The Sevan Podcast - #33 - Ryan Fischer
Episode Date: May 13, 2021The Sevan Podcast EP 33 - Ryan Fischer and Brian Friend @RYANFISCH @BRIANFRIENDCROSSFIT @SEVANMATOSSIAN The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://ww...w.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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I'm in my house, so I can't be much better.
We've had guys in the car, guys walking around.
Really?
Guys who don't own a computer.
Yeah.
You'd be surprised how many people don't own a computer, Ryan.
Is that like Ronnie?
No, no.
Actually, he has a computer because he posts a lot of pictures of him on his computer, staring out at the sun.
Someone asked me why we haven't had him on the podcast yet.
He just moved to, uh, to Laguna beach.
And he texted me like over the weekend and asked if he can come to my gym.
So he worked out at my gym over the weekend.
Is that the first time you'd seen him in a while?
Actually, I wasn't there. I was,
I was doing something with a bunch of videos, creating like a new course that I've been working on for a while actually i wasn't there i was i was doing something with with a bunch of videos
creating like a new course that i've been working on for a while but uh apparently he lives here now
so i'll probably see him more often he said he's going to come come work out more often
that that picture i posted last night that said uh we got to get ryan fisher on the podcast um
i it's pretty cool because i i from all my years of working at CrossFit, I have a hundred terabytes of videos and pictures, and I just typed in Ryan Fisher and bam, I had a whole
selection of photos. I had a whole selection of photos to choose that I'd taken of you.
And, uh, when I posted it, um, Ronnie responded right away. Hey, do you want me to reach out to
him and get them on the podcast for you? He's all, you guys will have a great conversation,
which was, which was really cool of him i like it
he wanted me to talk to you way back in the day when all the stuff went down like he was like you
gotta go on and i was like i was like i'm happy to go on i don't i don't think he wants me to go on
i i haven't i haven't i haven't uh i have no issues with you. We cross with it. I think that was why I wasn't allowed on.
Well, well, that's for sure. Um, and, and not CrossFit, um, and it's totality,
although it's really amazing how people are. I'll start with this and then we can backtrack.
If we want to get into more details, the story kind of bores me a little bit, but I, but I'll
tell you this just for the sake of for me and you.
It's my story.
Every podcast I ever go on, they always bring it up.
I'll tell you this part just to sort of clear the air.
So there was an incident where, first of all, you have to know something about Ryan Fisher.
And Elon Musk said it in the Saturday Night Live interview, and I've talked about it extensively with Matt and Josh on that podcast.
By the way, do you know Brian?
Ryan?
I feel like we look similar. You guys know each other?
Yeah, I don't think we've met, though.
I think we've met probably just by face or name.
Brian is, in my opinion, and I think in the opinion of most people,
the greatest analyst of the CrossFit games and the CrossFit athletes that's ever existed.
Not only is he a
coach, but he's freakish with numbers. He's like that kid in junior high who just reads the back
of all the baseball cards. And although we don't have a lot of games athletes on here, what we did
do a few shows, we met on Instagram and we did do a few shows together for the CrossFit games. And
I thought he was wonderful because he didn't talk and I got to be the center of attention.
And I thought he was wonderful because he didn't talk and I got to be the center of attention.
So that's why he's the co-host of the show.
So basically, for people who don't know, Ryan, and you can see this just by going to his Instagram, he doesn't do anything halfway.
He doesn't do anything 90 percent.
He does everything 100 percent.
You can see that by the number of times he's pushed himself so hard in workouts that the wheels have come off the bus. And his goal was is to win and be the best at what he does. And clearly from every single post. And I mean that with all seriousness, you can tell that like he's one of those guys who could write the book on be present every day and get, he wants to win at life. He does not want to look back and have any regrets. And, um, you can tell by what he's doing. And because of that, there's a
intensity to him that people who aren't striving for that level of, um, life living, um, that it's
going to seem weird, but it's going to seem weird to any, if you hang out with any of these people
who are giving their best.
They're not normal people.
And everyone has that potential.
He's just set himself free to do it.
That being said, there was an incident where he was at the CrossFit regionals. There was a Kerr shuffle with one of the referees in a dispute, and it got turned into a public incident because then Dave addressed it with Ryan, and we posted the video, and it turned into drama.
And people love drama, so it caught a little bit of fire.
And people love drama. So, so it caught a little bit of fire. That being said, immediately afterwards, I worked on the media team at CrossFit Inc. at the time. And I wanted to, and there was also a similar incident with Ronnie Teasdale that did not happen at a CrossFit event, but it was a similar incident. And the two of them worked out together. And I knew they were going to both be at this Del Mar regional, which was one of the greatest regionals of all the regionals. It was such a fantastic venue with great athletes. And I wanted to, the following year, I wanted to do a piece on Ryan and Ronnie,
and I wanted to focus on them because that's what I did at the events. I would start on day one and
sort of tell the trajectory of their story. And Tony Budding, who was the head of CrossFit media
at the time said, absolutely not. We're not giving people attention for bad behavior. And I never saw it as bad behavior. I saw it as,
Hey, this is just the competition floor. Like this is just, this is, this is it. There's athletes,
there's judges, there's people who want to win. And so they wouldn't let me do it. Well, flash
forward a few years and I became the head of CrossFit media. And the first thing I wanted to
do was do a piece on Ryan and Ronnie.
And I could do it because no one could tell me no.
And so that's sort of my take of the incident.
And then that year I did try to do a piece on you and Ronnie.
And I started to.
And I have to tell you, as a filmmaker, it was scary, right?
Like, I don't know.
How are Ryan and Ronnie going to react?
Or they can be like, fuck you.
We don't trust you assholes.
You already burned us once by posting all those videos.
And Ronnie was game and he went along.
And I think like after day one or maybe during day one, at some point you were, you looked
at me and you're like, uh, we're not doing this.
And so you, and I think that was the only time I had maybe had, had met you.
I don't think we've had any interaction besides that.
I remember just being really mad at regionals.
I think you were trying to talk to me and I was like, I mean like my,
to me, my life was over.
Like I had put my entire life into it and to not go to the games.
And like the, I think you might know a lot of the other people probably
don't know that like I had literally just gotten done with you know being like homeless and
going to jail for stealing and like literally having absolutely nothing to my name and the
only thing I cared about was going to the games to be able to create a life for myself
and for it to all go away in just a matter of seconds. I mean, I think I still got like fourth or fifth place at that regional
and they gave me dead last at the deadlift.
So I think I worked an hour.
It was like even if I got like in the top 20 in that workout
and I would have won it, it was my favorite workout of the whole weekend.
Like I would have went and it would have changed everything.
I feel like once you go to the games one time, like CrossFit's like,
oh, this guy is super cool.
And like,
you get like special treatment from there on out.
Did they,
did they give you dead last because of,
of the interaction you had with the judge?
No,
they just like,
Oh,
they just weren't,
weren't,
they just wouldn't,
uh,
like count any of my reps.
Even when I was exhausted,
tired,
I'm like doing single.
And they're like,
now when I'm like,
Oh my God.
So I was exhausted, tired, I'm like doing single. And they're like, now when I'm like, Oh my God. So I've heard, I've heard plenty of complaining about the refs.
I do a podcast with Josh and Matt,
and it seems to be like one of their favorite topics to complain about the
refs. And, and, and
Well, you have like two different kinds of reps you have the reps who's like
you know they're they're like scared of the athlete and like embarrassed to say the right
the wrong call and then someone's like oh my god did you see that they did that to matt frazier or
like they did it to this person or that person or you have the opposite who's like you know i know
no one's gonna know rep him so if it's even borderline i'm to know rep him. So if it's even borderline, I'm going to know rep him. So you guys like anyone, you know what I mean?
It's like, you just have like this weird, I don't know.
And I'm sure a lot of them probably remember my incident. So they're just like,
well, I want to make sure I do the right call, blah, blah, blah.
So I don't know. I feel bad for the people to be honest, but you volunteered.
You want to be a ref. Have you ever been, have you ever been a judge?
Why would anyone want to be a judge? I've been a you ever been a judge why would anyone want to be a
judge i've been a judge but it's only because no one else can judge and they're like hey we need
you to be a judge and i'm like damn it all right uh ronnie uh ryan own i was gonna call you ronnie
ryan owns chalk performance training um he's the host of the uh real chalk podcast and he has a very impressive website
is a very impressive platform um if nothing else you should check it out um of all the training
programs that i've looked at and and like dug through the way he talks about his is it looks
like it is the most fun it looks like it has an amazing worldwide community around it and it looks like um he's honest about what he's giving
and what you can get out of it fitness a beautiful body um diet nutrition all all the things and he
is um he is more focused than most in the crossfit community on wanting to look good and i think
wanting to look good is really, really important.
I don't know if he's more focused.
I think he's just more vocal about it.
A lot of people are focused on that, but don't talk about it.
Your turn.
I think that was like one of the things about me as an athlete that kind of like worked out for me, right?
Was like, even though I didn't get to go to the games and do really well,
like I always wanted to,
I always had like this freakish body that everybody
always liked. And every time I would compete, they'd be like, Oh, this is my favorite athlete.
Cause he just looks like a fucking, you know, Ninja turtle or whatever. Right. Like people
always had different names for me and such, but I always knew that that's what people like. So I was
like, well, I'm going to give them what they like. You know, that's a true entertainer in the, in the,
in the sports space. Right. Like right like you know a football player does
a certain dance at the end of a touchdown or a basket you know freaking lebron's got his like
chalk thing or whatever like everybody's got like their thing and i was like well if you guys all
like the way i looked and maybe what i'll do is just start showing you guys exactly what i do all
the time and that's kind of how everything started. Like, I remember I was actually dating this girl at the time and she was a model for like a big fitness brand. And
it was the first time I had ever seen, I'd ever met someone who was getting paid just to take
photos on Instagram. I was like, you get paid a hundred thousand dollars a year just to take
photos of yourself. And you only work like three days a week and like, just do photo shoots like this. Like it blew my face off. I was like,
this is insane. And then she's like, you want to come to a meeting with me? Like all these people
are going to be there. And I look them up on Instagram. They have like 2 million followers
and this insanity. And I'm like, sure, I'll go like, not because of them, but just, I'm happy to go and just, you know, meet the people you work with. Um, so I get there and all these kids start rolling
up and Lamborghinis and Ferraris and Rolls Royces and all this shit. And I'm like,
Nikki, what the fuck do these people do? And then they're like, Oh, well they do this and
they do that. And like this person sells programs or
whatever and I'm like wow like I didn't even know that was possible like you're talking about some
serious cash like I like how much money these people make and then she was like oh my my one
friend there like I know she makes like fifty thousand dollars a month like and and like I
remember the numbers coming out of her mouth and I just was like, this is insane. And I think at the time I had like 10,000 followers on
Instagram. And after that meeting, like literally every single day, I would just like analyze these
people's profile. I would, you know, watch everything they did, how they sold their
things. I'd go to their website and I just like would really dissect all of it. And I was like, well, there's nobody in the CrossFit space doing this.
And yes, I'm extremely self-conscious to say, Hey, like you guys should buy my program or,
you know, I'm going to sell this. And I wasn't like rich for owning. I didn't win the CrossFit
games. I didn't really feel like I had the validity to just the validation of just being
like, Hey, I have the best program. You should buy my thing.
So I was definitely a little bit insecure about it, but I was like, Hey, I do really
love this.
And what would I do if I did win the CrossFit games?
I would probably, you know, sell programs.
I would probably do what I really love to do since I was a little kid, which is I've
just always been obsessed with nutrition and training.
And I went to school for kinesiology.
Like what else am I really going to do?
So I was like, swallow your pride and swallow the, you know, whatever you think is embarrassing
or, and just fucking go for it.
So I remember I started selling books and just making all these different things.
I didn't know how to fucking make an ebook.
I just like put a bunch of workouts together that I was making for my gym at the time,
turned it into this PDF and was like, you guys can buy this. And it started to make a whole
bunch of money. And it was crazy to me. It was actually so crazy that a lot of big time CrossFit
athletes actually messaged me and they were like, Hey, like, I see that you're doing this. And I
see that you're doing that. I was like, wonder if you could help me out. And I messaged a lot
of them back. And I'd be like, this is actually the first time I ever talked about it on a podcast. I remember messaging back probably like
99% of them and being like, you know what? I remember you and I don't like you. And
I remember that you didn't like me and I'm not going to help you. And I made it like very
apparent that I did not like them. And the way that they had treated me during that time was like,
I remember it. And there were some people that time was like i remember it and there were
some people that i was like i will absolutely help you i remember you and you're fucking awesome
did anyone apologize when you said that was anyone like
oh i'm sorry you're right oh they just straight up didn't even write me back
um and it's it's if i was to tell you the names, you'd be blown away.
Like some of them are like the bigger, bigger names.
Um, I'll leave them alone, but it's just interesting.
Like a lot of people, I feel like that's the thing that CrossFit really did bad for their,
for their athletes is they didn't really give them enough opportunity to be able to build
their own brand.
And it kind of sucks.
Like someone like me, like, I don't want to say I got lucky.
I tried really hard and I, you know, I was uncomfortable. There was a lot of, and I was
in that moment at those meetings with my ex-girlfriend where I saw what was actually
possible. I think a lot of people don't put themselves in scenarios to see what's possible.
I always say that networking is one of the greatest things you'll ever do.
to see what's possible. I always say that networking is one of the greatest things you'll ever do. Um, even with the podcast, like you're going to meet people that you probably wouldn't
normally get to talk to if it wasn't for the podcast and a conversation will arise where
you're like, Oh wow. I never knew that. Or, Oh my God, he knows this person. Like he's talked
to Dr. Nick and Dr. Nick's like, Oh, I got it. You got to get Ryan on the podcast. And just like,
and dr nick's like oh i gotta you gotta get ryan on the podcast and just like it's a snowball effect and um yeah i just feel like if had none of that did happen to me and i just was like every other
crossfit athlete like i lived with uh kenny leverage for most of my crossfit career we were
good friends and he's like still trying to be a fireman. He's still trying to get into like that whole pipeline of,
of stuff like that.
And he's been wanting to do it for like his entire life.
And he was one of the top CrossFit Games athletes.
And he was just an amazing athlete and amazing person.
And he doesn't have nearly as much to show for it as a lot of other
athletes who never even went to the games.
And that just like really bums me out.
Like I remember training with them and like how hard he worked and
everything.
And I'm like to look at him and not see him have something great is like kind of a
bummer he also had an amazing he also had an amazing physique his physique was ridiculous
yeah it just sucks you know yeah a couple things you opened up a lot of cans there what happened
to the girl what happened to the girlfriend?
You said your ex-girlfriend.
What happened to her?
Well, we broke up.
She went and hooked up with some random guy and got pregnant.
Okay.
That's a pretty solid exit.
To sum up the story quickly.
It was also going to be an extraordinary challenge for you to make
the crossfit games because of your size right no i don't think so no how tall are you five five
oh okay okay you know there's only nine percent of the male population is five five like at five
really oh yeah yeah five six you're in a whole i'm five five Five, six, you're in a whole – I'm five, five also. At five, six, you're in a whole different category.
All of a sudden, it's like 18%.
I mean, let me ask you this.
How many people do you see on a daily basis who are shorter than you?
It's rare, but honestly, I don't even notice it.
I barely ever notice it.
I don't notice it either.
Well, we're proportion good.
We're proportion good.
If you're five, five and you're not proportion good you you you're you're really fucked like when you and have a weird torso and weird legs and still look normal but if you're
five five like all your shit's got to be like sorry brian when you when you were competing
how much did you weigh uh anywhere between 175 to 180 pounds and i still weigh that okay yeah no it's definitely uh
on the lower end of the statistical spectrum of what you'd expect to see at the games but
it's not unheard of who who's been five five who's gone to the games brian
five five dan bailey josh ridges i think i think frazier's all right he might say it's it's more but I've seen him in
person he's literally just like the same right I know it's funny dude it's it's actually crazy
like he was always listed I think at 5'8 and ever since he retired everything I've ever seen is said
5'6 yeah you know I think they're just embellishing the stats. So I don't really know. But I do know the stats based on what's listed on their games profiles.
And the average is five, nine and a half, you know, generally.
Yeah.
When I look at all the pictures of you and I look at your physique,
I don't see any of like the spider veins or any of the things that show steroids.
And of course, since my body looks nothing like yours,
I want to accuse you of being tough but
you have this fucking picture of yourself before you were i was too poor to even buy them but
and to be honest i after the after the dave castro incident i probably would have definitely
done him and come back and been like fuck everybody but i knew that if i ever failed
a drug test he would just completely light me up.
There's a picture of you on your Instagram. So, so you have some massive quads in respect to the rest of your body. And, but there's a picture of you, um, in a Halloween costume where you,
I mean, in the photo, you look like you're six, four, 300 pounds, but, um, you're, I think in
the photo, you say you're 210 pounds and you're in a halloween costume with these short shorts and your quads
are massive even bigger than they are now i mean they're way bigger than yeah yeah it's crazy um
who did you get those from are those from your mom your dad like how does that how do you how
do you have those it's tough i mean they are massive
right they think they rub when you walk right oh for sure that was a just abomination of life
at that point that was when i was on the olympic bobsled team and i was a skeleton athlete first
and i really wanted to do bobsled and i was like 100 i couldn't really break like the 190 pound
mark so i just started like literally
like every single night I'd go to Whole Foods and ask the guys but right before they close up if I
could buy a pizza for like five bucks because you know Whole Foods is like five dollars for a slice
so I'm like you know it's the end of the night what are you guys gonna do with this stuff and
like every night I just walk across the street I live right there in park city utah and i'd get a whole pizza pie every single night and i'd eat that like every night and i
need to be heavy to be on the team do you need to be on the team you had to be at least like 195
or something like that and but it's always beneficial to be over 200 so i eventually got
to 208 pounds of my biggest weight, but where I got the legs from,
I'd say probably like a mix from my mom and my dad, my, my real dad, I'd never met until I was
24 years old. And he's, he was like, he's like stocky, but didn't have the same legs at the time.
Seven. Can I ask us, or I'm going to ask a selfish question, I guess, because I don't
think it applies to a huge percentage of the population, but it's very real for me.
And I'm sure there's other people that it's real for, too.
I can't gain weight.
Like I try really, really hard.
And like one of the kind of conclusions that I've come to is I have to I have to like I can't eat enough healthy food to gain weight.
So don't eat healthy food.
So don't eat healthy food. don't eat healthy food that's
it that's the advice from the nutritionist no like honestly anybody who tells me like they have a
hard time gaining and i watch what they're eating and it's like the most nutritional thing on the
planet and they're like oh my god i have to eat like fucking 87 bananas and like 10 pounds of
ground chicken for this to work out it It's like, well, stop fucking eating
ground. Like if you look at bodybuilders, they look, they're like eating cereal, like legitimately,
like they're eating like bowls of cereal. They're eating like, you know, during their bulking phase
and sometimes like fast food. Like, I think that you can do it better than that, but you're going
to have to have like some processed stuff. It does not necessarily be like fast food.
And then I
was you know I was curious because for most of my adult life before starting
cross it really I was like come like my were just comfortable weight was like
150 pounds and over the last five years or something I've been able to get up to
165 and that's like kind of comfortable for me now and I feel like that's just
like now the new weight that my body's comfortable with.
And your, I mean, experience, if I started eating more of that, maybe processed food or slightly
unhealthy food and was able to put on another 10 pounds, is the, do you think the body's capable
of like adapting to that new weight and then maintaining it? If you, if you went back to
eating primarily more of what you consider healthy food? Yeah, I think so.
Like, I think once you get to where you want to be, it's always easier to maintain.
Like, I think that the biggest thing that people have is just getting over that hump.
And a lot of things that people do wrong is they're like, dude, I measure my food.
I do everything right.
And like, they do it for like three or four days out of the week.
And they feel like they can just say that.
But you fuck up like two days out of that week.
You're talking about trying to gain like a pound a week. You're not gaining like a pound a day. So like, you know, the weekend comes and maybe you program for your gym all
weekend and you have like one glass of water and a fucking handful of almonds for the whole day.
But you're like, you tell everybody I ate perfect all week. And now all of a sudden that day is so
bad that you just fucked up the whole week. or like that one day where someone's peer pressing you like every
single day, like hour of the day, like, come on, let's go drink. We're going to do this. We're
going to do that. Blah, blah, blah. All of a sudden you give into that. I just got really
drunk over the weekend. It was like a seventh year anniversary party. And I felt like shit for
like three days now that definitely
fucked me up but like things happen you know like these these these like small little things happen
i call it like the basic bitch syndrome like all the basic bitches are all like perfect all week
and then the whole weekend's just like you know fucking what are the what are those drinks that
people have like what's like the weekend what's the weekend drink it's like what is it i don't think
either seven or i or i drink i'm out of the game but but but i used to always get if you're talking
about like the sugary drinks i used to always get what's the a moscow mule i used to just drink just
crush moscow mules yeah well like every sunday like girls drink this i can't remember the hell
it is brian and i don't brian and i don't know. Look at us. Brian and I don't know.
Yeah. Mimosas, mimosas. It's like the mimosa thing all weekend. I have mimosas and blah,
blah, blah, blah. And it's like all of a sudden everything you did all week is pretty much gone
because it's, it's very small incremental changes. Well, Savan fasts once a week.
So you would not recommend that I fast once a week. Absolutely not.
not recommend that i fast once a week absolutely not
i fast 36 but i'm also 49 years old well you don't have the same goals as me right yeah and that's what i think that's what ryan talks about a lot on his i don't have any goals his his
instagram none a goalless man living life that is a dangerous man
someone fucks with you you're like hey bro i don't have
any goals in life i will fucking kill you right here i don't know if you understand this right
now like i live for nothing brian how tall are you brian 5 10 oh yeah, yeah. That's skinny. That's skinny.
Actually, when I started CrossFit, I was 5'10", 135.
So I'm still skinny at 165.
Have you ever measured your calories every day, though?
Yeah. I used to coach through the OPEX, and I had a lot of personal clients, and I also had a personal coach.
And so for six months, I was regularly tracking my food.
I didn't want to continue doing it forever. I wanted to use that as an opportunity for me to learn so that now I generally know if I eat this, it's about this pretty good estimation. And I have a good idea, but I strive to eat at least 3,500 calories a day. And, um, but a lot of times I'll eat like 60% or more of that after 6 p.m. at night.
That's just how my days generally go.
Yeah.
That's hard to do.
Not if you just eat a pizza every night.
Ryan, you mentioned earlier that you had gotten caught for stealing.
You know there's a statistic that says like – I think it's like 85% of the people in jail don't have fathers.
They grew up in just homes with moms, which is interesting because a lot of people like to blame it.
A lot of people like to talk about race and all this stuff but when you look at those statistics of who's in jail and who does well the primary statistic of who does well like the one that trumps them all is the
fact of how you were raised as a child and and and whether you had a dad at home and i and i only said
whether you had a dad at home don't get all upset women it's not a dig on women it's just the fact
that it's usually the dad that bails um did you what was it like growing up i mean I mean, I know it's all you know, but what was it like by your mom?
And you have an older sister too, right?
Dude, I have like nine brothers and sisters.
Oh shit.
I don't talk about them because I don't talk to anyone, but I talk to them here and there.
And I think that, you know, like when I went on the Scott McGee podcast one time and I
like talk about like my whole family life and like exploded in the CrossFit realm because I was like the first time because everyone always knew me as the super intense person.
And like I'm crying in like half the podcast because he asked me like all these questions that I didn't even know that he would ever know the answers to.
And he's like a fucking FBI agent just somehow just, just drove me into like these weird little corners.
I was like,
shit.
So he's really good at this job.
There was a point during the podcast where I was like,
dude,
how the fuck do you know this?
And he's like,
I talked to your mom and I was like,
what?
So anyway,
I did not talk to your mom.
I just saw,
I basically,
the two things that I thought was,
cause it is, does interest me a lot is the fact that you, you're very clear on your Instagram,
that mom, your mom is very important to you and you were raised by her. And then I did see,
I went all the way back to 2011 in your Instagram. And the only picture I saw was of a beautiful
young lady, but she looks significantly older than you. And you said she was your sister.
She looked like she was 25 and you look like you were 10 or something.
she was your sister. She looked like she was 25 and you look like you were 10 or something.
Um, yeah, like my, my, my family, you know, we're all like very, very different.
Um, I grew up in a house with five brothers and sisters. And then when I was 18, I found out who my dad was. And then when I was 24, I actually met him for the first time and then he has four
other daughters so there's like this whole big giant shit show of all of us the five brothers
and sisters that I grew up with we all had different dads and then as I was growing up
I remember just like feeling a little bit weird because my one brother, we had the same last name and I used to
always just assume that his dad was my dad. And my mom told me that that was my dad. And like,
I just always assumed that that was my dad. And then he wasn't, I found out when I was 18,
cause I was like real sad. I was like, man, why doesn't dad ever come see me? Like, why doesn't he ever ask me how I'm doing? Like, why don't I ever get a letter? Like,
why don't I, you know, get a phone call or whatever. And I got little things here and
there, but not nearly as much as my other brother who were, it was technically his dad.
And then one day I'm getting my haircut. My sister owns a hair salon and I'm asking her
all these dad questions. And she's like, I just got to tell you that like, this guy's not your dad.
Mom's going to fucking kill me.
But I just, I have to tell you this.
And I remember sitting in the chair being like, I'm fucking dreaming right now.
This doesn't happen to normal people.
And I wasn't fucking dreaming.
Like I literally was like, I'm for sure dreaming.
And I wasn't.
And then I remember just like having to figure out all these things, like who is my dad? Like,
what does he like to do? Like, what does he look like? Like, where's he from? Like all these
different things. And it was kind of like a hush hush thing. Nobody really wanted to talk about
him kind of thing. And, um, I think because that had happened to me, I think my mom always kind of felt, and I think because she didn't really know when she was going to tell me about it.
I think she always gave me like a little bit of extra, like a little bit extra attention when I was little, a little bit extra this, a little bit extra that.
My brothers and sisters were always like, called me like baby Jesus or something like that.
I'd always have, my mom always liked me a little bit more, but I always did good things. Like my other brothers
and sisters were always like real bad. And I was the youngest in the house. So I'd always see all
the bad shit that they did. And I didn't want to be like that. So it was just natural to me
instead of wanting to be like them, like most brothers and sisters, even if they are bad,
you kind of follow in their footsteps. I just knew, I was like, these people aren't that cool.
Like I want to do something way cooler than whatever they're doing.
So they're probably really, really proud of you.
I mean, I'm the oldest one and I fucked up a lot, but my youngest brother, my only brother
was five years younger.
He never, he hasn't made any of those mistakes that I made.
And I'm like, kind of feel good about the fact that if my mistakes prevented him from making those mistakes,
like that it was worth it. Maybe. Yeah. Maybe my brothers are on a little bit different levels
than yours probably. And I don't mean that in a, in a, in a, in a jab way. Like my brothers are
like, one of them's like a drug dealer and you know, one of them has a lot of issues and different
things. Like we're drastically different. Like any of them spend time in jail, any of them's like a drug dealer and you know, one of them has a lot of issues and different things.
Like we're drastically different.
Like any of them spend time in jail, any of them spend time in jail?
Significant amounts of times, both of them.
Oh, well that makes sense statistically to what we're seeing.
So yeah, I think like, but my mom,
like once I got to the point where like my mom knew I was good,
like she just always supported everything. I think that's like the best thing she ever did for me was there. There was a lot of times where
she was like, yeah, Brian, you want to go ride your bike to fucking like, I'd be like 12 years
old and get a flat tire on my bicycle. And I had like a prepaid cell phone at the time. And I'd
call my mom and be like, Hey mom, I have a flat tire. And like, and I'm, this is where I am. And
she'd be like, that's a literally a 40 minute car drive away. I have no idea why you were there. You must've crossed all these main roads and all these
craziness to get there. And I'd be like, well, I just heard there was a bunch of cool jumps over
here or something, you know? So she just, she kind of just was like, go live your life and
kind of figure it out. And on top of that, whatever you want to do, I'm probably going to say, yeah, you can probably do it.
Because I was just like so outside the box, like for me to even think I could ride my bike, what would be considered a 40 minute car drive away.
Like that was normal to me.
I was like, oh, yeah, I can do that for sure.
And depending on where you live in California, it might be shorter on bike.
Yeah, this is in New Jersey, though. There's like seven people live there.
So it's totally, totally different scenario.
But you know, what's crazy is, you know, I grew up the way that I grew up.
All of my brothers and sisters are very, very different from me.
Nobody has grown up to be the way that I am.
And when I met my dad for the first time, when I was 24 years old
and granted, I'm not who I am today, but at that time I was, I was still who I am now. Just,
I didn't have all the things yet. And, uh, like, and, and by all the things I didn't mean, like,
I didn't have my business or anything like that yet, but you could tell by the person I was that
I was going to be fine. And I was, you know, about to be on the Olympic team and all these different great things.
And when I met him, we were the exact same person. And I'd never met him my entire life.
I left. You were the exact same person, same exact person. Like we played the same sports
in high school. We both moved out of, like I moved away from New Jersey when I was 18
and moved to Utah. Oh, sorry. I moved to New Jersey when I was 18 and moved to Utah.
Oh, sorry.
I moved to Hawaii first.
I was a helicopter pilot for a little bit.
Wow.
And then I moved out of, that was when I was 18.
Moved to Hawaii when I was 18.
When he was 18, he moved to Florida, opened his own business.
He has a super successful business, you know, works like a 100 hours a week and all these crazy things
and when he eventually got money he bought all these crazy toys like dirt bikes and quads and
fucking all these just crazy shit and i have all that stuff and you know the things he likes to do
in his free time like he does iron mans and does like all these different things like we're literally
the exact same person it's insane and i never even him. And if you were to look at my other brothers and sisters and their
dads, none of them are even remotely like us at all. And I didn't even see these types of things
growing up. Like I only saw bad stuff growing up. I never, I was dealing drugs and doing drugs. And
you know, my, my friends weren't like that. Like I didn't even have any friends to look up to
when i where i went to school where i was like oh man i want to be like this kid
these are just like a natural intuition that i had and i want to be exactly like the guy which
i think just blows me away it's just crazy how old are you now 34 so and when were you home
how old were you the last time you were homeless? I wasn't like truly, truly homeless.
Like I slept in my car for like three days
and then I slept on some people's couches that I didn't know.
Like I didn't know who they were.
I was in their house like awkwardly.
Yeah, that's homeless.
How long was that?
2012 to 13 range.
So not even 10 years ago.
Yeah. My life's crazy since then.
Yeah. Um, you'd mentioned the eBooks earlier by the, I recommend anyone who's, who's,
who's interested in fitness and nutrition books to go over and take a look at them. It's a, it's, there's 24 of them and they all look amazing. I didn't actually click through them, but it's
quite the array. It's amazing. You can just keep scrolling and scrolling and you've published a lot
of stuff and congratulations to that. And I love hearing, I have a similar story to you, but I was,
I was on a slower trajectory, you know, at 34, when I was your age, I found CrossFit and that's when my
trajectory started headed up, headed upwards. Actually probably started a little bit before
then. Um, how did, how did you find CrossFit? What was the first time you came across it?
You're going to love this story. So when I was training on the bobsled team in Utah,
in park city, I used to work out at this gym and I was the gym attendant at the gym where I would just clean equipment.
This was my college job.
So I've been in a gym literally my entire life.
I mean, I started working out when I was 12 because my friend's parents own the gym in New Jersey and I was just in the gym all the time.
And then here we go.
I'm in college. I get a job at a gym. Anyway, I remember being in this gym and there was this guy who was training like
four people at a time, like in a little group setting inside the gym and the gym that I was
working out at, it's called basin recreation field house. And it's in park city, Utah.
And we had like an indoor track an indoor turf
like a not like a legitimate soccer field inside just like a humongous place and there was a gym
inside so you just had all these different areas of recreation and this guy little super skinny guy
and tiny but like ripped training these four people. And they're always doing crazy shit. Like
I remember seeing the butterfly pull up. I remember like people doing farmer carries and
like people like dying and I'm like watching them and I'm like, what the fuck are they doing?
Like sometimes it looks cool. And sometimes I'm like, that looks dumb. Like the kipping pull-up
thing, just like it was too much much for me and this guy would always come
over to me and ask me to do this workout 21 15 9 dressers and pull-ups i want to see how fast you
can do it and i'd be like no dude that shit's dumb and he would see me every day because i was
working at the gym and one day he's like i'll give you 500 bucks you can beat my time and i was like oh okay the person i'm talking about is chris spieler uh-huh so that's
awesome yeah i remember seeing chris spieler before he even had a gym like this is when
he showed me a video of him going to the crossfit games in the dirt doing deadlifts and and stuff
like this at the at the ranch i didn't know what it meant he's showing to me on his phone he's like
look at this thing i did over the weekend and And I was like, cool. Like I literally had,
I felt nothing for him. I'm like, Oh, you went and did deadlifts in the dirt somewhere. Great.
I didn't realize how big of a deal it was. I literally thought it was like nothing,
but anyway, I was like, all right, I got to beat this guy's time. It's 500 bucks. It's a lot of
money. So I remember my first workout fran and i did all the thrusters
on broken like super fast and i do the pull-up and like i had no idea i'd do a kipping pull-up
so i'm basically just doing like a regular pull-up and i'm like frogging and like just
flailing around trying to get my chin over the bar i think i finished in like four minutes and
30 seconds or something like that wow wow which which wasn't bad but i had never done an intense workout so check this out
after four minutes and 30 seconds i proceeded to projectile vomit for about probably two hours
like i'm not even trying to make anyone on the podcast laugh right now like i was probably had
legit rhabdo like my arms were stuck like. I couldn't even like open my water bottle.
I was so fucked up. I was like laying on the stairs. Like I was so fucked up.
Chris wasn't there by the way, either. I did this on my own. Cause I was like,
I'm going to do it. And then I'm going to do it again in front of him. So you can see that I could
beat him. So I was like, Oh my God, I can't never do anything like that again. That really fucked
me up. And then like a week went by and I was like let's just try it again so i did it again i think i got like 340 this time a little bit faster
that's incredible that's incredible same thing happened again vomited threw up blah blah blah
i was all fucked up again i think another week went by i was like i'll try it again
and this time i decided to like throw some,
some other stuff in there to make it so I could train for it.
So I did 21, 15, nine.
I did the thrusters and pull-ups and I did deadlifts at two 25.
So I just like put it all together.
I didn't know what the heck I was doing, but I was like, if I could do this, got to make that easier.
So did, did that.
And the same thing happened again, man.
I got all fucked up and threw up again.
I just kept like putting myself through torture. Um, but then when, when everything was over the whole Olympic dream
and all, and all these things, I wound up getting really injured and messed up my hamstring and a
bunch of things happened. And, um, I was like on the Olympic team and then just never got to go
because I was hurt. And then I was like, well, I'm a great athlete. I have my helicopter license. I should go in the military.
So I started looking into like pilot careers and being a great athlete. I was like, well,
maybe I should like be an athlete of some sort. So maybe I'll go in and be like a Navy SEAL or
something like that. And I remember like looking into all the special forces branches. And then
during that time, a friend of mine was like, well, you should just do CrossFit.
Like you should go to Spieler's gym or go to someone's gym.
And I moved down to Salt Lake city to be closer to the university because I
was just graduating and Spieler's gym was too far then.
So I went to this other gym and my very first day I walked into this gym and
you know, Tommy Hackenbrook.
Yep.
So my very first day was walking into his his gym
wow so i'm just like in like this mecca of athletes and i had no idea who any of them were
but i do remember walking into his gym the first day and it was like an intro class like you
weren't allowed to the real class you just did this intro and he was coaching it and i remember
as i walked in he just looked at me like like the hottest chick in the world just walked in. He just was like, Oh yeah, this dude's going to be good.
Cause we talked about it.
Oh my God. I remember seeing him. I remember just looking at him and he was like, Oh fuck. Yeah. Cause I was like 185 pounds at the time. I'd like lost some weight from, from the bobsled stuff. And I was doing like more CrossFit esque style stuff. And I was like super ripped and just insanely fit. And, um,
I, you know, I, I did the workout that he wanted us to do. And I like destroyed the workout
and he's just looking at me like, like, who are you kind of thing. And, um, I was like, well,
is that, is that like a good time that i got in the workout
and he like points over to the board he has like a record board and he's at the top of the board
and i got the same time as him awesome and then i'm like are you good like i don't fucking know
and then he's like i got second place at the crossfit games and i was like oh yeah this guy
chris showed me that he's like in the dirt doing shit. Like you're there at that thing basically. So, um, he starts explaining it to me. He's like, dude,
like I'm like one of the best guys in the world. And I'm pretty sure you will be too. If you just
kind of hang out with me and work out with me and I've never had anybody like you. So I'd love to
have you be part of the gym. And then, um, he tells me how much it costs and all these things.
And I was like holy
shit it's like 200 bucks a month there's no way i could do that and he's like well i'll let you do
it for free if you just kind of work out when i work out we won't do classes we'll just work out
with me and i was like all right i'll do that and i started working out with tommy and before i knew
it like i was in if you look up like some of the old articles back in the day in 2011,
my first regional was in Denver. We had to drive from Utah to Denver at the time of Southwest.
And I mean, I was in every article. I was like this new freak of nature who was going to come on the scene and kill it. And what's really, really funny is I never had any idea how to
compete. I had never done a competition. So like, I wasn't ready
to get a no rep. I didn't know that you could even get a no rep. Like I didn't even like,
I didn't understand so many things. And my very, one of the very first events was a thousand meter
run, 30 handstand pushups and a thousand meter row. That was the workout, which now is like a
joke. But I remember going over to the wall, laying on my
stomach and walking up stomach towards the wall and doing handstand pushups that way. And they
were like, dude, you can't do that. And I'm like, well, I can't do them any other way. Cause I was,
I was, I was too scared to hop up and flip like genuinely, like it just terrified me. I was like,
hop up and flip like genuinely like it just terrified me i was like hell no i'm not doing that and uh i mean i tried and i just like could not get my body to do that motion so i was like
i'll just walk over on my hands i'll be fine and i'll be good and from there on like i like my
entire experience my first year regionals was completely ruined but that was how the whole
thing started um i really liked Tommy.
I felt like Tommy was maybe one of the most underrated best guys out there.
He, whenever you got to see him perform live, he was a freak of nature.
Did it seem like that?
Did you enjoy working out with him?
He had a couple of things about him that were like very, very interesting.
Like I remember when I first started training with him, he was like, dude, you're too strong. Like, like you don't even need to, he's like, you don't even,
cause I was snatched. Like at the time I could snatch like, like two 65 and, and like rich
froning was the best in the world. And I think that he was, everybody was getting really excited
about him doing like a two 25 snatch. It was like a really big deal and i remember his his max back squat was like 365
and i was squatting 500 and then like all of my lips were super super hot and then he's like dude
you don't have to all you need to do is get conditioning down and like get muscle ups down
and all these things so he gave me this program and to this, I have it in my office at chalk. It's on the board and I have it
pinned up. Cause it's just like, I just look at the program and it just makes me like more mentally
strong. Like I'm telling you, like there's, there's no like lifting on it. It's just like
every day I'm on the assault bike and I have to do like these crazy challenges. And it went on for a month and he wouldn't let me lift any weights.
But I did have a key to the gym and he doesn't know that like I'd go in super late at night sometimes.
And I would do like just like little stuff like kettlebell swings.
Like I just wanted to touch some weights.
But when I was in the gym, he wouldn't even let me like you're just going to do this.
And there was this one time where I had to do 90 minutes on the assault bike for max calories.
And if I didn't hit like a certain number, if I didn't get like at least 1500 calories on the Schwinn airdyne at the time, he was like going to think that I was a piece of shit.
So I had never ridden in an airdyne for more than like, I don't't know five minutes maybe or something like 90 minutes just to
even be on it sounded terrifying and i had to go all out for 90 minutes i had like gel packs and
like a bunch of water like i fucking think i might have made a sandwich or something had it next to
me like i was like this is going to be serious so i sat down and like for 90 minutes i got 1500
and something calories and um which on the airdyne was a little bit
different but still it was a very very impressive score i remember telling him he's like that's good
and like that was it but uh yeah like i had to i had things like that to do like every day
and i remember just being like oh my like i remember showing people like this is what i'm
doing today and they'd be like, dude, oh, my God.
I mean, that's a month's worth of time for most people on the assault bike, 90 minutes, not one session.
That's 30 days.
This month, I want you to get 90 minutes on the assault bike.
Do you still throw up at all?
No.
Okay.
Sorry, I interrupted you.
And then you went back, and what happened?
I'll say I went back and did all my lifts and I still was just as strong. I didn't lose any strength, like he said, which was terrifying for me. I really thought I was going to lose a lot
of strength. Even though my lifts were so far ahead, I still wanted to have them.
Right.
And yeah.
It's crazy. This phenomenon is something that's actually, I mean, I've seen it play out at the
games. I think Spencer Hendel is the best example. He was consistently 20th at the games or something like that. All of a sudden in one year,
he's fifth place. And everyone's like, well, what'd you do? He's like, I didn't lift weights
last year. I was strong enough. He's like, yeah, but you only got eighth on the lift at the games,
not first or second, like usual. He's like, I know, but I didn't have any places lower than 28th.
I used to have five of those every year. And I coach people all the time. And it's like,
and I mean, I'm not there.
Like, they're not hiring me to coach them.
They're just at the gym training or whatever.
Some of them have their own coaches.
But I tell them, I'm like, you don't need to be doing bar muscle-ups every week.
You're amazing at bar muscle-ups.
Stop doing bar muscle-ups.
Go for a run.
Like, but not everyone wants to do that.
It's so easy to do the stuff that you are already good at.
So, that's a good, I mean, it's funny these funny these swings and whatever like i just needed a weight in my hand but it's cool that you were
at least able to listen to him and say okay i'll do what you say for a month and see what happens
yeah there's it's hard it's hard god no you go ahead i'll say it's. It's hard to know what to do in the CrossFit sector. So like, you got people like Ben Bergeron or OPEX or any of these people who think that they know the formula, right? Like they know the formula, like this is what you're going to do. And I have the best program and blah, blah, blah. And I fucking think that they're all crock of shit, in my opinion.
of shit in my opinion i'm not gonna tell anyone right now that like one of these guys aren't smart but like let's be honest like the people who won the crossfit games went to crossfit new england
before they won the fucking cross i mean like like during they won the crossfit games basically
right like matt crazier's first time at the crossfit games he got second place you know
what i'm saying and then he like worked
on it or whatever and someone gave him a couple workouts here and there but if we're being honest
he probably would have won anyway rich froning first time at the crossfit games gets second place
and did all his own programming and this and that and then wound up winning on his own
like ben smith was like training with a fucking rock covered in tape,
doing wall balls back in the day and been doing all of his own stuff and
nothing. He really does make sense. He works out all day, every day.
Rich was the same way. A lot of these people,
like people want to talk about CJ Martin over at Invictus and Josh Bridges
walked in this guy's door. You know what I mean?
Like all the best athletes in the world
are just walking into these people's doors.
And I will personally argue the fact
that like you could give them almost anything
and they're probably going to be who they are.
Like Tia Toomey as well,
she was already insane and then went to New England.
Like there's, I mean, again,
I'm not taking anything away from these coaches. I'm sure they're great.
And they, and they have something,
but you look at the people who win every year when they win for the first
time. And a lot of times they're like creating their own programs.
Miko is another one.
Miko is another one like, or Rob Orlando.
Yeah.
Maybe you get someone who literally did follow a program from someone by the book and they did really well.
But the majority of the time, it's the person who's like, oh, yeah, I just did like the class water.
Then like you do this extra lifting and then this and that or like I don't fucking eat or like all these ridiculous, crazy things.
And all of a sudden you're the, you're the,
you're the underdog watching the story from the outside. And you're like, well,
that's what I'm going to do. I'm just going to lift fucking everything all day.
And it's going to get me to where I want to be. And you're probably right. I think that
overtraining is realistically what you're training for, for the games anyway. So,
you know, interestingly enough, there's a durability factor. There's a strength
factor. There's an experience factor. I think the experience factor is way, way, way underrated.
Like you got to know how to get in an article actually. Really? Yeah. It's probably coming
out later this week, but I took completely agree with everything you're saying. I tell people at
our gym, I mean, I coach at a CrossFit gym.
It's my full-time job.
And I tell them, I said, look, the programming we have here is not the optimal programming for anyone in these classes.
But it's pretty good for everyone.
And you work with your coach to make these adjustments.
And how many hundreds or thousands of people do comp train and how many of those people win the CrossFit games?
Or even close to competing to being able to go to the CrossFit games.
It's a small number.
It's not an optimal program for anyone who's doing it,
but it's pretty good.
You're going to get fitter and whatever,
but each person is going to have to have some variety in there
if they really want to maximize either their potential
or maximize their potential is really all they should be striving to do.
You're just not going to beat Tia no matter how hard you work.
She's got something that you don't have.
And I don't know what it is, but she has it.
Dude, let's talk about the new kid, Medeiros.
I think this is a great case study this year because he's basically said all these athlete camps, that's not for me.
I'm going to do my own thing.
And I have a feeling that he might beat most of the people in the camps this year.
I just want to fucking party right now.
So hard. a feeling that he might beat most of the people in the camps this year i just want to fucking party right now so hard i just want to like i just want everyone to know like it's a fucking crock of shit
it's just it's it's a brand name right like this fucking hoodie could have been i could have made
it 60 bucks or i could have made it 10 it depends on the you know the materials i want to put on it
but i put this logo on and all of a sudden it's a motherfucking Gucci hoodie, right? Like we got Gucci brands out there with people's names behind
them. And all of a sudden the workout to Gucci workout, and it's a Gucci workout program. And
like all this stuff is happening behind these brands. So like if Comtrain is so great, or
OPEX is so great, or Invictus is so great or whatever. Why didn't the next Medeiros come
from one of their programs? You know what I'm saying? Like, and again, someone's going to listen
to this and be like, yo, Ryan just called everybody out. No, I didn't. I'm saying that
these best athletes in the world were fucking born to be the best athletes in the world.
Like if we're being honest about even my own life success, I wasn't born to
go to the CrossFit games. I was born to start my own gym and start my own brand and inspire people
in a different way. And I'm okay with that. I look back and I'm fucking pissed. I didn't go to the
games and I'm pissed. I didn't get to accomplish some things, but I think I'm actually happier
with where I'm at now. And I'm, I get a lot of people that reach out to me and they're, you know,
inspired by what I've done. And I, and when I really reflect on it, I'm like, you know what,
this is what I was meant to do. And I feel like I'm fucking cool with it. But at the same time,
I think when I talk about these things, sometimes people have something to argue.
And then all of a sudden you have someone like Madero's just comes out and it's like,
there's the thing I was just fucking talking about everybody. Like, I'm so pumped that this is what keeps happening.
And I think it's just for the people out there who they are the underdog and they want to go to the game so, so bad.
And they think that they need to follow a specific program and they need to do this and they need to do that.
And it's like, you need to, you need to understand yourself as like, you're like a race car.
Like, you know, the race car. Like, you know,
the race car needs really good gas. You know, the race car, you know, needs to get a tune up every
now and again. Like, you know what your weaknesses are, you know what you need to work on. Like
if you're strong as fuck and you ask these people for a strength program,
why? Like you're already doing something stupid. you just you need to honestly you need to be
like honest with yourself and work on the things that you need to work on
and and grow from there when when people talk about their secret programs
it's like what Bridget says he goes oh yeah I know your secret program you do crossfit
you know like they they
complicate it and they they'll go on these long like 10 minute talks of all the shit you do and
josh be like yeah yeah crossfit just to fuck with them like yeah people i i agree with what a lot of
your a lot of what you're saying i would i will say this you go to the store and you buy a new
pair of shoes and then all of a sudden you're like inspired to run a couple of miles, right? You're like, okay,
I bought this new pair of shoes.
So I'm going to run a mile every day for the next hundred days. And,
and so that I can justify spending this $130 on this pair of shoes and blah,
blah, blah. So that doesn't, um, I'm not arguing anything you're saying.
I think it compliments what you're saying, but like, yeah, if you're going,
be honest, it doesn't hurt to be honest with yourself that, yeah,
if you want to get trained by, um, Ryan Fisher, if you want to do the truck performance training
and you even actually say it in a lot, in a lot of your materials, Hey, the most important thing
is to find the training program that works for you. You're not like, Hey, come over here and
do mine. You're like, no, no, this is what you need to do to find the best one for you.
And so once you find that one, you're right.
Like, be honest with yourself.
But if it does inspire you to work out with Ryan Fisher, then go to chalk training, right?
You want to be surrounded by other great athletes and et cetera.
When all these brands were popping off and, you know, and I think I was one of the first ones to really start doing like the paid online programming but for me i could have
especially as an athlete gone straight into the athletic like i train athletes type of thing and
instead i went straight into like i make fun workouts that are cool for like everybody yeah
i like purposely did not even want to touch that sector because i knew that like i didn't want
everybody in my gym being a bunch of gym rats, like in the
gym all day, every day. I wanted to get people like great results in like an hour, the way that
it was meant to be and move them on. And then as I got more injured over time, not, not from the
sport across it, a million percent, not a lot of people think that like my knees and stuff are all
fucked up from that. I got my knees fucked up from a snowboard accident and from all these ridiculous things I've done back in the day. And anybody who knows me
knows that I ride bikes everywhere. I fucking climb mountains and I fucked myself up on all
sorts of different things. But anyway, as that started to happen, I started to do less Olympic
lifting and more like bodybuilding movements, but I loved the conditioning part of CrossFit.
So I started creating this thing that was called like high intensity interval
bodybuilding that everybody got really hyped on.
And it's really just like no Olympic lifts,
mostly just compound lifts mixed with cardio.
And if you look back into the old studies,
there's a guy named Pat O'Shea from the seventies,
he created like true like interval weightlifting,
which is where a lot of the information came from for Gregreg glassman to create what we have today as crossfit and it was a big reason why you have
people like jim jones and greg glassman who fought back in the day because they're like hey well you
didn't really create this it's something that already happened and like they got an argument
and greg's like well i'm gonna go fucking make this other thing and then you know it just kind
of like got a little bit out of control because they were like well if we do this really fast and really hard and we use these movements it's going to give us this result and then it just kind of like got a little bit out of control because they were like, well, if we do this really fast and really hard and we use these movements, it's going to give us
this result. And then it just got like a little bit more out of hand, a little bit more on hand.
But the true basis of everything was the true interval weight training articles from back in
the day. And that's what I put the bodybuilding stuff into. And then, um, I just started to
create different types of workouts. And I think a lot of the stuff that I have nowadays,
I have this other thing now called full body aesthetics,
where you lift every body part every day, but in like low volume,
and it spreads out the volume for each body part throughout the week.
And I think that's,
it's kind of like what I turned into being known for is I invent all the
programs. If you follow one of my programs,
I'm the only person that makes it and then knows how to make it.
And it's mainly because I've been in the gym since I was 12.
And I've seen I have I have case studies in my head.
Like I just like I have seen so many people go through so many programs.
And I even at this point in my career where I have, you know, thousands of members online that I'm training and I've sold fucking, I don't know, like a hundred
thousand bucks or something insane. I still go to my gym every single day. That makes me like no
money. And I spend tons of time in there and I hang out with my people because that's what I
really care about. And because I'm there so much, I still see, you know, what the workouts do to
people every single day. And like, I'm constantly like a lot of people don't know that like every single workout on the chalk performance training app that I still create
to this day, I am the only person that makes every single workout for all five programs every single
day. Like most people think that that's impossible to do, but I still do it every day on top of
everything else. And I've tried to get people to, I've tried to get people to help me. And I look
at their workouts. I'm like, this is terrible. I just, I don't even,
I don't even know what to tell you. Like, I don't like the way that I look at the workout is just,
it's just, it's so much different than other people. Like I have an entertainment factor.
I have a results factor, like an aesthetics factor. Like I look at the week differently.
Like I know how someone's going to feel on wednesday from monday and i know how they're going to feel going to the next monday from the weekend and like
there's just i know what all of it feels like because i did all of it like 10 million times
and i've watched 10 million people do it and i've had 10 million dms from people telling me
an excuse about something or a complaint about something and i think about all of that
on every line i'm like toes to bar.
I'm already thinking about someone's fucking compliment, like, you know what I mean? Like
my hands are going to hurt. My back's going to hurt. If I do those two movements back to back,
like there's no way I can get that much work done in two minutes. Like I know all of these things
and it's so hard to be able to teach someone that. What is skeleton? You, um, you said you
did skeleton in the Olympicslympics what is that
that's head first down the bobsled track oh wow it's the one that everybody's pretty much terrified
of wow okay so there's the there's feet first and there's head first who the fuck ironically
enough the head first ironically enough the feet first one is actually the scariest one out of
all of them because it's the sled that you're on the luge actually has the least amount of control
and because you're on your back you can really like barely see when you're on your stomach you
can see pretty well and the sled that you're on has a lot of control so even if you just did
nothing it would it would do a pretty good job but you still want to get into the turns and kind of like start building a
little bit more momentum. And then with the bobsled, I think to me, that's the scariest one,
just because I literally have flashbacks in my head of like, you know, I'm in the sled.
I can't see anything. I'm not not the driver and you just feel like boom
boom and then all of a sudden you just don't hear any noise at all you're like i'm about to crash
and then when you crash your fucking head's like hitting the sidewall you're just like dragging and
then like that moment of being in the air though like knowing you're about to fucking crash is the
just the gnarliest feeling in the world does everyone crash while training that
sport pretty much like as soon as you start you're like hey i want to like get into this
they're like all right we're gonna put you with bob over here who's like you know fucking like
the worst driver ever and he just needs someone to be in the back so you're like basically a crash
dummy in the beginning it's terrifying and people have died doing that right didn't
someone die at the olympics once didn't a uh a bobsled or a skeleton come off the track
the luge did i'm telling you the luge is the scariest one man is there a little window down
there your head are you on your stomach you're on your stomach you're on your stomach you're
probably like an inch or two off the ice with your chin um and then i think the scary part is
you know the track that you start at they start you at different levels you go like halfway up
three quarters up all the way up so you know kind of what you're getting into but when you go travel
international and you're about to be in an international race they don't let you do shit
like that like you're not allowed to have training wheels it's like you're going off the top bro and
you're you're going and i remember i was in all the courses the same are all the courses the same no there
was so much different oh shit that's what i was gonna say i went to canada one time and i was in
calgary and it was negative 40 degrees outside which is actually negative 40 fahrenheit and
celsius so i was like damn this is super cold And you go down in a one piece Speedo, which is from the Speedo brand, which is meant for people to be swimming in. So it has absolutely no warmth at all. Like we're talking negative penis on a day like negative 40.
So like I get out there and I go down the track and like,
I like, I like melt into my sled and I look up and I'm like,
I let my air out just cause like, you know, I'm nervous.
And when I did that, I fogged the whole screen on my,
on my lens, on my, on my visor.
And I went down my first time in this,
on this track in Calgary with absolutely,
I could not see anything at all.
And I remember going around this one turn and I came out and I came out so
hard that I just literally shattered my hip on the wall.
I hit it like so hard and just like, I shouldn't say shadow.
I got like a hairline fracture and I like moved one of my ribs is like
permanently in a different spot right now. and it's like all from that hit
and like that was like my first like you think they have the technology so that the screen
wouldn't fog up there's some way around the visor yeah it was so cold out it was just so cold
um are you single
because i don't see any girls on your i went all the way back to
instagram in 2011 and i don't see any any significant others on there maybe i don't
but i've had like i've had some pretty awesome girlfriends for most for pretty much most of my
life to be honest um and then just these last like three years i haven't
really it's funny you bring up like the five five thing like my last girlfriend was like 5 11
and she's like this beautiful like swedish blonde girl from utah just absolutely completely utterly
out of my league and then the girl before her was the girl Nikki who was the model who was another just beautiful
girl I've been lucky I've definitely had definitely had some great girls in the past but
it's funny like I was broke and never had any money and always had all these amazing girlfriends
and like now I have like a multi-million dollar house and like fucking two hundred thousand dollar car and
like i like live in this cool zip code and like since i bought my house since i bought my car i
haven't had one girlfriend it's funny it's funny i was speaking to jason kalipa yesterday and i
didn't really want to get into the details of it but my yes when i was completely dirt broke and poor i had the most amazing girlfriend life it was
yeah it's people don't even don't even know like yeah they think you need the ferrari before the
girls you do not yeah you do not um do you do you not have time for girlfriends anymore you
sound like you're extremely busy i am pretty busy i feel like I'm not any more busy than I've been. I used to like every single
girlfriend I've had for the last like 12 years has been from inside of a gym. Like I met them
in the gym. They were like a coach at my gym. Like there's like, there's always, it's always
someone that I meet in the gym. And I know that's not the best thing, but that's just where my
people are at. Um, I haven't been spending as much time in the gym like I used to because I
was in there 24 7 so now I just go in I do my workouts I film I'll hang out for a little bit
and then I leave and I think that's and then the rest of the day is me at home like making videos
or I'm a real big fan of like I paddleboard like almost every day or I ride my bike or I do
something but um you know it's hard to get someone to be like to want to come out and ride their bike
or paddleboard like in the middle of the day like at like one o'clock on a Tuesday you know what I
mean like people who have job people yeah almost nobody can do what I do so I I find myself as
being alone a lot.
It's interesting you say that about not, it's always been a frustration with me. They say you shouldn't be, what's
the word, fraternizing with people in your workplace. You shouldn't be sleeping with people in the workplace
or dating them. But what do they expect? I even tell my
employees, I tell my employees, I'm like, dude,
it's probably gonna happen
like let's be honest would i prefer it not happen absolutely can you do this for me
can you try as hard as absolutely possible when it's over to just be as cordial and as cool as
possible i need you to go into it with like hey if this ends it's going to be cool right that's
a good idea.
You mean like if two of your trainers start having a relationship or one of the clients, like, hey, don't bring your drama in here.
Like, be smart.
Yeah. So that's what I tell them.
I'm like, hey, I get it.
I've been doing this for a really long time.
All I ask is that you try as hard as you can and just make it a cordial ending type of thing.
The worst thing I've had happen so far is I had two coaches.
They no longer work there now where the one girl was married. The other girl was a lesbian. And then the one girl
is now divorced and now with a guy. And then now the two girls are together.
And in the beginning, like I knew it was happening and nobody else
really did but i'd be like hey i can see what you guys are doing in the gym they didn't even
they didn't confess it to me they're like what are you talking about and i'm just like listen
i know just like share a bowl of soap god damn it i know yeah like just take it down a few notches because people are gonna
start talking about it and eventually it happened and that's not why they don't work at the gym
anymore it was for different reasons but that's probably the worst thing i've seen happen so far
and unfortunately i wanted to just get rid of one of them and like i had to get rid of both
of them basically because you know they're a package deal now um and kenny leverage are you still friends with him pretty
close to them nope not at all no oh did you guys have a falling out unfortunately he thinks that
i said a bunch of bad things about him when i opened my gym and then he went and owned the
other gym and uh oh that sucks i'm sorry that's yeah people bring it up all the time you're like
why are you guys not friends?
I'm like, this fucking guy still thinks I said bad things about him.
I don't know what the fuck is wrong with him, but whatever.
Was he fun?
Did you like training with him?
Yeah, he was great.
Yeah, man, that sucks.
Friendships are weird like that.
Why don't gyms make money?
When I look at gyms, I think, holy shit, why would anyone ever want to open a gym?
This looks fucking hard. But so, so I'm not,
I'm asking you out of just like, let's talk about like you,
you're you're subsidizing your gym with your other, with your other work.
You're it sounds like your gym has really turned into a place where you
personally train, but it's also your laboratory, right? You don't,
you don't keep your gym open to make money directly
off of it. Yeah. So I could care less if the gym does make money for the first time in a long time.
Now I actually do because I have two managers now. There's like an operations manager and then
there's like a, you know, the personality manager kind of thing. I like to call it.
And, um, like I really want them to make
money. So I have been focusing a little bit more on some projects to get them to make more money,
like some doing some ad campaigns and showing them how to do different things that I'm really
good at for my online brands. And we're starting to, we're actually going to make more money this
month than I've ever made in seven years. So that's pretty cool. Congratulations. Yeah,
that is very cool. Thanks. Yeah, that is very cool.
Thanks. And it's a very cool reason why you're doing it. It's really cool that now you're paying
back, right? You're paying it forward. Like, okay, let's, let's do this for you guys. Okay.
Sorry to interrupt. Go on. I've got some insane employees right now though. Like if like they
threw me like a surprise seven year anniversary the other day and like, I like randomly buy them
really cool gifts and like people are like crying and stuff like that
like they're just like they're like as you know like my family life wasn't always the greatest
growing up so I just feel like those are like my family so I try to like really really take care of
them plus like without the gym like I don't think my life would be that cool really like
yeah like I can go travel and do whatever I want and like live the life I have now. But like,
if I didn't go to the gym, it would be so weird. Like I'd have no friends. I feel like I'd have no
vibe, you know, I'd go to like some other like film space and probably film the workouts and
put them online and just be like, this is so boring, I guess. Um, but anyway, yeah i i i think that i think people just they they put numbers together they're
like oh i could rent this space for five thousand dollars a month i could get this many members and
i can charge them two hundred dollars and i'm gonna bring home all this money and it's like
well you don't understand that like there's gonna be seven girls flushing tampons down the toilet and you're gonna have a two thousand dollar plumbing bill this month you don't understand that like there's gonna be seven girls flushing tampons down the
toilet and you're gonna have a two thousand dollar plumbing bill this month you don't understand how
much toilet paper they're gonna go through and paper towels they're gonna go through
and how much your electric bill is gonna be and your insurance and the taxes where you live and
like you know one day you're not going to want to coach classes. You might even be in the gym
paying people to coach classes while you were there, which sounds absolutely insane to you.
Um, but like, just because you're in the gym doesn't mean that you're doing all the things
in the gym. Sometimes just being in the gym is enough. Uh, and so you start to, you know,
a little bit higher payroll happens and all these things start to happen. And, uh, I don't, I don't think people realize
like you really are just buying yourself like damn near minimum wage job at the, at the end
of the day, when you break down all the hours, you're actually there. You can make the same
amount at like McDonald's probably. Um, I tell people all the time, like if you can open a gym with the,
with the absolute certainty that this is just like the window shopping for
everything else,
it's a really pretty dress when you're walking through the mall and you're
like, Oh, I'm going to go in that store.
And then they get inside and there's all these other things.
There's like an online program. There's like supplements.
You have clothes, you have whatever,
you make them feel like they're part of something bigger than just this, this one gym, then I think that you're that you can create
something great. But if you think just the gym is going to do it for you, I think the gym is
actually going to strip you of any love that you have for fitness, to be honest, I think it's going
to like literally make you never want to work out ever again. Oh, explain that to me a little bit
more like it's because it's going to exhaust you it's going to
just it's going to make you so tired you're going to like i remember like in the first couple years
i was coaching like every class every day and like just the thought of working out in my gym was
tough i was like fuck i almost want to go work out somewhere else just so i could work out
um and like i i remember like like years had gone by where I couldn't even remember anything,
but like what the inside of my gym looked like.
I mean, I literally be in the gym at four in the morning, leave at nine o'clock at night
and the whole thing would start over and over and over again.
It never really, it never hit me how much I was in a gym until I went to a doctor to
get like my blood tested.
And it was like the first time i'd gone to a doctor like
get my blood tested and like really get a full panel of all my stuff i think i i think some like
sports nutrition person in town had basically like sponsored me to like figure out food allergies and
all these things and help me become a better athlete and when i got my blood panel back the
doctor was like you literally have zero vitamin d levels like this is really bad do you feel like
do you feel like shit and i'm like um yeah but i work like all the time and i work out a lot and
like blah blah blah and he's like this is like terrifyingly bad like when's the last time you
went outside and i remember just thinking to myself and i was like fuck i live in california
i literally just got a doctor asking me like, if I go outside,
how sad is that? That was like a pivotal moment for me to like really start living my life.
Like now people think of me as like the ultimate adventure junkie. And like, I'm always outside,
I'm always doing things. And when I started doing that, I was working out less and performing
significantly better because i was
so much happier and like did you go back and get your vitamin d levels checked did you ever go back
and get vitamin d and everything wanted to be normal after that and no supplementation just
get it out in the sun i started with some supplementation at first because he literally
was like concerned um and then once i built a routine to go out a
lot more often i stopped taking it and everything was fine i think vitamin d is one of the things
people have been talking about the last months to year that's like you should depending on where
you live you should be supplementing with vitamin d would you recommend that depending i mean if you
don't live in california it's actually the number one supplement right now that you could take to actually defend yourself from COVID-19 as well.
Or you could just stop eating like shit.
Oh, 100 percent.
I have to always say that.
I think you're coming from someone who like we never had masks in my gym.
I personally don't have the nicest things to say about this entire thing.
But like in terms of how serious vitamin D is, like there's studies that say vitamin D is like borderline steroid effects in athletes who don't have enough vitamin D levels.
There's, you know, tons of articles with immune system where vitamin D is like one of the most important vitamins as well.
I also have heard that you can spend some time in the sun, but if you go in the sun,
whatever, how long, and then the first thing you do like within an hour of that is shower,
you're actually not absorbing it. Like you need to go in the sun and then not shower or rinse
yourself off or whatever for a while to get the sunlight's vitamin D. I don't know if it's true
or not. And I heard sunglasses also, for some reason, I heard that, that you should spend time
out without sunglasses to get proper absorption of that shit. I don't know if any of it's true. true or not and i heard sunglasses also for some reason i heard that that you should spend time out
without sunglasses to get proper absorption of that shit i don't know if any of it's true i don't
give a fuck because i'm outside all the time and i agree with you 100 ryan it would be probably a
great topic i think this the worst thing that ever happened to this planet is covid response
and that's actually fair uh it's um It is a complete.
Yesterday, the CDC reported that 95% of the people who died had four or more comorbidities.
I equate that to if we put Ryan Fisher out into a pool and have him hold four 45 pound plates and he starts drowning and we throw him a life jacket.
No, you fucking idiots.
Tell him to drop the four 45 pound plates.
He knows how to swim. I mean, this is fucking insanity what we've done to our planet and our people
that being said someone dm me go ahead let me say this and then you can let me say this and then you
can say the whole thing someone dm me yesterday and they said you have to ask him about his gym
during the covid response because i'm telling you that place ran seamlessly.
So it must've been one of your members or something that.
Yeah. I mean, so a lot of people went straight into like online training and like they did this
and they did that. And I was like, dude, fuck this. Like I, oh, so I felt what it was like to
not have my gym during COVID. You know, that's actually one of the things that I am thankful for during,
during this time was I had my online life, my fucking online program doubled.
I was making more money than ever instantly.
Congratulations. I love hearing that.
Thank you. And, you know,
I had hired people and changed their lives and like it was great i felt what it was
like to be rich with no life because literally i would go to the gym and there was nobody in it
and i would film videos and such i would go to the coffee shop and you're out in a fucking line
where it looks like everybody has aids and you're fucking terrified of each other and like you're
getting fucking aids coffee or something, whatever the fuck.
Half the coffee shops aren't open.
You can't go out to dinner.
You can't go to the movies.
You can't even fucking go say hi to someone or give them a hug.
I mean, like it was so bad.
And I think that without going to the gym, that's what my life basically feel like.
I would just be like, what am I going to do today?
Like, I don't fucking know.
Like, I would just be like, what am I going to do today?
Like, I don't fucking know.
So anyway, because I felt like that, I assumed that everybody else felt like that.
And I was like, well, I'm not closing my gym.
I think people need this.
So I put paper up everywhere.
So it looked like we were closed and I just fucking stayed open.
And I have a video on my phone.
I can send it to you if you want to post it for part of your,
for part of your stuff. It's, it's, it's the cops consistently just sitting there knocking on my window for like 30 minutes. And like, we're inside working out. And I just like, I just told
everyone to lock the doors and just keep on working out. And eventually, like, as long as we don't
leave or anything, like we're going to be fine. And they just stayed out there and knocked and knocked and knocked.
And like,
I have a video from the girl who owns the coffee shop across the street and
she gave it to me and she's like, I thought you'd like this.
And they eventually left and never came back.
What a waste of our resources to have police officers stand in front of a
gym for 30 minutes.
There's so many bad guys out there that need their ass beat. Go get them.
Well, I guess I got two bad guys ass anymore.
I got two tickets for 170 bucks or something like that.
And they wound up leaving them outside, like on the thing.
They never, they never actually gave it to me.
So I still actually have never paid it because I didn't really feel like I
needed to, but yeah, I got two tickets during that time. I stayed open.
I literally only closed for one month. And most gyms I think were closed for like anywhere between
six months to a year. And then about half of my members still paid even when we were closed for the month and then i probably had about 60 to 70 ish percentage of my members
like kind of working out that next month and then where i'm finally at the point now it did
take me a year now to actually get to the point where i'm going to make more money than we've
ever made before but people were kind of weird about it for a little bit. Like I lost members because I was open to a hundred percent. They thought that I was doing the wrong thing.
And that that's fine. Like in the beginning, it was scary. I think, I think all of us in the
beginning were a little bit scared. And then some people are just different. You know, some people
takes a little bit longer for them to see the writing on the wall. And some people are
adamant that, you know, they have their, their own personal view on it and they're never going to change.
The very the very first data that came out of China, the very first data from day one was that the vast majority.
I forget what the numbers are now. I used to know I'm off top of my head.
Who died were over 65 years old.
They were men and they had been smoking for more than 30 years.
That's who is dying in china and
when the second the news media said this thing kills old people i was like fuck you you cannot
say that you cannot say something kills old people if the one commonality is they've been smoking for
30 years like and the second highest demographic was women who lived with those men like shut the fuck up and now and now i see
when someone reports 78 of the people who die from it are obese no no you that wrong it's not it's
not 78 it's 87 or 98 like like i see what's happening like you consume too much sugar and
refined carbohydrates you're toast your day of resting and all you have to and the cool
thing is is you don't have to take anything you can just stop doing something i'm just not going
to eat that anymore i mean there's a there's one there's one good way of doing it i think it's cool
though it's it's definitely emphasizing how important it is to be healthy i think being
healthy is going to be cool again but at the same time god i hope you're right god i hope you're
at the same time the average weight gain over the last year has been 20 pounds and there's 10 i read 29 i
read 29 pounds for millennials ryan so millennials the top 10 is 50 pounds holy shit but the average
the average is 20 it's like 20 to 29 pounds and then the upper 10 percent of that
is 50 i want to tell you people out there who are listening if you're over 40 years old and
you're putting on weight you're fucked and if you're under 40 you better start losing it because
your body's going to change and do it now while it's significantly easier ryan do any do uh are Ryan, are a lot of your members getting the vaccine?
It really makes me sad because a lot of them really are.
I would say it's 50-50 though.
I wouldn't say it's like 70-50. The only reason I asked was like my follow-up was do you talk to them about it at all?
Or do they have confidence to ask you about it?
They don't really ask me about it.
I just hear them come in like, oh oh i got the vaccine yesterday or like whatever to me the vaccine is a crock of
shit because you get the vaccine you still have to wear the mask you still have to like do all
the things like everybody else like nothing changes for you and then on top of it they keep coming out
like every week with like fucking people getting third eyes and fucking dying and fucking craziness
like they just said that the,
you haven't really heard very much negative about the Pfizer one yet,
but someone posted something the other day that said they,
they already think that Pfizer is going to start creating Alzheimer's faster
than normal.
And it's like,
you guys don't know anything about this vaccine yet.
Like,
I don't understand why people are taking it yet,
especially,
you know, we do know, but we do a lot about sars that if you are healthy i posted on my instagram several times ryan i dare anyone to show me one healthy person who's died just show
me one and occasion and there's one kid out of new york that someone sent me to that may have
been healthy but my favorite is when someone shows me an Ironman athlete
and they tell me he's healthy.
And I look and like, he's obviously immune compromised.
He lives off of gel packs.
And I'm like, and there's so few of those anyway
that have died.
But no one healthy has died, not one.
And then they turn to, well, the long-term effects.
The long-term effects are just based on the fact
of how healthy you were
when you got it or not and 80 of people are asymptomatic yeah 80 percent are you gonna have
are you gonna have kids ryan yes and i actually think about the fact that if the girl had vaccine
i don't think i could do it wow i love that i'm genuine about like i remember like
recently there's a girl that likes me and i'm just like man she got the vaccine i don't know
if i could do it and why and why is that what do you mean do you think that says something about
her mentality like you're thinking okay she's not thinking clearly or she's bows easily to
peer pressure i just worry like what what what will be what will happen to the kid? What will happen to
her down the road?
It's scary to me.
Now they're starting to
permit kids to get the
vaccine. It was the saddest day in the gym
for me yesterday, the day before
this teenage boy who recently started coming there. He's
doing great, making progress. I was like
so happy because he's getting the vaccine
later this week. How old was he? I think he's's 15 they've approved it all the way down to 12.
well maybe we can start empathizing with each other now where's it there they they're scared
they're scared of this uh uh sars cov2 although they're taking a vaccine that doesn't address it
they're only taking a vaccine that addresses covet and now we're scared of people who took the vaccines and how many i'm scared of
them i'm scared of them i used to be scared of girls with nipple rings now it's girls who have
vaccine i honestly it's crazy though i'm telling you nipple ring is crazy it's a crazy sign and
now if they have a nipple ring and the vaccine, that's a damn near fucking terrifying.
I'm starting to feel a little alienated.
I was in a class the other day and people are starting to be more and more comfortable interacting with each other, sharing a barbell, whatever else.
And they're like, yeah, well, we've all been vaccinated.
Well, except for Brian.
Oh, shit.
unvaccinated well except for brian oh shit like what i think's weird i think it's weird how they're making it seem cool to get the shot that's what i think is weird like i worked out in 24-hour
fitness last night and the night before just because i got done with work real late i didn't
want to be in my gym alone and i go to 24 and like on the tv it's like I got my vaccine or like and there's like announcements that go over.
Like, we hope that you get your vaccine and like blah, blah, blah, blah.
And like, if you get your vaccine, like we're going to give you some free shit.
Or, you know, you're on the radio and like President Obama and Michelle are like, I'm Michelle Obama and this is President Obama.
And like, we're so happy we got our vaccine and blah blah blah and
i'm just like since when have we ever been like super excited to get a vaccine like when the
vaccine comes out you either just decide to go get it or you don't and now it's like the cool
thing to do to me that just seems weird a billion dollars they have budgeted for propaganda they're
paying ryan you could just go out and get the shot. They'll probably pay $2,500 if you post it on your Instagram.
No chance.
Tell me, I want to go to the nipple ring.
Have you been with a girl who has a nipple ring?
We were talking about this the other day in the gym.
Me and some of the guys were talking about this.
And we've come to the conclusion that every girl that we were with that had a nipple ring was was crazier than girls who
didn't have the nipple ring do you have to work around that do you have to be gentle like it's
it's debatable i don't want anything interfering i mean you're with a girl it's getting all
romantic and hot and all of a sudden she's like ow and you're like what the fuck i think that they're more i think they're more into the painful things because they have
okay all right yeah you're usually you've gotten if you if you see a nipple ring you've bitten off
more than you can chew most likely you should call a friend of hers she needs you and your buddy
yeah the first time i vaccinated let me see your nipples
the first time i slept with this one girl was the first girl ever had a nipple ring
and the first time we slept together you lost your virginity to a girl with a nipple ring
no no no no oh i was like wow that's some advanced shit okay the first time i slept with a girl
who had a nipple ring our first time together she came over my house she's like i'm gonna be there
at like 11 o'clock at night and i'm gonna wear something special and she came over and she had
a cop outfit on and like that was my first experience of a girl with a nipple ring and
then this escalated later on to other things.
And then other girls that I had met had had nipple rings and equal,
equally crazy.
And it's great.
They're just,
they're great.
You're probably just not going to marry them.
Right.
Just like the vaccine.
They can be great,
but they have the vaccine.
Right.
but they have the vaccine right we're gonna get so much shit for this podcast no no it's good
how do you get nervous when you do your podcast
no never never i've said some fucked up shit in some podcasts too
but your own personal podcast the real chalk pocket you don't get nervous you're not like Never. Never? I've said some fucked up shit in some podcasts too.
But your own personal podcast, The Real Chalk Pocket, you don't get nervous.
You're not like a few minutes before you – do you have guests on your podcast?
I do.
I only have like maybe 30-something on mine right now. But I did like 200 episodes with Barbell Shrugs.
Okay.
And I still think about like grabbing some of those old ones and just posting them on on mine just so i have them right but they're just like you know i don't know how
relevant they are anymore because they're so old now but and barbell shrugged was mostly it was the
group of you talking together you didn't have guests or you did have guests no so basically
what we what barbell shrugged did was instead of releasing a show every week they released a show every day on their on their
on their platform and like every monday was real chalk every tuesday was barbell shrug every
wednesday was this other so we were all on the same podcast and there was a podcast being released
every day so they were getting like seven times the content of normal and they would just pick who they want to be part of their collective. They called it. Yeah. And so essentially what happened
was like, as chalk started getting more, more successful and stuff, like a lot of my workouts
and stuff were getting kind of intertwined with what they were selling. And it just kind of got
like conflict of interest. So I had to leave, but, um, it was cool. I really liked it a lot.
And I just, I wish i still had some of those
episodes on my podcast but it is what it is because i've never really gotten nervous before
no okay because when i go on other people's podcasts i'm usually like dreading it up until
the moment because i don't want to like talk about myself and then but but when we do these podcasts
and this is i'm actually noticing it's going away.
It's actually getting the more Brian and I do the more it's going away, but like 10 or 15 minutes before it's a podcast startup in my head.
Like the rehearsal of the questions.
And I'm just, and I'm just like, God, I fucking hate that.
Like, I don't want to have any of that going on in my head.
I just want to sit down and turn it on.
But you don't have any of that going on in my head i just want to sit down turn it on but you don't have any of that no not really like i remember i used to i used
to prep a lot i'd fucking find out prep like crazy yeah yeah i would find out like your favorite
color like i want to know everything you have like a freckle on your inner thigh like i want
to know every single thing that i can possibly ever find out and then now i'm just like i'll
figure it out like i could just do it on a whim
now and and bring up great conversations and great questions and you just sometimes the toughest
thing ever is when you get someone on who asked you to be on a podcast and they never talk
they're just like oh brian so what's your story and you start talking and they're supposed to
like chime in at one point and be like oh yeah like i would talk to someone who said this or
blah blah blah or like in my life, this happened.
Like there's like they just like sitting there listening to you.
And then you're just like, well, dude, there's there's nobody else on this podcast.
I'm basically talking alone.
Yeah, I know. We just had Cody Anderson on.
No, no, I'm just joking, Cody.
I'm just joking.
It's funny. There are some people out there that I want to have on who I think would be kind of tough and that it would be tough to
extract from them, but I kind of am up for the challenge too. You know what I mean? Kind of like,
it's kind of like that 90 minutes you did and they saw bikes like, okay,
fuck. Like what if I could get something real out of this guy? What if I could like,
What if I could get something real out of this guy?
What if I could like, what if I could connect?
Dr. Nick had something really that I really like.
I mean, he has a ton of cool stuff on his Instagram.
But one of the things he said is he said, people can only meet you as deeply as they are, you know, intimately aware of themselves.
And that kind of gave me a relief because sometimes I feel a little bad like, hey, man, this, this person's just so superficial. Like I can't, like, we're not connecting, but then I realized maybe that's just where they're at.
Like, yeah.
Some, some people, some people just don't like to open up at all. You know what I mean? Like you can ask me anything. I remember on one of my podcasts, I did, I did a Q and a podcast where I just answered everybody's questions. And someone asked how big my left nutsack was, and I measured it right on the show.
I was like, fuck it. I don't care.
How would you measure?
How would you measure?
It was tough.
It was tough.
And there's a lot of temperature factors, you know, like it could be hot.
It could be cold.
I had to measure both.
I had to do both.
Cold balls are the best.
So, I mean, I think if, I think if you just don't give a fuck,
I think it's just, it's such a better way to live.
I feel like people, how did you get to that place?
How did you get to that place?
Fuck. I mean,
I've had enough things happen in my life where what's the point? I mean,
any, any more, I mean, I just, I feel comfortable with it. I mean,
growing up, my mom is a complete, just,
she curses every other word. She, I, I, I didn't grow up with a dad,
obviously. So like my mom would always ask me like about girls.
Like when I was like starting to hook up with girls and stuff, my mom would just flat out be like, did you get a blowjob from that girl?
Like, like I'd go down, like I'd go down in the basement with the girls.
Like we had like this like little like cool area with a pool table and stuff.
And I tried to go down there and then like I'd come up the stairs and like my mom would ask me like right in front of pool table and stuff. And I'd try to go down there and then like,
I'd come up the stairs and like, my mom would ask me like right in front of the girl too,
like you getting a little bit down there or what, or like whatever. And they're like,
or I'd be like, no mom. And she'd be like, well, why wouldn't you? Are you a fucking pussy? And
then like, like basically like stuff like that. So like, she was always crazy. Like I had uncles
and stuff that were super funny and ridiculous. And we were just always around like dirty jokes and just like things being totally OK with whatever. And I think I think like that. And then all the things that's happened to me, like what else more could I feel like you could think about me when people already thought so many things about me?
was there a moment where you murdering the judge thing like people thought i was in there's people this day that still think i'm insane and they meet me they're like wow
you're actually really nice i'm like guys it's it's funny you say that
you know dave gets that a lot too people are like we'll meet him and be like oh my god i
thought you're an asshole it's really you're you're actually a normal person and it's like yeah people take these snippets of your life and like and put them under this
scrutiny like they're better than that or that they've never done anything like that no it just
wasn't captured i know you did something crazy this morning in your house that if the whole
world saw we'd hate you yeah um what what is in this i have have a million questions, but we're going to wrap this up.
But what?
Because it does fascinate me when people are set free.
And it's clear that you've embarked on the mission of setting yourself free and that you appreciate it.
And you probably don't want to go back.
Was there a rock bottom for you?
Was there a spot where you were just like, OK, like where you felt it just come off your back?
Like, okay, I can't do this anymore.
I just have to be myself.
I just have to, I have to be free.
I know my rock bottom spot for sure was when I was sleeping on the couches.
And I remember I really couldn't sleep at night,
because I just have all this anxiety about the next day. And I would just be like,
well, like, what the fuck is the point of tomorrow? Because like, I don't have a job.
I'm not going to the CrossFit Games. Like, I'm gonna go work out all day tomorrow. And I'm going to go work out all day tomorrow and I'm going to like go steal some
food from the grocery store and whatever. And like, and in my past,
I was a helicopter pilot and I was a fucking Olympic athlete and all these
crazy things. And I'm nothing right now.
And I'm not doing anything with any of these things.
And I remember just like for weeks,
I think I would sleep like two, three hours a night,
I'd cry a bunch of like at night, just like, cause I just thought my life sucked. And I feel
like I didn't deserve it. And that was the rock bottom for sure. Um, but then the gym that I was
going at, there was a guy who coached there and he just had this insane personality. He just always
was like, just always had dope energy. And I knew that he was
tired as fuck. And I knew that he didn't have a lot of money. And I knew that like, he didn't
have to be the way that he was in those moments. I'm going to look here on my phone for a second,
because I wrote something about, about did you i wrote this i wrote
this last night sorry so i wrote skill your skills and passion will always be your secret
to your true success but your energy will give you the opportunity to display it
so what happened to me during that time it's so funny that you're asking me this question
it's like literally what i was thinking about last night so what happened to me during that time. It's so funny that you're asking me this question. It's like literally what I was thinking about last night. So what happened to me during that moment was
the energy that he's putting out is making me happy. And I'm a giant piece of shit right now.
So like, how else could I affect other people by me just changing the way that I'm going to
present myself to everybody. And from then on, I tell everybody all the time,
people who follow me for a long period of time, they know that this is the one thing I always
talk about. And I always just say, you should have the best energy in the room. It doesn't
matter if you're the smartest person in the room, the most confident person in the room,
the shortest person in the room, the tallest person in the room. It doesn't matter who you
are, but if you have something about you that makes people want to be around you,
you are going to be presented with way more opportunity than anybody else.
People always have something to say about, I don't understand why that person is so successful.
I don't get it. I'm smarter than him. I have, you know, better qualifications or I this,
or I that I'm like, yeah, but person's kind of cool. Right? Like, I kind of like following
him. I kind of like some, there's something about him. They always say there's something about that
person and it's the energy that they put out. And I don't want to be like hippie about the energy.
It's just that, I mean, there's, you ever meet like someone who's even whether you're religious
or not, you meet someone who's just like, so content with like their faith faith or like all of a sudden you just like being around them you're like fuck this
person just makes me feel good yeah you're just like they're just they're so happy like i i want
that you know what i mean like i feel like there's people like this in our life and if you're just
really good at podcasting fuck you i get on podcasts sometimes with people i'm just like man
that person was so good at asking questions like Like the conversation flowed so good. And if
someone ever asked me, yeah. But if someone ever asked me like, Hey, whose podcast should I go on?
I'm automatically going to think of like my favorite ones. Right. And like, Hey,
which gym should I go to? You should go to Ryan's gym. Like he's great energy. Like it's amazing.
I go to? You should go to Ryan's gym. Like he's great energy. Like it's amazing. Um, or like when I wanted to open my own gym, like I didn't actually tell anyone I wanted to open a gym.
Someone asked me if they could give me money to open a gym because they knew that I was going to
put the best energy out and they knew that I was going to put the best version of myself out there.
And they knew I was going to like die if it wasn't gonna work so
i think people can feel this and they and it just creates an insane amount of opportunity
the best photographer i've ever known was was not one i would recommend to anyone but i would take
a photographer who is 50 of his quality but who's cool as fuck and be like that's the guy you want
to hang with someone asked me yesterday what's the most important thing if i want to get into the video space i'm like be
don't tax the fucking subjects be chill just be cool people just want to hang out with cool people
who make them feel at ease that's it and and one of the worst photographers i know is the most
successful yeah i give people bonuses you give me who charge me
too little i'm like cool you did an insane job here's an extra whatever and they get what they
probably should have charged anyway i do that all the time and ladies and gentlemen that's why you
don't tax the wealthy because the more you fucking tax them the least they're going to do that
the least they're going to do that sorry i had to interject that yeah
yeah it was just like the the the if i can get into it i'm gonna get there's a lot of things
you can get into when you start going to that stuff oh i just i just this fucking fake want
to help people and just hurting people when you're trying to help them. Just nonsense coming from the media is just,
I have this whole list of other stuff that I would love to get to.
You're welcome to, I mean, I got time if you want it.
I don't, I don't have time. I got three little boys.
Oh yeah.
So I'm going to take them to striking to class today and then to the skate
park and then to all the millions of things I keep keep busy with so they don't end up in jail.
Tell them to stay away from the girls with nipple piercings.
I will.
Stay away from the girls with nipple piercings.
My four-year-old waved his fist at me.
What's the longest podcast you've been on uh probably like three hours oh oh i can't do 90 minutes i'm looking at right now at a minute an hour and 45 i'm like oh
too long yeah too long i was it depends where you go with it like sometimes it's worth three hours and
sometimes you're just you're just blabbering you know like i think most of joe rogan's could
probably end an hour and a half sooner i haven't listened to a lot of them but a lot of them seem
like i i like them to get going pretty fast i like yeah i want to get into it yeah yeah like
in the first 30 seconds how big is your left nutsack?
Yeah.
My, my, my business partner in the gym made my space.
Wow.
He's a very, very wealthy man and very, very smart.
He's helped me with a lot of things and he created something right now where you guys
are going to start seeing it very, very soon.
It's called Clipper.
And basically what it does
is you can embed it into like this podcast. And depending on what you wanted to get out of the
podcast, it will summarize it and give you all of those points. And it'll give you like the one
minute clip here and the one minute clip here, one minute clip here, one minute clip here.
And it'll just give you everything that you want to know. And then the rest of it, you don't have
to listen to. And then like, it does the same thing for like Skype meetings. Like instead of you being there for the whole meeting, it'll highlight everything
that you needed for your job position and whatever. And it'll give you all the voice
bites and summarize it in written form. And it'll give you that. So you're done in like
five minutes instead of being on a one hour Skype. Have you seen this in operation?
Yeah, it's insane. It's all, it's all AI, like all artificial intelligence that just,
it learns over time. They've been building it for like two years now. And, uh, it's going to be,
it's going to be insane. Like you can embed it in anything and it'll summarize everything for you.
You don't ever have, it gives you the cliff notes of everything that you'd ever want to put it into.
Like you, you can do like a South by Southwest conference, like a whole weekend conference and get all the nuggets that you want out of
it.
Imagine like if you did a podcast and like, let's say,
let's say Ryan did a podcast and it was an hour long and this software
summarized it in 30 minutes. So you're like, Oh, that's pretty good.
And then I do a podcast and it summarizes it like in 18 seconds.
Just a big old fuck you. You know what I mean?
I'm in 60 minutes. stefan didn't say shit but yeah it's cool um
thank you very much i think there's a lot more to talk about um uh i wanted to get into canola oil
for sure i want oil and the vaccine are very similar i wanted to get into canola oil for sure. Canola oil and the vaccine are very similar.
I wanted to talk about your relationship with Dorian Fitness Lonnie.
I wanted to ask you about supplements.
Let me ask this one real quick because someone DM'd me this.
I don't even know what this shit is.
Berberine?
Berberine?
Is that a supplement?
What's Ryan think about berberine?
I'm not really sure.
Oh, good. Maybe I'm pronouncing it wrong okay yeah i'd like to talk about how you got into helicopter stuff i'd like to talk about the guy you met um on your montenegro to croatia
um journey that was a great that that sounds like it's a great hitchhiking story
i was curious if you had fat clothes um no fat i can get no you don't have fat clothes
do you do you have that brian i don't even know what that is oh my whole yeah you've been trying
to put weight on your whole life yeah my whole wardrobe is like that my whole wardrobe what
what's your waistband brian 31 okay yeah mine's mine's probably around 31 but uh but i always like to
have a few 32s around in case something weird happens because i eat too much get like excessive
blood flow the waist down i gotta have a 32 i'm i'm 155 pounds and i'm five foot five so in how
tall you're five foot five and how much do you weigh you're 175 180 175 180 yeah so you have probably 20 to 25 pounds more muscle than me but recently
i've stopped shaving and because this neck hair is growing down well then dming me telling me
that i look like i'm getting fat but i'm like hey yo i'm i'm lean and mean but this this
but it's worth the sacrifice.
I promise you the next time we have you on, we'll get Brian's recording working properly.
And thanks for being here.
Of course.
Appreciate it.