of our members who has a chronic illness and she was doing, um, working with a Wim Hof breath coach to try to like boost her immune system and gain control of the autonomic nervous system and all that stuff.

So I went and I had read his books. I tried a couple of times on my own and I went and worked with a breath coach, a Wim Hof coach for a few sessions. And it was like, whoa, like some dope, dope stuff happening in your head. Like, um, and what, so fast forward, I started getting into more spirituality stuff, reading Michael Singer, Eckhart Tolle and Deepak Chopra and all these things. And, um, the parallels along the way with, uh,ic philosophy and all this, it's just like everyone's talking about the same stuff. So – Deepak fell off the path. Sorry to break it to you on just that.

So speaking of Deepak, so I started working – so I got introduced to Deepak's cousin. And his cousin is a pranayama breath coach. And his cousin is a pranayama breath coach. He's also an MD surgeon in three different places, cardiovascular and all these. And what he found was really good. He's Boston Mass General, like super successful. And he's like, I'm curing. I mean, I'm doing these massive life-saving surgeries on people that this is all preventable. It's preventable through the breathwork that we learned as children growing up in India. So got introduced to Pranayama

breathwork stuff. And I've been working with him for a few months now, Heather and I both, my wife, and through all this practice, you know, it's, I think this comes, I don't know if it's, but I realize that no matter where we are, no matter who you are, everyone is trying to find their purpose. Everyone just wants that thing. They want their purpose. They want the meaning of life. They want to know what that is. Yet it's so elusive and it's so abstract for people that they have a hard time pinning it down. And I believe that if you know, it kind of goes awareness, intention, action.

That's kind of the flywheel of life. If you have an awareness of certain things, then you know how to be really intentional. Like, let's go do this thing, get yourself dialed in, and then take action because really the first two mean nothing without action, but you can't do the action without the first two because you could be climbing ladders and leaning up against the wrong wall or just spinning a wheel really fast and not really going anywhere. So when you have that awareness of what your purpose is, whether it's in, I don't say I had this conversation with chandler and amanda this morning about like like understand what amanda barnhart yep oh man imagine her in person today i did yes i think he sees her almost imagine like he saw did you see what did chandler have

his shirt off he not yet no that'll be this afternoon god that's crazy that you get to hang out with them that's like statues that move for hang out with them. It's like statues that move. For real. Both of them. Chandler's has… Like claymation at its best. Yeah, no, he's like… You know when we were growing up and there was like those He-Man action figures?

He, like He-Man wishes he was Chandler. He-Man wishes he was Amanda Barnhart. Yeah. Amanda Barnhart actually played strong safety for the Patriots this past weekend. Amanda did? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, she's built just like them.

Yeah. When she's on the field, I don't even watch anyone else. I just want to see her move around. I don't care what place she's in. Nothing. And everything to boot. She's got that Hobart. You better care what place she's in if you want to see her.

If she's not in first, you probably won't. Yeah, good point. Even if she is, you might not. Are you taking a knock at media? The way they cover people? Savan and I, we've talked about how he loves watching Travis Mayer. But the event that Travis Mayer won his heat at the CrossFit Games, he never got any screen time.

And Savo was very sad about it. I'm going to get you back on track here, Ben. After I say this, the whole thing about sport is it's competition. If the commentators aren't talking about who's in first and who's in second and talking about the competition, then it's just people working out. It's like football. If there's no other team on the field field it's just dudes throwing the ball and running sprints late it's just late so you have to have the other team so they there's this event at the games where scott pancheck and travis mayer for seven and a half minutes fucking within a half

a second of each other and they never show travis mayer so what the fuck is that so i i so this is really interesting hearing you because like you were a big part of this team for a very long time it's been it's been this most puzzling thing to me forever is and i think i understand where it came from but when you watch the crossfit games they go from close-up shot of one athlete to close-up shot of another athlete and they no other sport does that even individual sports even like in tennis they don't go like, here's Serena hitting it. Here's, I don't know who else is it, Steffi Graf hitting it. That shows my, like, they don't do that in any, like any, like it's show the race and then you use the replay to show the close-ups.

What if in porn they just showed the penis going in and out, but you never saw the vagina, so you never knew if there was even anyone there. It was like that close-up. We just saw a shaft moving sorry everything's got to have a porn ponent everything has to have a porn ponent everything has to have a porn i would i would just clarify ben i don't think savon was ever part of the broadcast team i think he was documenting media in a different way yeah yeah yeah and you Yeah. And you could have had a conversation. Yeah. Yeah, I yelled at them a lot.

So is it because they believe that they want to show the emotion of the sport? That's what I remember hearing. Like, there's so much emotion in our sport, and they want, like, then why are they doing it? Because they don't know what they're doing. There's no one there. Like, there's no ideology. There's no vision.

There's no big picture for the games from the broadcast team. And you know who it really fucks is it fucks Chase and Sean and Tommy and those guys because people blame them. But it's not their fault because they're not watching the event. They're watching the screen, too. That's right. And so they can't say, do you know what I mean? So but no, it's just because no one is no one has like said to them pulled the whole team together. I'm guessing. I mean, I haven't been in every single meeting, but the meetings I have been in, no one has said to them and pounded into them, hey, you're going to be fucking fired if you don't show the competition. The whole point is we need to build attention and pressure and a narrative. There's also no competition.

Free narrative. Free narrative. Go ahead. Sorry, Brian. There's also no competition to really to broadcast a crossfit event they were never done before people had to learn how to do it and the company that's doing it now is the only one that's ever really done it for the games and everyone else outside media companies that try to do this at sanctionals they are not familiar with the sport of crossfit and

it's very different sport to shoot than you know horse racing or uh you know a sailing event but even horse racing, they show all the horses. They don't just zoom in on one horse. And then even sailing, they show the sailing events. The only time it's one athlete is when it's like skiing. Or gymnastics.

True story. I edited porn for a week and I got fired because I tried to put a narrative in there. They're like, there's too many cuts and it's not a story they just want to fuck and it's the end but i tried to make it like this girl went missing and they were trying to find her and and they're like with like title card and i got fired you just need to move to soft porn that's like you know like the skin of max yeah um dylan val dylan you this is our um this is a guy he's a uh aspiring professional fighter ben and he always gives money i can't the world needs ben's podcast it's constantly pushing and

mapping out how to have an agency over one's life wow well said um the biggest impact we can have on the world is for every individual to chase excellence long time fan thanks guys dylan ben has a new book out it is it's awesome dylan thanks man it's called you can jump in unlocking potential unlocking potential so prepared for this four pages of notes i fuck myself that's the easiest that's the but we got the record thing in the porn in so the audiobook is not available yet or else i would own it uh right yeah that just takes a long time not that writing a book doesn't but hey it's patrick cummings fault is it going to be your voice ben it will be yeah yeah do you enjoy listening back to your own voice no no does anybody yeah actually i listened to my pot after 200 and some odd podcast i the other day i was had my

wife's phone and she was listening to it and i hit play on it and i started laughing i'm like fuck i'm funny hey ben like i know i'm like i just never knew that i hate myself hey ben how difficult was it for you to read the first the first book was that a really hard we talked about this on the last podcast I was on with Sivan. It's super hard because I'm dyslexic. So it's like, not only is it hard, because it's hard anyway, but I can't read. So it makes it really, really hard.

Yeah. And then I don't know what the hell I'm doing. I have no direction to your point. I'm like, I have no media people. I have no person in the booth being like, this is how you should do this. Or like, make sure you bring a glass of water in there or like right it's just like and if you forget a word or mispronounce one your whole line's gone you got to restart yeah and if so the second rodeo hopefully is a little bit better um for me but um i think it's because i'll take as dylan was just saying i'll

take more agency over it i'm not gonna i don't want the producer being like, um, that wasn't the exact right word. Just let me, I just want to like, if I can get, it's what part of the podcast and part of the book is about, but allow myself to get into a flow state. Like it's constantly like, nope, sorry. Can we take that again? You said that that was, um, the, um the and you said you know you just kind of said it mumbled if you could just so it's like oh i hopefully the next one's a little bit smoother yeah oh ben i don't know if i like what you're talking about trust the coach trust the coach they know what they're doing no i think the problem is i didn't have a coach if i had a coach i would have oh i had i had a guy that just wanted to do it completely by the book.

Ben, I want to, you know, that comment from Dylan about chasing excellence and everyone having that. And then also this comment you made about getting in the flow state. People, a lot of people ask me about your life philosophy. They've read your book, a lot of CrossFitters, of course, just lay people I'm talking about primarily. But I and often I say to them, I say, I really love, um, the stuff that Ben puts out there, but his lifestyle is like, I can't do it. I can't do that amount of discipline, you know? And I don't know if your life has evolved in this way, but I remember listening to years ago where you talk about, I have, I wake up at

this time. I do this thing. I do this thing. I make sure I have time for this. I make sure I have time for that and this and this. And actually, James Fitzgerald. Try texting with this motherfucker. Try texting with Ben. Try it. I dare you. Try it.

Well, you won't get anything between hours of 6 p.m. and 11 a.m. the next day, I think, or something like that. But anyway, James Fitzgerald is similar. He's like, you want to optimize your life? You need to do the same thing at the same time every day. And then you'll have this flow and it'll be natural and circadian rhythm and predictability and whatever. And my life is a total opposite. Although I feel like I'm in a flow state and I feel like I'm being productive. The majority of the hours of the day, I train at different times every day. I write at different times every day. I sleep at different times every day. I eat at

different times every day. And because I've, I've been wanting to for years, ask you on your perspective on that. I I mean am I totally off the mark of what you're talking about or is it just the same thing in a different way no it's no no way it's the same thing a different way if you're getting into a flow state there's no one prescription for it right so every single one we are all our own unique special snowflakes and for you to try to be like me is ridiculous and that's's, that's not, you have a different set of genetics, upbringing, opportunities, past condition, like everything. You have different goals, different motivations, different you know, there's a different voice inside your head.

That's inside mine. So this is what's worked really well for me. And to me, it's not a matter of, this is what I was going to say about the, you know, going full circle back. And I hope I come back to Brian's question, but the chat about Amanda and, um, exactly before that one. Yeah, yeah, exactly. We all have this. It's, you need a certain level of awareness, right? You have to have a level of awareness. And for me, that biggest level of awareness is what is my purpose? What is my passion? What am I here on planet Earth trying to do? And if you have that thing, holy crap, then all you need is some intentionality.

And for me, this is for me, my purpose is to live a fulfilled life. Now, you can change that word out, change that for almost anything, because to me, we all have the same purpose. And whether you change that out for becoming enlightened, as Sivan said, or the evolution of your consciousness, or find eternal joy and happiness, or finding God, those are all the same thing. We're just calling them different things. Then from there, then from there, that's your inner purpose. I believe that we all have an outer purpose as well, which people get confused.

And our outer purpose is unique to you. And Brian's is different than mine, which is different to Vaughn and Matt's and so on. But your outer purpose is unique to you. So you guys probably has a lot more to do with creativity than mine does, which probably has a little more structure, but certainly mine, my outer purpose is to transform a tribe. Like that is what I am. I feel like I get the most fulfillment out of my life with is I want to, and those words mean a lot to me, a tribe, which we are so ultimately familiar with in our space, you know, has a certain language,

certain rituals, routines, beliefs, values, certain set of clothing, a certain way of going about and doing things, and then to transform that. So the opposite of transformational is transactional. Transactional, if you had a transactional basketball coach, they would teach you about a pick and roll, running a triangle offense, zone defense, full court press, and how to let your fingertips follow through on your foul shot. A transformational coach doesn't bypass those things. They do those things, but they make you a better person. And they make you, when you're done with basketball, you have now transformed on an inner level beyond something that you were before. A transactional coach, when you're done with basketball, that coach did nothing for you.

Whereas transformational coaches do something so much more. So for me, my outer purpose now, right now, which is not the same as it was when I was 14, which is not the same as it was when I was 24, and it won't be the same, I hope, when I'm 64. I hope it's evolved into something else. And to me, that's the difference of your inner purpose is shared, but we all call it something different. Your outer purpose is unique to you. And it also changes throughout your lifetime. And I believe that people are confusing what those two things are. And they're always trying to think that it's something you're

born to do, but there's naming and trying to find their outer purpose. And that's what creates all this level of confusion. So if you take enough time and space and whether it's whatever it is to create that level of awareness of what is truly you believe your intentional, your inner purpose and outer purpose, then from there, it becomes the intentionality aspect. it becomes the intentionality aspect. And so awareness, the next one's intentionality. And intentionality, it doesn't matter how you, it's what speaks to you. So for Siobhan, it might be meditating. For somebody else, it might be journaling. For somebody else, it may be walking through nature. Somebody else, it might be climbing 14 peaks in a year or whatever it is. So for someone else, it might be going to church every weekend.

So the mechanisms that we use to get there is as unique to us as our outer purposes, but we are all searching for that same thing. And here's what I believe, and this goes full circle back to what we were talking about earlier, I believe that this CrossFit methodology is as worthy of a path to enlightenment as anything else that's existed. I believe that, you know, Greg said you can't measure it, but he also said the greatest adaptation happens between your ears. And that's what he was alluding to. When you go through this practice of training the way we do on a consistent basis, that first level awareness of the voice in your head is so prominent that you can't ignore it. And there's close to 50% of the people that don't believe there's a voice inside their head is that true really that's a made-up stat i heard from somebody else so i like it though i like let's go it comes from it comes from um i just read the book it uh it takes what it takes it's uh russell wilson's um sports psychologist guy i'm blanking on his name um but it's a good book it

takes what it takes so here's the thing whether you're that the covey guy is that the covey guy no no no he would not forget that guy's name it's right here um trevor moad oh 80 some guy just said 86 of statistics are made up so you're in there oh yeah all the things i say i'm made up that's why podcasts are such an awesome platform because you say whatever you want same thing documentaries by the way awesome platform. Can you say whatever you want? Same thing with documentaries, by the way. Ouch, ouch. My two favorite, my two favorite mediums. So, um, you know, if it's kind of like, all right, let's talk about, let's talk about nutrition for a second. Nutrition. There's two, just like this. I think that you have your inner and your outer purpose. Nutrition. There's two things. There is the amount of calories that you eat, and there is

the avoidance of processed foods. There's basically nothing else that matters in nutrition. Those are the two things ever. Now, whether you choose paleo, vegan, whole food, carnivore, keto, macros, those are all intermittent fasting. Dude, like choose it. Why are we fighting? Choose the one that works for you. There's no reason to figure out like, is it meditation? Is it religion? Is it church? Is it spirituality?

Is it walking in the woods? Is it CrossFit? Is it journaling? It's like, they're all like, they're all worthwhile pursuits to get to this end state. Call it what you want. Enlightenment, finding God, um, eternal bliss, happiness, and joy, heaven on earth or whatever worthwhile pursuits to get to this end state call it what you want enlightenment finding god um eternal bliss happiness and joy heaven on earth or whatever it might be so um i get distracted i read these quotes when they pop up yeah go ahead good the great thing about podcasts is you can

quote anything and totally make up the source abraham lincoln so good so good ben ben say those two things about nutrition again the two generalities what he said so good oh there's only two there's only like there's only two things it's um are you eating less or more calories so it's calorie intake and then it's um quality food are you eating processed foods or eating shit so i would so i think it was sometime in three to five years ago, you had three rules for a diet. Do you remember when you had three? I hope that those were two of them. No, they weren't. They weren't.

And that's the point is your understanding of this has evolved and synthesized from three to two. And I think it's evolved in a mature way. I can't remember exactly what you said. Not too much, mostly plants. That's it. Those are the three. Yeah. So he had had those three.

And you basically said, look, there's a million things out there. But if you look at any of them, these three are going to be embedded into them in one way or another. And now you've been able to move forward in your process of understanding that and simplify it to only two. And I like the two a lot more than the three. Oh, no. Because. Go ahead. Take a break.

Say hi to Heidi, Brian. Say hi to Heidi. Hi, Heidi. Thank you. I like the three of the two more than three. I've personally in the last year as a result of some of the, just us and you, I guess, as a result of some of the stuff that I let's just listen to you, I guess, as a result of some of the stuff that I've learned on this podcast have eliminated plants, pretty much eliminated plants from my diet, just as an, as an experiment. I like to do personal experience with nutrition

and exercise for myself so I can relate to others. Um, anyway, so then, and I was like, always thinking about that. Cause I loved when you had said those three. And then I was thinking about in this past year and I'm like, man, there's some super people that appear to be super healthy and knowledgeable about diet and they are clearly omitting one of those, the mostly plants. Yeah. So like the mostly plants one. So if you were to take the true nutrient densities of food, right. And rank them in order. And you were to ask the general public, like what's the most nutrient dense, meaning how many vitamins, minerals, and fiber are in a calorie of this food. And you say, what's the most nutritious food group there

is? 85% of the population is going to go vegetables. And what about the other 15%? They're going to be either not know what the hell you're talking about, or they'll be more knowledgeable. And though, because when you actually break it down, the most nutrient dense not know what the hell you're talking about or they'll be more knowledgeable and though because when you actually break it down the most nutrient dense food group there is is organs organs correct exactly right now that's that's not the end of the so you don't go like organ meats are the best thing for you because that's not the end of the argument either the reason that people were misled to think that it was vegetables is because people ranked how beneficial vitamin certain vitamins and minerals were to the human body so they gave more credit to

zinc magnesium potassium calcium um vitamin a c d and e and then they give a lot of credit to things like selenium and other stuff and iron and other stuff, which are just, all organ meats are chopped full of. So the debate rages on, like, what is the best thing? Is it vegetables or is it meat? Like, I don't know the answer to that, but there's two things that to date are really, really, really consistent. And that is that being hungry is better than being full and whole foods are better than processed foods.

Those are the two that any nutritionist is not going to debate with. Do you know there's 78 organs in the human body? I did not know that. Five of them are considered vital for survival. Why the fuck can Ben espouse on all this spiritual shit? No one's saying he smokes weed, but I fucking start talking about it and everyone's like this motherfucker stone i don't first of all i don't i haven't smoked weed in 200 years i don't do gummies i don't do edibles but i'm like a perfect human being except for the fact i don't like i don't do the sleep i i probably sleep only five or six

hours a night and then i nap i do a good well i never try to sleep but then i i sit still in the middle of the day for an hour usually seven Savan, you could be high without using drugs though. And maybe going back to our original conversation. I can't win that conversation if you're going to do me like that. But maybe about this pursuit of enlightenment, meditative state that you guys were talking about at the start. Or you were talking about it at that time actually. Maybe you're experiencing some of that today as a result of your uh pursuits in the last year or so oh right like i'm having a pavlovian response to all the times i used to smoke a lot of weed and talk about this shit and talk about it now so i'm

getting wow damn you fucked me up brian hey listed below are the tabular columns of 78 different types of organs of the human body the anus sorry i just have to say that's one of my favorite words that's an organ the penis that's crazy the rectum the rectum and the anus are separate no no testes are those are these three of the vital five clitoris bone marrow no this is like just all 78 i'm looking at uterus skeletal muscle i think most people are curious of the vital ones at this point yeah i don't i just i just wanted to throw some context in there organs organ meat organ meat so it's yeah say something this podcast is right i know i'm gonna pull it back on track so i want to talk about something you said real quick here about two two things you you said you said about the inner and outer um you were said you said about the inner and outer um

you you were you were talking about the inner and outer world and the confusion and this is a topic that i talk about um ad nauseum is people conflate reality with their thoughts and it's in it and you you said it you didn't say it quite like this but you did say that this is where all the problems and confusion come from and i agree completely and I'll give you some really, really simple ideas. First of all, there are no ideas that are real. All your ideas are inside your head. And I'll give you one that's like the most potent one that people struggle with is there is no such thing as racism. Racism is made up. It's an idea in your head. Now, if you write on a piece of paper, something racist, all Jewish people are bad. And that is a writing of racist on a piece of paper, but that's different than the idea of racism that you put in

your head, that you project on the shit that you project onto the outer world. I give you another more simple and less charged example is a red light means stop. We all agree that we know that it doesn't really mean stop. We agree on that so that cars don't crash into each other. We agree on certain things, just like we could agree that. But there is but this conflation of ideas versus what is reality is what's really, really screwing things up. I'm perfectly OK with this idea of gender as long as it stays as an idea of gender. And the whole world's doing it. The smartest people in the world are conflating gender and sex. Look up the definition of gender. These things are being conflated. And it's where

all the problem is. We're not talking about the same thing. And to circle, tie this all the way back to enlightenment is that if you are caught up on those things, you will not make it to the center of the circle. If you are being offended by those things – and Ben talks about this a lot in a different way. He talks about the importance that he calls it feedback. And when I listen to him talk, I talk about it being offended. If you cannot take feedback, you will not grow. You will not become enlightened. You will not have a healthy relationship with your wife.

feedback, you will not grow. You will not become enlightened. You will not have a healthy relationship with your wife. And then to tie it, even one more thing that Ben really talked about, and I'd really like to hear you talk a lot about this is trust. I really trust the world. And that's why I'm so fucking happy in the world. I really trust the world. And, um, and, and I really trust my wife. I think i trust my wife more than she trusts me and therefore i'm happier in the relationship but but but the line that ben says over and over in many places and i and i did write that down uh here don't say it don't say it okay go ahead say operating at the speed of trust that's really important for you to know. And that also gives me some concerns about using microdosing as therapy or MDMA as therapy, because what that does is that does build your trust. But if you don't have a practice and cultivate trust after you've experienced it through these therapies, you will have bigger issues further down the road.

Does any of that jive with what you're saying yeah so inflating reality so yes i i think that i totally understand uh um um we like ideas we the ideas we like to label things give them um form and um understanding so we can uh it's not a bad thing. We need it to navigate through the world. Like government is a thing that we agree upon, right? A business, an LLC is a thing that we agree upon. It's nothing more than that. The land that we own, like when we came, when, when Europeans came over to America and they divvied up the land with pieces of paper, the Native Americans were like, what the, what the hell is you doing? This makes no sense.

Even gravity, Ben can't own the you doing? This makes no sense. Even gravity, Ben. You can't own the land. Like it makes no sense. So all of it. Yeah, even gravity. It's just an idea. We see the phenomenon.

I'm not denying the phenomenon. But the idea and the theory and the math behind it, these are ideas. But Ben is real But Ben is real. Ben is real. Well, no, Ben is not because Ben is a label you're putting on my being. Yeah, that guy. That thing is real. My being. The being is real.

The thing that Ben is signifying is real. Yes. This microphone that I rub on my mustache. Okay. okay so here's the whole like the thoughts are we cannot truly know ourselves until we find space and in the gap

in that gap is where we can truly find the center of the I don't want to throw the baby out with the bath water though and I know you want to keep the comp train empire and be enlightened. I love it. I love it. I love it. No, I, there's a reason that our species has evolved to the point it has, and it's because of thoughts. And part of the whole movement that we're in is like, be present, be present, find stillness, find space. Your thoughts are,

your thoughts are the enemy of everything and every trouble that you've ever had in your whole life is because of the thoughts that you have. Possibly, but that's an idea. So what we need to do is not, it's also the thoughts that we have are also the reason that we are talking on a podcast, that you have a coat, that you have a home to be in, that you can learn from your past, predict things in the future that might cause pain. And it's a good thing. So thoughts are good. It's like, I realize all the spiritual aspect of this whole thing, but we have to recognize as well that there is beneficial aspects to thoughts. It's when the thought gets messed up that that causes all the unnecessary

suffering that is like racism like or when we react when we react to the thoughts like exactly so it's based off our past conditioning and our fears and anxieties of the future are seeking pleasure and avoiding pain and this anxiety thing that we have, which is built into us from a biological perspective for survival, it's just that it's gone haywire. We don't longer have the issues of real life survival, so we turn them onto other things. Back in the day, our brain was the most efficient thing that has ever existed in the history of the world in order to create something, which is this society that we, it's why we've rose to dominance in the animal kingdom, because we were able to prepare and learn and adapt like nothing else. But now there is not the necessary problems to solve

like they were then, like, let's go get the next meal. Let's build the shelter. Let's avoid the natural disaster, the real life-threatening things. So we go, the problem-seeking mechanism has not been diminished at all. It's always going to be there. And we're just seeking things to solve that don't exist anymore. And we think that what that person said on social media is life-threatening when it's not. We think that your boss asking you to work on the media is life-threatening when it's not we think that your boss asking you to work on the weekend is life-threatening and it's not we think the person honking their horn and cutting off the traffic is life-threatening and it's not and when i say think it's actually not fake because we're not logical if we thought it through it

would be okay we're emotional beings do we rise and fall to the's all about the amygdala part of the brain. I know I've heard you talk about this stuff, but that causes these. When you say emotional, people think it's like diminishing. So I won't say a lot of emotional. I'll say that it's the psychological aspect of our brain, not the logical. It's the psycho-logical. There's the logical and there's the psycho logical the psychological is the emotional part that's ingrained in us for survival it happens way faster than the logical part of our

brain does the logical broader brain is when you step back from something which makes it seem more real right which means like let's say somebody cuts you off in traffic. When that happens, your biological brain is going to have a hormonal reaction that goes like it's survival. They're threatening me, my tribe, whatever it might be. I need to defend and I need to defend now vigorously. So then there goes the finger. Then goes the horn. And then goes cutting them off or slamming on your brakes to get as close to causing an accident as you're possibly doing it. And then you go like five days later, you like you don't remember it but if you do remember you're kind of like well that

wasn't that big of a deal that's the logic and you don't even feel and you don't even feel good about it right because you you shouldn't feel good about it because you're the non-logical the psycho logical part took over and through this your practices of meditation or journaling or again, whatever you want to do, church, read scripture, whatever it is, what we can do there is help to balance those things out a little bit. And we get a little bit of space potentially from that emotional side, because it's not the thinking that's wrong. from that emotional side. Because it's not the thinking that's wrong. It's the overthinking and the overanalyzing. That's what causes anxiety. That's what causes the gut reaction in our stomachs that you can feel when something isn't right and you get nervous about something. Or

you're not, you didn't like the way something went and you felt guilt about something. And to me, I've really enjoyed putting this into a disciplined practice that I do every day of trying to find a little bit of separation between my thoughts. It's mind, body, spirit. And can you pull those apart a little bit? And spirit is like your soul spirit is like, you're truly the essence of who you truly are. You're true being not Ben, not business owner, not father, husband, coach, not guy that grew up in this town and is 44 years old. But the, the soul is the thing that doesn't change it. It's, years old, but the soul is the thing that doesn't change it. It's the deeper level of understanding of the I am, I am. And when you can kind of have some awareness of that, well, then you can be more

intentional with the way you navigate the world, whether it's Brian's creative spontaneity, let life come at me, or my disciplined structure, disciplined allows you to have the autonomy to live a happy life, or it's something in between. And to me, when you get that awareness, that intention, then you have to take that massive action because without the action, there's nothing, right? Like I can, I can want to have wisdom. So I'm going to read a lot and buy a lot of books. That's the intention. I bought a lot of books, but until I actually read, it doesn't, it's not doing anything. But to me, you're just picking up books and starting to read is not very productive either because for what end state, what are you trying to accomplish that's

why you need the awareness part in the beginning so i'm a big fan of taking massive massive action towards uh i don't want to i don't like the word goals but towards um what you think will fulfill you on your deathbed and having that level that level of of the you need to bring onto everything. So you have awareness, intention, action, all layered with a layer of perspective. Because otherwise, without the perspective, you could really end up in a selfish pursuit. Or you could be the type of person that goes, I'm just going to travel around the Andes and then, you know, and like not have any true real meaning to your life or any hindsight. Like it helps to see things from afar and from a distance. A few minutes ago, I was thinking, as you were talking, I was thinking about, I'm sure everyone

knows a person who is very even keel, you know, things happen in their life and their ups and their downs are very small. They don't, they don't appear to be very emotional. They don't appear to have big, major reactions to things in their life. And then there's obviously people quite the opposite who have these tremendous highs, these tremendous lows. They cry easily. They laugh easily. They have the best experiences and they also have the worst experiences. And you probably are, you know, most people are probably somewhere in between, but you know someone who's each extreme. What I think and what I hear you saying about these daily practices you do is very similar

to CrossFit, is that you're just consistently day after day after day working on that so that when those moments come, when you should be experiencing extreme high or extreme low, even if you're a generally even keeled person, that you're still aware of how you're responding to that moment. Because most of the moments in our life, I think are like, we got a good handle on them, but everyone's going to have those situations arise where something's going to happen and you have to react quickly and you're either going to react logically or illogically based on the preparation that you've done over time. And the reason why I say it's comparable to CrossFit is because we know that by putting ourselves in challenging situations day after day after day in the gym,

and by constantly evolving how we interact with those by understanding our breathing more, like Savan talks about learning a new skill, whatever, that it's potentially preparing us for a time that won't ever come, or it could be preparing us for a moment in which we can draw on all those experiences to have a successful or productive interaction in a time of crisis. Yeah. So I, I, I love that, Brian. That's like one of my litmus tests for myself. And one of the reasons I do what I'm doing in terms of particularly CrossFit is my biggest fear is that I become a liability to my family. That's my number one fear is that my family has to take care of me. And I always want to be an asset. I want to be the guy that's there that able to take care of them throughout my entire life. When I'm 95 years old, I want to be able to continue to be,

you know, this is kind of what the book is about, but be a leader. And I think the word leader, I've had a hard time writing a book about leadership because it's something I'm trying to work on. It's like, I didn't want to write a book saying like, I figured it out at all. It's really something that I continually work on. I am so ultimately aware of my shortcomings that it's hard to write this book. But I wanted to basically, because what you just said there to me is a massive aspect to this, is as the seas get rougher, a leader gets calmer. And if you put in these daily practices, which I do believe is what we should all be doing and reason that we, we go to the gym and train really hard for six days a week is

because yes, the physical, the physicality aspect of, um, being an asset, but also the mental aspect of, um, having that composure when you get the call at 3 a.m. in the morning, what are you going to do? You get that call at 3 a.m. in the morning. Are you, as you said, the emotional person that has these massive swings either which way, or are you the pendulum that just sits in the middle? I'm not saying don't swing at all, but a pendulum that swings, like people that you see people in your lives, and I know I am in my life, that had this, they're like so full of joy and so happy and they're so like over the top boisterous. Well, if that pendulum goes all the way over here, it has to swing the other way. And I'm not saying go through life as a complete stoic. I'm not saying stoicism is the thing. What I'm saying is you through life as a complete stoic. I'm not saying it's stoicism is

the thing, but I'm saying is you can narrow up the swings a little bit, have passion, have love, have joy, have tears, have sorrow, have grief. But if it destroys you or those moments make you, If it destroys you or those moments make you, you're not going to have the consistency to be an asset to your family. And a leader, someone that leads to me is somebody that shows that they care. That always has to be number one, care. Then consistency, that's number two. And then competence. Competence is actually third. And what I think most leaders do is they want to come in and show how smart they are, how good they are. I got my level one as a coach and I'm going to show you everything there is to know about a snatch before showing somebody that you care about them. And while you're trying

to show everything you can, you're over-coaching them. And the person's like, who the hell is this guy telling me what to do with it? And you haven't shown that you cared about this person in a consistent way. So, you know, Siobhan, you were talking about that we operate at the speed of trust. That's where trust comes from. Trust comes from those three things. And I really love the word unconditional because you were talking about like the different levels. There's like, yes, I know you're going to show up to lunch tomorrow. That's a certain level of trust. I know that you might not swear on this podcast. That's out the window.

OK, so there's not that level of trust. It's like, but there's different levels of trust that like you can just basically X's and O's. I know that these things are going to happen or not. But there's unconditional trust. And unconditional is this crazy, crazy, crazy word and fill in the blank after it, which is so cool. Like unconditional trust, unconditional love for my athletes, unconditional competitiveness. What that means is no matter what. So let's take unconditional love. And when Heather and I came across this term, it kind of rocked us because we had the conversation. We meditated on it. And then after the meditation, we talked about it it and the conversation was then, um, I don't know if I love you

unconditionally. Now that's a hard conversation to have with your wife of 10, 11, 12 years, but think about that word is that means no matter what. I just want to interject. I would say it's better to admit that than to pretend the opposite. For sure. It does make it easier. It's still a hard conversation. That's no matter what. No matter what you say about me. What's the deal breaker? You find out your mate's a pedophile? Let's name those things. They hurt your kids? Yeah, that's the one I go to.

My wife cheats on me. I'm unconditional love. My wife hurts my kids and fuck, man. Now we got a fucking problem. Yeah, but that's what unconditional love is. It means regardless, no matter what. Now, so when I first heard that, I go like, well, it doesn't exist. Like it just doesn't, that's not a thing then. It's like it doesn't, but Siobhan, you know it does because that's how you love your kids.

Yes. You love your kids unconditionally. If my kid tried to stab me or cut off my left testicle in the middle of the night, I would wake up and love them. Not like a little bit less, like zero less. Now, I'm disappointed. I may be angry. I may be incredibly frustrated.

I might have a lot of questions, but the love thing does not change at all. Like not at all. I want to throw in one quick thing here that's practical for people people to use this is the point you leverage your ego against yourself and you fucking let your ego just eat that shit you are at fucking dinner and someone serves you a brownie and you proved you let your ego go i am not going to eat that because i love my kids and i want to live to 95 and be healthy. When you're about to waste your fucking money on something stupid, you say, no, I'm not going to do that because I love my kids unconditionally. I'm going to put that in a savings account for them so when I'm dead, they have money.

This is how you leverage your ego to make yourself and everyone's life around you better because you find something like that, like your kids. Because you don't want to let them down no matter what, right? So it's 10 o'clock at night. You don't want to work out, but all you got to do is go out in the garage and ride the assault bike for 10 minutes and you can check the box, get out there and fucking do it. You know why? Because you have an ego that can't let down its identity that you love your kids over everything else. That is a healthy use, in my opinion, of letting your ego control the train. If you can do it like that. I do that shit all the time. All the time. Here's the evolution.

I see the trash guy dump my trash and some shit goes like out into the street and it's like raining and cold and I'm in my underwear and I don't have shoes on and I don't want to go out there and pick it up. I leverage my ego. I don't want the neighbors to see or anyone to drive by my house and see it looks bad. So I leverage that to do the right thing. want to go out there and pick it up i leverage my ego i don't want the neighbors to see or anyone to drive by my house and see it looks bad so i leverage that to do the right thing and i go out there and pick up all the fucking trash and i and every time i feel better about myself for sure yeah and then i shut that fucker around shut up don't talk to me again when i'm in my underwear here's the the evolution of our consciousness is can we bring that same leverage, not just to your kids, but to the rest of your family,

to the rest of your team, to the rest of your community and the rest of humanity. And when you have that same feeling that you do for every living being on planet earth that you have for your kids, that's enlightenment. And I'm so far from it. Like so far from it. I don't know what the hell, just knowing the goal is pretty, uh, but that's think of how like it's awareness, right? awareness now there's intentionality but like so and i'm i'm doing it the way that i think i i'm the best way i know how to do it but you also recognize the gap and here's the thing is like as you become aware of ego and as you become aware of the thoughts the the roommates in your head you have one good roommate one bad

roommate that's want to perpetuate a conversation they're not there to to solve anything. They just want to bounce ideas back at each other. And this is what the cool thing about doing a CrossFit workout. Those two guys, those two roommates like go to war during a workout and they bounce back and forth all the time. I'm the victim. Like, woe is me. I shouldn't have had the cookie. This is so hard. I can't believe that person's going fast than me. Why did they program this? This is my weakness. To the other person, through the warrior mindset, that's like, bring it on, motherfucker. I can do this. I'm going to leverage my ego and I'm going to do everything I can. I'm going to be better than I was yesterday. They go back and forth, back and forth. Well, when we can get that to sit in the background and just find unconditional. Remember, we're filling in

the blanks after that. Unconditional love, unconditional trust, unconditional competitiveness. It's what I want for my athletes. No matter what, no matter what the circumstances are. So as you just like, so your wife tries to hurt your kids, like no matter what happens in the competition, no matter what happens, like it's 116 degrees and you have to wear a weight vest and do Murph at noon, bring it on. Like there's nothing that's going to pull you away. There's no distraction. Nothing, nothing can pull you away from your ultimate competitiveness. This is also a good example though, because ultimate competitiveness looks different moment to moment.

For sure. Sometimes it's selling your soul on the floor. Sometimes it's throttling back. And that's where awareness in those moments, as the range of that pendulum gets wider, becomes valuable. I just want to be super clear. My wife has never hurt my kids, just so you know. So, Brian, I would say competit say competitiveness though is not the range thing the range thing because to be competitive you have to be a smart competitor otherwise you're

a dumb competitor and you're spilling out energy spilling out everything just to be like i gave it my all well you gave it your all in round one of a five round workout that was dumb that's not competitive that's just you trying to like actually taking the easy way out or your body's broken down and you know it but you're like fuck it i'm going back and doing another brutal session tonight you do what you can with what you got for where you are it's like the right things to being a smart person is part of being a competitor as well and if there is nothing that can dissuade you nothing that can pull you nothing that can uh diminish in any way, form your best efforts. And by the way, it happens to all of us.

It happens to Matt Fraser. It happens to Michael Jordan. It happens to Michael Phelps. It happens to Serena Williams. It happens to Simone Biles. It happens to all of those athletes. You just see it in glimpses, tiny, tiny glimpses, or you see the good thing in massive doses.

But the unconditional aspect, just like we experience love, it's conditional right now. And most people that we know compete conditionally, just like most people we know live conditionally happy. Meaning, do you want to be happy? Yes or no? Unless you're a psychopath, everyone says yes. They say, okay, are you, you realize that's a choice? And people go, yes. I say, are you willing to be happy even if your wife leaves you? Even if your dog dies? Even if somebody does something horrible to you? Even if you get sick, even if your kid gets sick, even if you are locked up and put in prison and starve, are you still willing to be happy? Because it's a choice, you said.

People go, well, no, I'm not going to be happy. Well, it's unconditional. Now, we're not dealing with any of those things, most of us. We don't have somebody trying to hurt our kids. We don't get to be locked up pulling solid check and find I mean, we get bummed out because the weather isn't good. We get bummed out because we didn't get enough likes on Facebook. We get bummed out because the workout doesn't have your wheelhouse movements in it. You're not gonna be at the top of the leaderboard. Like all we have to do is become aware of the ego, which is a storytelling machine in our heads that tries to make us feel

important. It can do it any which way. It's equally satisfied from you being the victim as you being the hero. It doesn't matter which one it is because both those are very important players in the world. It's funny. I don't know when I realized this, but at some point in my life, I was really, wow, feeling sorry for yourself and arrogant are the same thing. It's just, I don't know if this is the right word, machinations of the ego. It's just the ego indulging itself. And yeah, we have a lot of that going on right now, the feeling sorry for yourself. There is no end to that, by the way. That's a bottomless well.

Go ahead and indulge all you want. You can never use that resource up, but you will never also be happy. So I want to go back. I don't know if hmm do we talk about leadership i want to talk about katrin um going to iceland and what you can share about that and what that is like having such a amazing so first of all when you met her she um she was not a games champion far from it right yeah she had been to the games twice and finished uh in the high 20s both times okay and then she missed again she missed the games the year before okay and then that's when

she came to you yep and she turned into um one of the most remarkable um personas in i would say the world but but for sure in crossfit anyone who stands next to her knows she has just incredible presence her uh uh it's it's it's beyond her physical presence there's something fuck i don't know what it is magical yeah there's something emanating off of her there's something uh it's like almost tangible i'm trying to think of any of the other athletes quite have it there's some people you feel a peace around you know um like i was just around fitness lani after he's been sitting under a tree for five years and there's man it's quiet you know the loudest in the room in the world when you're standing next to him uh it feels like you're in the grand canyon just complete peace but she is has a remarkable glow and almost like you're getting vitamin D when you stand next to her.

I mean, there's like – you feel it. And so then she wins the games, and she's with you, and she is a – I would say like a project of yours, like a car in your garage that you've helped build, right? you've that you've helped build right but she's a human being and now she leaves why does she leave how does that happen is it a mutual discussion like what can you share about that i mean it seems it almost seems like a um did you ever read that book zen and the art of archery no basically this guy becomes that you'll love it this guy becomes a master archer and then he has to when he's finally done like shooting one arrow into the back of another arrow 30 times then he's done and he can't just give the bow away he has to destroy it it's over the relationship's over he got what he needed out of it it did your relationship like is that journey

really over or i wouldn't say our journey is over. No, I don't think any part of it's over. Well, I mean, like, I don't really believe in ends really. I don't still believe that. I don't think that anything really ends. Um, so it's definitely not over. We still talk all the time. She was here a couple of weeks ago and hung out with us for a week.

So it's, um, um, she's still one of my best friends. You know, she picked up her whole life as a young 20 year old and came to Boston, Massachusetts to live with us for six, seven years. It's, um, you know, it's one of the things I'm most grateful for in my entire life. It's like, I, I, I got to witness, um, and it wasn't more like I, I, I just correct something. I don't think I was, she was the car in my garage that I was trying to help build. It was more like, um, somebody dropped off a Ferrari at my house and, um, I got to watch that Ferrari go. I learned, I learned a lot from, um, being around her for sure. Um, but we, um, we did both grow as she grows an athlete and I grew as a coach together. We kind

of kind of, it was like one of those, um, rare circumstances where we were both in this thing, like, let's just, um, really go at it. You know, it wasn't really about balance at the time. It was really more about just like, let's make a real run at this thing. And I think that's, we are both at different points in our lives where there's a little bit more balance coming to play, both from her and from me. You know, it's not a 24, seven, three 65, and that's not to diminish what she's doing now as an athlete. It's just, as you get older, you there's more data points. There's more wisdom to play off of. And can she still be a champion? And can you still be a world-class coach with out that a little bit of reckless abandonment?

It's a good question. Yeah. I don't know the answer to that, Savant. I really don't. I'm willing to like, Back to Michael Singer. He says that in that book, he says something along the lines, if you're afraid or not being afraid of yourself or being one with yourself or being aware of yourself as not being afraid of death. It's a really, really powerful point. And when I read Eckhart Tolle, he says that you can become enlightened without embracing death.

I do not believe that at all. Zero. I don't know anyone who's become enlightened without embracing death. And I've never heard of a story of tons of people jump on the path, you know, and want to dabble and like touch the light. But so I wonder that about. I really like the way you describe that, like you guys saw each other and she's like, I'm a Ferrari and you're like, well, shit, let's fucking see how fast you can go. You know, and you like like, you know, you know, this helmet's for safety, but we don't really need it. We can go faster if we throw it out the window.

Like, just fuck it. Right. and that's what it was yeah that's what that's what the whole thing was that and i guess that's trust too right yeah there's a lot i mean there's a that's kind of where this whole thing's um stemmed out you know it's like i always i always thought that trust was you know when i was a personal trainer not a crossfit coach and um as a personal trainer, you recognize that you operate at the speed of trust. If they don't trust you, they're not going to do the stuff outside of the hour of the day that you're with them. And you're only with them two or three days a week. So what are you doing if they don't trust you? Because you're fighting a complete uphill battle.

So you just have to get the whole operation, the whole deal. Every bit of every relationship just is, it is at the speed of trust. You know, whether you go like Dale Carnegie stuff or, you know, Chris Voss, like, you know, the FBI hostage negotiator, like it's all about getting people to trust you. Once they trust you, you can be a, if somebody does, it's basically, that's the ceiling, right? So you can have all the wisdom and all the knowledge in the world, but if they only trust you 10%, you're only going to give them 10% of what you got. Now, if they trust you 100%, but you only have 50% of the knowledge, you can get them 50%. It's just, that's always going to be the ceiling.

You can get them 50%. It's just, that's always going to be the ceiling. And you get two people in a room to do some MDMA and they'll, they'll, they'll go, they'll do 10 years of that relationship in five hours. I'm dead serious. It's trust. I'm dead serious. You dabble. Have you ever fucked around with MDMA?

No, it's not. It's not. Is it as well as MD? Is that okay? That's okay. I think the kids call it Molly. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah's not. It's not. Well, is that – Ecstasy. Okay, that's – Yeah. I think the kids call it Molly. Molly?

Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. The only thing I know about Molly is that I think it was like Julian Edelman on video at like a NASCAR race or something like that on Molly or something like that. He drove the car on Molly? No. He was like in the pit.

He was like partying in the – He's an NFL player, Stefan. Not the base car driver oh yeah it's crazy it's crazy stuff um when you guys when you when she says she's going back i mean it is kind of for ego's sake it is kind of nice that she's going back to iceland right it's not like she's um going uh 200 miles north of you up to hwpo and being like see you ben i mean it's kind of nice that she's going back to iceland right it's not like she's um going uh 200 miles north of you up to hwpo and being like see you ben i mean it's kind of nice that she's going back to her tribe no one probably can imagine what life is really like for katrin and any of those people who live on that island i mean that is a unique situation 300 000 people all from the same mom and dad i

mean it's pretty crazy what they got up there. Yeah. So there must be – there is that kind of piece that's nice, right? Like it's like Peter Pan and like now he's going back to his like, you know, wherever the fuck he came from. So it makes sense. So her – she's been away from her family for almost a decade. She's incredibly close with her family, like incredibly close. She was here when her best friend, her grandmother died that ate her up. She's still incredibly close to her grandfather who just had his 80th

birthday this last summer. Her sister is a young mom. She's about to have her, she's pregnant with her second. Her best friend is getting married, engaged. They're all getting, Annie pregnant with her second her best friend is um getting married engaged they're all getting um annie just who is her best friend as well just had a big life life's life's passing by right now and at some it's going to this chapter is going to change at some point right um i think it's really naive of me to, um, to think that it wouldn't

like it, this is going to, we're going to ride this off into the sunset forever. Like it's, um, if it's best for, you know, if it's best for her, it's best for me. It's, you know, it's allowed me some opportunities to do some things that I might not have done otherwise um it's not necessarily like the the jocko like you know good like good it's not that but it's a um why would why would we fight something like why would we when it when you don't as you said everything's an idea that we don't truly comprehend or understand. Why am I going to fight for something that I don't completely – Did she try to leave before? Like Matt has a story where he wanted to – after four, he wanted to stop, and O'Keefe is like, no, no, one more, buddy. No, because Catherine is not retiring.

She's like still competing. Right. But you weren't like, no, no, no, I'll clean out a little more room in the garage. You can park now with your doors wide open. No, it wasn't like that. No, it was never like we – no, it was – I mean, there was full trust. We were like there was no hint of this at all. And then she went back for the summer after not being home for almost two years because of COVID.

for this summer after not being home for almost two years because of covid so like she was here like she always went back for um um most of october november and december she always went back for two and a half months every year but she missed that for two years so also there's this like pent up like i haven't been home so then finally going home and she went home for the same thing she went home for two and a half months. Are they doing COVID in Iceland? Is that real over there? Yeah. They're super strict, super strict. They're like, they're like a New Zealand type thing, like real hard. Wow. Wow. Okay. And yeah, it's so weird how every country is different with that stuff,

but it's not just countries state to state, even city to city, even in county to county out here. Um, Ben, sorry, Brian, I know you wanted to ask something. Uh, I'll get this out and then your turn. Um, if, if my, if the thought of my wife dying or my wife leaving me, I would be done. Like, um, I'd be, I'd become a monk. I'd raise my kids. I'd be done. Like I would be like one of those Chuck E. Cheese things. I would come out, take care of my kids and then go back in. Like I have no interest in that. I put in so much effort in this relationship. So amazing. I've like, and from where I sit now, I have no interest in rebuilding another relationship ever. This thing is fucking awesome. Does any part of you feel that way about like i already built the i already built

a few of the fastest cars in the world like like like and this one like this is the this is the life cycle of it like okay um this is the life cycle of a of a coach with a top tier athlete and like does any part of you just want to just like move to naples it wouldn't be naples oh i just saw naples in your my dad lives in naples instagram oh um that's going to happen at some point hey you know who else you know i think brian's dad lives in naples close by is your dad ball ben no my dad's got a great head of hair no not bald ball like like i ball so hard motherfuckers want to find me you know like ball no i don't know what ball is uh is he rich is your dad rich he he's uh he's well off yeah yeah naples god i'm going naples is like well off yeah yeah

yeah i'm going to naples yeah yeah i'm going na Okay. Get a ball in Naples. Brian's dad balls. I think that one of the, I think this lesson, there's a big lesson that can be learned from what Ben's talking about here with Katrin. How I always perceive this without having talked to either of them about it was exactly what he's saying is that the, uh, just the time had come. And if you tried to force it, when, when the time comes, this is where that practice of awareness happens. Neither of them was looking forward to the end of that relationship, but certainly both of them knew that eventually would happen. And so being able to recognize that the timing was right before the situation evolved into something where she stayed because she felt like she had to and resented Ben because

of what she was, he was keeping her from. And I think that they both have a good, probably because of your pursuits of the spiritual disciplines have rubbed off on her, a younger person who is also maybe searching like most of us are. You guys were both able to kind of recognize that together and make the appropriate decision at the appropriate time. Yeah. The only, the only, the only, the only constant is change, right? It's the only thing that is, that we can kind of hang our hat on, like this is going to happen in this universe. It's the only thing that we can kind of say is going to happen, is that things are going to change. And my biggest nightmare is that I'm in the same spot. Not my biggest nightmare.

I have one or two bigger ones. But a big nightmare of mine is that I'm in the same spot five years now that I am right now. So what, like, this is another opportunity for change. And now I can lean more into working with Cole and Chandler and Amanda and Sam and some of the other great athletes that we have. And, um, it might be a chance to bring on another younger athlete and do the whole thing over again from the very beginning or it might maybe in two or three years i go like hey i might my the thing that's setting my heart on fire is now this thing but like how crappy would i feel if i like forced her to force my hand was like no you have to stay and then some one of those things happened like an opportunity to

work with the next uppercomer came and she's like, you were committing to me. I'm not saying that's happening, but it's just like I've always – I've had plenty of turnover in my business. I actually encourage turnover. I think that holding people on for a long time is a bad thing. bad thing. So for me to have a different set of values or principles or modus operandum for my athletes would be hypocritical at best. There was this, there was this guy I used to work for and he would travel with this lady and every time they would get to the airport, um, he would, he would, uh, she would say, Hey, can you, he would, he knew she had a bad back. So he would try to get out of the car and get her luggage out from the trunk. And before he could do that, she would always say, Hey, will you get my luggage out of

the trunk? So he never got to do it without her asking. And there's this thing, and I'm forcing this idea a little bit, but there's this thing that if you, so many people are trying to force the universe, you don't have to force the universe. There's great shit coming your way, man. And if you're forcing shit, you're not going to get it. There's great shit coming your way. And sometimes, and that goes back to the meditative piece. If that lady could just like have that thought, Hey, I need to ask this guy to help take a deep breath, let that thought go and just give the universe a chance to do it for her. It will start doing stuff for her and she'll see the magic of the universe. And then this guy can

jump out and it's a win-win for everyone. She can see the magic of the universe that it helps her. And then this guy can get the opportunity for helping her. I see this shit every day, people missing opportunities because they're trying to force things. And I feel it in this catchment thing. By the way, Brian, you did a great – I don't know if you nailed it, but you definitely let Ben off the hook with what you said. What was off the hook? I'll go back on it. No, I don't know. He just gave you like – he just, I don't know exactly what he said.

It was fucking beautiful, and you were like, uh-huh, yes. It was so good. People can relate to that. Everyone stays in a situation longer than they should at some point. And it's almost always to the detriment of everyone involved. Agreed. And one thing I'm curious about, Ben, was there a shift in the dynamic of the group of athletes that you're currently working with? Like almost like, oh, okay, the big dog stepped out. Now who's rising to that occasion?

Was that dynamic present as well when Katrin was training with them? Yeah, so it's a great question. Yeah, it's a great question, Matt. And the answer is, yes, there was a shift in dynamics. But every year there's a shift in dynamics. So literally because two years ago we didn't have these athletes training in-house. So there was every year there's a shift in dynamics so literally because two years ago we didn't have these athletes training in-house so there was a shift there and then the year before that we didn't have like every year so last year we brought these athletes in-house to train with us

but it didn't happen until february so this year we're training everybody in-house starting in september so crazy different dynamics and all of a sudden we're training everybody in-house starting in September. So crazy different dynamics. And all of a sudden we're getting ready for Rogue as opposed to last September we were still getting ready for the CrossFit Games. It's like every year is so different. There's so many moving pieces that you can't go, this is the variable that's changed at all. With that said, yes, of course, like there's going to be change with any athlete leaving, but someone as big and as magical as, you know,

is with that personality as Katrin, for sure. You know, in essence, they came here probably to be as much with her, if not more than to be with me. You know, that's probably the reality of that thing. She's the world champion. She's the best that, one of the best that's ever played this game um they came here to learn as much from her so when she leaves yeah the dynamics are going to change for sure yeah our roles established do you have that conversation with your athletes such as like for lack of better words catchman

would be you know team leader team mom she's been with you the longest she's kind of helps them through stuff um are there other roles like that within the group there yeah but they're not named it's like any like uh it's like any um people just rise to the occasion yeah so it'd be like any team sport we try to actually create more of a team atmosphere we try to we do a lot to instill that intentionally awareness intentionally action so doing a lot to um intentionally create a team atmosphere but we're not going there's a little bit i mean when there's a new kid on the block that's coming in um i let them know certain things yeah because there's always the dynamic yeah so like if there's a new athlete um and we have a shortage of equipment um i tell them

like you're getting the short end of the stick you don't get to use the pegboard yeah right yeah if um if these athletes are doing this like you haven't been to the games yet you haven't quote unquote earned it um hopefully one day you will but these guys are um have earned the right of first refusal you eat last yeah yeah ben i heard that um you take you go is this true that you take all the games workouts historically and that you do an analysis of the games every year and been like okay we haven't seen this in so long we haven't seen this we have seen this and you kind of start making predictions to help your athletes the first part of that is true we start making predictions i don your athletes? The first part of that is true. We start making predictions.

I don't know if it helps the athletes. I've heard you've been pretty damn good at it. Well, I think everyone's good at it now. I think I was just like, I did it before other people did. I think this is just a human behavior thing. No matter how much Dave wants to avoid patterns and programming and tries to there's always going to be inherently in everyone's you know exertion you can kind of like filter out what the strength movement might be you can kind of filter out like you know it is

unknown but it's not unknowable like right unknowable would be like and there's a reason for it it just wouldn't be a good test it'd be like this year we're gonna do bobsledding and we never see bobsledding again right to you would kill it right and this year's gonna be this year's gonna be archery and like it's just like it's wouldn't be for it's a fit into our definition our practice of fitness you're always gonna have the outliers the weird one the paddle you're gonna have the of fitness, you're always going to have the outliers, the weird one, the paddle. You're going to have the softball toss. You're going to have the – Freestanding handstand push-up?

No, that's shown up. I programmed a competition with freestanding handstand push-ups back in 2015. Did you have that same standard or variation where you had to walk forward and show control on the way down? No, we didn't have that. We had that. You had to show forward and show control on the way down? No, we didn't have that. We had that you had to show control at the top and the bottom. Makes sense. I was thinking about this.

We coupled it with 405 deadlifts. That was the workout we did back in 2015. It was before the competitors competition. It might have been 2014. I knew Dave copied that from you. I knew Dave Castro copied that from you. I knew Dave Castro copied that from Ben Bergeron.

There's just so many different combinations, right? It's like, I just want to say that because I know Dave would hate that. Eventually music starts like they, they do start sampling and it's like, there's only so many different bar chords. There's only so many different notes.

There's only so many different plots. When something like that happens, let's just say it's the freestanding handstand pushup with this new standard that you haven't practiced with any of your athletes and it gets announced. And suddenly, you know, 30 minutes from now,

they have to do this thing. Do you have any kind of process in place where it's like, okay, I know they're going to be pissed about this. All right, guys, you have two minutes to vent everything you want to say negatively about this.

Get it out now. Now we, and then good. Are you done? Okay. Now, how are we going to do this Everything you want to say negatively about this, get it out now. And then, good, are you done? Okay, now how are we going to do this as best as we can? No, but that's a good process. You want a job, Brian? That's a good system. Because I feel like every year at the games, some athletes can have that.

My athletes, and maybe they just do a better job of hiding it from me, but we're so past the vent. Like it's just – we skip that step. Honestly, it's just like right to like what is the best thing that we should do right now. Because we talk so much before the event of what's inside of our control and what's not. All the sports bullshit stuff that people talk about all the time except that it's true. And most people don't actually live it. It's kind of like we were saying, it's like everyone wants unconditional happiness. Everyone wants to be enlightened. Everyone wants to not ride the emotional rollercoaster, but what are you doing to actually put it in place so you can live it in that moment?

And we do a fair amount of talking about that stuff beforehand and kind of when these, because they're going to pop up, there's going to be 13 to 15 events. It's the event, the movement that you don't want to come up is going to pop up. We also talk about that in the, during the event, we are not going to talk about the validity of the test. That is not a thing that we do at the CrossFit games.

So everyone goes like, where's the CrossFit? You know what? This is a, so this year is for short people. This year is for tall people. Like cool, fun conversations for a podcast. Right. Not the conversation to have for a competitor in the midst of the competition.

We can do the venting thing afterwards. We can do the retrospect and look back and learn from it afterwards. Right. But not in the midst of it, particularly when the next event we're doing has literally could do zero, zero to do with the previous one. If the first event is swimming with fins and paddleboard, and the next event is muscle ups and sled drags, those two events have besides

like a very, very, very baseline level of fitness once you're at the crossfit games you've established that they have no carryover one to the other none except for the baggage you bring with it so if you can eliminate the baggage from event to event you get to oh no my my lats are tired from the pedal i'm not going to be able to do muscle ups in the sets i wanted throw that out yeah you do what you can with what you got for where you are. I have a question for you about off-season events. Because I notice a lot of

athletes who I feel, from my perspective, which is not coaching high-level athletes, that are doing way too many of them for... They're saying they want to win the CrossFit Games, but they're also doing three events in four months that are just interruptions in training cycles, et cetera. Do you have a process with athletes specifically as they're coming on their first year or whatever,

or how do you guys decide as a team which off-season events and how many you're going to do? Yeah, it's a great question, Brian. It's athlete specific. And what you just said is mostly it's dictated by their age. So what's your competitive history? Because you you need to you need to compete to get better at competing you can't mimic it in training what do you mean like some old ass dude like you're 38 and like hey this sorry jason smith from south africa you just do the games no because jason smith probably not going to win the games and this is career so that's the second part is there's a real thing that's called their career and financial, you know, and two years ago, three years ago, it, our athletes really didn't do anything other than the games because there was no earning potential outside of it. You could go to these competitions and win five grand, but that's compared to what you could do at the games. It's so different now with rogue actually mimicking, or I think they surpassed the games and payouts.

with Rogue actually mimicking, or I think they surpassed the games in payouts. Like, I can't, I can't as a coach say, don't take that earning potential. Right. It's up to them individually. I can have the conversations, but, you know, their earning potential went from,

you know, went 3X over the year. Yeah. And if you're not winning the games or particularly a top three it's even more enticing because you know finishing you know 11th place in three events is pretty close to finishing fifth place in the games and there's dubai now too wadapalooza there's yeah there's enough hundred thousand dollars for the winner of wadapalooza this year that's no joke yeah that's some good money now ben um i i had this podcast with um uh josh and matt and we did 22 episodes and before then i didn't really know matt too well and we just kind of we just dug in and we did it and it was interesting getting to know him it was it was a really interesting dynamic with me him and josh we're both at all totally different places in our lives

and how we want to present ourselves to the world i thought it was um i thought it was bold of matt to to i mean i saw what i was getting out of it going on a podcast with Matt. He's got a fucking tremendous following as a five-time champ. People just want to fucking like see him. Right. So it was like huge, huge for me. It was like basically getting my podcast on steroids. Right. And so I simultaneously started this one to try to leverage some of the attention from that one and it didn't work. And, um, and then after 22 episodes, he left and I don't know exactly why he left. We had, we had, uh, he called me, we didn't talk for like three months. And then finally I was just like, Hey, we got to figure this out. So I called him like, Hey, why aren't we doing podcasts for a couple months? I can't remember.

said he basically gave me a reason and it had nothing to do with me but but i don't believe it i i think it did have to do with me and and i've gotten a little hints from talking to josh because we've pushed forward with the show that it did have to do with me um when you parted ways with him did it have to do with you and i actually heard a story i heard a story that you used a story of his in your book that he didn't like and um that was a that pissed him off at you and i've what's interesting is is i've said josh has told me things in private that i've said on this podcast and then he's called me and yelled at me rightfully so hey dick dickhead what are you doing i just told you that you're not and i was like okay sorry but i was stoked he told, right? Like so stoked instead of just like kicking me to the curb.

Um, do you, do you care to elaborate or share your, what your relationship was like with him? And if those stories are true that you shared a story in your book and that caused you to end, by the way, for those of you who don't know, Ben did something that I don't think anyone else has ever done and probably will ever do. He coached two CrossFit Games athletes in the same year, two individual champions, Katrin, David's daughter, and Matthew Fraser, which is just crazy. Fucking nuts. So Matt and I have a good relationship right now. I've talked – whenever I see him, we talk a lot.

I saw him last – sometimes we chat for a while. I was going to hire somebody recently for media that used to work for Matt, so I called Matt up and asked about him. We chatted for probably 25 minutes, and he gave me all the insight. So I think that Matt and I have a good relationship. If Matt didn't like one of the stories I, I said in the book, um, that's certainly possible. Um, but I gave Matt the, the, the transcript of the book before I published it. Oh, so that, that story is not true then. I don't know. And I, it, I, maybe it is,

but he, um, well, as far as I'm concerned, it's not true. Cause if he didn't tell you, then it's not true. right? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. What kind of emotion is that picture, Alyssa? We're young, man. It's a great picture. Let me tell you what Ben's looking at. He only cares about his shoulders.

He's like, man, I should have done shoulder day. I should have pushed a little harder. That's the only thing this guy's thinking. I was smaller then. That was cool. That's what that is. That was just really, really cool. That's when we were pushing.

Not that we're not pushing now. We were just pushing in a really different way then. It was really an amazing year. You know what? Honestly, the first thing that pops up when I see that picture is I miss California. Like that's nice. California for the, for the games was awesome. Yeah. It's just like, I think it was such a better venue. It's hard when people say to me,

why are you still in California with how fucked up it is? It's just like, I think it was such a better venue. It's hard when people say to me, why are you still in California with how fucked up it is? It's nice. I live in, I'm in Santa Cruz and man, it is nice. Guys, I've told you everything I know about Matt walking away. I'm not hiding anything from you. I just don't want to tell the story that something happened that didn't have anything to do with me. It was basically, I mean, it sums it up that there's the the show was just not bringing it was causing more stress than benefit is basically would be the big picture of

what matt told me there was a couple things that happened and and like i think they make sense i just don't believe i just don't don't let those ideas run away no no everything's about me that makes a lot of sense to me so matt is um the best I've ever seen at auditing his life. He, if it's, if it's not for the right reasons for the right, if it's not going to serve in the right way, it's gone.

Like Matt's that's why he's at one of the reasons he was as good as he was is when working with him, it was, it was jaw dropping. How intentional he was at creating his environment. And I work with some phenomenal athletes, but it was such a degree above. And how he dotted I's and crossed T's like nobody else I've ever seen. So the fact that he's like, hey, this isn't fitting in right now,

like peace out, like that doesn't surprise me at all. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. More stress than what I'm getting out of it. Like, nope, not for me. What a great trait that we could all kind of like lean on

instead of what we were saying is like just letting it kind of linger for a while yeah i think that there's a yeah i better flush that idea out a little more before i just go fucking running wild with it but i think that there's there's a trade-off for that there's there's definitely a trade-off for that if there is a control piece that doesn't allow just um shit to happen that you might be missing out on on life but but but i hear you i don't i don't want to dog it i mean shit look at look what he did with it if eating after six o'clock at night doesn't help you win the games and stop eating after six o'clock at night i want to talk about the book before we let you go i'm unlocking

um potential you say potential potential unlocking potential canadian is that canadian thing you say it you say it i say yeah you're saying it phonetically correct i say potential unlocking potential unlocking potential how do you say cupboard say cupboard cupboard it's the same way how else would you say it i don't get it my wife says it like like like it's like three words or yeah i don't know no not like that uh we had we had kate when we had uh kate gordon on last night reading the news you should have heard her pronouncing Haiti. Have you heard an Australian pronounce Haiti?

I can't even do it. Okay, so Unlocking by Ben Bergeron and Christine Bald. Yep. I'm thinking about having her on the podcast. Cool. She's great. Yeah, it's cool that she worked with Dave. Yep. I would love to be on that podcast with

christine do you know her brian i know of her i have had uh one very infrequent or very small conversation with her but um well you know what she does for the game or well for dave cash was instagram now is something that i also do for some of the competitions and uh she well she's been i think she's had a lot of experiences that are pretty unique and selective over the last eight to 10 years or so within the space of CrossFit. Um, so, so Ben wrote this book and, uh, I don't know if he wrote it with Christine or I don't know if she wrote, is she the co-writer or you wrote it with her? What, what, what's going on there?

Yeah. So, um, well, yeah, she's the co-author so i went with it yeah so she was the ghost writer for chasing excellence meaning basically didn't really her name wasn't on the title which is the same process okay um and then like if i'm gonna do a couple of these whether she should it makes no sense for us to be a ghostwriter type thing patrick i'm telling you get your name on the podcast um so it was ben's week he's crumbling he's maybe he doesn't want it on the podcast maybe maybe right it's true uh the savon and brian podcast you're good dude man um i don't know i don't know why i never thought of this when when you read something

you're like holy shit and i never thought of is this this book unlocking potential i think and i haven't read it yet but from what the the digging around i've done it's about leadership and about group flow and when i've heard about flow i've never thought about group flow i've only thought about individual flow i was like wow and i highly recommend there's at least three podcasts where Ben and Patrick Cummings and one of them, Christine Bald is on where they talk about the book. And I mean, shit, I don't mean to hurt your sales, but if you don't want to read the book, definitely listen to those three podcasts. It's pouring. It's pouring full of good ideas and wisdom. Why this book? You even admitted, hey, what, why, why this book? Like you even admitted, Hey, like leadership

isn't, this is uncomfortable for me to like, be like, Hey, I know everything about leadership. Why do that then? Um, I think it's an opportunity to help. And that's such a cliche answer, right? But it's consistent. There's the consistency. You always say that. Okay. So, you know, I have friends that whether it's them running businesses or people even in my own business, there's so many. I think that there's just some, it's again, like what Brian was learning. I think there's a level of awareness and discipline and structure you can bring to an organization to get more out of it. And in the book, I kind of tell the story of the ebbs and flows. It's not like, here's all the things I did well. Most of it is, here's the mistakes I made and the lessons I've learned from them. And because of that, I'm in a better spot now than I was 15 years ago. But man,

even in the last six months, I'm like, we should have waited because I've learned so much in the last six months that I would rather share with people. It's this constant evolution. That's one of the things that's like, you just kind of have to eventually, you know, Seth Godin type thing. You just have to ship it. It's, uh, um, but that's, yeah, that was the impetus was, I feel like we've been really intentional in creating something that I'm really proud of at CrossFit New England in terms of, I think it is, you know, as cool as all the affiliates are that are out there. And this isn't like, it's a, it's a special place that we, that didn't get there by mistake. We did it with a lot of fumbling and learning along the way, but we did it all the while being so intentional with what we're doing.

So here's what I mean by that is a lot of people know that when in business, it's really powerful to become clear about your values and people call them core values. But all that really is, is identifying what is important to us. And then what people do is they list out these core values. They create these little words, these little taglines or a couple sentences, put them on a wall at best, and then hope that the organization, it comes to fruition.

And is that what you did? Because in one of the podcasts you talk about with Christine bald about how you were, when she came on board, you were going through what you called the renaissance of CrossFit New England. It was what we did. Yep. I did a number of different times. Okay. It made all the mistakes possible when it comes to something as simple as core values. We made them aspirational, things that we want to be that we're not actually.

Actually, we made them completely unmemorable because we had seven of them. And if you ask me what my core values were, gosh, it's integrity, it's community, it's positivity, passion. What's the other ones? Which if you can't just like boom, boom, boom right away, like with no hesitation, that's not what's important to you. They're just words. It means nothing. They're not, that's not what's important to you. They're just words. It means nothing. So there's so many different, you know, there are other ones that are like permission to play. Like there are ones that everyone, like you can't put honesty as a core value. Like what do you mean?

Like what's the alternative to not being honest? Like that makes no sense. So then there, once you become really, well, I guess there is an alternative. But then once you become incredibly clear about what those values are, do you then take the real steps, which is bringing them to life? Do you operationalize them? Do they actually live and breathe in everything you do in the organization? So instead of the mistake I made, here's our core values, guys. Let's have an hour-long meeting. Let's discuss them. Let's lay them all out. I'll give you the meanings and all the rest behind it. And then follow that meeting up with another memo saying just to recap it all through email. Talk about

it again a week later. And then send another email maybe four or five weeks after that. Be like, hey, guys, remember this is what our core values are. That is the equivalent of doing nothing. Actually, it's worse than doing nothing because then you're not going to live by them and they don't come to life. So it's an inconsistency. As opposed to every single opportunity, the leader has the responsibility to teach and tie every single thing that you are laying out to your staff, every single thing has to tie back to your mission, your vision, your purpose, or your values. If it doesn't tie back to one of those things, it's an inconsistency. It's a bright, shiny object that's distracting people from what they actually should be thinking about. You have to be so laser focused on what your vision is. Those are the four

components of vision. So laser focused on what your vision is. Those are the four components of vision. So laser focused on what your vision is so that people just know what they're driving to at all times. And every time that you're doing it, you're tying things back to them. And then every single thing, because your vision basically comes down to establishing a really strong culture. Your culture is made up of a few different things. But what you need to then do is intertwine every single people process through the filter of core values. So how you hire, fire, reward, and review people all become a mechanism by which you then reestablish what is it that we believe that is important to us. Because if you only reward based off performance, what you're saying is performance is the most important thing to us. That is the thing that we value the most.

That is one of our core values. If you're clear about that, awesome. You have now operationalized your values. What people do instead is they go, it's about teamwork. It's about customer service it's about um um passion but then they reward people that drive the highest numbers total inconsistency instead you you way you hire people so that was that's the way you would review and reward people but how you hire people when you hire people hey that's inner and outer shit again completely yeah yeah inner and outer shit it's also like hard skills soft skills there's all like hard skills, soft skills. There's all like a ton of that stuff and how you, um, just in terms of how you coach hard skills versus soft skills and the, um, the closeness into which you give the feedback,

the thing you talked about early hard skills, you want to give the feedback as close to possible as you possibly can. So for example, to the, to the incident or to the accuracy, okay. To the incident. So for example, if after this podcast, you to the accuracy okay to the incident so for example if after this podcast you were like hey brian um let's i don't know who does it but let's um when we pop up those uh little quotes let's do it so that ben can't see them you know or like whatever i don't know if that's the right thing but brian your picture is crooked your camera is crooked

don't ever let that happen again exactly that that's a perfect that is a x's and o's there's no argument about it. It's not tacking his personality or his character. It's just a, literally a thing. This is what we're going to do to improve going forward. In coaching parlance, it would be like, you missed a piece of the snatch of the progression. You know, when you coached about this, it actually, let's coach it this way. You coached head up on a deadlift. We actually want to coach head neutral on a deadlift. Very immediate. But if you give feedback like that based off someone's character, it looks like you're trying to character assassinate them. It becomes so personal. So you need to step back and create

a resume of those things. So if you go like, hey, Brian, every single time that someone asks a question, you look away and roll your eyes. That's showing a little bit of that, your whatever you want to say. Now, if you did that the first time he did it, he'd be like, dude, get off my freaking back, Siobhan. Like, what are you talking about? But if you're like, Hey, I've noticed over the last seven or eight podcasts that when you ask questions, you always do it with a British accent for some weird reason.

So anything that's personal needs that kind of step back. And all of a sudden that's how you build this. But getting back to the operation. Wait a second. That shit doesn't work with my wife. Hey, Hey, this is the,

this is the eighth time today. You've left the stool right in the middle of the hallway. Then I get, well, fuck are you keeping score? When'd you start keeping score? I'm like, Oh shit. Now I'm fucked up. fucked yeah because you guys haven't built unconditional

trust and unconditional love so that's damn it damn it damn it so that's why it does it's um so but the value system so what you need to do this goes right back to that savannah exactly imagine if when you guys were getting married you you said, hey, I really, really value transparency and feedback. So the point where every single time something goes is out of place, I'm going to call it out. I'm just going to call it out every single time. That's just – it's something I value. It's like basically you're saying like this is something – one of the top three things I value in my life. I just like – it's a part of me. And this is what you do when you hire somebody.

We talk about this with feedback. We value feedback here. We value growth. We look for humble people that are not only willing, but accepting and eager to get feedback. I understand how that's uncomfortable for a lot of people. If you're the type of person that finds feedback as a character ding or something that you just feel uncomfortable for any reason whatsoever, this probably is not going to be the best place for you. Not meaning that you're a bad person. It doesn't mean that we're doing this right or wrong. I just want you to thrive when you're here. wrong. I just want you to thrive when you're here. Now, Siobhan, if you had had that conversation and meant it before you married your wife, before you started dating on meeting date number one, you're like, Hey, every single thing that is out of whack, I'm going to call out in real time.

Then it's, I'm going to redefine the word nag and control freak. Yes, this is who I am. It's because I value it. And here's why I value it. Because I value it because I believe it's the number one thing for growth. It's the thing I find is the most important thing in humanity is that we are growing and evolving. And I think it's the shortcut to growth. You give a reason behind it, you go, hey. And if you don't, if that's not one of the things that you kind of like would feel comfortable with, I get it. I'm not saying I'm right.

It's just the way that we do it. It's the way that we do things here. And now what you're doing is creating a filter system through a values, essentially fear speech. Imagine like the difference of somebody going like, Hey, just to let you know, you seem to be a great fit for our organization. You have all the skills. We could really use your talents here. I just want to let you know that we work like really hard here. Like we work really hard. We give people vacations, but no one's taken one in three years. We don't mandate that people come in on the weekend. I'm not saying this is what we do. We don't mandate people come on the weekends, but usually most Saturdays people are here until 11 o'clock at night. Yeah.

Right? And most people here are single and don't party or socialize at all because this is their everything and anything. What you're doing there is you're filtering out the people that go like, well, fuck that. That's not what I want to do at all. But the people that want that go like yes hell yes sign me up this is how you bring values to life this is the role responsibility of the leader so that's how you create does your book talk about all this yes it's unlocking potential it's all in there yep yeah that's in the first section that's all that's all in how to create a culture

so what people do is they're like i'm gonna going to have a culture. I want a really strong culture. And they just let things kind of grow. And they hope because they're a CrossFit gym or they're doing good work or they're a political organization that's going to change the world or they're a nonprofit. They believe that or they're a sports team that they're going to be competitive. And they believe that just because of the industry or their specialty, that their culture is going to manifest itself in the most positive way that they could possibly create. And that's not the case. It's going to grow. It's going to create, but it's like a jungle. If you don't tend to it, cultivate it constantly every single day, you are not going to get the garden you want. You are going to get whatever is going to spur up. And most you are not going to get the garden you want you are going to get

whatever is going to spur up and most likely it's going to be the fast growing toxic weeds we need to be incredibly incredibly intentional with cultivating our culture it's not going to happen by accident um it's interesting as as i went through all these things and I was listening to you talk about it and I'm excited for the audio book to come out, but there's a piece in there, there's a slide on your Instagram about the 10 precondition for group flow. And it's a familiarity, blending egos, a sense of control shared goals constant communication equal participation close listening um yes and i'm guessing that's instead of yes but and then it's in parentheses it says conversations are addictive not uh combative

number nine shared risk i'm having skin in the game. And number 10, complete concentration, total focus. And I think that it was nuts working at CrossFit Inc. in the early days. Greg's vision was absolutely – well, it always was from beginning to end. His vision – there was never shortage of vision. That was one part of leadership that was just completely nuts. I mean to a point where it was – oppressive is too much, but it was a lot. Like I was around him all the time, and it was just constant vision, vision. It was nuts. I mean, to a point where it was oppressive is too much, but it was a lot. Like I was around him all the time and it was just constant vision, vision. It was nuts. And if you, and I want to tell this to people, if you want to be, do something really great with your life and you're a good follower like me, I'm an incredible follower. Like I am fucking fiercely

loyal and I love good leadership, man. I'm just like, I love owning a good leader. See how my ego does that. They don't lead me. I own them. They're just a tool for me. And, uh, when I, uh, I, I, I thrive there. And, um, but there was, there was, there were two things in here that popped out that really bugged me. Uh, uh, when people didn't work as hard as everyone, there was like, when I would see a weak link like i would never on my like on the executive team there was one of the executives at crossfit inc and when they were gone they would have an auto reply and i loathe that you're a fucking executive at crossfit inc and you have an auto reply like you're on vacation or you i was just it just i just thought they were just and then the other

thing was um uh and people who take days off i did like like christmas like you know like what like like where i call you at sunday night for a shoot about monday morning and you had boundaries fuck off like i did i hated that and the other thing is just shared risk one of the executives another executive had like 50 million dollars in the bank and i had heard him say at one point hey he uses his his paycheck from crossfit inc to pay his taxes and you know because he made so much in like whatever dividends and that shit and and and he was the sloth he was the worst person on the team while the rest of us were fucking savages. It was basically like the way you described your, you know, in a few senses, you described your relationship with Katrin in the beginning. Just all in.

Both of you were just all in. Just, okay, whatever it takes. And so I found it very stimulating just to see those ten pieces. And we didn't have a lot of the other stuff that you talked about. But because Greg's vision was so strong. And in the early days there was. We didn't have trust. But we had the facade of trust.

Because we were growing so fast that everyone could kind of do what they wanted. And everyone was so dedicated that it, that, uh, that it turned out okay for, for, for many, many years, it cruised like that. Yeah. So the kind of the, the ethos of the book is that there's three pillars to leadership. There's three pillars to great organizations. If you want to truly unlock everything you can out of those organizations, you have to kind of like give everything you can to these three different endeavors. And the first one is culture kind of saluted to that. The these three different endeavors. And the first one is culture. Kind of salute to that.

The next one is what you were talking about, vision. Yeah. And if you have a visionary, like as Greg was, like a once-in-a-lifetime type thing, like revolutionize an industry type thing, that can make up for a lot of shortcomings in the other two, for sure. And the third one is execution, which is basically like getting shit done um and that involves a lot of uh coaching um and dave and nicole were amazing at that so you had two of the three like really really really good which can mask another one yeah yeah i i would i would also like to say this the main thing is if you if you are are a – let's say you're a guy and you work for a company that mows lawns, right? And you have a great leader, and he has great vision in terms of working in your neighborhood and cutting lawns and getting it done efficiently so everyone can have Saturdays and Sundays off and get paid, blah, blah.

get paid blah blah that's but if you want to work for someone who um is going to build a rocket ship to go to pluto um just so you know um you have to also be a world-class follower there was like like um you don't get to work for elon musk if you're a bitch you don't get to work for greg glassman if you're a bitch you just don't there to work for Greg Glassman. If you're a bitch, you just don't. There are, there are leaders out there. There's jobs you can do you, but, and, and, and, and you will also experience something that most, I interviewed a guy, um, Tyson Bajent the other day, and he's a, uh, like maybe the greatest division two college quarterback in the, in the history of the sport, definitely in the, in the top 20. Um, and everyone on the team loves what they do. No one would rather be anywhere. Everyone wants to play football their whole life. It is not like that at Starbucks people. I would guess

it's not like that even at most CrossFit gyms, even though it's probably pretty good compared to most other places. If you can work somewhere where 90% of the people or 99% of the people want to be there, you will experience something so amazing. And that's what it was like working at CrossFit Inc. And it sounds like that's what it's like working at CrossFit New England. And that's what it's like being on a successful college football team. No one's there. But those things will vanish.

There's a chance you could go into the workforce and get a job at Apple or Facebook or google and or amazon and and 90 of your employees just can't wait to go home that i can't do that so that that's a that's a big part of the culture as well and the vision as well but really being really clear about because it all starts you know a rocket ship to pl. Like what's the purpose? Like, and if your, your purpose is to ship out Christmas presents to people, like, yeah, you could, you could slap a big smiley face on that and be like, we're, we're making people's Christmases happy and we're fulfilling, you know, kids' dreams and all the rest. But, uh, it might be a little more transparent than that. You're actually just shipping out products, right? Right. You know, but if you work in a CrossFit gym, if you do what you were doing, like you, um, like CrossFit, particularly

in the early days was like on a mission and it was like a F you, if you don't understand us, if you're not a friend, you're an enemy and there's no one in between. And we are going to revolutionize this fitness industry and take it by storm. And we know our way is the right way. Like that's a galvanizing mission. Like that is a get a bunch of revolutionaries in the same room together and let's go see what happens. That's really, really cool. That's why if you can do that for, if you're mowing lawns, if you can do that for like a mowing lawn thing like hey we are going to revolutionize i'm going to overuse that word but we are going to

create the best lawn mowing service in the world so that dot dot dot whatever it is people want to work for something like that and if they don't they're going to get off the bus because the next thing that comes along is going to be just as good as this one because they didn't gravitate towards it anyway that that being said i want to say this i used to be a checker it was the first job i had well after a paper route when i was 16 years old and i loved checking what's like a like a checker like people like i worked in a place it was called drug barn it was like a it was like a like a cashier yeah like it was like a like a? Yeah. It was like a drugstore. I worked at like a Long's, right?

And it was before they had – Savan worked at a drugstore. Yeah. Enough said. And it was – and I just – and it was before they had scanners. And I just loved it. I loved interacting with the people. I loved helping the people.

I loved meeting all the new people. I loved bagging stuff and organizing it in the bag. I like being faster and making more money at my register than all the other checkers in the fucking place. I love like taking my break and then being done perfectly on time. I love my fucking apron. I loved everything about it. The other day I went into a Starbucks for the first time and I don't know a couple – I don't know how long it had been. But I fucking go into this Starbucks and I go up to the counter and the checker is so nice and there's spilt coffee

along the edge. And I almost leaned up on it and got it on my shirt and I almost set my iPhone in it. That would have pissed me off. And I go, Hey dude, there's spilt coffee over here. He goes, okay, no problem. And I hear the manager overhears me to say that to the checker. And she goes, um, it's hot chick manager. She goes, Hey, um, so-and and so will you clean that up and so and so

comes over with a fucking wet rag and just slops it up and now instead of there being wet coffee there there's wet coffee and soap and dirty rag shit smeared everywhere and she leaves and i hear the manager say thank you and me being the passive aggressive douche that i am i go over and get a handful of napkins slow though stop the whole fucking line and clean it so they can see like this is how you fucking do it like i would never ever if i work at starbucks i would own that fucking place so that's uh that's the third part of the book which is the execution yeah you're setting standards and expectations and then not just drawing lines and saying like you know urban me stuff, like above the line and below line, but coaching people up to believe in a transformational way that this is important because, and make people understand what is acceptable and what's not acceptable. Can you teach that?

Or do you have to find the right people? No, you have to find the right people first because that's why it has to be, it's sequential. Culture, vision, execution. that's why it has to be, it's sequential culture, vision execution. What most people do though, is they go where you just went to go like, they don't know how to clean up the, they don't know how to clean up spilled coffee. They have no idea. We got trains, people have spilled coffee. When they don't give a crap about what they're doing behind the,

you know, the wrong person. But if you found people like you, when you were checking to work behind the counter and you go, Hey, when we, so 11 Madison park, we've gotten into the best restaurant in New York and best restaurant in the world. When they train their staff, it's the plates. There's a little engraved, uh, engraving on the backside of the plates. They make sure that all of the plates are served so that if the customer were to, by chance, flip it over, the writing would be parallel, just like how they would normally read. That's the attention to detail. And to those people, they eat it up because there's this meaning behind what they're doing.

There's this thing. There's this creation. There's this caring. It's all this like, you know, it's the difference of working at the Four Seasons versus the Holiday Inn. Those people at the Four Seasons want to create an experience for those people. And they hire the right people that want to do that. They create the vision for them to latch onto. Then they let people know what the expectations are, the way to actually get this thing to come to life. As opposed to just like, hey, here's the

boxes you're supposed to check along the way. At the end of your shift, make sure you have these seven things done. That's a transactional leader. It really is true, man. They tell you that shit when you're a little kid, someone will be like, Hey, what's that line? How you do everything is how you do everything or how you do anything is how you do everything. Yeah. It's, it's, it's like someone says that to you when you're

young and you don't get it and then as you get older like you start seeing all the jackasses around you and you're like yeah i actually i so we it's funny we have that up in my gym we have that that those words of my gym and i don't believe it oh okay tell me i think i think excellence is modal specific so because you put incredible attention detail to marketing or your writing doesn't mean you put incredible attention and detail to marketing or your writing doesn't mean you put incredible attention and detail to how you do the laundry. I see what you're saying. I see what you're saying. It's actually from – I stole it from Jeff Bezos.

He said he's like just because people are – even pursue excellence in certain areas doesn't mean they pursue excellence all over their lives. In fact, I think it's impossible. Okay, well, that's more optimistic. I like that. That's optimistic. So just because you're a pile of shit and you can't do a good job at Starbucks, I don't know. Yeah, you could be a piece of shit. This is me.

Like in school, I was a piece of shit. I sucked at school. And I thought I didn't like to work. I didn't think I liked to do anything. I thought, but that's so not true. You can't pull me away from work when I like it. So if we try to judge the worth of a fish by its ability to climb a tree, we're going to think that fish are worthless. That's not the case.

You have to put people in the right environments to thrive. And everyone's environment is something different. I don't believe in laziness. I don't environment is something different i don't believe in laziness i don't think it exists i don't think anyone is lazy i think oh that's so funny say that people have not found that's so what they're passionate about because if you put those people that are sloths and lazy put them in the right environment i don't know what it is we've been the right environment they're not gonna be lazy i promise you they're not but someone invited me someone invited me to their house the other day and i'm like i don't think so and they go why

i'm like because i don't i don't leave my i have a schedule i have a loop that i do with my kids and my life is just a loop and i'm not breaking it he goes oh you're lazy and i fucking almost punched him in the throat i almost fucking punched him in the throat. Like, no, actually. I thought you were like the Zen. I am, I am, I am, I am. Isn't your low blow? If I wasn't, he would have got punched in the throat. That's a good example. The pendulum swing.

He was present enough to not punch him in the throat. It's wrong, but just not all the way. Do you know, it's like when people, I want to say, it's like when people say to me, they're like, oh, so do you do CrossFit? I'm like, this guy's at my house, and he's like, oh, because you're lazy? I'm like, do you not see my empire that I've built? Do you not see my manicured lawn? Do you not see my kids standing at attention? Here's something I've come across recently, Siobhan, which I think there's –

so I'm totally with you. As Brian alluded to, I'm really disciplined. I love my routine. I like knowing when I'm doing what, make sure I'm getting all those things because at the end of the day, I know if I get those things in, I'm going to be fulfilled. But here's the danger in that is you end up on your loop. You end up in this loop and 10 years pass by. You've only done the same things. Yeah.

by, you've only done the same things. So I came across this really quickly from Jesse Itzler, who I don't know a ton about, but I listened to this one podcast that a friend recommended me on, and this one thing really, I latched onto it. And he was like, listen, it all goes by so fast, unless you have these meaningful experiences. And I resonate with that. Because if you asked me, like, if you said, um, 2017, the first thing that pops in my head that I try to grab onto 2017 is the CrossFit games. I actually dictate my years based off of the, um, the, the year, like what was happening at the games that year, who won, where was it? What were the events? Like what? And that's cause it was the biggest, most meaningful thing besides like the years my kids were born and when I got married. Yeah. So the idea is

have your amazing routine that like is going to be so fulfilling to you, but then have seasonal, meaningful, amazing experiences. Well, yeah. So imagine like you go through your, you go through your amazing routine every day is as fulfilling as the last you do your meditation, you do your workout, you do your journaling, you do your spiritual reading, you do your time with your family. You'd get to do this with your kids in the garage. You get to, um, go to your kids practices whatever it is so amazing so amazing but then every this spring you go and spend four days in the the utah mountains with your kids right and then the summer or alone right or alone anything and then you have these things that like oh my gosh these like points along your journey amazingness with like boom boom, amazingness, boom.

Because in that amazingness every day, it's just, there's no, it's rinse, wash, repeat. You're on your loop. And you got to break out of your loop to create something truly like, look back and like, this is what I did in my life. I was, to tell you the truth too, when that guy said that to me, like right away,

I'm like, oh, I'm so glad this happened. This is going to be a great story for my podcast. I can probably get, like, 15 minutes of fucking play out of this one. Maybe 11 minutes. Well, this is the second time I brought it up. Oh, okay. So you got, like, 27 minutes. Yeah.

The first time I got eight minutes. This time, seven. Probably next time, it'll be, like, five. Law of Domination returns. Matt, we should have a thing when like you've heard us every if you've heard us me tell a story like twice before you should go like this if you've heard three times you've heard this story seven heard that three times she'd be like that or just like or just or just a mute button matt's got that don't don't give him any ideas

commercial break brian do you have um do you have anything for um uh ben um any of you any superficial crossfit games talk you would like to nope uh so then i'll then i'll tell you then i'll go um about superficial games how did how is i think i asked you this before too how how should someone um it's like a three-part, I guess. Is it realistic to want to go to the games? Is that like a stupid thing? Is it just too hard? Is it like I, and the reason I ask is I think it is like, I, like, I think it's, it just seems crazy to want to win the games to me and, or to even want to go to the games. It just seems too fucking hard. And second of all, if you do want to go,

how, how should you get on that path? How do you know? Is there any way you could figure out whether you have it or not before you spend eight years and you're 27 years old and you have fucking no chance. Yeah. I can tell you one right now. If you look up the open and you've ever lost me in a workout,

no chance. Okay. This podcast over. Thank you, Brian friend. Okay. So, uh, I think it's actually really simple and really mechanical. Um, how old are you is the first question. And if you are, um, under the age of 15 or over the age of, um, 25, the answer is no. And when I move out, you're starting your journey.

Starting your journey. So we're saying, the next question is. Meaning, so sorry, meaning if you're 14, come back next year. Yeah. Okay. Yep. The next question is, how tall are you? Okay.

Because if you're six foot six, the answer is no. If you're a Because if you're 6'6", the answer is no. If you're a guy and you're 4'10", the answer is no. How about Colton Mertens? The answer is – you said win the CrossFit Games. I said – Okay, but how about Colton? He can't win the Games. He can make it to the Games with good programming.

But he's going to be a programming-reliant athlete. Meaning his performance in a specific competition will be reflective of the programming in that competition. I was at the Granite Games where he qualified through, and I was really impressed with him there. Like really, really impressed because I thought there would be an event or two that would bump him out. One that had box stepovers with a heavy bag, another one with a bunch of wall balls that were really important. I thought those would be enough to knock him out. But he was a stud.

Yes. I love that. I troll this motherfucker so hard. I want to be on the Colton Mertens bandwagon. I'm on the bandwagon so hard, man. I love it. He's a fucking – he's amazing. I'm so inspired by him.

He's amazing. But I – Don't hold back. Don't hold back. Don't hold back. Don't let me tell you what you can do. That's ridiculous. No, no, no.

I mean you don't hold back. Still give it to me. No, I won't hold back. Let's hammer him some more. I won't hold back. No, I'll say that it's – for him to win the CrossFit Games, it's going to be programming dependent. If it lined up for him correctly, he could win. Meaning if the programming lined up really, really poorly for Matt,

programming does matter. Now, if programming is done right, it shouldn't. I don't know. Dave does a good job. Okay. Let's just talk about those exceptions, Tia, Matt, and Rich. Really? Did the programming matter?

No. Okay. That's because the programming's done well okay because let's say the programming wasn't done well it matters if the programming was um but we can even within that context we can give an example there's you know matt wasn't uh 30 points better than noah one year and suddenly 200 points better than the next year the format of the competition dictated the outcome now now dave does a good enough job that it doesn't matter and that's why it's a mute conversation because at the games it hasn't mattered really ever the right guys always want but to say like you know um we're getting off track the the the idea is that height

does matter height matters now because the programming is done well if the programming shifted completely and it was all gymnastics you wouldn't be able to be you know six foot and compete but we have people i can because it's not all gymnastics it's just the way it is so the first one to me is age the second one to me is um how tall are you and you have to be in the sweet spot for both of those. If you're somewhere in your young 20s, late teens, and you are for a guy somewhere around 5'6 to 6', like you're in the sweet spot. Let's make a run at it. Those are really easy ones. The next one after there is what is your training history and adaptability to training?

So how fit are you entering this thing? And then how fast do you make adaptations? Because this is people that don't like, people don't like to talk about this, but you put two people through the same training program, same nutrition, same sleep, they're going to respond to it differently. It's just that it is, there's a genetic thing to it. And it's not even genetic. It's environmental genetic thing to it and it's not even genetic it's environmental it's upbringing it's a whole bunch of different factors but um what is your

how fit are you and what's how fast you adapt to training the next one that goes along in that so my first one is like if the bottom of the pyramid is age and height the next one is threefold it's training history training out to adaptability and dedication. How bad do you really freaking want this thing? Or how much time can you actually commit to it? That's what, that's dedication. You have to want it and have the lifestyle or availability of time. Now, let's just say, let's back up a little bit. Let's say you have a 19-year-old. Let's put this in the right context. So you said, Sivan, no one should go for this. Like you shouldn't go for it. Like you just can't do it. It's too hard. Well, if you're 19 years old, um, you are a guy that's five, eight, 190

pounds, 195 pounds. Um, that is a seven and a half percent body fat. So you got the right makeup. You grew up as a weightlifter, a gymnast, a track athlete, and you have the athleticism of a basketball player. And you respond incredibly to training. Meaning I put you on a squat cycle and you put on 30, 40 pounds on your squat. I have you work muscle ups for 30 days straight. You increase your muscle ups by 10%. I have you do a running program and you drop your mile time down by 15 to 20 seconds. And you have all the time in the world and you are a freaking mental monster. They'll dedicate their lives to this. No excuses. Nothing is going to get in your way. And you say it's too

hard. What somebody has to win it. Why would it not be that kid? Like that is exactly the person that should go for this thing. Age, height, training history, how fast you adapt, dedication, and mental monster. Yep. And then the last one, which is resiliency, or there's just some people that are more prone to injuries. This happens in every sport. There's just some people that can't stay on the field, whether it's baseball, basketball, football, or CrossFit. They're always dealing with something. Zion Williamson.

Yeah, exactly. There's so many talented people, right? He probably checks every other box along the way. Like Derek Rose, right? Derek Rose, same thing. Jason McGrady. Yep, there's so many people. So if you have that, whatever that is, six, seven, eight spots, why would you not want – you can't talk to turn that kid and go it's

so hard like it's and you see those people yeah you've seen you've seen people who check all those boxes age height training history how fast they adapt dedication mental monster and uh resiliency there's no such thing as perfect so no one's going to be a 10 in all categories but you just kind of wage if you had a 10 that would be the next crossfit games athlete right it just would be do you have if you have 10 years and opportunity right so that means like being with the right coach the right environment the right all that because you take the right time i mean you could have all those things and come along at the same year as matt fraser that's right and suddenly you might be amazing you might be all those things and come along at the same year as Matt Fraser. That's right. And suddenly you might be amazing. You might be all those things, but you'll never win.

But you're Ben Smith. But who was Matt Fraser? What was Matt Fraser the year he came into the games? Think of his height, his age, his weight, his body, like all those things and his training history. He was a gymnast with a weightlifting background. And then when he figured out that he wasn't a good runner, he joined a track team. It's like, and he responded to training incredibly. And there's been nobody ever that's been more dedicated than him. So all I'm doing

is working backwards from that Fraser. Hey, it would be cool if you had a, uh, like a, um, a website, can you be a games athlete and like you know you pay 75 bucks and you take that you take the test take a quiz yeah yeah yeah and it's 100 questions that basically go there's it's 100 questions that go through that from age height uh training history ben's like i know it's launches tomorrow you know ben i think it was uh 99 no ben talked about this in 2017 and think it was or 16 it was called the 2030 games champion across the game champion 99% no. Ben talked about this in 2017, or 16. It was called the 2030 Games Champion, CrossFit Games Champion.

He did talk about this in 2017? Yeah. Or 16, 17, something like that. And then, Ben, if they get a high score, it funnels them to Comp Train, and if they get a shitty score, it funnels them to Training Think Tank. And they gotta train with Travis Mayer.

Hey, And if they get a shitty score, it funnels them to training think tank. And they got to train with Travis Mayer. And hey, what's our boy's name? Haj? Max L. Haj. Max L. Haj. Max L. Haj. I think we're good. I think we didn't even get what's crazy. I was actually a little nervous doing this.

I was like, I don't really have people on the podcast multiple times i mean not like people like you like if they it's like people like daniel brandon like needle movers and uh like what i consider ben quite a hefty needle mover i i meant like eye candy i meant like eye candy. I meant like eye candy. He's not working on those shoulders though. Hey, so I kind of cracked the code on Danielle Brandon too. I figured it out yesterday. So basically we had her on the podcast and then two podcasts she no-showed us. So now when I scheduled her, I schedule her with another guest. So like schedule Ben Bergeron and Danielle Brandon on the same day. You just have Daniel come in like an hour after Ben started.

And that way, like, you know, if she, she doesn't show you still get a podcast. You got, you guys can steal that for your podcast too, Ben,

if you want. Well, I'll always show up. You can trust me. I think that one time you said something like the last time you were on, you're like, have you watched the podcast? I was like,

yeah, I've watched your podcast. And then I said something about guests and you're like, no, we don't have guests. I was like, Oh fuck. Okay. I watched like, Oh fuck.

Okay. I watched one. Brian is the cheese Louise. What is going on, Heidi? Oh, this whole show is all eight women who listened to the show are here for Brian. Um,

let me just peruse through these notes real quick. Uh, unlocked, unlocking potential um is the is the new book um it is uh at amazon it hit number one um someone wanted me to ask about athletes training alone now now monster energy drink now drugs let's okay let's finish on this do you know any athletes like do you know any athletes you personally that have done steroids or performance enhancing drugs i don't yeah me neither no i'm actually i'm always surprised when that it it happens actually see hunter mcintyre you know what the fuck you're talking about i

don't know anyone athletes are no no but we have a i had him on the show i really like him actually and uh and now he texts me anytime someone pops he'll text me oh so and so popped oh i guess i guess it's not all clean someone but i think this fucking thing is clean i mean like relatively clean it's not because people pop but but relatively by relative i mean relative to other sports to your average people walking around on the streets i think it's probably representative of other sports and people walking on the street with my guess so it's equal it's equal to that it's just i would say so i mean like i think it's because you grew up when this was this had a certain ethos like i did you know it's like there was i guess what would you do if someone did pop like or not not pop one of my athletes

yeah well like what if you went in the bathroom after joe schmoe and there's a fucking dirty needle in there would you be like yo dude you can't train here yeah so you can't train it that's one of the rules of comp train you can't be you can't be a rule we don't even no you just don't even – no. You just don't? I hope not. I mean – We try to hold some sort of like – I don't know what the right word is. Ethical standards?

I don't even know what that is. We try to make good people. We try to do things. I try to get people to do things the right way. And that's so far removed from the way we want to go about doing anything that it doesn't even make the list of things to talk about. Now that I'm saying i'm like damn i probably should because if we don't talk about it means that we we don't own it and we should own it yeah i mean i expect to know when you wipe up the clock coffee not to make a bigger mess with the right i mean we have we have athlete agreements with our athletes and that's not even in them like it's because it's honestly a number across my radar that it would be a thing we would talk about. Don't get juiced up. Number seven.

Let me, let me look through a couple more. Um, can't do drugs at comp train. Oh, Florida. So you wouldn't retire in Florida. Where would you retire? I don't know. Actually, when we were in Florida, I asked Heather, that I was like, do you think we are going to end up here at some point? And she was like, I hope not. Uh uh because it seems like it's just like where you it's like this it seems like the loop honestly savannah it seems like it's the same thing over and over every day i just like the idea of being so sweaty just in a pair of shorts never putting on shoes or a shirt and just like just becoming one with the humidity and just like especially now that i'm older like i think my body would love that.

I would love that. I like the heat as well, but I would like to do it where there's more, um, interesting nature, honestly, as like, I want like,

don't they have crazy, they have insane birds and fish there. Don't they? Yeah. We saw dolphins. We were there like really close, like really close, like as close as the,

you know, four feet away from a bunch of dolphins that were jumping out of the water really cool but um i don't know it's like it's perfectly flat there's no exciting um trees or vegetation other than like beautiful flower but it's like manufactured there's the everglades but yeah i don't know i want like too sterile for you it's a little too sterile i think yeah and everyone has. Isn't it trippy how everyone has gray hair? I think that's the generation ahead of us. I don't think that – I don't think it's like our parents are turning blue hairs. I don't think.

Definitely my parents. I mean I'm turning into one. Blue hair or gray hair? Yeah. Isn't that the same thing? No. I think it turns blue. I think they like color.

I don't know. It's just like – it's blue. When I was there, man, I couldn't believe how many old people there were. Yeah. Last time you were on the show was episode 15, a feedback from people you trust, special followers, recklessness, masks. Oh, okay. This is something.

Do you require masks in your gym? Uh-huh. No? Matt, would you like when it gets to COVID no we don't but here's the here's the crazy thing you don't do you require vaccinations in your gym no and no oh shit I thought you did and I was like hating on you

in between like in here I'm so sorry for hating on me silently just for hating on you period i mean i like you not out loud i did i did maybe i maybe i said to matt maybe i like sent mad a text me like this motherfucker requires masks and vaccinations in the gym or something it was a long time ago i haven't thought about it a long time ago we did this what i was going to say okay so we were to my understanding to my

knowledge we were the first crossfit gym in the country to close and we did it voluntarily um that was when i felt like i i we didn't have a grasp on what this thing was you know it seems like it was going to come through and it'd be the black plague and kill everybody we had no understanding of anything i was like dude better safe than sorry we can do this thing if we us being closed for a week helps mitigate seeing any which way which way, form or shape. It feels like a responsibility that we have to be able to do this. They're closing down all the schools. If all the schools are closing down, I'm on board. Let's do this in the, let's do this the right way. That's when I thought that was the right way. And then before I had no inclination that this was a political thing at all or anything like that or that there was motivations on either sides or anything like that.

I was literally trying to go like, what's the way that we can do our part? What's the way if there's a way that we can stem this from spreading to other people? I want to do our part. When we were mandated shut down, that's when I got up in arms. That's when I got like, what the F, like you're wrecking my business. So during that process, we followed the guidelines. We did outside, we did Zoom classes. Then we did outside parking lot workouts. Then we went inside and we had to build 10 by 10 plastic jail cells that everybody worked out in. Literally four-sided jail cells made out of plastic.

Yeah, I talk shit about those too. You should. It sucked. It sucked. It almost broke our business. We had, at the time of COVID, we had about 375 members. After two weeks, we had zero. Literally zero members.

Crazy. We built it back up to when we went back in the gym. We went back in the gym with about 120 this after a year. Same location. Same location. Is that the location I've been at? Yep. And now we're at whenever, how far into this thing are we? Almost two years. And we're still at just 60 we have 245 250 members now um so i mean it's it's when it's made sense in terms of like a stemming but once it doesn't stem the tide and it's like what people are like what like it makes no sense like if it makes no i'm not about like i'm not falling for the rules for rules regulations or anything like that i want to do what makes the most sense for my members.

And once it became made more sense for them to be fit and be like the gym is the best thing that they can do, like I want them to be doing that. Yeah. So we've talked about it as well. It's like if the state were to come out and say, you need to wear masks, you need to do all the things that we were doing before. We would not follow protocol. What state are you in again? Massachusetts. Yeah, it's fucked there. Those people.

Ben, where are those other – That is a fucked state. That is a fucked state, I want to tell you. There are some bad people there, some bad human beings there. There's also some really good people. Sure, sure. Okay, fine. Same as the state you live in, Seva.

Oh, man. Oh, man. I was in Arizona, and i came back to california i i seriously can't believe these are human beings i think california is worse than i think that california's i've been is a lot worse than mass right now is there are no mask regulations at all anywhere except for schools it's the only place everyone's mastered like i want i want to go into home depot i'm the only one who's not going to mask. I go into, like, anywhere I go. Yeah, I'm the only one.

Yeah. Me and my kids, my wife. They let you buy things without a mask on? I've literally been turned away. No one will say a thing to me. I've never been turned away, but I've been asked politely to put it back on. But I'm pretty careful where I go. But people will say stuff.

My wife goes to more places than me, and people will say to her, we have a mask for you. And she just says, no, thank you. And then they don't say anything, but it's just so weird to see home Depot, like a guy buying a hammer and he's got a mask on. I want to just walk to him. Like, sorry, dude, you're not, you can't get a hammer. Why, why not let people do what they want? So you can, you can, you can't form a freedom is letting people do something that you don't believe in. I totally agree with you. I totally agree with you. Um, so it's like,

you can't get upset for people wearing masks the same way you don't want to get people to tell you that you need to wear a mask. Right. I totally, I totally 100% agree with you. Here's, here's what I think is happening. I think when you wear a mask,

I don't believe in homeostasis and it's especially, and I've become especially aware of it with raising kids. There's, you're never, there's no homeostasis. You I've become especially aware of it with raising kids. There's no homeostasis. You're either doing something, you're either being a good parent or you're being a bad parent. You're either helping your kids or you're making shit worse. You're either making them codependent or you're setting them free. It's like so fucking quick, the change. And I do believe that every time someone wears a mask, you are telling the world you are, it's, it's the fear flag. You are flying a flag of fear and you could be telling yourself it's for compassion. It's to protect it's to do this, but think of this, think of like this Matt without getting, okay, I'm not going to go down that road, but every time you wear a mask, I think you're wearing, you're telling

the world that there's something to be afraid of here. And we're all just mirrors here and i think that we're all have fallen into this fear narrative that's completely unrealistic and completely untrue and that we have a we have a responsibility to each other to set our noses and mouths free if you want to kill someone you should cover their nose and their mouth and if and if you don't, you should uncover them. And I just think it's, I think it's so irrational, but I hear you. I'm okay with, I'm okay with it being, but it's, but it's not, but all the stores say here, you must wear a mask. They all say that it's not, they're not doing it. They're not doing it by, it's a cop-out. I think to say they're doing it by choice. Sorry. I didn't mean to talk over you, i do agree with you yeah i think that um you're creating a narrative in your head the same

way a lot of other people are creating narratives in their head you know um no i don't because you're you're you're a conditioning of your past and what you believe and your reality is very different than someone else's reality. Somebody else goes, my, my son is a doctor. And my son said, the best thing I can do to protect myself is wear a mask. That's their reality. They're doing the best thing they can. They look at you and they go, oh my gosh, he's endangering me. He's reckless. Like he's doing the worst thing possible where you're doing the same thing. You're saying you're wearing a mask is the worst thing possible. It's just, we're all creating these fictions in our head. There is no reality. So just do what floats you, what makes

you feel good and forget about what the rest of the world is doing. Forget about what they're, because you have no control over it. It's only going to come up with a negative narrative. there because you have no control over it it's only going to come out with a negative narrative it's politics and it's politics 101 it's like i hear you except no one is the only narrative out there ben is that is the fear fear narrative and there's there is not true that one's just being pushed heavily and others are being suppressed okay Okay, fine. I'm fine with that. The, the, the, the narrative, the other narratives are being suppressed and the really loud narrative is, is that these mass works and that they're helping people's health and that everyone needs to wear them, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

And what I'm just saying, and you're in, I'm being a little cavalier and having fun with it by just poking fun and saying, yeah, you shouldn't be able to buy a hammer if you're not, because it's too dangerous of a weapon. If you're not even able to stand up for yourself and not wear a mask that's that's all i was saying but okay i hear what you're saying but there's a complete imbalance of uh there's there we're we're we are completely vapid of logic and um uh fear rationale and fear mitigation i mean we've completely there's there's there's no context or assessment of what's going on so the masks are just the distraction the vaccines is what they i think that they wanted people to get another thing another thing i i don't care if anyone gets a vaccine,

mandating them for my kids is fucking absolutely insanity or for anyone who's had COVID already. How the fuck does that work? Anyway, but I hear you. I hear, I hear what you're saying. I agree with you,

Ben. I agree. I agree. Let's all go get our legs chopped off. Okay. Thanks for coming on. Thanks for having me. I'm excited for the book to come into an audio book. Do you have a date on that? Nope. Not even on the radar right now. He's not interested in unlocking his potential until that's released. he's not interested in unlocking his potential until that's released.

I have a lot of things that I need to, I have a lot of keys that I don't know what they go to unlock that I'm trying to figure and fumble through before I get to that part. I, I, I allow myself now when I work out, I keep my phone next to me and I allow myself to take notes when I, so if I'm doing a workout, I allow myself to stop and take notes. I would have never have done that. Now I have a podcast. It's like, I allow myself to do that. I wanted to share that with you. I don't know why, but I thought it was pretty cool. That was a hard thing for me to do. So one of the best moments of clarity I have in my day is when I'm,

I take the eight 30 class at crossing New Englandland every day and during the warm-up process my mind just does my mind just like goes into a really cool mode and i have a little whiteboard next to me i just write down all the notes it's always like before i start my workout so i can relate is it on the ground it's different every day sometimes it's on the wall sometimes i write on a window and sometimes i have one of those little, um, like, it's like a, like a size of a piece of paper. And I'll just put that on like a plyo box or something. What if you think something you don't want the other clients to see,

like switch? I write it really messy. I purposely write really messy. So no one can read it for me. It's like, it's like hieroglyphics. Bang Heather at three o'clock. Oh fuck. I better like just draw like a circle with a line in it. All right. Thanks, man.