The Sevan Podcast - #4 - Tres Kennedy

Episode Date: May 6, 2020

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. Benefits vary by card. Other conditions apply. Are you a priest? Am I a priest? Yeah.

No, I'm a pastor. What's the difference between a priest and a pastor? I don't know. I guess I could have said yes, I'm a priest, but I've never called myself a priest before. A pastor is someone who spreads the word of God. Yeah, that's me. God, if I was your friend like that, I just said, God, I'd be like, oh my God, I'm always being judged. I say, oh my God. I try to make my daughter not say it, but I do, unfortunately. I wasn't even raised. I'll say, oh do it, I'll say, oh, my gosh.

I wasn't raised religious, but we weren't allowed to say that in my house, so maybe that was my religious component. Maybe so. How did you know I was a pastor? Do you have Instagram? Well, I went to your website, and there was something that you have to – there was something – it's called the No Sweat – hold on, hold on. No Sweat Intro?

The No Sweat Intro. And as I looked at that, I thought, oh, his CrossFit gym looks like more than people coming to interview you. You're interviewing them. them like you want to see if like your gym looks like it's a um it's a family and people and you want to and you want to um just get a good read on people before you welcome them to the dinner table oh yeah for sure uh i've told so many of my friends that uh planting or starting this gym is almost identical to planting a church and And me and two of my best friends, we planted a church five years ago. And so pretty much the steps and in how you care for people,

it's the same thing. What did you say you and your friends did what five years ago? We planted a church. We started a church. Wow. How old are you? I'm 31. So at 26 years old old you started a church

did how does someone start a church uh like what like what is the first steps of starting a church yeah well now and i thought oh that question so many good things to that it can come out of this. Yeah, so yeah, like let me go back a step. You're 31. At 26, you started church. What was the name of the church? Move Church. One more time. Move, M-O-V-E, Church.

So something happened to you that made you really want to share the word of God just like something happened to you with CrossFit that made you really want to share the word of God, just like something happened to you with CrossFit that made you want to share the word of CrossFit. These are just like. Dude, you already, I was going to actually say that and, you know, trying to figure out what the freak we're even going to talk about today. But it was the same thing. Like, if I believe something wholeheartedly, I will give my life for that. I absolutely believe that God loves me and sent Jesus for me. And so I will give my life sharing that message and trying to get as many people to be impacted the same way I was impacted. Same with CrossFit.

Like, I know CrossFit works. It changed my life. I even said to you, it saved my life. of life. And as passionate as I am about seeing people know the Lord spiritually, physically, I want to see as many people healthy as possible. And that is what, it's the same thing. And where did your path intersect with realizing that God loves you? Is that the phrase you used? Where did? Like, when did that happen? Like, how do you know that?

How do I know that God loves? Let's see. I was probably 22 years old. I grew up a pastor's kid, so I've been around the church my whole life. Okay. 22, man, I was doing whatever I wanted to do. Like, I'd go to church, all that stuff, but I didn't know jesus for real and then he like i was dry i was in a vehicle coming home from a trip where i had just just was i did whatever i wanted to that weekend and i sat i was remember sitting in the car on the way home thinking what in the world am i doing and uh

and that was the first time i like ever prayed to god like for real, like from my heart, like, Lord, like, I don't know like what I'm doing and I'm sorry that I've lived this way. But in that moment, I knew he loved me. I didn't feel condemned. I didn't feel like I felt convicted for sure for all the stuff. But at the same time, like in that moment, I didn't feel condemnation. I felt love. And I felt like God said, Hey, look, I've loved you as much now as I've always, as I've ever loved you. It's not based on what you do. That's the big thing in the South. Like all this is happening while you're driving in your car at the age of 22. I wasn't even driving. I was riding in the car. Okay. And, uh, and I felt it, man. I like, I started sobbing in the backseat of the car. They're like, what are you doing? I'm like, uh, I was like nothing. I just kind of had a moment with God and, uh, and then from that

moment on, I experienced grace, uh, for real. And, uh, I'm not perfect and I never will be, but I always know that wherever I am, God's there with me and he loves me and he's going to move me forward, um, towards, you know, looking like him, being like him, loving people like him. And yeah, that's where all that started at 22. And both these communities have some pretty intense peer pressure. I was going to say healthy peer pressure, but I won't even put that judgment on it. But I guess by that means, you know, if you're a bank robber and you start going to church, they're going to try to talk you out of it. Just

like if you come to a CrossFit gym and you show up with a Coke in your hand, they're going to be like, Hey, we can wean that off your, as part of your palate. No. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's like, what's the steps to that though? Right. Like it's, it's more of the motive behind it than anything else. Like why, why are you robbing banks? Like, is there a problem like do you need money is this all you've ever known right same with like coca-cola is that all you've ever drank like so i my nephew they all they drink is mountain dew it's their whole family so that's all he's ever known you drink mountain dew with every meal you know so it's like the conversation doesn't start with, hey, you should stop drinking that crap. It's like, let's figure out why you're drinking that stuff first.

Oh, interesting. Where's home for you? What state is Warrior CrossFit? We're in Warrior, Alabama, just about 20 minutes north of Birmingham, Alabama. Okay. And the Woe Town, that stands for Warrior CrossFit? Warrior, Alabama. Me and my friends, we've called Warrior WOTOWN our whole life. Okay. Coke, Mountain Dew. Mountain Dew seems to be huge in the South. You know,

I'm in California and I just don't see Mountain Dew. I mean, I see Coke trucks everywhere. I never see Mountain Dew. If you ever come to Alabama, I'll let you come to one of my family functions. It like, we should be sponsored by Mountain Dew. Have you ever heard of Mountain Dew mouth? Oh like where the messed up teeth and all that stuff. Yeah where they put Mountain Dew in a baby bottle and they start feeding Mountain Dew to babies and then by the time you know they're they're you know in their teens the whole gum line is completely rotted away you've ever seen that? I've never seen that I don't know if i don't know that trying to think what movie it was that i saw dude i just watched waco for the first time the other day and uh i can't handle

anything where kids are being like messed with i mean i got almost a two-year-old and so now those things are hitting me like hardcore you know you see and you see kids like suffering like that i couldn't handle that being a um a pastor what do you want or dracula movies out of your uh i'm just not into dracula i love harry potter but dracula is not my cup of tea i uh i'm trying to think which dracula movie it was i saw i'll i'll i'll give you the name later but i wasn't into dracula movies either but i didn't have kids. And then all of a sudden I had kids. And in this Dracula movie, they're asking this guy to give up his only child. And his only way to avoid giving up his only child is to turn into Dracula.

It's a real, it's a mess. But I was sitting here in this movie that that's an action movie. And I'm crying because I'm thinking, oh my God, I wouldn't, what would I do? Would I turn into Dracula to save my son? You do some crazy stuff as a parent, for sure. Because you experience love in this way that you've never experienced before. You know, you hear people say that, but until it happens, you don't even know. I would imagine it's the same with multiple kids. And something happens biologically too, right? So like I'm going to give you a real superficial example.

I used to love when I would get new camera equipment in the mail, like a box would show up and I know a new camera would be in it. And I would like, I wouldn't do anything except just focus on that. No, come home, open the box, look at it. Now a package, a new camera could come in. It could sit on the table for a week because all i really want to do is spend time with my kids yeah that's it and i'm a huge fan of your kids instagram page i just got introduced to it like last week so the fact that this is like even happening right now it's really wild but dude i love it i already told aaron my wife, I was like, we need to turn our garage into a gymnastics gym of just fun

with all these different things. And I don't like – down here, everybody, the pressure is your kid plays baseball, basketball, or football. It's probably anywhere, right? But I'm like, man, I don't want my daughter to just have to go down that route. Like, Aaron, my wife, she played college softball but like and her family that's they're big in softball like man it would be awesome if our daughter did something different and then watching your Instagram I was like

oh my gosh this is what I want to do let them just do everything try everything yeah I didn't play any sports growing up I was the uh the chubby kid in pe class who got picked at all the guys would get picked and then some girls would start getting picked and then i would get picked and um but i and so i don't really know anything about baseball football or basketball or soccer but i've been trying to fake it in like one day a week you know just do each of those and not for any reason i don't have any interest in them doing those things, but I just want them to feel more comfortable than I did. Right.

You're at a friend's house and everyone's hitting baseballs around. They can do it, but they don't end up being like me and just drinking a Coke. Yeah. And they'll just end up, their friend makes fun of them. The next thing you know, they got them in an arm bar.

Right. They'll have that skill. And that is the one thing my kids do seriously. They do do-jitsu three oh yeah i saw it yeah three times a week i told my friend just recently it was this past week i watched a video where the two kids were fighting each other and then i read some of the comments and they're like hey what's the fine line between like moving in and letting them like self-soothe and i was like oh my gosh this is And I was like, Oh my gosh, this is,

there's some like life lessons to be learned here. Do you have any siblings? Yeah. I got a brother. Did, and is he older or younger? Uh, he's 16 months younger than me. He's like my best friend. Wow. That's close. Um, and did you guys wrestle a lot? Uh, I was very timid. He was more like, I just couldn't couldn't hit him i i hit him one time in my life and i as soon as i hit him i immediately apologized to him i was like i'm so sorry i shouldn't have done that but he beat the crap out of me so you had to pastor jeans from the beginning i don't know something maybe i'm i don't know i don't know what it was but i i couldn't i'm just timid like i've never been in a fight um but as i got some friends that do jujitsu and i'm just timid. I've never been in a fight. But I got some friends that do jiu-jitsu, and I'm just like, I don't have – I'm way too timid of a person to try to even – the thought of even someone just making my lip bleed on accident, that's not my deal.

I saw a bumper sticker that said jiu-jitsu, the art of folding people's clothes while they're wearing them. I'm like, wow. Yeah, and I'm not mobile at all, so I would break in half. My brother put me in a WWE move when we were kids, and my back popped, and I just lost my breath. I thought he broke my spine. But I'm running to my parents going, Mom, I think my spine's broken. Obviously, my spine was not broken because I was running. But, dude, he still jokes on me

about that so you're um you're 22 years old you have this encounter with um uh spiritual enlightenment god yes with god and at 26 you and four of your buddies are like hey we're gonna start a church yes and at this time you are are you 70 pounds overweight at this point no uh so all of that started two years before okay two years but uh so so you were i was a student pastor at a church before that i've been i was i've been i was a student pastor for 10 years. So from that moment with God, like forward, that's what happened. But yeah, two years before that. So that was almost seven years ago now.

What are you, 2020? So 2013. That's when I had, I was like, that's where I found CrossFit at. I found God in the back of an Impala. Then I found CrossFit, you know, 2013 in gardner alabama i'm a little lost here so give me give me a second so so you're you're 22 were you overweight yes okay when did that happen when did you start getting overweight were you overweight as a kid oh yeah uh i've probably middle school you know all my friends are losing their baby fat and I wasn't just because, you know,

we didn't know what to eat. We just pizza, what kids ate. Right. And then I had no, we didn't really know like how to exercise. I played golf in high school, you know, pretty competitive with golf, but as far as physical fit stuff, I didn't care about any of that stuff. And then at that point in time, he was like, Hey, you know, know I just had the right friends and so we were hanging out with the crew so it did it didn't matter what I looked like I was because I was around people all the time and then as you get older you know I guess you start noticing more of those things or something at 20 uh so 24 is when when my physical fit stuff started happening, or I found CrossFit.

But, yeah, I was just depressed. So 22, 24, pastoring, dude, I was depressed, but I didn't really talk to many people about it. Everybody thinks that pastors have all their crap together all the time. We really don't. I still think that. Even though you're telling me that they don't, I don't believe you. Yeah, I absolutely don't.

Every day I'm like, every day I're telling me that they don't, I don't believe you. Yeah, I absolutely don't. Like every day I'm like, like every day I have to like humble myself and be like, God, I need you today because I'm one, one decision from stupid. We just won. Like I couldn't be really stupid on this podcast right now. And it'd be, you know, whatever. So, so that happened at 22. So depressed. I would go, I would come home from work every day. Like we would have like small groups. We did like, I was pastoring kids and all this stuff. I'd come home and I was just like exhausted. I didn't want to go to sporting events. I didn't want to go lead in any capacity because I had no energy. You know, then mentally I start looking myself in the mirror, you know, I'm like, what's going on? You know, tried to date a few girls, but they were way out of my league.

And they're like, hey, look, I just like you as a friend. And that happened like four, boom, boom, boom. I'm like, what the heck is going on, you know? And I was like, well, I need to do something. It wasn't purely, it was not lady or girl driven at all. But it was just all these factors just mentally wore me down. I was like, what in the world am I going to do? I had a friend who did CrossFit, and he lost, I want to say, close to 100 pounds doing CrossFit.

He posted a picture on Facebook. I watched this whole story on Facebook. I was like, there's no way I can do this. There's no way. A friend who lost 100 pounds doing CrossFit? I don't want to say it's close. I don't know the exact number. It doesn't look anything like the same person when he started. No, I said he was as big as I was. And then he was like fit. I'm like,

what in the world is going on? Same age as you? Yeah. He was a year younger than me. That's what I tell people all the time. Like the power of like sharing your story on that stuff, how inspiring it could be. Like we weren't even like I say we're friends we knew of each other we were Facebook friends but I saw him post that and it I was like okay let's let's see if I can do this you know I'd only person only thing I knew about CrossFit at the time was Rich Froning that was it that a lot of people probably the same way yep um i was like let's see if i could do this i went to uh my local affiliate at the time in our in our hometown uh crossfit gardendale is the name of it um and they had an on-ramp program and i was like okay they're like you

you let me stop you here for a second i want to go back to the girl thing. Sorry, I'm just mixing it on. I love this. I've watched the old ones you used to do, and they're pretty much similar. I was afraid you'd have to ask me that damn daily when you found out that I was a Christian. um ever since i was five years old my kindergarten mrs allen i knew that i wanted my whole life was dedicated to um um having women find me attractive and like me and so i'm 48 now somewhere it's it's it's it's waned substantially you know like once I had kids and now I've really settled in with my wife I don't understand how like I mean weren't you just like from the eighth grade to to 24 being like hey I'm overweight and I'm never no girl's ever gonna want to put her hands on me because I'm overweight and I got to do something about this and wasn't that just weighing on you

or no you weren't because I outkicked my coverage like three times in a row. I had like three serious like high school relationships. I don't know how other than I don't know. I got really lucky. And so I had out of my league girlfriends and then that didn't happen anymore. So you were like, oh, I can just lean on my personality. Yeah, exactly. That's awesome.

That's good. Social media came out and they're like, no, it's not about personality anymore. Like before I, hey, if you just get to know me. So I guess the dating, how it happened changed. Is your brother overweight? He was. He's on a journey.

He's a member of our gym oh sweet oh you must be so happy about that oh yeah i love it and how about your parents how are they how's their fitness um so i personal train my mom she had a really bad car wreck uh so her knee is shattered so we do some personal training with her, even teaching him like nutrition stuff that just started in January, like them learning like macronutrients and stuff like that. So trying to walk them down the path, you know, and so and my dad, he's a member at our gym as well. He comes to our noon class. So it's fun, like coaching him on how to do like a power clean and seeing him get really frustrated when he can't like snatch something it's fun but

how did you get your parents to do that don't they think you're crazy weren't they like no we're not gonna do it super supportive parents super blessed uh my parents are awesome and so they've supported me in every facet of my life and so I lived at home when all of this started, even CrossFit. So they watched it happen. And, and, uh, you know, when we opened up our gym, they're like, Hey, before then they're like, Hey, that's your thing. You do it. But now they're like, Hey, we've supported you in everything else that you've done. I'm, we're going to support you in this too. And now they're, you know, I'm, we're going to support you in this too. And now they're, you know, members of our gym. My mom has cried to me out of the blue and which is really uncharacteristic for my mom.

She's 76 and she started CrossFit at 69, I want to say. And I'd say three times in that, in those years, the only three times I've ever seen her cry is she'll like put her hands out, her cold hands. And I love her cold hands. When I was a little boy, I loved her hands on me. She put her hands on my neck and she'll, she would cry, look me in the eyes and cry and be like, thank you so much for introducing me to CrossFit. It's crazy. So that would be great when I get there. I'm nowhere near that. Like nowhere near, but my dad did do the open this past year, um um just because our gym was doing it so i literally i don't remember what workout it was maybe it's 19-2 or i don't remember but i thought or 22 and i i thought i was watching my dad die in front of my eyes as i was coaching him

like oh shit i'm gonna kill him yeah that's exactly what I thought was happening. I was like, I'm watching my dad get the life sucked out of him right here. But, yeah, it's an interesting dynamic. And my wife's parents, I think they're really close to joining the gym also. So it's just getting over the fact of do I want to listen to someone younger than me, like, you know, humble myself to the point to be coached by someone that I wiped when I was a kid, you know, I get that. Um, for my mom, the first year was super stressful. She said she had to take the classes first thing in the morning and get them

out of the way or else the whole day. She said she was tripping. Yeah. Oh, I just got this thing that said my internet connection is unstable did you hear any of that i heard all of it oh sweet yeah you're good by the way congratulations getting um parents your wife's parents and your parents huge huge okay so how do you find gardenville crossfit and what gives what gives you the balls to actually walk in uh i knew something in my life had to change that was it like i joined several gyms over like a span of six years you know um but i'd go in try to work out then i would get mental because like there's

no way i'm what i'm doing is working so now i'm just wasting my time i'm out of here then i didn't have any accountability or nothing so i was like you know forget this um so it was really like a last ditch effort i was like if this doesn't work then nothing is gonna work for me. And so I just went to the door. I remember walking in the middle of a class and I was like, hey, I want to sign up for your beginner's class. And like, I was wearing like skinny jeans. I was a fat guy in skinny jeans and like an outdated shirt. And he was like, yeah, but you know, you got to wear like athletic clothes to, to work out tomorrow. Right. I was like, yes, I know that I'm not stupid, but that's, it was just, Hey, you, you get a month, you get a month free. That's kind of how it went. I was like, okay, worst thing I'm out 150 bucks, you know? And so, uh, so I went and,

uh, talked to them. And then that next night started their on-ramp program. And, dude, it was the simplest workout ever looking back at it now. It was four rounds of 10 push-ups, 10 air squats, 10 sit-ups. That's it. I was like, oh, man, that's no good. Say it one more time. I want to write it down. Say it one more time.

10. Four rounds, 10 push-ups, 10 air squats, 10 sit-ups. Okay. Okay. That's it. So we learned all of our movements for the night with the PVC pipe. Now I get to the workout. I'm like, oh, that's nothing. I'll be fine. You know, I'll make it. Round three, I seriously thought I was going to die. And at the end of round four, I was like, there's no way I can do this.

And so then after we get done with the workout, it probably took me like 16 minutes to do that or something like that. And we're sitting down in the front. They were kind of debriefing for the night. They're like, hey, do you have any questions? I thought I was going to vomit. And so I was like, yeah, where do you throw up at? And they're like, well, you just need to go outside. And so like,

I run outside and I start dry heaving and I luckily I didn't throw up, but I just got so embarrassed too. I was like, Oh my gosh, I can't believe it. I'm the only one I'm in this room with other guys, my age. And then like three moms and they kicked my butt. I'm like, there's no way. So I'm sitting on the curb and this is, this is why I stayed like this. This is the thing I was sitting on the curb. I'm like, there's no way. So I'm sitting on the curb and this is, this is why I stayed like this. This is the thing. Um, I was sitting on the curb. I was like, well, I just wasted $150. I'm not coming back tomorrow night. And my coach, his name is, he's the owner of the gym. His name is Chad Langston. Um, he came outside and he gave me a bottle of water.

He's like, Hey man, you did good. I'll see you tomorrow. That's it. That'll be 250. Yeah, no, he didn't charge you for that's it that'll be 250 yeah no he didn't charge you for the water thank god the one time he didn't charge me for a water but um but like just that brief it was no like master yoda speech or anything like that that was it that's all i needed because up until that that moment like mentally I quit. I was like, I'm not coming back. But that one little conversation changed everything for me. Because he said, hey, look, you did good. I'll see you tomorrow.

Which meant he – no one else had ever done that. Because I went through that gamut so many times at other gyms. I'm never coming back. I don't even know what I'm doing. But he came out and kind of walked me through that process. And from that day forward, it's, I've never, there's never been a thought am I going to quit CrossFit no matter how like sucky of a workout we do or how difficult something is or how crazy my schedule

gets. It's not been the case. And so that was in August and by May of the next year, I had already lost 70 pounds. So it was, I was average. I was just like 10 pounds a month and I'm the type of the next year, I had already lost 70 pounds. So I was averaging, I was losing like 10 pounds a month. And I'm the type of guy that like, if I see something working, I'm just going to keep doing that. That's why I love Legos as a kid. Like you tell me what the end product is going to be, I'll do that.

And so I was like, you tell me what to do, I'll do it. Every day I'd come. I was working out four to six times a week, just boom, boom, boom. I mean, learning everything everything finally got double owners all that stuff and it was just like by the end of the time uh by yeah may i'd lost 70 pounds now i didn't know much about nutrition at the time but who cares that we can build off that stuff but it that was 70 pounds without knowing anything about nutrition yeah Yeah. My nutrition was, okay, I'm not going to eat bread. I'm not going to eat fried foods and I'm only going to drink water. Okay. That's huge

though. Cutting out bread's huge. That was it. I was afraid. Have you ever seen the movie Heavyweights? No, but before you go there, how did you know to cut out bread, fried food, and just drink water? Part of it was just like i know these are probably bad things for me okay but they walked me through a pro like they said hey here's some things we recommend eating maybe you should cut out some of these things but it was never like some like deep you know nutrition program like like things that are available now you know okay so yeah that was it and i was just afraid that if I ate a piece of bread that I would, I would go into a food coma, wake up like five days later, all my weight

would be back on. So that's, that is what would happen. Yeah, it probably would have. That was, that was my fear. So for a year, that is exactly what made my decisions for what I ate every day. So what, what about the movie heavyweights? That was it. That there's this moment in the movie. If you don't, if you didn't see it, I don't even want to go down that path because it wouldn't even be funny.

So maybe someone's listening and seen it. Comedy. Who's in it. It's an old Disney movie. Like they go to a fat camp. These kids do. And they're like, hide,

like hiding food. And at the end, it's got a Ben Stiller in it. And, uh, he's trying to get all these kids to lose weight. And at the end, it's got Ben Stiller in it. And he's trying to get all these kids to lose weight. And so he's like making them like cutting out meals and all this. They finally overthrow him and putting him in like this guarded gate stuff. And they had this big party and they're eating like all this food and they wake up the next day and they're just like covered in like Twinkies

and all this stuff. And they're like, did y'all learn anything? And and they're like don't put twinkies on your pizza that was like the biggest thing that's what i felt like i was if i ate a piece of bread that was the next step it was me waking up the next day as a pastor are you only allowed to watch disney movies is that one of the things they tell you and i'm from the south it's's like, no, no, no, no, no. Have you seen Porky's? I have not seen Porky's. Do you even know of that movie? You're probably too young. Yeah, I know what Porky's is.

I definitely do. No, man. As a kid, that was my introduction to the South. Like when I think of the South, I think of Porky's. I don't even know where that movie took place, but that's just like, as a California boy, I thought, okay, you know, we had to sneak to watch it. But when I would see it, I was like, okay, that's the South. No, man. boy i thought okay you know we had to sneak to watch it but when i would see it i was like okay that's the south no man i wasn't allowed so i wasn't allowed to like read harry potter back

in the day um i remember my dad he sat down with me he's like hey look if you just if you understand you can tell me that you know that this stuff isn't real i'll let you read it and now so i mean there was those things but now i we my we, my parents were cool. We, they let us watch stuff and listen to music and all that stuff. Why did they call you trace? What's that? Where's that? Sydney Charles Kennedy the third. So that's the, so, so it, uh, that's the Southern way. Oh, right. Yeah. So what's your real, what's your name?

Sydney Charles Kennedy III. And does anyone call you Sidney? No. People who don't know me, so people maybe at the bank, teachers in high school and college the first day. Is Sidney a girl's name? I know there's the famous actor Sidney Poitier, and that's a dude. Sidney is definitely a girl's name, man. It is. and he that's a dude but uh definitely a girl's name man that's it is that what i caught so much like heck from people and like i dreaded the first day of school because i knew my teacher was going to call me sydney and there was always going to be that one dude in class be like that's a girl's name then i turned blood red and be embarrassed for like 20 minutes. It happened every year.

I was like, please just go by last names. Just call last names. Just call last names. All the cities I ever knew were hot. They were all hot. Even this one? No, not this one. Well, maybe now you are.

Now you are. Now that you've been CrossFitting. But back then, maybe you weren't so hot. That's hilarious. So you go into the gym and you have that first day and are you just crazy sore the next day uh yes uh yeah i was it was really the second uh when i got into right like the actual workouts like once they took us out of on-ramp that's when I really got sore for the first time and you're and you're 24 years old and 70 pounds overweight and you're just

getting into it and it's kind of like quitting smoking it's like you know people who quit smoking you can try 20 times before you finally get it yep and you've gone to several gyms and you had tried a bunch of times to find your place, start your weight loss journey. You just couldn't find it. Yeah, I couldn't. I needed someone to tell me what to do and I needed accountability. Those were the two pieces that I needed. And you got that accountability and that peer pressure and that love and that support by the simple gesture of the affiliate owner what was his name something langston chad langston chad langston came out and handed you a bottle of water that's it man that is it uh i am forever indebted to him like the smile that changed the world i i love i love i love him i love him

to death and he because i and i put i tell him i like, he, like, I'm not who I am today. Like my family will not be who they are today. Like none of that doesn't probably doesn't happen. It may, who knows, but he's definitely, I'll always point to him. So I'll always like, he'll be a pillar in my story forever, you know? So, and I don't know if he meant like, he probably, when he had, he probably just, his ambitions were, Hey, I'm going to open up a open up a gym let's see what happens but like that's part of the i think part of the reason you like while we even open our affiliate we want to help as many people

as possible and i'm not saying i want to be a pillar in somebody's life but i want to help make that connection like you know it's a place of positive transformation and you've already dedicated your life to do that through the church. And this is like just another piece. Oh, for sure. For sure. For anyone who doesn't do CrossFit, just so you know, this is why it's so popular. Because it works. And this isn't some isolated story that Trace is telling.

I have my story. My mom has her story. Everyone has their story. Every single person, Rich Froning to Dave Castro to Nicole Carroll to, I mean, every, to Trace Kennedy, every, every person has their story like this. This isn't, um, this isn't just, uh, work out, get fit. This is, this is where you bro out and meet your wife and, and be with like-minded people who want a better world. Yep. That's it, man. That is absolutely it. And it's, everybody has a why, and that's what we

try to help people find here. Why are you doing this? It's way more than I want to lose 30 pounds. It was. I mean, for me, it was. I wanted to, you know, I need mentally something needed to change for me. At the end of the day, that's why I did this. And other people finding those whys. And then you surround yourself with people who are like, hey, my why may be different, but we know that this is the thing that's going to help us accomplish the why. And that's, you don't find that a lot of places. You really don't.

Some churches, you don't even find that stuff for sure well tell me about that what do you mean your why go into that i was gonna wait to ask you that but tell me what do you mean i don't even know what that means my why for work why do i work out yeah or any kind of why like what are you referencing when you say when find out your why what motivates you to make the decision what like what why is why are you going to walk in the doors to this place why are you going to spend an hour of your day somewhere like there has to be a reason i mean there has to be right um so mine now is i want to model health and wellness for my daughter number one okay so sorry so you had your daughter already

no you didn't have your daughter when you know now no no my wife's totally okay okay so it's changed your why can change oh for sure okay yeah definitely i mean if that and that's one of the great things about crossfit too like the why will always change like so i wanted to lose a bunch of weight so what happens when i lose a bunch of weight? Why would I come back? Why does it matter? Well, now I want to learn how to spin a jump rope under my feet two times. Or I would like to learn how to do a bar muscle-up.

And then it switches to, oh, wow, what's this nutrition stuff that you guys are talking about? I would love to maybe have abs one day. And then it switched off of those things that, oh, wow, this, this is having an impact on other people now. So I want, if I want to keep leading people and I want other people, like if, if two people decide, oh man, maybe I can do this CrossFit thing and prioritize my health and wellness. Okay. And that's my why now, those are my two things. My, my daughter priorit my health and wellness. Okay, and that's my why now. Those are my two things. My daughter, prioritizing health and wellness. For her, no one has a priority. And then the second thing is that I don't want to ask other people to do things that I'm not going to do.

So if I'm going to tell people on a weekly basis and no sweat intros, Hey, uh, like this works. If you work out three to five times a week, you will see your like so many different things in your health life. Why do you do no sweat intros? Yours wasn't a no sweat intro. Yeah, I think I don't know that people, I mean, people come into people who are listening and I know this cause I looked at his website, but it's just what he says. If you come to a Motown CrossFit and you meet Trace or Aaron Kennedy, they talk to you for 15 minutes and that's your first session. It's not get in there and do the four rounds. I want to know why you're here. Like,

and if you say it's so you can lose 30 pounds. Okay. But why do you, why do you want to lose 30 pounds? Like what else? Let's find something else. Oh, you have kids and you're playing outside with your kids, but you can't really play outside with your kids because you're out of breath all the time. Tired of having sex with the lights off. That too.

Or if you want to go, like you go to the beach and you're you dread going to the beach because they're going to look at you like okay i need four beers to take my shirt off yeah exactly a lot of people there's some there's some people who are those those ways i couldn't tell you i mean those way intros we've had where people like grown men are like break down in tears and admitting for the first time, I'm insecure about my body. I've been insecure about my body since I was 13 years old, you know. So finding that's something you can build off of, because guess when when your life continues to happen or things fight for your time on your schedule, if the why is not strong, then we know. Well, I'll exercise some other time or I'll figure something else out to do.

I'm trying to marry those two things together. CrossFit and people's like, they're wise. Have you ever tried to change someone's why? Like someone says something and you're like, no, no, that's not your why. This is your why. Or like they're not thinking deep enough or? Yeah, I wouldn't change it. I would just try to keep asking questions until they kind of and some people don't know and so helping them discover those things that's that's huge too like oh wow yeah you're right i that's really why i'm here so if we can connect those things then we're saying you know we've seen so many stories already of people who i mean i could just rattle off lists, but I don't really want to rattle. Your gym, on your website, you say that you guys have lost your combined weight loss of your members.

How long have you been open? You've been open eight months? October was when we opened, the first week in October. Oh, that's interesting. And your first time going into a CrossFit gym was in October also. August. August. Oh, so August to October, you lost 70 pounds? No, no. I started in August and in May I'd lost 70 pounds. Okay. That's right. Okay. I'm getting my dates confused. God, there's competing questions in my brain now. Hold on one second. I want to talk about the 800 pound weight loss in your gym, but first I want to go back to your, your journey. So you go in, in August and how much do you weigh? I don't, honestly, I don't know the exact number because I was afraid to get on a scale. Okay. Then how I weighed 260. Oh my goodness. Okay. You were big

man. How tall are you? I'm 5'11". I was a big boy. Yeah. So you, so you weigh under 200 pounds now. 185 now. Yeah. You look, you look lean and mean. Like I can see your ears. You don't have any head fat or nothing. You got one chin and you got the hipster mustache. I seriously, when I saw you on the, for the first time I met you and I saw your look, I would have never thought you had a 70 pound weight loss story. You look like the guy who was like you kind of have that image with those glasses and the and the religious background that like you ate you were 6205 pounds and you did crossfit to put on weight i did you know no no no and this is just like this all like my wife wouldn't let me bleach my hair blonde so i did a mustache instead do you rap no no so i would just be cool to have a rapping pastor

i'm they're out there i'm sure my hair so if i would have bleached my hair i would have got so many m&m jokes and so that was another reason i didn't do it and that's exactly why i said do you rap um how so so you go in in august and in aug, let's say August, September, October, November, December, January, February, March, April, May, in less than a year, 10 months, let's say, you lose at least 70 pounds, maybe more. Probably. that through um working out four to six days a week um with chad langston at gardenville crossfit and you um the only dietary changes you make are basically you you change anything you drink to water you cut out fried foods and bread and the weight's just dropping it is i was averaging 10 pounds a month i want to say i was trying to lose two pounds a week. That's what I was trying, you know. And who's the first person who said something to you?

Like, hey, yo, what's going on? You sick or what? Or did people know? Were you just nonstop CrossFit blah, blah, blah? Oh, yeah. Shoot, yeah. Dude, I'm a millennial, man. I was on Instagram posting all the time, dude.

I'm a millennial, man. I was on Instagram posting all the time, dude. The first time I had the inkling of a blister, it was on my Instagram page. But I don't really know. I think one of the other owners at the gym, she was the first one who said, oh my gosh, you've lost a lot of weight. And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then she pulled up the picture lot of weight. And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. And then she pulled up the picture of our on-ramp class. And I was like, holy crap, I have lost. I knew I'd seen it on the scale, but that was the first time. And that was probably month three that I was in there that she said something. And then other people just kind of slowly started saying things as well. And when I started buying other clothes, I'm like, oh, wow. Yeah, I definitely noticed a difference now. And did you know Aaron during this time? Oh, yeah, we were, we went to high school together. We were, we hung out in some of the

same circles in high school, but she was super popular. She was a cheerleader. She played softball, all that stuff. I was the mascot in high school. I was like a punk rock kid, but so I wasn't really with around her much, but she, she was the cheerleader who dated like hard, like punk rock kids and stuff like that. And so I knew of her, I had a huge crush on her, almost messaged her on MySpace and ask her to go to prom with me, but I didn't thank God. She's the same age as you? to go to prom with me, but I didn't thank God. She's the same age as you? A year younger than me. Okay. But then in college, our worlds kind of combined because she got saved in college. And so we started going to some of the same like church functions,

gathering, small groups, stuff like that. And that's where we started hanging out more. And you must have been stoked. You're at a church function and your high school crush shows up you're like oh there is a god no wonder you no wonder you believe in god it's easy man it's like hey that's just one more sign like okay yeah this is happening for sure but i tried to date her i i tried to well not date i tried to oh i asked her on a date we went on a date and this is before i this is when i was like big. I was a big old boy. I think she probably said yes out of sympathy because we were friends and hung out or whatever. And then after the date, I was like, hey, I enjoyed that.

You want to go out again sometime? And she responded, I just like you as a friend. So I was like riding on high. I was like, oh my gosh, I finally went on on high I was like oh my gosh I finally went on a date with a girl I've been trying to go on a date with for a year and then she just liked me as a friend I was like oh crap this is terrible and that was so that happened and then like it happened a few more times and so that that was like a year almost a year before I started CrossFit too then I started CrossFit lost a bunch of weight CrossFit, lost a bunch of weight. But

before that, like she said, she liked me as a friend. I kind of got ahead of myself. Um, so I thought that just meant, Hey, don't talk to me anymore. Like get out of here. That's my nice way of saying thanks, but no thanks. So I just stopped talking to her. And then a month, a month later, she texts me and says, I really miss talking to you. And I was like, Oh my gosh, she really does want to be my friend. This stinks. And so we stay friends and hang out and like, you know, communicate with each other. And then I start, you know, the CrossFit thing. And did you think when you started CrossFit, Hey, maybe I'm doing like, Hey, like, was she any of your like motivation? Like days you didn't want to go, you'd be like, hey, I'm gonna do this because I really

want to catch her attention. No, not her. There was another girl that I've never even shared this. I don't even know who's gonna watch this. I know my, or listen to this, I know some of my friends will for sure. But like, there's's this one girl I was just like a whim we started talking a little bit and then she just like no more and she was my real motivation like when I didn't want to go like it wasn't I was attracted to her anymore I didn't have any feelings for her I was just like no this is not happening again and so I'd be running or doing some exercise or one of the workouts. And I'm like, nope.

She was definitely my motivation for sure. But Erin was never anything like that. It was just like we were just friends. You had kind of admitted defeat. There was no way. She had transcended you. She was in the clouds. Deep down, I was like, goodness, I would seriously love to go on a date with her and marry her.

That was, that was like, I felt it. Like, when you know, you know, right. She just did. So I had to go through 11 months of hell doing CrossFit for her to realize that she liked me too. What a great gift to your gym to go through that transformation and let everyone witness that. You know that?

It's like hope for everybody she no she didn't do crossfit at the time i don't mean even her though i don't even mean her i just mean all the people at gardenville crossfit to get to sit there and see you come in four to six days a week and be basically i mean you were a beaten scared puppy on its last hope for for losing weight and um something clicked there oh yeah everyone there like as they were giving you a gift you took such um responsibility whether you know it or not and actually gave everyone there a greater gift than they gave you it really is that way i know it's that way for the gyms my mom goes to. They see a 76-year-old woman working out and kicking ass,

and they're like, what the heck? They can't believe it. Yeah, I normally would have said the F word, but with you, I'm just trying to. That doesn't bother me at all. Just try and do my part. You're effective. It was funny. I was like, I wonder if he ever does say heck.

That's funny that he said it. But I tried. So I was a member of CrossFit Gardendale for six years. And there was like one, other than inviting people to the church that I was a part of, the only other place I would invite strangers to or tell strangers to go to was the gym. I tried to get as many people as possible to come and work out. And I was bummed

when some of my friends came and like, no, this isn't for me. I'm like, what do you mean this isn't for you? Are you freaking kidding me? You know? So yeah, they definitely hold a special place in my heart. What percentage of your gym members go to church? That's a good question. church? Ooh, that's a good question. Uh, maybe 75%. And of, and of those, what percentage go to your church? Ooh, uh, of that percentage, 30% maybe. It's, it's interesting because I don't go to church. I don't have any, I guess, set faith, but regardless of what denomination or what church my friends go to, I really like church-going people. They're just good people. Oh, yeah, man. It's like a good tool to vet your friends. They have a compass. they have, they have a compass, you know, I tried to tow a fine line there too, because I didn't want to, like, I know I have some sort of authority in the church that we're a part of. So I really did try to like tow that line very carefully to not be like, Hey, you guys should

come to my gym, you know, and do this stuff, you know? So I'm going to say some bad shit to God about you. Yeah. I i just i didn't want to kind of use that but some people were there they they saw the life change they had for me they saw the transformation um so i'm like pastoring their students and then we plant this church and so i'm and they see this chunky kid like slowly you know transforming like hey what did you do like and it wasn't just a fad or a phase you know it's like we're like five years in six years in seven years in okay now you have my attention like what are you doing to see this kind of like health change and i'm like it's crossfit there's no greater um you know this is a bad word in the CrossFit world, but there is no better marketing plan than to be a priest and to lose 100 pounds.

I mean, I expect your gym to have 10,000 people. I mean, because they know you have the recipe. Yeah. They know you got the recipe. You did it. Hey, here's my casserole. Look. No one can be like, well, he doesn't know.

No, actually, do you have a picture of your fat self up in your gym no oh there you go free marketing right there i just gave you a great idea you take that to the bank dude uh there's not many of those pictures left i try to find them every now and then but so you're at crossfield gardenville for um for six years my two questions are what finally clicked does Aaron my questions are going to be how did they feel about um you breaking away from the gym and my other question is I want to know how you finally got Aaron on the line and did she actually see you lose like would you see her once a week during this 11 month initial that's the cool thing is so we were friends and we stayed friends and she saw me lose the weight

and i tried to date some other girls but i always had feelings for her so i was like okay at some point in time we said we we had a conversation we hung out one night i said this is skinny version of you or still giant no skinny i said hey if i if you just like me as a friend then we can't be friends anymore because i want to get married. I have that desire to get married at some point in time. But it's not going to happen because I have feelings for you. And that night she told me, she's like, I like you as more than a friend. And that's all I needed.

So I was all in from that moment forward. You know, we got married nine months later, I want to say, from then. Wow. Yeah. We've been friends. We knew I want to say, from then. Wow. Yeah. We've been friends. We knew so much about each other. Right. Ten years.

Yeah. So, yeah, that was – and it was like – that was the coolest moment ever. Sometimes I get – not sad. I cry telling that story, but I'm not going to. But I love – yeah, when she said that, it was all like – I knew. I knew, I knew, I knew. And, uh, it was just, I joked with her once we got more comfortable in our relationship. Cause I was like, Hey, look, I'm not going to say it's because I'm skinny now that you have feelings for me, but I know I already had the personality of a fat guy

and then I lost weight. So I know that I'm a home run so you just be lucky that you got me and she gives me crap about that every now and then for sure but um two I knew my wife for five I pursued my wife for five years just so you know before anything happened and it was the greatest thing ever it's like to be friends with someone yes to be friends with someone for five years and then finally it happened it was like it's what care it's what's carried us the next 18 years like that's like there's still as how i felt about her then i still feel like i don't say i feel the same about her i feel like i've loved her in new ways now but that i it's it was a it was effort and that's what i needed. All my previous relationships,

they were like, whatever. I didn't have to try. I had to try. I had to put in work to even get like her attention. And so that was, it was worth it for sure. And so we were, we got engaged and she was still just doing her own thing fitness wise. And then, uh, after we got engaged, I went up to her house one day and I had one of those little Kalo rings. I got down on my knee and said, will you do CrossFit with me? Yeah, and she started laughing. She's like, yeah, I'll start doing CrossFit with you. This was after we were engaged. She started at that point in time, that next on-ramp, she started doing CrossFit.

It took her five months, and then she started at Gardendale. Yeah. Gardendale. And she started kicking my butt in workouts immediately because she was athletic. She played, you know, college softball. She, she had it. She instantly became like the fittest girl in the gym, all this stuff. And, and I was like, yep, that's my wife.

I'm going to just hitch my wagon to her now. Like forget my weight loss journey. My wife's kicking everybody's butt in here so as superficial as it sounds you really have to like look at the big picture it it's it's more yes she found you more attractive 70 pounds less were you ever well let me go back saying were you ever diagnosed with anything when you were overweight hypertension diabetes anything like that yeah it runs in our family for sure uh my grandmother and grandfather both had diabetes heart disease runs in my family i've had three uh family members die of heart attacks so how happy are you that this covid thing is out and you're 70 pounds less

and it's just i mean i'm gonna just be family history yeah crossfit for sure changed my and me and my brother have had that conversation several times. I'm like, hey, look, some of this disease that's ran in our family ends with us. It really does. And so that's another, you know, knowing that will make me come to the gym on days I don't want to come to the gym too. Yeah, eventually maybe your daughter's kids won't know that heart disease runs in the family. They won't have that as part of their narrative like you have. That's the dream.

That's the hope for sure. But yeah, I mean, it's not super – it wasn't – It's not superficial. Sorry, so this is where I was going. No one wants to marry someone and spend the rest of their life with them knowing at 65 they're going to be in a wheelchair or in a walker. You owe it to your mate to live as a role model to be strong to be healthy you need to make it so the competition

is not only to get along and love each other but you want to wipe your mate's ass you don't want your mate wiping your ass and that's the crossfit competition yeah no that's it like i want to have to stay as healthy as you can yeah i want to spend as many years as possible with my wife for sure she doesn't want to look at you and be like oh god in 40 years i'm going to be hosing him down in a chair because he's going to be so i mean oh geez man that's what i love about listening to you talk you say whatever but that is what happens right and i've heard and i'm stealing this stuff from greg he say people don't know this but the cornerstone of crossfit is to stay out of the nursing home there's a few there's the nutritional component but the functional fitness component

um people misunderstand it it's really to stay out of the nursing home and the second you can't wipe yourself yep we have a member at our gym who's 73 years old and her goal is just if she falls to have the strength to get up and also to be able to sit on the toilet those are the two things and she's developing the strength to do those things she's a 73 year old awesome goals yeah i'm like yeah why wouldn't you because you got friends who can't do that stuff right now. Right. And so, yeah, she's not trying to do – like she'll never snatch 60 pounds probably. Probably not. But if she happens to fall at her house, she'll be able to stand up or she'll be able to sit on the toilet and not have somebody else come pick her up

and wipe her butt, you know. And if she has grandkids, she'll be able to play with her grandkids. Oh, and she is. Her grandkids are running in 5Ks and she's walking in 5ks awesome yeah so you're going to gardenville crossfit for six years how do you what happens um the chad starts hitting on aaron so you're like i'm out of here i'm gonna start No, no, no. So my wife gets really good at CrossFit. They ask her if she wants to go get her L1 and start coaching. Oh, that's cool.

And you're like, that's bullshit. I've been here longer than you. No, I was pumped. I didn't think that was something that I would ever do, you know? And so she started doing it, and she fell in love with teaching CrossFit. She did. She was a dental hygienist. She still is part, like part-time dental hygienist. And, uh, it's so wild how all of it happened. So that was July of 2019. Um, yeah, July of 2019. Uh, we had had a few conversations

at the gym at one point in time uh the owner of our gym was thinking about buying another gym and he had asked me did i would i be interested in managing that gym and i was like oh wow i've never thought about that before so that's where the bug kind of started in that conversation but he ended up not buying the gym i was like no that's no big deal but wow that that would be cool to do to like work at a CrossFit gym. That would be awesome. And then so she was coaching. She started coaching more, and I was doing social media for a CrossFit company who teaches skills and stuff like that.

So ever since I've been in, so I worked for Kill Cliff for a little bit, and I started working with WOD Prep and doing stuff with them. And so they had approached Erin about coaching with them online, teaching different stuff. And she ended up not doing that, but that's when we're like, okay, maybe what if we open the gym one day? And so I, you know, I talked to our owner and I was like, Hey, you know, would, would you ever want to go North? So Warriors like 15 minutes North, minutes north, another city north of Gardendale. I was like, would you ever want to do anything like that? He's like, no, that's just not for me.

Gardendale is where I want to be at. Like, I don't think it would work up there. So that's kind of where that common – Living up there at the time, 15 minutes north? I live in – my hometown is 15 minutes north. I lived in Gardendale. I still live in Gardendale. But so we just had that conversation like, no, that's not what I want to do. It's like, okay,

cool. And we were at the beach and my wife was just talking about, I just don't know if I want to be a dental hygienist forever. It's like, what do you think about opening up a gym? Like, could you see yourself doing that? And she was like, yeah, I would love to do that. Let's make that like a five-year goal. Okay. I was like, I think in yourself doing that? And she was like, yeah, I would love to do that. Let's make that like a five-year goal. Okay. I was like, I think in five years we could absolutely do that. That'd be fun. So we just, you know, start praying about that.

Like, is this something we want to do? I talked to some mentors. What does that mean? You start praying about that. I saw that on your website. You're like, dear God, like writing a letter to Santa. No, sure. I really thought like, I believe wholeheartedly

that God kind of, He directs our steps, and He creates plans for our lives, and has us in places where He wants us to be, and gives us wisdom to make smart decisions on stuff, and I do. I want to be a part of what God's a part of. I don't want to do things that, you know, that he doesn't want me to do with my life. And so that's major for me and my wife, you know, that I know that's not everybody, but it is for us. And that's just kind of part of our, that's our worldview. And so we, we just started praying to God, like, Hey God, like, this is a cool idea, but if you don't want us to do this and you want us to be a dental hygienist and maybe a part-time pastor and a substitute teacher forever, then I'll do that. That's fine.

So you ask God, but you're not putting like tons of pressure on him. Yeah. Hey, look. It's your call, buddy. Yeah, it's your call, right? But if you – like just show us, you know, right? And that was how that prayer went um and then from there we have it regularly you do that every night i would say every month it would be consistently

we would pray consistently for sure together together on our own in the same space okay yeah it just it would just in times like we pray different times throughout the day and sometimes i'll be driving in the car and like would talk to God for a minute or two. Hey, God, what's going on? You would call your mom or whatever just to chit-chat. We'd just be talking. From there, we'd talk to some of our mentors, people that have some value in our life. Hey, look, this is something we're thinking about.

You tell us, is this a good idea idea could you see us doing something like this you know and uh and they're like that makes perfect sense why would you not do something like that I was like okay like if if it's not just like bad pizza that I ate right so now people that I really look up to are saying those same things. Okay, let's see where we even start. Five-year goal. I have a friend who owns a gym in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Okie CrossFit is the name of that gym. I just met this guy in June. Yeah, in June, I met him at a church conference. And so we became friends on Facebook. So I reached out to him. I was like, hey, look, we're trying to figure out what even step one is. If we want to do this

in five years, where do we even start? And in that conference, he starts like telling me all this stuff like, hey, this is what you need to focus on. This is the goals you need to set to see if you can, you know, financially do it, what you need to be looking for, building space wise, all this stuff. At the end of the conversation, he said, hey, man, you know financially do it what you need to be looking for building space wise all this stuff at the end of the conversation he said hey man you know we had three gyms one of our gyms got hit by a tornado so we shut it down and we just have the one it's like I've got all this equipment I'll sell it to you for pennies on the dollar I love these parts of the story that like I would like the name of the gym is oaky crossfit that's more just southern just i just love it just like stereotypes and the gym was hit by a tornado i mean i feel like i'm watching

this is a story from jed yeah well he's in oklahoma that tornadoes are huge there got hit by a tornado and he said i'll sell it to you uh and we he sold us everything we needed uh equipment wise to open up our gym like and you didn't even have a space is that why in your instagram i see a lot in the beginning you guys are outside like no that was just an idea that that jake the guy from uh okie crossfit said hey man the month leading up to your gym opening host community workouts in the park for free. Yeah. Great idea. Was that a good idea? Sounds like a great idea. Great idea. We, that wasn't even on our radar. And he told us that five weeks before the gym open. So we're like, all right,

let's promote it for a week and see what happens. And we had like 20 plus people every week come to the different parks in our community and work out. But yeah, he, so at the end of that conversation, I would call this like a God moment. Like I totally was, this is, we would be where my faith comes in and is like, okay, he's speaking in these moments. This is not coincidence. I met this dude in June, no intentions of ever opening CrossFit gym. July, we have a conversation with my wife or we, we, we talk together.

We start praying. The very first conversation we have, we have all the equipment to open up our gym. Way less than a budget that we would even need to open up a gym. one friend in the area who was, who had some influential relatives that knew just where a property was. And at the end of that conversation, we had a space and with the cost less than what we were even looking for budget wise. Those were our first two conversations. And so I was like, Oh my gosh,

this is not a five year dream. This is like a, I asked Jake, I was like, when do you think we can open? And he's like, I can see you opening in October. I was like, October? We were thinking years. He's like, no, you can do it now. I needed him to push me out of the nest and do it. How long was that? How long was October from when you were talking to him? June, July. Okay. So just July. So July, end of July, August is when he's like, I can have, we can have you open by October. Is this space behind you, the gym? Yeah, this is part of it for sure. Awesome. Okay. Okay. Shit. And then now you've been open eight months. Yes. I mean, I, you, he's talking talking you reminded me of a god

moment i have i'm going to share with you okay so i was in new york city and i was making a documentary on arm wrestlers and this one arm wrestler was going to um this self-help lecture on how to like get rich right and so it was like a three-hour lecture from this guy and then if you like his spiel you can buy like the CDs for $12 million, right? Yeah. Or the DVDs. I think it was DVDs back then. Do you know what DVDs are? Yeah, I know what DVDs are.

I remember creating the tapes. All right. All right. So the guy said, hey, and I'm just kind of sitting there while this guy takes the class. And I'm not really interested in it. And I'm just taking some video and some pictures. But then something he says catches my ear. He said, if you, God will give you whatever you want. And so if you resent rich people, he will make sure that you're not rich. Oh, that's interesting.

And I was like, wow, because he doesn't want you to become something that you resent. And I just remember thinking, okay, I'm going to make sure that any thoughts I, and I was a, I was a Berkeley liberal. I'd grown up in Berkeley, right? Hardcore liberal. And so there was all sorts of animosity towards the wealthy, even though Berkeley's rich as shit. And at that point I said, I'm going to do two things. I'm going to, and I just came up with this on the fly. Anytime I see any money on the ground, a penny or anything, I'm going to bend over and I'm going to pick it up and I'm going to say to myself, I am a money magnet. And the second thing is, is I'm not going to have any resentment towards rich people at all. If I

see someone in a Ferrari, I'm not going to look at them and be like, they don't deserve that. I'll be like, good for that guy. I'm glad to see people having fun in the world, you know? And I was going to just flip the script, you know? And I wasn't really negative anyway. And I wasn't like a money hungry person, but I just thought it would be a cool experiment. And it worked. I'm doing good. Seriously, it was like, it was like within months, I got this job that was paying me 3,000 a month. And then I got raised to 4,000 a month. And then I got raised to $4,000 a month. And then it's just been like, and this is 20 years ago, but I just, so there you go. It's funny that you said that because we got a member at our jam who is like, he's a big fangirl of you.

And like an hour before we were doing this, this he said i'm pretty positive that he got his start doing arm wrestling documentaries if you want a uh a tidbit on him like no thanks but now i'm gonna definitely tell him that i have a fangirl at our gym yeah it's the name of the movie's pulling john amazing movie it's on netflix it's on itunes I recommend it. But yeah, that's my, does that sound like the same God that you know? I don't know. Did your God hook me up? God gives good gifts for sure, but I don't think it's like based on what you think and what you want. Like, I think that's just his character anyways. Maybe he was just rewarding me because I was just being, I was a kinder, gentler, humbler, you know, like literally I will get out of my car and like someone will have dumped 20 pennies on the ground and it's in a parking lot and like people, everyone's ignoring the pennies. And I'll be

like, just take a few deep breaths and pick every penny up and say, you're a money magnet in your head. And like, this is your moment of humility, you know? Well, if that's the case though, man, then I wouldn't have had to go through all the issues I did trying to find a wife. Oh, you did good though, buddy. Hey, so when you met, so, so going back, so, so you opened the gym and, and to kind of close that story and I want to go back to your wife for a second and having kids, personal passion of mine. It's really interesting that it's a huge compliment to CrossFit that a pastor would open a CrossFit gym because it just shows the – not the moral or the ethical, but the – you're a do-gooder. the, you're a do-gooder and you weren't, you weren't going to open a, um, uh, you weren't going to open a candy store and sell a cigarette and candy store. You weren't going to open a tobacco joint and I'm not, you know, whatever, if you smoke or chew tobacco, I'm not, no judgment, but, but you, that, that's not, you're not helping anyone.

Right. No, it's help. It's a helping thing. Uh, it's the same thing. You're serving people. That's, and that's why it was so easy because I've been serving people for have dealt with issues with addiction to eating for years or just having no self-confidence or just no drive to do anything or feeling like there's no way, there's no hope that they're just going to be 400 pounds forever. You know, like it's easy. Like my goal in life is to see people fit spiritually and physically. That's why I feel like I'm here, right? And so, no, it was an easy jump because it's pretty much – if you're serving people, that's all that matters.

That's really it. Do you coach a class? Do you have them pray before the workout? No, I don't do that. Like. Does that alienate the non-believers? I'm a believer, but people can get to know me to know that I'm a believer. I don't feel like you have to, like a Christian gym, right? Like we're not naming all of our workouts after Bible verses and there's not all these scriptures on our walls.

That's fine if people do that, but no, that's not what defines me being a believer, how I live my life, how I shape my worldview, how I serve people. I want people to see Jesus in those things, and not just because I haven't branded in my CrossFit gym. So we got non-believers who coach at our gym gotcha you'll get them don't worry you'll get them um uh when you hear someone when i'm when i'm looking at these articles every day that come out i'm seeing stuff like in the uk 95 comorbidity with deaths states like minnesota 98.1 i'm seeing like a 90% of people hospitalized in Illinois or something had diabetes type 2 diabetes it makes me not angry is not the right word but when people bad mouth CrossFit in a time when I know it is the cure not from getting the ailment but just rolling

with the ailment like I'm 48 I've never worried in my entire life of getting sick. I don't avoid sickness. I don't care about sickness because I just take care of myself. I just really minimize my sugar. Yeah. Who cares? So what? I just minimize my sugar. I don't have unprotected sex with strangers. I mean, it's like pretty simple formula. And when I hear people bad mouth it, or have you ever had this thought that like, well, it's worse than saying the color red is ugly? Or, I mean, you're saying something negligent. You're spreading misinformation about something that could save someone's life. It's like someone bashing Christianity, let's say, even from your perspective. Like it's done so much

for you it's allowed you to contribute so much positive energy into this world and then when someone badmouths crossfit you're just kind of like wow that's do they even know what they're doing like you're not just bad mouthing like hey i don't like levi jeans you could be closing the door for someone whose life could be saved yeah Just yesterday, we did an outside park workout, and one of our members came to that, and we were just talking beforehand, and she said, hey, guys, something big happened the other day in my life. I'm like, oh, what's that? She said, I came off my diabetes medicine.

I'm like, yeah, like, yeah. And you're like, holy crap, that is like huge. Like, we're not high fiving because, you know, social distancing and all that stuff. But like, I lose it. I'm like, oh my gosh, this is what it's all about. And to know like all these stats that you're throwing out, like all these underlying, why would you not? Those are the stories. Everybody's got an aunt or uncle or cousin that hurt their shoulder doing CrossFit or busted a knee, like whatever. You hear them all the time. They're a dime a dozen. Man, people are coming off of, at our gym, blood pressure medicine, now diabetes medicine, right? Like those things are happening. We've seen over 800 pounds lost at our gym since October.

Yeah, that's incredible. How do you know that? You track that? Yeah, we have check-ins with our members, like gold check-ins, and they just share what's going on in their life. And so we got Excel sheets for everybody. Awesome. I love it.

But we're not just measuring those things too. We're like, we have a former military guys like, hey, look, I suffered with like panic attacks. Since I've joined this gym, I've had zero panic attacks. And he credits it to CrossFit. Now, I don't know like, hey, look, you said that. I didn't say that. You said it. I just interviewed Zach Lewis from Skyfall CrossFit.

He's not the owner, but he trains there. Lost 100 pounds. He's taken his anxiety medicine to almost nothing. Yeah. That's why you're off the sugar and you feel better about yourself. Yeah. And that's what you can connect life to. You're like, why would you not? And that's why we're, as long as we we can be open we're going to be open and it's a shame you know congratulations you saved your life by the way yeah and that and that's if if we shut down tomorrow it was worth it is there a chance of that from this all these small businesses closing um no luckily we had some really good mentors that kind of just helped us prepare for uh this we're connected with some groups of gyms all over the world so when this stuff

was going on in china they're like hey look here's what's happening so they're putting plans together and they're like hey maybe you want to try these things and just the kind of way we live financially we try to set things up so we we could make it how we had an emergency fund what's this group what's this group you're talking about is it chris cooper yeah chris cooper two brain two brain dude we just can't stop hearing good shit about this guy we were just fans of two brain uh i i wanted to start two brain in october and i was like i can't spend that kind of money like i don't even know we got like 20 members there's no way i can spend that kind of money but man they gave so much stuff away for free when covid started and i was like no it's worth it like we're joining now and so we just met him yet i haven't met him i've talked to him

we're friends on facebook now but i've never met he's cool yeah i huge fan. Yeah. Him and Pat Barber are like two of the biggest stories for us. Like I tell people all the time, Two Brain helped us get our business where we need to do programming. Pat Barber has taken care of us. Another great dude. Lives down the street from me, actually. Well, I got to do a Zoom for our gym with him two weeks ago. And, man, everybody loved it.

Like, hey, that's the guy that does all our part workout videos. That's awesome. The final thing. So it goes back to Aaron. Okay. So you, you went. Oh yeah. Yeah. The kids. That's where I was going. The kids. I knew there was one left thing so you so you're basically tell her um going back you basically tell her hey look it i'm

interested in getting married and moving on with my life and you're this i just keep looking at you as that person and if you're not gonna be that person i'm gonna have to like take some space from you because i can't because that just won't work i won't be able to find a mate with you in my life yep well that's some like i want to say that's some slimy ultimatum shit but it's also just the Because I can't, because that just won't work. I won't be able to find a mate with you in my life. Wow, that's some, like, I want to say that's some slimy ultimatum shit, but it's also just the harsh reality of love. I was like, I got to be honest. And she says to you, in that moment, or she takes the, in that moment,

she says, let's see. Okay, I'm willing to take a step in that direction. Yep. And then nine months later, you're married. The question is this, when do you know that you're aligned with her on having kids and a family and all that stuff? Those are things. So when we started dating, we just talked about those things like, hey, what are your values? What are your non-negotiables? What could you negotiate as far as just things you believe, right?

So like, hey, I'm a pastor, so I love the Lord. I really would love for my wife. That's one of the – not ultimatum, but it's like, hey, I want to find someone that loves God too that we're on that same path. And then the other one was really like, I love my family and I really do desire to have a family one day. And do you see yourself learning those things? If not awesome. That's her talking or you're talking or you talk. That was me. That was me talking to her. And she was like, Oh my gosh, no guy has ever talked to me like this before. And I was just like, Hey, look, I, before I get emotionally invested anymore,

like, and because I had made so many mistakes, like getting emotionally invested before I really knew somebody. So that's where all the drama is in relationships. Yeah. I always do that. I always do that. That's the best way. I can detach super fast. If our values don't line up or if we're not like, if our non-negotiables and negotiables don't line up then like I would have just detached and be like okay look before we get go any further emotionally these are the things I'm looking for do they line up with what you're looking for and they did that was the cool thing they did like she didn't date anybody for four years until she dated me so she would she

had said no to a lot of people so I wasn't the only one that got friend zoned and so she was trying to figure out her stuff in life too and so we got to that moment and that was kind of how the conversation went like when did was that going to happen we didn't know like we're like I would like to enjoy being married to you and get to know you and love you and then you know at some point we could bring a kid into that as well that's just kind of how that conversation went. And then so you get married nine months after that kind of, so you knew her for years, more than 10 years. Then you get married and nine months, or then you guys start dating. Nine months later you get married and then how much longer until you have kids? Two years.

Two years. And a planned kid? Oh yeah, we were gonna, yeah, we were like, hey, let's start trying to have a kid now. And you end up with a two-year-old daughter. Yeah. She's awesome. She's incredible. And your wife's pregnant now. No, not yet. You don't want to announce that on the podcast? No, no, no, no. It's so funny. Like one of my friends just said that the other day, but she's not. She's not pregnant.

We're just practicing a lot. But that's it. All right. Good. Are you going to have more kids then? We would like to. I'd like, you know, if the Lord allows, I'd like to have one more. And then we would love to adopt at some point in time as well. Was it easy having that kid?

Meaning like the pregnancy easy? Oh, yeah, man. It was super easy for her. Other than like the pregnancy easy oh yeah man she was super easy for her other than like the very end of it like and she was worked she worked out all the way up until like two days before or the day of the day two days before she was working out she was doing like pull-ups butterfly pull-ups all that stuff crazy all the way up until and then as soon as she got cleared from the doctor that was like one of the first questions she asked when she went for her thing. It was like, hey, when can I start doing CrossFit again? As soon as she got cleared, she started back.

It's like all my daughter has known. Our rhythms kind of changed. We can't work out together as much anymore because one of us will have the baby, but the baby was up here as much as she can. She's got little weights at her house that she picks up. We do this thing. We break down at the end of our workouts with a go Wotown on three family on six and we'll do the breakdown. And she does that now. She'll say it. She knows what Wotown is. It's like one of her,

one of her first 10 words was Wotown and it's, it's cool. I love hearing her say it. Will you homeschool her? No, I'll probably, we'll put her in public school for sure. I, you know, I think it's, I know plenty of people who are homeschool her? No, we'll put her in public school for sure. I think it's – I know plenty of people who are homeschooled, and that's cool. People feel like that's what they want to do. But I want to do a good job on my end of raising my daughter and helping her walk through all of life's situations.

And I think some of those things you need to face. I don't want to just protect her from everything. So she needs to probably get picked on and me help encourage her that where her identity is truly found and, you know, and experience some things. And I want to be able to walk with her as a dad through all of that stuff. That's the promise. Hey, look, you may be in this like high school may suck. Middle school may suck. But guess what? what you're gonna have a mom and dad who are gonna walk with you every step of the way do you know russell burger i don't know him i feel like i know his name i think he's in alabama rentsville is the lawyer guy uh he's not a lawyer but he's kind of like a lawyer he was i think he was a great i want

to say he was a green beret yeah he used to work to work for HQ. I know. Anyway, he gave a great talk one time about basically the more you protect your kid, the weaker your kid is. And I know that's a little oversimplification, but it was an amazing talk. It was like the parenting talk that so many parents need to like, basically we get stronger through hardship and we all know that through Crossfit right you have to struggle in order to get adaptation yeah and that's what i've been telling so many members too like man we've been preparing for covid like yes our world has been thrown upside down but every day in the gym your world to a degree is thrown upside down there's a moment that you want to quit or there's some unknown variable, but you make it through it. You figure out a way and you do it. And if you can't connect those two things, I don't know what else to tell you. So don't let all this stuff

make you go crazy. Find out how even just exercise can really help you shape some of the experiences outside the gym that you're kind of going through? Greg Glassman has been saying for 20 years, we have a cure to the world's most vexing problem. And he has been saying for 20 years, don't eat sugar. And of those comorbidities, 99% of them, from what I can see just from reading the paper are caused from guess what? Eating sugar, heart disease, hypertension, diabetes. It's it's like yeah the whole entire crossfit community has been preparing for this and this covid i mean thank god it's not killing kids yeah now that's the great thing killing people with chronic disease it's picking people with chronic disease i'm glad because if it was and i would be in my house all the time yeah and you can turn chronic disease around in 21 days man that easy i'm no fucking doctor but i've i know you can go to a crossfit

gym i know someone can go to your gym they get the double whammy at your gym they can ask you to pray for them and they can get off the sugar and start moving in 21 days they'll be at the 95 yard line of protection from covet now don't anyone say anything stupid. Well, you CrossFitters can still get it. Yeah, we know everyone can get it. That's not what I'm suggesting. He got it, but we're going to live. Hope, like, for all the stuff I'm seeing, we're going to live. He got a dry cough.

Yeah, exactly, exactly. Trace, thank you so much. Man, thank you. This is like a – it's weird. I can't believe I'm talking to you right now. That's the crazy thing. Dude, man, I was – the behind-the-scenes stuff back in the day, that's the first time I ever –

I'm like, who is this guy talking on the other side of this camera? But I was hooked from that point. When I heard Josh Bridgesosh bridges say i'm just here to lift rogue weights drink mother can kill clip and we're not gonna choose man that is the line i was like this is okay last question why is josh bridges so popular he's not he can't even win the he can't even win the game i saw that clip on your instagram you're like i don't know why man you're gonna be 100 years old people are still gonna think you're gonna win the cross what is going on with this guy why i don't know man i just like him i really do i'm a fan i'm and dan bailey both of those guys

so yeah of course you do dan scratches your dan scratches like that christian good guy like okay he could date my sister and josh is kind of like oh he's a bad dude he's got that mustache navy seal shit going yeah i just like he just defined like he was anti you know a lot of the things he wasn't your typical dude that you were filming at that time maybe that's why i like him so much yeah all right brother thank you so much shake your hand you're doing that but that's really good all right i enjoyed it all right you got my digits text me anytime