The Sevan Podcast - #548 - CrossFit Amite | Affiliate Series Ep. 2

Episode Date: August 12, 2022

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Bam. Amity, is that like the horror movie? Cross it. Amite, actually. Not like Amityville horror. Amite. A-M-I-T-E-N-T. Like an Indian guy went to elementary school. Hey, a meat. Let's go play some kickball.

I think it is part of the Indian tribe. I'm not sure. I know some of the local communities around us are from that area. I didn't even mean that kind of Indian. I meant dot, not feather. A meat. A meat. A a meat yeah um what city are you in or what state are you in so louisiana south louisiana we're about uh an hour north new orleans and about an hour uh north uh east of baton rouge man those are good people down there we are we are yeah it's a uh it's a trip being raised in california and thinking about all this just the way that you know you could you stay in california

your whole life and then you're told that the south is a certain way and that california is different and that the north is different and then you go down there and it's nothing like it's explained to you as a kid in California. It's nothing. It's so crazy. You never even seen people act like this towards each other until you go down there and you're like, wow. It's a whole new world down here. Just like it's a whole new world wherever else you go in the country.

But, you know, the dynamic between California and Louisiana and especially the South uh, you know, home opposite ends of each spectrum. So, uh, we're completely different down here. Yeah. I'll give you an example. I went to a, um, so, so, and I didn't leave home. I didn't like, I was well-traveled, but like, I didn't like really leave, leave until maybe like my twenties. And I remember I had a movie that I made and it was going to film festivals and I was somewhere in Tennessee and I went to a nightclub and there were black and white people in the same nightclub. But the South is supposed to be racist. But where I come from, from California, San Francisco, the black and white clubs were separated where it was supposed to be, where we're supposed to be open and welcoming. Imagine that dude. And so what the fuck is going on? People have such a false misconception of how we are down in the South.

We're so integrated. It's unbelievable how integrated we are. And I mean, black and white couples are so common here. We don't even notice it. So yeah, a lot of people, if you've never been down here, especially if you never spent a whole lot of time here, you'll be shocked at what you thought was true is not true. So, but yeah, we're definitely a well-cultured group down here. And I come from a family of pretty hardcore liberals, right?

Hardcore, you know, go Hillary. And my sister married these fucking piece of shit republicans from texas and we and we go down there and the men stand up every time someone enters their fucking room and my mom's blown away yeah oh yeah because you won't see that shit in california men ain't standing up for nobody. No. And I was like, and everyone's familial and everyone makes eye contact and everyone shakes your hand. And I'm like, these savage Republicans, they're not savages. They're terrible. I was like, what the hell is going on?

We're horrible. We're horrible. It's so different in California. Yeah, it is. It is. I spent some time there. I was stationed there. Well, not really stationed there, but I went there.

I was in the Marine Corps for a while, so I spent some time out there. And I wasn't aware, politically aware, back then as much as I am now, because I joined the Marine Corps at a young, young age as a teenager. And so I was very unaware. But it's still there. It stuck out like a sore thumb. was very unaware um but it still did it stuck out like a sore thumb um and even more so just because of how polite you were and familial you were as opposed to everyone in california is kind of like more yeah that yeah and um you know just um when you speak to someone they you know i remember you getting looked at like i was crazy hey how you doing and open the door for someone i had a lady get offended that i opened the door for she kind of looked at me like i was crazy and she said i can handle the door myself. I said, I'm sorry. Yes, ma'am. It was ridiculous. uh once i started off as a young man when women enter the room you stand up and then i just integrated to anytime enters the room show everyone uh equal respect stand up shake people's hands make eye contact hold the first time especially the first time i met him for sure yeah

yeah uh uh or just like really even my good friends right yeah like even my good friends stand up give it give uh that was one of the coolest things about working at crossfit greg would all if someone walked in the room he would he would stand up, give it, give a, that was one of the coolest things about working at CrossFit. Greg would all, if someone walked in the room, he would, he would stand up and hug them. Yeah. So a lot of people think Greg was like an asshole. Cause the only thing they see is what, you know, the, what he has on YouTube and his interviews. And I mean, he is, he is arrogant, but rightfully so.

I mean, I love that about him, but he's not the asshole in person that, that everyone, you know, portrayed him to be. He was phenomenal. I love him and know portrayed him to be um he was phenomenal um i love him and i miss him to be honest so very loving man physically loving to to uh to everyone like yeah yeah cool hey um it's funny you say that this is not how i thought the podcast was going to start but i was listening to the to the a little bit to the new ceo being interviewed by stefan roche it's a 20 minute video i made it i probably got like 15 17 minutes through it sure and the stuff he was saying i i don't think it's what the community needs it's i haven't seen

that interview okay i haven't seen it i haven't seen it yet he's he comes across very polite very kind very interested in learning very interested in being open but it's how i feel about it's how i feel about um politicians um it's it's like uh when uh elizabeth warren said the majority she was uh that's do you know who that is some politician yeah absolutely absolutely okay so she was saying that the majority of the country wanted Roe versus Wade to stay in place, and therefore it should stay in place. And I thought, wow, she doesn't understand how the country works. She doesn't. It has nothing to do with what the majority of the people want.

Like the majority of the people in the country could want to kill Jed Rogers because he wears yellow shirts, but our constitution protects us from doing, even if it was 99% of us wanting to kill you, the constitution is to protect us from being animals. Yeah. So you're also like, and I want a CEO like that. I want to see you. I was like, I don't, I don't give a fuck what the affiliates think if they want to sell candy bars, I'm here to protect the methodology until I die. That's, and you're also, that's also coming from a lady who claimed she was Indian and she wasn't Indian. It's no

big deal. Don't worry, Jed. A little bit of lying is okay. That's from the Democrats. Disappointing if that's the route that he's taken because as a Marine officer, from my understanding, he was a platoon commander,

it's pretty disappointing that he's taken that road of responsibility, if that's his agenda. And that's one of the reasons why I got out of the Marine Corps, actually, is because it was becoming too political, too soft, for lack of a better word, too soft. too political, too soft, you know, for lack of a better word, too soft. The intensity for which we enforce discipline and vigilance was starting to fade away because towards the end of my career in the Marine Corps, the war was starting to fade out in the beginning and in the middle of my career. You know, the war was at its all time high. So we didn't have time to focus on, uh, social constructs that are outside of the military now. And it seems like that's what's happened. And we're in peacetime now. So they have a lot more fucking shit to do, uh, than focus on combat,

um, or discipline. So we've got to make sure that we're accepted by society. So it seems like the military has became this huge social project that we have to integrate into. And you're seeing that from its leaders when they eventually get out and how they run things and even in the military and then how they run things politically or, you know, in a business setting like the new CEO. And like I said, I haven't seen his interview. So if that's the if that's the the the route he's taken then that's pretty disappointed and and i don't mean to to just come in and bag him maybe um it's just a short interview uh you know i i don't want to say that he should come in and be like well i don't know maybe he should have come in and been like hey i read the first 30 articles greg wrote in the journal i'm getting the fucking shit back on track

i wish some of you aren't gonna like it so get the fuck out like maybe maybe that would have worked the the road that greg has been taking since 2001 um you know i've been in the game for a long time and um the tenacity in which which he steered this ship of fitness and how he took on everything that was wrong about what we thought we knew about fitness. He was the spearhead of it, and we don't see that. We need a spear. We need a tip of the spear.

We don't have a tip of the spear now. We don't have a face the way Greg was, and it's pretty disappointing, you know, because I, for one, miss missing him and a lot of new affiliate owners, a lot of new coaches, you know, it's unfortunate. They really don't know who he is unless they learn about him at the level one. But even then, um, of course I haven't had a level one. I, I didn't even research. Um, I got a research at my level two. So I haven't been to a level one in 12 years. And, um,

so I don't even know if they even mentioned his name anymore. Um they do okay i i i do i do think they do i think that um you know even even when i would interview uh age during the games i interviewed adrian a bunch of times half dozen times and and the the old guard is uh the true old guard doesn't have any issues mentioning his name it's not a political hot potato. Yeah, there. And I think that they still I think that the Hobarts and the Maliolos and the Nicole Carols. Yeah. Thank God they're still there.

Yeah. And even, you know, even I don't know this for a fact, but it sounds like even the guy who's running the affiliate department, the Gary Gaines cat. It sounds like even he's coming around like he's starting to get it. It's hard to get. It's a steep learning curve. Yeah, it is. It is. He had some big shoes. He left some big shoes in the field. He left some big shoes. He left his handprint everywhere. And for a CEO to come in, and the credit to the new CEO we have now, that's a ballsy job to take. That's pretty, he has to be confident in his abilities.

So that says a lot about him as a leader is that he's confident enough to, hey, I can handle this multi-billion dollar industry with, you know, I don't know, we have 15 or somewhere around 15,000 affiliate orders now and the direction that we expect him to take. So that's pretty ballsy of him to do that. So hopefully, uh, hopefully he's up to par. Um, you don't become a grunt platoon commander, uh, being a shit bag. So hopefully he carries something.

He's got great. He's got good street cred with you. I think, I think so. I got, I'm going to give him the benefit of the doubt because of, because of his, uh, because of his past and rancor. Um, so, so you know hopefully he continues to uh float that cool uh spiegel snatch ten dollars thank you is don fowl eric rose at 2.0 i guess only time will tell i i i guess only time will tell the only thing is is that people come

into this company thinking that there's something that they're selling widgets right so like hey let's say me and you were selling candy bars and you're like hey dude red wrappers sell better i'd be like great and i go hey this shape sells better you're like great we start putting together a product that we're trying to trick people into buying instead of adding value to it and that's not how crossfit works we need someone just to protect the brand and the affiliates that are going to fail are going to fail and the ones that are going to succeed are going to succeed and that's that yeah and i think um you know and like again going back to greg he was adamant about that he was at the point where this is the hill that i down i will protect the methodology i will protect my affiliates um i will

go broke before i throw up the white flag um and everyone knew that. Everyone, you know, the NSCA, the ISSC, all those, they knew, they knew. And, you know, and they knew what they were jumping into when they, you know, got in the ring with him and, you know, his success rate for the lawsuits. And the reason that he's so successful too, because everything that he would put forth too, because the, the, everything that he would put forth was correct. It was true scientific truth. And I mean, how do

you fight that? It was under, it was, it was, he didn't make, he doesn't make any money. If I have 250 members in the gym, the way NSCA or ISSC makes money from Coke or, you know, any other of these sponsors that, I mean, they're, that's, that was his big, that was, I think that was his last, um, his last big battle against, um, you know, the, the market was, uh, the soda industry. And I'm not sure if he's still, I'm not sure if he's still on that frontier or not, but, um, yeah. Yeah. So, you know, he didn't have, he wasn't making, he was making money from, you know, the affiliates and, and having 15 15000 affiliates and whatever the company was worth.

But in the seminars, in the seminars, yeah, he but he wasn't making any money by telling me what I need to know and spread it out in town and getting my affiliate. I mean, getting my members in here, I could have 500 members and it didn't it didn't raise his uh value at all so he he was genuine in what he did and everybody knew it um he was confident what he did and i i hope i hope we have a a face that that tries to match that i don't know if it'll be able to but i hope we have a face that does that he towards the end and and i'm totally open to being having him come on the show and tell me hey you're fucking wrong and i'm gonna see him later today maybe i'll run this by him but towards the end the last i'd say 2017 18 19 he knew that there was nothing else he could do for the affiliates so what he did is he put on his fucking hunting gear and he went out and started hunting for anyone who was a threat to

the affiliates and yeah and he did that yeah and he did that and and not just to the affiliates. Yeah, and he did that. Yeah, and he did that. And not just to the affiliates, but to the industry as a whole. And not because he didn't care if someone drank Coke. People have it all wrong. He just didn't want Coke involved in exercise science. He didn't want them

bastardizing the science. That was it. Yeah, sure. I mean, it's all over the universities. You go to LSU, Louisiana State University here in Baton Rouge, it's 45 minutes up the road.

And their sponsorship is part of his Powerade and, you know, Powerade's owned by Coke. So, you know, in the exercise physics class, the minute they start, it's all if Coke is giving them millions of dollars. Yeah, they're not going to they're not going to preach a doctrine that tells or influences people to stay away from those sugary drinks. uh, a doctrine that tells or influences people to stay away from those sugary drinks. They make, it's, you can't tell me that they don't have their hand in the curriculum. Some, some way, shape or form there's too much money involved for them not to have their hand into it. Right. And look who started, uh, our CrossFit Amity shirts available online for sale. Uh, yes. Uh, we, we post the links. we post the link every, um, every time we get new,

new swag. So, uh, we just started a new Instagram page. Uh, uh, I know only for only four posts. Yeah. So, so we had 4,000 people following us and we had like 200 and some, you know, several thousand posts. Um, we got compromised and for some reason, Instagram completely deleted, completely deleted our, um, completely deleted our page because we couldn't be verified. Um, we got compromised and I'm not sure how that happened, but we're ready to restructure anyway. We're getting ready to move into a brand new facility. Uh, so we're excited about kind of, you know, kind of re re re energizing, um, the gym and

making new posts and um so um yeah it's an old website yeah when did you when did you open the gym and why'd you open it so two years right yeah 2013 uh april this coming april will be 10 years so we're pushing the 10 year mark um congrats yeah appreciate it, appreciate it. Yeah, appreciate it. You know, I started CrossFit – well, I found CrossFit around 2006. I was in Yuma, Arizona for WTI while I was in the Marine Corps, and we took a trip to San Diego. What's WTI, Jed? Weapons, tactics, and instruction. It was just a part of training.

It was standard training that we do a couple times a year in the Marine Corps. And we took a trip to San Diego before we headed back to North Carolina. And we were on the beach. And for the love of me, I can't remember this gym's name. I seen some guys running with sandbags. And they were running into this warehouse. And I saw them doing some burpee boxers. I think it was burpee boxers. And I noticed he had long hair. So I was like, okay,

they're not in the Marine Corps. So who are these cats that are doing this crazy stuff? What is it? At this point, I've never heard of CrossFit in my life. And I walked in and I said, Hey, you know, what is this stuff? And one of the coaches introduced me and I signed, I said, Hey, can you mind if I get a, you know, get a session in, I signed a waiver and dude, literally within like four minutes, I was puking on the ground. I was puking on my shoulder. Cause I was late on my back. I couldn't roll over. I did not know what the hell hit me. And I was like, Holy shit. What is this crap? How old were you? I was, uh, 19 at the time i think 19 um yeah 19 or 20 and um all i could think of on my way home i was telling my buddies that whatever we do doesn't ever make us feel this way we're doing something wrong so we need to figure out how to start training like this so um i was unaware that

they had a dot-com website so So I found that not too long after, and I tried to do some of this stuff. We didn't have a gym on base that allowed head bumper plates or anything like, because, you know, CrossFit was still in its infancy, especially on the,

on the East coast and even less so in the, in the, in the military at this point. So I did some of the stuff like more grunt work things like sprinting and, you know, air squats and sandbag runs and stuff like that. But I really, really got into it on my final deployment. Um, in 2010, um, I really started to push it. And then I got my certification, my L1 right after that. Um, and, uh, and decided, uh, to eventually open a gym, um,

and open it up in my hometown because I saw a need for it. And here we are 10 years later. In 2010, where were you deployed? Afghanistan. Yeah. And what, what, what equipment did you have access to there? So thankfully we had a kick-ass sergeant major who loved to work out. For the first three or four months of our deployment,

we didn't have much. We had a couple of dumbbells and we had some tires, but we didn't have any barbells at the time. And I had an uncharacteristic deployment. Most Marines deploy for eight or nine months. My deployment was 13 months. So I so I was, I was able to work out towards the end when we finally got bumper plates and barbells. Um, not sure where the equipment came from. Um, but, uh, we were able to start doing, uh, we followed.com, uh, the workout day, uh, from the.com website, which is, that's what I, that's the template that I followed for the longest time. Um, I still remember three on one off. Yeah. Three on one off. I still remember Josh Bridges doing Fran to a medicine ball. Um, you know, I remember when, and I remember when, um, Spieler got a hundred double unders unbroken and the whole CrossFit

community went crazy. So that was, that was pretty, that was, that was, that's funny. Um, so that's when I started really getting into it and got home, got out of the Marine Corps, off active duty. And I stuck with it. And, you know, I saw a need in the community, in my hometown, especially, especially in the South. And so I decided to step in that step in that pit and see if we can light a fire. So why did you take your L um, L one, did the military provide it? No, they, I was unaware that they offered that. I remember Greg doing some things, uh, in camp Pendleton, I believe he did some L ones in camp, camp Pendleton. Um, I tried to actually get over there and my, my, my sergeant major was actually open to it when I asked him about it, but, um,

that didn't pan out. And, um, so when I I got out, I decided to get it on my own dime. And, you know, I think I can't remember. I know Chuck Carwell was the flow master, and I can't remember who the other two coaches were, but I know Chuck was. It's a lot of money for a kid out of the military to spend. It was. And I had said, Oh, you know, I deployed a lot. I was, I was operational for a long time and I deployed, deployed, deployed.

So I had some money saved up. So at the time that grand, uh, it was a grand in, uh, still, I think still is maybe it's 1250 now, but it was a grand in, so it was a lot. Um, but I looked at it as a long term investment, you know, and I was so happy that I did it, especially back then, because we only had like 10 people in our class, maybe 10 or 15 people. So the coaching that we received from the Flowmaster and the four coaches was substantial. The hands-on, the one-on-one, the practical application towards it was great. And I hope it's still like that today, but I see pictures of 30 and 40 people in the L1 class.

I'm like, man, that's rough. That's hard to do. You mean, what do you mean by that? You mean to teach that many people simultaneously? Yes. Yes. To make sure that each, each individual gets, you know, I really appreciated that, that, that small group, that, that one-on-one attention, constant, constant eyes on me all the time.

I enjoyed that pressure. Um, cause you have that kind of pressure in the Marine Corps, especially in my job and, and from my team that we had. Um, so when I didn't mind that kind of pressure, um, and I really enjoy that. And when I did my level two, which is when I got my level two as a coach's prep course at the time, I even, it was even more so that way. And I, that was that was that was the um that i think that yeah that was the one where they gave you the beat down not not physical beat down but the the psychological one that's the one where they like fucking critique every fuck up of yours right that one used to make people a lot of people cry i didn't think i honestly didn't think that i was good enough to be a gym owner i didn't think i was gonna be just like fuck i can't this. I heard crazy stories about that. I can't. It was – and the level two, I did research level two in Austin, Texas,

a couple years ago, and it was great. It was phenomenal. The new information that they kind of brought in was phenomenal, but it was nothing compared to the coaches' prep course as far as the critique. I mean, I think they changed. They want to make people, in a sense, kind of happy and, and, and feel, uh, fulfilled when they leave. Um, I did not feel like that when I left the coach's prep course, I felt like I'm not even sure if I can be a gym owner. I was so insecure when I left,

but I was glad because it did sharpen. It's sharpened me big time, sharpened my iron big time. So just so people know, that's how the l1 team treats itself each other too the feedback inside of that seminar crew is savage but they all but they all handle it because they all just want to be better but even the best guys at the very top are getting critiqued by like it's just it's a non-stop critique machine and usually you can see that you can see that by how they deliver the information in the courses. You can see that. You can see even on.com or on YouTube or on Instagram when Hobart, excuse me, or Nicole Carroll or Carwell, or when they post something, the way they speak, the way they talk, the way they execute, you can tell that drive to be, even though you know you're

not going to be perfect, you still say, I don't care. I'm going to be perfect. So you can see that drive in all the level one seminar staff. And it really is, you can take it as far as you want to go. And if you want to be a CrossFit coach, the information that is at our hands for free, essentially, you can take it as far as you want. And I don't know of another certification process that can even match what we have. When we started CrossFit, it sounds like I started the same time you did, 2005 or 2006. um all the the it was very obvious when you went on dot com that the program was for people whose life depended by life i mean survival the difference between being alive or dead the program was for anyone who felt that um being physically prepared could be the difference between life and death. So, um,

the firefighter needing to rescue two babies out of a building quickly so that he doesn't, he's strong enough to do it. Um, Marines who had to load up a truck full of fucking ammo quickly before the enemy came, um, police officer who had to run and resuscitate someone. It was all that's everyone who is doing it. And then there were the rest of us who we did the program not because our jobs not because we had those kind of jobs but because we wanted your guys's mojo right yeah yeah the closest thing we could get to doing like boot camp or buds or any

that was crossfit and so we kind of hung out with you and what it did is it assimilated you know i was raised to hate um first responders as a democrat I was raised to hate first responders. As a Democrat, you're raised to hate first – even though it's subliminal, you're raised to hate first responders and military. But then people like me started assimilating with those people and falling in love with them. Yeah, falling in love with them. And being thankful and appreciative that there's people like that who exist. that there's people like that who exist and then eventually to now or to just prior to glassman i'm selling the company it had morphed to holy shit these are the lifeboats yeah we're the we're the we're the swim coaches yes swim coaches that's what he used for just survival in a world full of fucking cheerios and um pop tarts yeah yes and I eat pop tarts every once in a while, but,

uh, uh, so, but yeah, so, you know, and that's, that's been the, that's been the motto from, that's been the kind of the, the, the message from day one. I don't think it has really changed. Uh, I think now, um, uh, fortunately in my community, I'm able to reach a lot of senior citizens. I have, uh, an abnormally amount of, uh, men and women that are over 50 in my facility. Uh, fortunately as compared to the gyms that are around Baton Rouge, New Orleans, um, the local gyms around. So I'm, I'm thankful for that. And that's a lot of that is due to my mom. She's 61 now and she's been doing it since I've opened and she's in phenomenal shape.

And what her testimony and what people see that she's able to do that kind of influences ladies and men her age to to kind of ease in there. kind of ease in there. And I've had to figure out a way to be more diverse in the way I coach and the way I program because my demographic is smaller. My community is smaller. So I can't target the mid-level 20 to 28-year-old fire breeders that just want to go hard every day. I have to be inclusive to everyone. I have to figure out how to make a program, how to coach a 60 year old, 60 year old. And I also have to figure out how to, uh, how to be attractive to the 18 year old athlete that could be going to college. Um, so that was a challenging time for me, but now, you know, we have, I have a good team in place. Um, and we have a good program set up. and so uh now you see people who firefighters police officers military police that were using crossfit as a tactical application

operationally um you see people having that same mindset says hey i want to attack it to suck us out of the nursing home um and it says that's where we're at now and um you know i'm so happy and thankful for it so and they can still be hardcore my mom's 78 or 79 she goes to crossfit uh still and they still do you just flip a smaller tire she still pushes the sled she still has the rope and she drags the sled they still they still like let you build that mentality. And I'll tell you, a lot of 78-year-olds can't walk around in my backyard because they'll trip into a gopher hole. They'll trip over a hose. Not my fucking mom.

She'll be back there with the grandkids. Absolutely. And it's all because of CrossFit. My mom will start crying occasionally. She's not like that if being so thankful that CrossFit got introduced into her life. Absolutely. like that if i if being so thankful that crossfit got introduced into her life absolutely and you know when when people see what my mom can do and other 50 year olds in the gym and 60 year olds in the gym they're like oh my god they're so amazing and to their credit they are they they they put

in the work they they had the dedication they had a persistence um so yeah they're they're they're amazing but they're not they're not special they're amazing, they're not special. They're amazing, but they're not special. They're not doing anything that you can't do. Um, it, you know, so, um, and we're working on that where people are starting to see, uh, you know, it took a while cause even then we're still not, we're nowhere close to where we want to be. Uh, like I said, we're moving to a new facility. I'm able to, uh, I'm able to branch out and kind of, uh, target, um, the older crowd and the younger crowd. I'm able to kind of branch out a little bit more and kind of target the older crowd and the younger crowd. I'm able to kind of branch out a little bit more and kind of be a little bit more diverse to get more people in there. But we have what I consider a pandemic of obesity in our community. anywhere and probably 95% of the people in a restaurant at a grocery store, a retail store, or not even overweight, but morbidly obese. And people like myself and everybody in our gym,

we're definitely the oddballs. We definitely look like the oddballs. And it's not just my town specific. It's all over the south from Louisiana all the way to south Georgia, north Georgia. You take a paintbrush and just cross it to Mason-Dixon line and everything below the Mason-Dixon line, it's a pandemic. And it's terrible. So the job is nowhere close to being done. Not even, not even close. Do you, by the way, incredible that you're still inspired after 10 years. I mean, you sound so inspired. I love it. I really do, man. Will you, I used to trip um like i would be like i would be at some you know burger joint

with greg and there'd be some dude filling up a coke and greg would walk over to him and be like yo that shit will give you type 2 diet and the dude will be 200 pounds overweight and the dude will be like greg will be like hey that'll give you type 2 diabetes i'm like oh fuck here we go and and the dude will be like i already got got it. And Greg's like, Oh cool. All right, cool. Well, Hey, uh, there's a gym over here, CrossFit, blah, blah, blah. And I didn't even know Greg knew that that gym was there. And he'd be like, I want to give you a, go in there and tell them Greg glad to bill me Greg Glassman.

I'm Greg at CrossFit and go in there and you got, you got to lose weight and they'll start helping you get off the Coke and that. Do you, do you do that shit? So I do roll up to someone at walmart and just be like hey so so the people people i know um or even acquaint or acquaint with uh you know i i do something similar to that yeah um i had uh you know this story came into my head when you said that had a lady about six months ago um inquiring inquiring about a membership. Um, and she came in, she did my three day kind of like on ramp, uh, just to see how it was. And, uh, she's extremely

obese and, um, you know, and I gave her some nutrition platforms to follow. Um, and all that was free, uh, in hopes that she would, she would join. Um, and a couple of weeks later, I saw her at a local restaurant, a local restaurant that has the opportunity that has a menu to eat healthy chicken, veggies, fish and veggies, lean meats and veggies. But they also have an unhealthy menu, fried stuff, you know, fried rice and all that stuff. And she had a big plate of fried food on there. And I just walked up. I said, hey, you're not going to fix those issues that you came to me about by eating shit. And I said, just like that. Yeah. And, and you know, she, she never did join, but she didn't join anywhere else either. So, you know,

it's a choice. And I feel like. And even if you hurt her feelings, maybe someday she'll be in the shower. She'd be like, fuck that one motherfucker, Jed Rogers. He actually cared about me. Yeah. And I mean, it fuck that one motherfucker, Jed Rogers. He actually cared about me. Yeah. And I mean, it's so I think, I mean, I'm not a psychologist at all, but I don't pretend to be. But I think part of the problem is because we see it in kids. We're so scared to tell these kids, hey, it's not OK to be fat.

It's not OK. It's not OK. okay to be fat. It's not okay. It's not okay. You put a, you put a, you put a stress on yourself first, and then eventually as statistics show, you're going to put a stress on your family members through Dr. Bill's or having to take care of you in the future. And then you're going to put it, you're going to put a stress on your own self-esteem when you start identifying yourself and what social group you want to group you want to hang out with. You're going to be insecure and you're going to blame it on everybody else. Oh, they don't like me because I'm fat. No, they don't like, I mean, that's, we don't like,

we don't not like you. You put that insecurity on yourself. I see that in my entire family, my entire family. If they watch this, they may get upset, but my entire family is unhealthy with the exception of a few people. Um, and I've tried for 10 years, the only individuals in my family that I've gotten in my gym or my mom and my cousin, I got a first cousin that comes in, he comes in, uh, you know, on a couple of weeks. Um, my mom comes every day. Uh, I tried to get one of my grandmothers in there. She's, she's hit or miss, but no one else. And it is disappointing. Um, my brother's healthy. He's lean as can be, but you know, he doesn't work out, but, uh, you know, I'm trying to get

everyone in my family, but they, they just won't. And I have a history. I have a terrible history of heart disease in my family, uh, of chronic disease in my family. And, um, you know, why do you think you got your mom in there? Uh, mom's been very supportive of my brother and i for everything we do um i don't care if i started a a uh whatever i started you were dealing with door-to-door she'd help you with the exception of that but if i opened if i if i opened up a snowball stand she's she's a very moral woman but if i opened up a snowball stand she would be the backbone of my snowball stand kind of the way she is in the gym um so whatever my brother and I do, she's very supportive. And she was working out a little bit before, but nothing to the extent. My stepdad, he's very health conscious. He works

out at his house and he stays active outside in the country. So she's always been healthy, conscious. But we really stepped on the gas when we opened the gym um and uh you know she's been you know she's been there ever since um so yes so we my brother and i are blessed to have a mom like that who's very supportive of everything that we do but um you know so but that's the that the issue is and it's still an issue uh and it's the same story of every other gym i got a buddy of mine who owns a gym in uh about 40 minutes from me justin king he's actually a master's athlete competing the games games this year. Justin King, 40 to 45-year-olds, 40 to 44. And he owns Slinging Iron, CrossFit, Outland Walker. Does he squat below parallel? Oh, shit. Yeah. Yeah, he can for sure. He doesn't have any knee problems that I'm aware of. He used

to have a bum knee, but I'm not sure of so he is. But anyway, so he has the same testimony. It's hard to get his family members in there. We have the same... Everybody around here has family members, the majority of their family that suffer from chronic illnesses. You can't find a family

that doesn't have chronic illnesses around here. Meaning self-inflicted from bad lifestyle choices. 100%. 100%. And I do a good job of bringing in the attitude to my members that it is your responsibility. I tell people all the time, it's okay if you're fat now. If you're hearing this, it's okay that you're fat. What's not okay is that tomorrow when you wake up, after you heard that, you think it's okay and you don't do anything about it now. So it's okay. There's not okay is that tomorrow when you wake up after you heard that you think it's okay, you don't do anything about it now. So it's okay. There's nothing wrong with you being fat now, but let's fix it. Let's go ahead and let's make a positive change. What's not okay is that you

choose not to do anything about it after I told you. And my members who come in that are overweight and obese, we have a sit down conversation and a very sensitive conversation. I'm very sensitive to how they feel because I mean, that's rough. You know, when they realize that when they realize that they, they, what the, the hole that they've got themselves into, I mean, it's, it, it hurts. I mean, so, so I'm sensitive to that, but I'm also a point to, Hey, you can't miss, you can't be coming here three days a week. You got to be here four to six. You can't be eating bullshit. Hey, when can I have a cheat meal? Don't even ask that right now. Your whole life was a cheat meal. Right now, we're not cheating. Right now, we're not focused on that. And they're adopting that mindset. They're asking me nutrition questions. They're coming into my office and say, hey,

what do I need to do? Can I get an in-body scan? Or hey, can you give me some extra cardio? Hey, what about me coming at 5 a.m. and doing some cardio and then coming in the evening sessions and getting the group session? I'm like, yeah, sure, let's go. Hey, can you give me some extra cardio? Hey, what about me coming at 5 a.m. and doing some cardio? How about coming in the evening sessions and getting the group session? I'm like, yeah, sure, let's go. Hey, can you write me my macros or can you send me anything? I love it. Keep coming. Keep coming. Keep coming.

Keep coming. Do you think that – I don't know if this is because I'm a CrossFitter, I don't know if this is because I'm a CrossFitter, but do you think this is typical of our group, our cult? Like, so the Toyota dealership's like two miles from my house. And so when my car's, when that maintenance light comes on, I drive my Toyota down there and I walk home. And when I walk home, I stop by the coffee shop and i treat myself to a coffee with heavy cream and i listen to an audiobook okay and i get and i get that two

mile walk and i never see i don't see one other and it's sidewalks the whole way i don't see everyone else who drops their car off fucking gets driven by the by the guy they think i'm fucking crazy because it's 6 30 a.m and i'm walking home but like i i just feel like like we would all do that as crossfitters we're not letting the guy drive us home in the in the van that says toyota santa cruz toyota on it if i was uh if i was if i was in a location where uh it was in walking distance to get to receive those services i probably would um but two miles is nothing for us right two miles is nothing it's like thank god it's like i'm excited that i get to do it

yeah yeah it's nothing it's nothing um you know and i'll add that down here especially you know you you run the you run the um the the unfortunate um turns of the heat is unbearable here okay it's especially lately it's been hot so i I tell, you know, we, we, we don't, we don't stay inside because of the, because of the element. So I tell my members all the time, especially those who work in the hospitals, which is, I have several members who work in the hospitals, they stay 60 degrees in there. So when you come to the gym, it's 90 degrees, 85 or 90 degrees. And, you know, even though you may be work capacity, your work capacity may be up to par, but your body's not used to the to the heat body acclimated. Um, and I also, I definitely tell that to my new members who are obese, um,

and overweight as any new member. Um, because, because it's kind of a shock and not only is the workout going to be tough, but the elements in which you're subjecting yourself to is tough. Um, you're not used to the heat.

Uh, it's not 65, 70 degrees in there. And set yourself up for a treat. Then walk a mile away to the gas station buy a sparkling water and walk home yeah two miles and you got a treat yeah yeah so uh so you know that's that's the mindset that i'm trying to implement and it is working you know where it's working thank god um you know like i said i have a great team of coaches um and um that i would not be here if it wasn't for all of them.

And so and they're all we all have that same mindset. Surround yourself with like minded individuals. And, you know, you then you'll see your gym members start to hold each other accountable. Like, hey, why did you miss yesterday? Got to come today. So it's it's it's it's cool to see all this come to fruition um and kind of morph to where it's at now cory leonard uh savon i bet jed will agree part of the problem down here is everything is delicious and everyone eats until it's gone not until they're full it's how we are

all raised down here 100 100 100 um so if you want to treat yourself, you have an unlimited access and amount of places to treat yourself. And it is tough. You know, we're a big time food industry down here. Our food is delicious. I've been all over the world and there's no better place. And, you know, I'm biased obviously, but there's no better place in South Louisiana in terms of food. You know, and I love the, for me, I love fried food, so I don't want anyone thinking that I don't eat because I eat, I probably, I'm gonna do as I say, not as I do type guy, especially when it comes to nutrition.

I do try to be a lot more conscious about it, but I love, love fried seafood, love it. We all do. We love fried chicken, we love fried seafood. We love the sugary sweet tea, and that is a treat. I'm not saying that that doesn't happen. Um, but you gotta be aware of, of the, the, I guess the, the, the unfortunate events that come with it, you know, the, uh, you know, so it's, um, it's hard to do down here.

When you, when you joined the Marine Corps, how did your, um, how did your mom respond? Did she cry? Was she scared? Was she proud? She, she, so my family was very proud, uh, very upset at the same time, especially the way that it happened. Um, it was pretty abrupt and, um, I had a pretty, I had someone, I had some unfortunate events take place, um, in high school that I brought upon myself and i was on a road to nowhere pretty doggone fast um and i knew that i wanted to join the military i knew i wanted to join the marine corps i just didn't know when um after like fighting and drugs and stealing and no not not drugs but a lot of you know fights and um you know i had to get kicked out of school um and um why were you fighting so much?

Was your dad not in your life? No, no, no. My dad's been in my life. He's a big time in my life. It's just one of those. So I was raised, I was always smaller. I was always smaller up until I became. Me too.

I was always smaller. So it wasn't anything for me to get picked on. But, you know, but so, and I wasn't, I never did give into the boy and stuff. Um, the minute someone picked on me, I would, I would throw the first punch and it would be often, um, you know, and so you had a chip on your shoulder as a kid. I did. So, and, and it happened all the time. I never got picked on by the same person twice. Um, so I got kicked out. Uh, and you know, my mom supported that. Hey, my mom and my dad both supported that. They were like, Hey, if somebody's thinking on you, you do what you gotta do.

Yeah. So, so they were supportive of that. And mom, I unfortunately support that too. Yeah. So, and so do I, um, so I got kicked out. I was on the road to nowhere. I was working on a farm. I had a, I loved the job that I had. I was working on a horse farm and a cattle farm. So I was learning a lot, learning a lot about work ethic and a lot how to how to work my hands, how to do country boy farm stuff. I did that since I was like, I think, 10th grade or something like that. But I knew it. There was a dead end to it. There was nowhere. There was no future in it. And then one day I had a bad day at work, you know, because I was upset if I get kicked out of school. It was embarrassing.

And I left work. I drove to a recruiting station. I told him, I said, I'm not leaving your office until I have a contract. You got expelled? Yeah. Yeah. Did you hit a teacher? No.

So I went hunting that morning. Part of a southern story, country story. The high school that I was from was a small country town. I went hunting that morning. You know, people in California can't even imagine that. You woke up in the morning and you went hunting. What were you hunting? Like pheasant?

No, so I was hunting turkeys at the time. Okay, same thing does in california birds i don't even know what a pheasant is i just said that to act cool yeah i was uh i wasn't even a turkey hunter then uh much as i am now but um so i went turkey hunting and we didn't have to wear uniforms at school at the time um so i showed up to school in my camouflage and um and i had my pocket knife in my pocket and um i forgot I forgot about it. And, um, two weeks before that, um, we had a stabbing at school, um, which is, which was unheard of at our school at the time, because we were such a phenomenal public school system. And, uh, the,

uh, the new, uh, the new school board judge wanted to make an example out of the next issue that came along. And unfortunately I was that example. Um, you know, so they, he didn't give me any kind of amnesty. He didn't show any kind of compassion. It wasn't even a question. Boom. He expelled me and, you know, I had to return to school the next year, but that wasn't happening. Um, I wasn't going to do that. So I got my GED and, um, you were 16. No, I was, I was, I was 18 at the time. Okay. I was 18. I was about to get out of high school. I was almost out of high school then.

And so kind of like as a fuck you. Okay, fine. You just joined the Marine Corps. Yeah. I just joined the Marine Corps. And fortunately at the time we had two campaigns going on. We had the Iraq war and we had the Afghanistan war going on. So the Marine Corps was spread then.

So they were taking anyone. They were taking delinquents. They were giving, yeah. So I was one of those delinquents. They were, yeah. So I was fortunate. And I did well enough on my ass valve that I could choose what I want to do. And it was fun. You know, it set me straight. It was the best decision. One of the best decisions that I made in my life, and I'm so thankful for it. And so fast forward, this is where I'm at now. When you killed this turkey? Yeah. And then you eat him?

Yeah. I actually have that turkey breast in my freezer. When you kill him, what emotions go through you? Like, is it— It's like lighting somebody up on the football field. Really? Oh, my God. You got to come.

Is any part of you ever like heartbroken like is it oh my goodness no no yeah when you miss if you miss absolutely you're gonna i'm so soft fuck you're gonna get me you're gonna get me some hate mail man i love it hey i would might i might go over there what if i went like what if i was out there with you and then i went over there and started crying? You got to suck it up, dude. That's not allowed. Yeah, that's not allowed.

We don't tolerate that. Yeah. We don't tolerate that. Would it go away after I ate them? If I shot them, and then I was sad, and then we cleaned them, and I ate them, then would I be like, well, now I get it. If you don't get excited about the hunt itself, and then the success of killing it, then you're not. If you can't get excited about that, you definitely won't get excited about eating it. But no, so the eating them is just a bonus.

The most fun part of the whole hunt is the experience of a hunt. Calling him, tracking um, calling him, tracking and calling him, uh, you know, you know, actually seeing him face to face, you know, within 10 to 15, 20 yards and pulling trigger. Um, it's, it's, I've, I've deer hunted and it's nothing like it. Turkey hunting is phenomenal. You're going to get me a lot of hate mail now. So people are going to message me, but I hope they, I hope they do. I hope they do i hope they do i'm ready the thing is is i don't think the people who those people have never done it no they haven't they haven't and you know a lot of the same people eat beef from yeah mcdonald's so so they're stupid but but i mean i was that kid like uh and and i remember in college my

friends would go fishing and i would go with them and they would be like hey i'm gonna take a piss hold my pole and i'd be like fuck that and they're like why i'm like what if a fish fucking bites the end of it i just can't oh good we gotta get you in a hunt man i know rich i mean i don't i know you know rich rich hunts a lot yeah so you know what i'd like to do i'd like to go um i had a friend who went out on some like fucking multi-dollar sailboat for two weeks, and he said the chef would just jump overboard, bring in a fucking giant fish, splice it open, and they would just eat sushi right there. Just rock. That's great. That sounds amazing.

That's a lot of fun. That sounds great. there is some sort of appeal like with the liver King shit. Like there is some sort of appeal to me as, as crazy as it sounds of, of, of right there when the, when you kill the animal to eat some of it shit raw, like it's organs.

I'm not going to go there. No, that's not, I'm not that infinite. Grab a big old handful of cock and start working on it. No, I can't do that, bro.

I can't do that. I can do that with fish and tuna. I can do that with tuna. I mean, doesn't that sound crazy to be on a boat out in the middle of cock and start working on no no i can't do that bro i can't do i can do that with fish and tuna i can do that with tuna i mean doesn't that sound crazy to be on a boat out in the middle of nowhere and just eating raw fit just the best sushi you've ever had so i've done that before as far as tuna fishing goes um yeah but but yeah but as far as like you know killing the animal a land animal no that would never happen i would never do that you have no problem eating a giant fucking tuna cock but if it comes off a cow no way absolutely you have your boundaries you you take your l1 um and um and can you imagine why wouldn't it's only two days why

wouldn't they have every service member in the United States military take that? Wouldn't that be just – Because – Wouldn't that alter the way our military operates? But I think, again, you know, this is this is no offense to people who are overweight. But I don't think there should be any bend whatsoever in the military as far as accepting overweight people. Absolutely not. We have it being over being overweight in the military. We're talking about in the military itself being overweight shows a lack of discipline and discipline is the foundation it's the bedrock of what our military is based off of so if you're overweight immediately you're on discipline but yet you could take those those

you could take uh 500 um fat dudes and in three months fucking clean their shit up be like hey this is what you're gonna eat you're gonna walk and run every day this is the pt right i mean you could clean those up for real but absolutely but the problem is now uh the military doesn't enforce that and they'll say they do but they do not they do not they will not do that um now especially more than ever social media um anytime someone gets their feelings hurt they they go up the chain, they complain. You know, so those who are in charge, the head, you know, the head sheds who are trying to make these soldiers and Marines and airmen and sailors adhere to the fitness standards and the body weight standards. All you got to do is just cry and say, hey, they're fat shaming me. And man, they're scared to touch you. They're scared to say anything to you.

It's especially in combat roles where you see a lot less overweight people in direct combat roles. But it's still, you know, it's you have a perception being fit and being able to look good in uniform. It's to me that's supposed to be,, that's supposed to be part of our repertoire. And you're seeing a lot less of it. You're seeing a whole lot less of it. Even in the special ops community, I have some buddies that are still in the special ops community. The standards are starting to drop. The standards are starting to drop.

They're starting to say, okay, we'll slide this under the table since you didn't pass there. And I still have some buddies that are still in the Marine Corps. And they can't force a Marine to PT. In some instances, they call it considered hazing. And you'll have some people say, oh, that's not true. No, it's true. Back in the day when I was in, if you were overweight and you couldn't make it, you better stand the hell by it because you were about to have your life changed. That was about to be the center and focus on everything that you did. You're going to watch what you eat. You're going to PT when we tell you to PT.

You're going to get your weight checked. And, you know, we hazed you a little bit. But, you know, at the end of the day, those people came out, those Marines came out better because of it. And it shouldn't be accepted. It shouldn't be accepted in the firefighting community. It shouldn't be accepted in the police community, in the law enforcement community. And I just don't see – And the reason why it shouldn't be enforced is that you're taking an oath for a job to save other people's lives, and now you've done something to actually put other people in danger.

Correct. The exact opposite is happening. It's not because you're fat. It's because you're fat and someone else might die because you're not taking your job as seriously as they are. Correct. Perfect example. Or worse than that, you're actually – instead of making the team stronger, you're making the team weaker. Absolutely. Absolutely. So a perfect example. running through the woods off the interstate.

I believe it was. And they ran some thousand yards. And Herman's a bigger guy. He's 250, 240, but he's strong and he has a lot of wind. And, you know, but he has all his gear on. He has his vest on. He has his gun belt. But he ended up catching this suspect. And when he got to him, you know, most men that are his size, thankfully, he's not overweight. He was just he's a big muscle guy. He was able to get to him and still have enough work capacity, enough enough fitness to apprehend and put cuffs on him and take him back to the unit. enough fitness to apprehending, put cuffs on him and take him back to the unit. I know police officers all over the place that couldn't even make the run, much less that happened. A thousand yards is a run.

What if that suspect noticed that that police officer was, you know, fatigued and turned around and came back and fought him? He wouldn't have the ability to defend himself and bam. You've seen that before. It happens. It happens, you know, and. And hey, and then you're probably more likely to grab your gun the more fatigued you are because the more scared you are. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And you make a bad situation even worse.

And then, you know, we had a situation about two years ago. Next door neighbor's house caught on fire when I was about two years ago. One of my next door neighbor's house caught on fire when I was about two years ago. One of my next door neighbor's house caught on fire and it was a pretty substantial fire. And a couple of a couple of the boys that were fighting fires, the firefighters, they they started getting fatigued and they were only on the call for like 30 minutes. Now, granted, it was hot and they were in full gear, you know, but they were fatigued. And I just I found that unacceptable. I find that extremely unacceptable. I don't, I don't find any tolerance. And if you want to be treated with a certain level of respect because of your responsibility and what you do for a living, then gosh dang it, your fitness and your mentality should reflect that. I'm not going to speak to you sensitively like a client who's 40 years old and overweight and wants to change a life.

That is – you want a man-sized job, you need to be taking man-sized responsibilities. And to me, being overweight in a job that requires you to save lives should be absolutely unacceptable. Dude, that's a great shirt. Man-sized job, man-sized responsibility. Personal responsibility. I'm going to coin that. You already did. Man-sized job. So it's a no-brainer. The entire U.S. military transforms overnight if every single, if that's part of the requisite, two-day L-1. They can't help it.

Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. requisite two-day l1 they can't help it yeah yeah absolutely absolutely i mean isn't it isn't it crazy that just two knuckleheads like me and you have the answer for them this is a two-day course that even if you you won't be able to help it you will learn stuff that will allow your dna and your genetics to manifest and show themselves in all their glory yeah Yeah. Just two days. Go take it. You can try not to even follow it, but it'll still fuck you. It'll still happen. And I think we'll be an unstoppable. Yeah. I think we'll be an unstoppable force. Our mentality will change. Like I said, you know,

you can't have a strong mind without a strong body because it takes a strong mind to make a strong body. And I just – the discipline that you deliver, the discipline that you receive from forcing yourself to stay fit and healthy conscious, it rubs off on everything else. And I just – I feel like that should be a no-brainer in the military. Do you think there's any fat dudes in the Chinese military? No. Me neither. I don't know of a single fat Chinese person.

Come to California. I'll show you some. Yeah. And like I said, it's not shaming fat people. It's not shaming people. I want to let you know that the first step in the changing yourself and realize is realizing that, OK, there's I got to fix something. It to me is no different than someone who has an alcohol problem and wanting to fix that. OK, my first step is noticing that, hey, I have an alcohol problem and that's OK. It's great that I recognize that, so let's fix this.

Nobody's picking on you. Nobody thinks anything less of you. We want to make sure that when you're 60 years old, when you still have another 30 years to live, that you're not in the hospital putting a burden on your family making funeral arrangements. It's just facts. arrangements and that is a it's just facts if you're fat you're gonna die early you're consuming more resources from society you're you're you're you're um you're a bad example for other people i mean just all these things that are just facts it doesn't mean you're a bad person it doesn't mean you're an ungodly person it doesn't mean anyone hates you but but like um i i'm short my nose is big and my kids are never going to be six feet tall.

It's like, it's like breastfeeding is better for kids than not breastfeeding a hundred percent of the time, but you're offending me. I can't breastfeed. I can't, I'm not. Yeah. It's just the facts are the facts. Blasting turkeys is an asshole thing to do and I just can't help it. It's just that, no, I'm joking. You come do it. You'll love it um so that's what yeah so so and that's my main objective here um you know i'm all of my overweight members who are

it won't be long they won't be overweight um uh i show them a lot they are overweight for 10 years i've never had the body i've wanted my whole life i still but i still try yeah every day i try i look at food and i still try to make good decisions yeah absolutely and so today so so and look and that's it's just about trying it's just just keep trying keep trying i'm fulfilled i'm fulfilled trying i'm so fulfilled trying and and and what what do you lose by being healthy conscious every day, by making the gym one of your priorities? What do you lose? You have everything to gain. And you're a good example for other people.

I mean, now that I have kids, yeah, it's so important to be a good example. Children. And that is another avenue that, fortunately, we're able to jump into when I move into this new facility, is I'm going to open up a kids program for sports, but more so we did a kids camp this summer and it was a phenomenal hit from the ages of six. Yeah, there it is. From the ages of, I think around five to nine, I believe it was. And it was such a phenomenal hit. And these kids bought into it, hook, line, sinker. By the way, my boys wouldn't like that shit. The way you got the boys and girls separated. My boys would hate that. They want to they want to do shit with girls.

They'll do shit with the girls. Yeah. Yeah. So a little girl crazy. So already, dude, at five and seven, already girl crazy. Fucking. Yeah. So my son, my son's that way, but he won't admit it. But so that kids camp, that kids camp was a huge success. Thankfully to my girlfriend, Sarah, who's I couldn't do this without her. My coach, Rachel, who's been with me since day one, coach Laura. And we had a couple other gym members help. Thank God, the goodness of their heart. Angel, she helped out a lot. And BJ helped out a lot. But anyway, so they really bought into this. The parents loved it. And most kids' camps are from 8 in the morning to around noon. They're a few hours. But we push this sucker all day from 8 to 3.

And thankfully, Sarah and Laura are elementary school teachers. And they have great organizational skills when it comes. My hands were off. I had complete hands off of this whole program. And we just wanted to test the waters and see what we could do and how we can implement this into our future program. And it was a big, big hit. And it's going to be a permanent program when we move into this new location. We're going to have educational nutrition classes. location. Um, and we're going to have, uh, educational nutrition classes. We're going to have, uh, fitness classes for these children in here because we want to make sure that, Hey, listen, you know, this is, this is what you got to do. This is, this is the right avenue to take

to be healthy. And we want to make health an absolute priority, um, you know, around our whole community. You, you, after you take your L one, do you, do you know that know that when does it start to seep into your brain like oh shit i'm gonna open an affiliate that was my whole purpose to take you now it was okay why did you want to open a gym didn't anyone tell you that it was going to be hard uh yeah totally i knew it was gonna be extremely difficult i didn't realize how difficult it was going to be um so even though you knew it was going to be hard, it was even harder than that. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, when I was in the Marine Corps, thankfully I had great leaders to teach me how to be a leader and teach me how to teach and teach me how to explain things, but only from the Marine Corps side of the house, very intensely, uh, uh,

very short tempered, uh, in a sense, um, but very effective, very deliberate. And I realized very quickly that I could not carry that over into the civilian sector because you would lose business quick. So it was rough on me at first. And you still are pretty hardcore. You're pretty hardcore. Yeah. Well, yes. This is the toned down version of you. I can only imagine what the other version would be.

Comparatively speaking, I like to be that way because we're just too soft in society in general. So I had to learn how to be a people person. Coaching wasn't the – the coaching aspect came pretty easy. It was the how to – can you hear me? I can't. I hear you. Okay, great. Coaching was the, coaching was an easy part as far as like how to teach people how to move, but just like the teacher to L2, different, different people respond to different tactile cues, verbal cues, visual cues. You know, you've got to learn how to communicate and deliver that

information to different people. And, you know, some people don't come in there ready to be intense. And I didn't have, I didn't, I didn't care about that at first. And I realized pretty soon that if I want to make this career, that I have to figure out how to still be, still enforce discipline, still enforce a discipline mindset, but also be welcoming and a little bit, a disciplined mindset, but also be, uh, welcoming and a little bit, uh, I don't, I do not want to use the word soft, but, uh, a little bit more, uh, I guess diplomatic and sensitive to, um, someone's personality. Give me an example of that. Okay. So we have, uh, my football players, my baseball players in my gym, I show them no remorse. I have kids from around 15 or about 13, even my females, my softball players, who I'm actually pretty, pretty doggone hard on my softball players.

I show them no remorse. I don't put up with any, I mean, any kind of late to class or or anything like that. I'm very deliberate in the way I coach. But then I'll have the 25-year-old and a 30-year-old female that comes in and she pays me the membership and I'm not going to treat her the same. I'm going to explain to her and be a little bit more sensitive. So if she shows up late,

you don't tell her, start running around the building and I'll talk to you when I'm ready now. You fuck with me, I'm going to fuck with you. But you will do that to football players. Situation dictates. Especially with the adults.

Because, you know, for the majority of the gym, if they're late, they have an absolute reason to be. And most of the time, everyone's there early. They know what to expect. And when they show up late, they have a good reason to be. So, you know, I take every situation, um, as it comes, but, um, you know, and I understand sometimes that my teenagers, their kid, their moms and their parents drop them off.

So really that's out of their hands, but I still make them pay every once in a while after late. Um, but as far as my kids tennis coach, if you show up late to tennis, you're fucked. Even if it's the parents up. And if the parent in one time he told me, he's like, hey, man, I told you already. Like your kid has to come with fucking pockets. Tennis players have to put balls in their pockets so that they don't lose their rhythm for serving. And then and then one day I was just sitting there looking at my phone.

He goes, Sevan, come out here. And I can't fucking come out there. I'm like, what the fuck's going on? I've been coming here for two years i've never been called out there and he's like i told you to put right in front of all the parents and kids i told you to fucking put on uh shorts on him i'm like oh yeah sorry and he goes the whole team's gonna fucking run suicide sprints and you're gonna run with him because oh i love that i had to fucking run i'd run suicide sprints with the fucking kids almost threw my back out i love it i love it i love it i love it i absolutely love it um i mean i wish you know i wish all coaches were like that

and i was like that for a while um you know i would i wouldn't accept anyone being late i wouldn't tolerate that at all um for a long time and then my mom i remember my mom and a couple of people say you gotta tone it down um so you know that's what my mom, I remember my mom and a couple of people saying, you got to tone it down. So, you know, that's what my mom tells me about this podcast. Hey man, you got to tone that shit down.

I'm so sick of telling people saying, telling me what to say and how to say it, especially, you know, for, for at the expense

of somebody's feelings. I can't stand that. So it's not my fault you get your feelings hurt. That's true. If what I say hurts you, offends you and you don't think I matter to you, then i don't know why it's that big of a deal to say what i say uh so i'm not gonna be rude and just hurt your feelings but i mean if me telling

you that you're awake you need to lose it because you're gonna die soon uh but that hurts your feelings and hey i mean it's better than saying oh oh, it's OK, because it's not OK. And people like me want to hear that. I want you to yell at me and be like, oh, shit, watch out. There's a car coming. I love. Yeah, no shit. I love constructive criticism. I had a conversation with a member yesterday and I told her, hey, you tell me. You're outside the box.

You're a the box. You're a member. I value your opinion. Tell me anytime you think I need to fix something. Don't ever think that you can't come into me and tell me. So I love constructive criticism. My wife will be like, hey, when I'm driving, I'm 50 years old. She'll be like, hey, there's someone in the crosswalk there.

I'm like, thank you. Please tell me. Please tell me. If I see him in the crosswalk there. I'm like, thank you. I'm not, I know. Please tell me, like, please tell me, like, if I see him cool, if I don't see him, thank you. I'm never like, Hey, don't tell me how to drive. I don't want to hit someone. I got somewhere to go. Yeah. What do I care? So, so what, what's so hard about running an affiliate? What, what's what, why is it so hard? Uh, I think, I think that's a question that's, that has different answers. Uh, there's not just one answer. There's, there's multiple, there's multiple branches to that answer, but you know, the hardest thing about running an affiliate, um, you have to have more than one hat. You have to wear more than one hat. Um, you know, and, uh, especially, especially in, in my, in, in my situation, I have to wear more than one hat.

Fortunately, you know, I have I have my mom. She helps me with with the books and my finances. But, you know, as a business, you got to be a business owner and a coach. And if you want to take this thing, if you want to take this to the house and have this a career, you have constantly have to pursue your knowledge as a coach and your skill as a coach. To me, I think that's number one. You have to separate yourself because now in the area of in the age of where information, phenomenal world-class information is free. Everybody can receive it. And everybody, you know, you're seeing more coaches than ever. You have got to figure out a way to separate yourself and your skill.

You constantly have to pursue sharpening that iron as a coach. And so that's number one. Hey, before you go on, can you give me some examples of that? Like, is that like, okay, all the other coaches are doing the nice guy thing and everyone's like, okay, we have the gender neutral bathrooms and we talk nice to people and we call and you're like, okay, what can I do different? I'm just going to be real. Could that be one of the, and that's. Well, so I don't want to gender neutral bathrooms.

That's not even a conversation that'll never happen. So, what I meant by that was, is I want to be able how to, I want to sharpen my iron on how to effectively deliver information with the least amount of words. I want to get my people. Yeah, I want to figure out how to get, you know, John Smith doing a barbell snatch in quickest, most efficient way possible. Um, using the least amount of words. Um, and I also want to figure out, this is, I feel like we've done a good job of separating ourselves. Um, with when someone comes in with, uh, things that are need to be scaled. Uh, We do a good job of having, of having the abilities to scale everything. When I say everything, I mean,

everything. There's none. I feel like now as a coach that there's nothing that I can't scale from. And you can accommodate anyone, a one legged guy in a wheelchair. Anyone, anyone. Okay.

Got it. Yeah. Anyone. Yeah. I had that. I had that. I feel confident in my abilities to be able to do that. Absolutely. Um, and you work on that, but you work on that every day. I'll do that. I'm constantly, I'm constantly on.com, constantly reading, constantly. I mean, I'm on my phone reading and watching videos all day, every day. I go through

my level one manual, my level two manual just to refresh because, you know, I mean, there's so much, the information is so dense and you wouldn't think it'd be that dense from a two-day seminar, which I believe that it can be condensed. I mean, that can be spread out. I wish it would be more in-depth, the two-day seminar, but that's for another conversation. But I'm constantly reading, trying to improve my craft because this is my career. This is what my son relies on me for to put his food on his table. And I do.

I love what I do, and I want to separate myself and my coaches. They know that we stand out. We're different. And I have the ability now to have Major League Baseball players in my gym and have an effective program for them, along with soccer moms and 75 year old seniors. And I feel that not every gym is that unique, but we have the capacity to deliver that now. So and I guess that's that's why I want to eventually, you know, we're, I'm actually working on my level three right now. Um, but moving into this new place kind of like slowed that down.

Um, he's got me so nervous, but, uh, but, uh, so the level three, I've been reading over the information. It is psychotic how much information that is Jesus Christ. Um, but I'm so excited about trying to take the test. So, uh, is it applicable information? Like you're every bit of it, every bit of it, every bit of it. It's ridiculous. It's ridiculous.

You really separate yourself. You're a level three, level four coach. Wow. That's so good to hear. Oh, I love it. I love it. Yeah. Have you, have you ever almost thrown in the towel?

Yeah. Can you tell me what, what that was like? How old is your son? Is he older than the gym or younger? He's, uh, he's no, he's, he'll be nine in November. Um, he's around, he's, he's a few months, he's six months behind the gym. Okay. Wow. What a life. Yeah. So he was born, he was born November of 2013. I opened the gym in, um, in, uh, April of 2013. Okay. Yeah. So, um, and I got him, you know, I got him working out every time he's at the gym. So, um, but what was the question before throwing in the towel? What happened? Oh, throwing in the towel. Yeah. So man, it's just, you know, uh, you run into, you run into benchmarks as a a business like, OK, let's make it through year one and let's reevaluate and see if we have the potential to make it to year three. And once you get to year three, let's reevaluate and see if we have what it takes to year five.

And then once you get to year five, you know, that's a positive. That's a big check in the box. OK, let's make it a decade. I almost threw in a towel a couple of times. Um, I wasn't sure if I had what it took. Um, I wasn't sure if, if, you know, sleepless nights, man, for, for about a good four and a half, five years of me being open. Um, thankfully I don't have to do this now, but, uh, I was there four 30 in the morning and I didn't leave till eight 39 o'clock at night. Um, and, uh, youclock at night um and uh you know i don't unfortunately don't have to do that anymore um but it was stressful man and uh it took a toll on you know i didn't work out as much it took a toll on my oh my you know i was up all night worrying um

and and the gym was constantly growing we we have grown every year since i've and when you say worry you mean money like how am I going to pay this bill? The toilet's broken. Fuck, I was just kind of getting ahead. Yeah, all that. All of those things. Or even, hey, does this business have the potential? Does my gym, do I have the potential to grow this thing to where I want to get it to?

Because I have a service ceiling. I have a service ceiling where I want this business to be. Do I have that ability to do that? And sometimes I still ask myself, do I have that ability to do that? What does that mean, service ceiling? Service ceiling. You've got an aircraft that is maximum altitude service ceiling, maximum altitude. So can you – your gym can successfully help 300 people live the best life that they can live.

Can you get to that? I want 450. Right, 450 to that? I want 450. Right. 450. Okay. I want 450. Yeah. Yeah.

300. I think we'll have 300 in, in, in about 18 months. Yeah. And so, and so what you're, what can you do to make the place? Well, how do you, how do you get there? What, what questions do you have to ask yourself? Uh, is it just, is it really as simple as just work? You have to, I mean, is that the big component?

And I shouldn't say simple, but you have to constantly be working on yourself, like crazy self-evaluation. Why am I not attracting more people? So the first rule in the Marine Corps leadership is know yourself and always seek improvement. To be a leader in Marine Corps, that's the first rule in the Marine Corps leadership is know yourself and always seek improvement. To be a leader in the Marine Corps, that's the first rule in the Marine Corps is to know yourself and seek improvement. And if you do that, everything else falls under that. Everything else. Because if you

know yourself and you're seeking improvement, everything that you're doing wrong, you're going to dot those I's and cross those T's. So that's you've got to be very, very critical of yourself. And you have got to throw your pride under the table, which is very hard to do and say, listen, I suck at this. You know, I need to get better at this or I screwed up. This is how I need to get better. Asking people that are wise. There's a lot of people smarter than me. I'm not that smart. Asking people saying, hey, what do you see me doing wrong?

You know, how can I fix this? How can I make it more attractive to you if you were not in here? And I ask those questions all the time. And, you know, I think and we're still not I'm still not there. And I think if you ever get to a point to where you think you're there, that's when you're start. That's when you start going downhill. Your attitude will point to where you think you're there, that's when you start going downhill. Your attitude will show that, that you think you're there. And, you know, like Ben Bergeron always says, it's not that he, I don't think he coined the term because everybody's always said it. It's that constant pursuit of excellence. You know, and if you don't, if you keep that at the forefront and, you know, then, you, then you're going to succeed.

Why keep the name? Why not drop the name? Does the name add value to you, CrossFit Amity? Why not call it um um super fit am amity or amity fit well i you know because i have a sense i don't want to say a sense of loyalty to crossfit because uh you know it's just it's a corporation and it's not someone but you know i wouldn't be here uh if it wasn't for crossfit hq word um you know i feel you i feel you i feel you you. I feel you on that. There's an integrity piece, right? Yeah, sure. And Glassman's dedication to the affiliates when he was running the show, I mean, how do you leave that? And like I said, the free information, dude,

the level of information that we have to us as affiliates, as coaches, I mean, dude, it's almost like a PhD in how to be a strength and conditioning coach. It is. The correct way. The correct way. It's, I mean, years of information. You can read everything that.com posts. You can start now and read everything that's posted on.com since 2001.

And I'm not sure if you could ever get through it in a lifetime. I really don't. I mean, I know it's, it's, it's, it's amazing. Um, you learn so much. Um, and it's right there at your fingertips and it's free and it's, and it's stupid that it's so it's free, but it's, you know, it's great. And again, I think that's how we separate ourselves as, as CrossFitters. You know, CrossFit gets a bad rep in some places or everywhere, really.

You know, we've all heard it. CrossFit gets you hurt or things like that. And there's, I think there's some ways that we can change that. I hope that, that you know the new leadership kind of reroutes how we do the certification program um what do you mean by that how do you think it should be done different so um the the information that i feel is delivered at the level one is is great two days it's compact it's great. I feel like, in my personal opinion, and I know that I didn't go through this, so it's easy to say, oh, you didn't do a level two to become a coach. So I can say

that. But I feel after going through the coach's prep course in level two, if you want to make a good rep, if CrossFit cares about its name and they care about excellence, I feel like they should expect excellence from their affiliate owners and from their coaches. And I, me personally, I don't think that you should open up a gym and represent the name without a level two. I don't think that's a, um, that's, I think that's a, that's a discussion even when I was there that was like,

it would come up at least once a year. Yeah. Like there were a lot of, there were a lot of proponents for it. Cause you don't, as from coming from the level one, someone who's someone who may be at a CrossFit gym for six months and says, hey, I want to help out with level one or hey, I want to open up a gym six months and get my level one. They don't have the ability to leave in that level one to handle a 10 person class with two or three people who need the scale because they have different, uh, different elements that they need to work on. They don't have that ability for class organization. They don't have the ability to, uh, effectively, uh, execute a warmup, execute a whiteboard discussion, uh, three, two, one go cool down. And Hey, we're done in 56 minutes. They don't have that ability to do that. And you really don't really have that ability to do that just because you went to level

two either. Um, you're just more aware of what you need to be or you need to have as a coach, as an effective coach on the floor. Um, you know, and I, I see, uh, you know, cause there's gyms all over the place, man, just like you can go. You know, you can be a welder, you can be a doctor. I mean, how many shitty doctors come from the same school? So you're going to have you can go to a medical school for four years and you are not prepared to teach medicine. Same thing with the same thing. So in that regard, CrossFit's just normal. Yeah, sure. Yeah. But I think I hear what you're saying. I think what you're saying is, is take it. We have a bunch of people out there with L ones running

gyms. Good. Awesome. If we have a lot, a bunch of people out there with L two's running gyms. Now we've elevated the requirement. They've probably put in a thousand hours of training at a box where they worked at, you know, make an $18 an hour at first. And now if all rising tides lift all ships and so then the reputation changes so if you have people who are more qualified than the reputation changes um the thing that i don't the thing that some people of course we don't want to be known as a program that injures people but there is a piece of our badassery that we never want to lose. Like,

like I would never wear any UFC gear. Cause I, cause I'm not in the UFC, but, but if I was in the UFC, I would UFC wear UFC gear. And I feel that way about CrossFit too. If you don't do CrossFit,

you probably shouldn't be wearing a CrossFit shirt. And I think people know that. Like everyone is, you walk into Starbucks with your CrossFit shirt on and everyone knows that you're the fucking fittest dude in there. Everyone. They just there. Everyone. They just know. Absolutely. Yeah.

They know. Do you have a shirt in the cauliflower ear? Everyone knows that, like, don't fuck with that dude. Especially now where fitness is going now. You know, a 225-pound snatch in the 2008 Games, I think that was the winning snatch at the games, maybe 2008, 2009. I can't remember. Jeff Leonard, right?

That firefighter. I think so. Yeah, yeah. Now you got guys doing Isabel in four minutes at that weight and a couple reps, they're touch and go. So where it's gotten to now, and you walk in there now,

you walk into anywhere to a gym that has a remotely sensible competitors program an hour a day you got average people doing things now that they couldn't do with the 2009 or 10 games um and they're just and these people don't even have the ability to make it the top 100 in the open out of the open in their region or, you know, make the two semifinals. It's where fitness has gotten to now is unbelievable. I would have never guessed that. I would never. When someone told me, you know, the whole conversation,

when you and I started, when you meet a fellow CrossFitter, which wasn't that common, it's like, hey, what's your friend time? And that was kind of like where you stood at the badassery level of crossfit like hey yeah i got a sub three friend well nobody heard of a sub three friend often back then right and now sub three friends are a warm-up right sub three friends are a warm-up um and you if you'd have told me 12 15 years ago that a sub three friend fran was going to be a warm-up for people even a sub-2 30 fran was going to be a warm-up i'd like you crazy you're nuts now it is you know uh it's um it's changed it's changed man but the principles the foundations are still the

same foundation is still the same um youations are still the same. You know, eat lean meats, green vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruitless starch, no sugar. And, you know, create a program that increases your work capacity across broad, tall, and mobile domains. Keep workouts short and intense. And, I mean, it's because, I mean, look, even though the games have a different games director, the fittest man and woman are always at the tip of,

always on top of the stand. You see that regardless of what kind of program throws out there, the fittest will always rise to the top. Yeah. And it's from those foundations and fundamentals. It really hasn't changed. It just evolved. It's gotten better.

It's improved. Going back. I derailed you going oh let me let me read this real quick um uh bailey walker wow i hope cross it watches these interviews with the affiliate owners honestly hope other affiliate owners watch them these are amazing sebon this is information that needs to get out there uh bailey the first show had so many views and uh probably tens of thousands over on apple itunes i think this one i think this whole series is going to be nuts, actually. It's going to be off the hook.

Even just not for CrossFit gym owners, but just for anyone who's interested in the space or owning a small business. So you were talking about how you get a one-year benchmark, a one-year mark, three-year mark, five-year mark, and then I was asking you if you've ever thought about throwing in a towel. And then I derailed you if you've ever thought about throwing a towel when when what and then i derailed you what happened um the the stress level man um you know worrying just hey am i'll be able to get my membership you know the first the first year will i be able to

get my membership to the century mark we weren't at the Century Mark at the end of the year. We ended up getting to the Century Mark. You were not. We're not. We're not. But that was my personal goal. And we were at around 75, which is not bad for a small community. I mean, we're a small, small town. And so we hit the Century Mark. And then, you know, hey, do I have the ability to sustain that? Because once you get to that benchmark, you've got to sustain it. You don't want to fluctuate below that. You know, you want to sustain that century mark level and being more, receiving more clients who had more various type of issues and me learning how to adapt to being able to handle all of that load with a 10 to 15 person class. And, you know, and then you would have people who would bounce checks or bounce payments and they would cancel. You know, they would cancel. It's not just one thing, but over the time, you know,

you just keep questioning yourself. Hey, this is what I really want to do. Can I make, could I, could, could I sustain this or do I want to go back to being a contractor making 90 grand a year, a hundred grand a year with no overhead? Or do I want to take this where I'm at right now? And do I want to still pursue it to what I believe it can go to and take that risk um so there's been more than one time where I threw it in town man um you know I made some mistakes uh on my own um you know and I take full responsibility of the mistakes in the

gym and where the gym's grown um so if you're going to if you're going to take the credit of taking the gym where it's at you you got to take the credit of taking the gym where it's at, you, you got to take the credit of, of this decline when it declined. And I'll take full responsibility of all that. Um, so I brought a lot of the pains of the business on myself, um, but I'm learning, I've learned from those pains and learn from those, from those mistakes. And I think that's why we are where we're at now. So, um, uh, I think it was howard told me something like hey and maybe i'm wrong maybe i'm

misrepresenting this and i apologize if i am but um he said something like yeah it's kind of fucked you have 600 members and i go why he goes because if every month you lose two percent of your clients that's 12 people and i was like oh shit and he goes so that means every month you got to get 12 new people and i was just and then i kind of hear that like in your voice And I was like, Oh shit. And he goes, so that means every month you got to get 12 new people. And I was just, and then I kind of hear that like in your voice too. It's like, Hey, it's not, it there, there's not like this homeostasis. And then you're like, okay, we're here. It's just constantly, it's con. So you're, you're running a gym with fucking a 300 people, but if three, if,

if you have to, for every nine people that leave, you have to give resources to onboard nine new people. That means every other day you're onboarding someone that you're open. And that requires two hours of one dedicated staff for three days. And then you have times that by nine. That's 27 days of onboarding. All month, you're just – there's always someone in there onboarding. Correct.

And it's like – it's like it's uh and when you have and that's that's the boat's never steady it's always it's always getting bigger and smaller at the same time but i think that's an i think that's in every business that if you take if you take that route to be an entrepreneur i i don't see how you can avoid any of those uh any of those discrepancies that we're talking about i don't see how you can avoid any of those. Right. Even as if you own a liquor store, like fuck your, half your clients went to AA and they don't get drunk anymore. I mean, I mean, yeah, especially here, you know, where we're at, you know, they have a liquor store right next to a church down the street.

But, and that's the next thing. If you have to establish a team, you have to create a team and you have to you. It's a must. You have to have the support of that team. And the only way you get to support that team is to develop their trust that you can deliver the best coaching possible, at least the best coaching around. And then show them that they're a part of something that's going to be great. And show them that they're important. And I wasn't, I don't want to say the word micromanager, but since it was my business and I was just, I had a vision of how I wanted to be ran all the time.

I was so like meticulous on every I coached every class. And, you know, I never everything, every new member that came in, I dealt with them. And that's not so much the case anymore. I still coach the majority of the classes still to this day. But I have a great team to help me out. And, um, you know, I got, you know, Corey, um, his, his wife, Rachel, who's been coaching for me for forever. Um, he coaches my 5am class and he does that out of the goodness of his heart. Um, he's an attorney, so he doesn't need to, he just does it cause he loves it. Um, he's been doing it for a long time and he's actually who, um,

his building is who I'm moving into for this new place. And it's a phenomenal fucking location. You know, he just, him and his wife, they just coach out of the goodness of their heart. And they've been doing that for forever. And my mom, she's the backbone of my finances. My girlfriend helps me out beyond measure. And I got coach Laura who helps me out when she can after school. And they've been dedicated and loyal ever since they've gotten there. And this business would not be where it's at without in that I couldn't even think of taking it to where it could be without it. And it sucks that, you know, that I can't show them the credit

that they deserve financially, but maybe if I hit the lottery one day, I will. We'll see. You pay the yearly fee. Is there anything you expect in return from CrossFit HQ for that yearly fee what is there anything you expect in return from crossfit hq for that yearly fee no they give me they give everything to me i mean i get three thousand three thousand dollars a year

and uh i can i have enough information to be to be educated enough to challenge any professor and any university and where do you get that information? You go to CrossFit.com? .com. .com. That's the Bible there. That's the FitnessBible.com. So, as long as they keep providing some sort of content

and maintain the old library, you're getting your value. Is there anything And maintain the old library. You're getting your value. Is there anything that they shouldn't do? Like should they weigh in on things that they should or shouldn't weigh in on? As far as fitness-related stuff? Just stuff that would make it so you wouldn't be proud to hang the sign.

So, for instance, Ben & Jerry's, that ice cream people. Yeah. In the name of goodness, they support some really fucking crazy shit. Yeah, they do. That really hurt a lot of good human beings in the name of goodness. CrossFit has sort of dabbled in that, but I think as of lately, tiptoeing out of the room. We've got to get away from it. You got to, we're a fitness program. We're a fitness methodology. We're not us. We're, we're, we're, we're not a, we're not a,

a socially we're not a social experiment. We're not a company that is created to, to hear and to hear and, to hear and implement people's political, religious, and, and I guess personal agendas and views. We're a fitness program. A lifestyle methodology. Lifestyle methodology. And we should stick with that. For everyone.

For everyone. For everyone. I can't stand that when CrossFit did get political, and it still has to an extent, when it says the word everyone, hey, we're opening up a gym. I opened up a gym and someone asked me

and this is no discernment to the homosexual community. But when someone asked me, said, hey, what are you going to do for Pride Month? Nothing. Everybody's welcomed in here. Everyone. Everyone.

I mean, everyone. I treat everyone. You can wear a Pride Month shirt every day to your gym if you want. Wear it. Wear it. 365 days a year. Yep. Wear it.

But I'm not. I'm a fitness community. I'm a street conditioning facility. And you're going to get what it's designed to get. I'm not going to fly – the only thing I'll fly is the American flag and my Marine Corps flag. That's it. So to me, the Stars and Stripes is – that's inclusive. That's all-inclusive.

We're the only country that's 100% all-inclusive. So if that doesn't make you happy, then I'm sorry. You need to go somewhere else. 100 all-inclusive so if that doesn't make you happy then i'm sorry you need to go somewhere else and so you would like that um you you kind of like the old school crossfit's for everyone some of the some of the things that we judge you on are the cleanliness of your bathrooms we we want clean bathrooms yeah and and we want uh efficacy in our in our training and uh and we believe that diet's the foundation of a healthy lifestyle just some shit like that virtuosity of virtuosity of movement keeps you

out of the nursing home yeah so that's what that's what i want and if anybody if anybody shows any kind of disrespect to anyone in my gym who thinks differently to them than those people who show in disrespect they're gone regardless if you agree with them or not they're fucking gone hey i don't care so that's kind of the top of the food chain in your um gym uh treat people with They're gone. Regardless if you agree with them or not, they're fucking gone. I don't care. So that's kind of the top of the food chain in your gym, treat people with respect. Oh, 100%. Yeah, you never, I've, you know, I've kicked people out of the gym that thought they were better than people. I had, you know, I've had several, you know, I've had a couple, not several, but I've had a couple of members who were good fire breathers.

They were, they were, they were hot shit on the, on the floor. And, you know, they thought they were better than people and they were talking down to members and stuff. I'm like, Hey, you gotta get out of here. You gotta go. You got to go. I don't feel like dealing with you go. Yeah. I tell, I tell people all the time, the only ego that's big enough that this gym is big enough to hold his mind. And I don't have, I don't have that. I don't have an ego big enough to, uh, to not work out next to the most out of shape person in the gym or someone who thinks differently than me. So if I don't act like that, then no one will. Um, so has, has the reason that you got into the gym and the reason why you're staying in it,

have they stayed, um, the same or have they changed? Do you ever ask yourself, why am I still doing this? My reasons for staying? Yeah. No, they haven't changed. My reasons for still being a gym owner hasn't changed. I actually have grown to love it more. I've grown to love it more over the last two years. I kind of got through a lull. I went through a lull for a little while.

It was kind of redundant. And I kind of caught my fire over the last two years again. Not that I wasn't trying to be a better coach when I was in that, in that lull, but I was just, you know, I just, I think everyone goes through that. But over the last two years, I really got my fire again and realized why I love what I do. And the members make it fun. The members make that happen. You know, I got some phenomenal, you know, what I love the most, you know, everyone loves the fact, I mean, everyone knows that men love to lift. But what I love the most is when I have a lady in here who's 25, 30 years old, who's relatively lean. And she looks at the barbell and is like, yeah, but I want to do this, but I don't want to lift weights.

And I'm just, I don't even tell her anything. I just wait for the program to take fruition. And then six months later, she comes in from work and she's pissed off because of work. I just want to lift something heavy. I'm ready to lift heavy. And, you know, she's adopted that lifting heavy mindset. She's adopted that hardcore mindset. And I would say to work hardcore, that's subjective to everyone.

But she's adopted a mindset that she never would have thought she'd adopted. And I love seeing that. I love seeing ladies being able to throw 100 and 150 pounds sandbags over their shoulder, being able to clean 135, cycle the barbell. Now that's not heavy in competitions. That's not impressive in a competition setting, especially in regards to semifinals or the games, but finding average everyday women who can do that. I mean, you, you're not going to find that. Um, so that's, that's where I'm at. Um, that's, that's what I love. I really do love it. And I love, so, um, I have a kid in the gym who was overweight for a long time and he's lost. I mean, he has been an absolute psycho in the gym. Every day he's dedicated and he's lost so much weight and he's so strong and so in shape and his gymnastics has gotten better. And his mom told me not too long ago that his whole attitude,

his insecurities that he once had have improved improved. And, um, you know, that's the reason that you do this. That's the reason that you do this. And the cool thing about what we do is those testimonies are always going to come because they're always going to be fat out of shape people who need help. Um, those are the kids that come in and they don't talk for six months and then all of a sudden they talk, right? Yeah. Yeah. You know, um, and, and, uh yeah you know um and and uh you know and

i took the credit to a lot of the moms too i have a lot of moms who bust their ass to get there and they have kids on their hip they're getting one from school they have a diaper bag on their shoulder um and they're being stressed out and they do everything they can to get to class and then they kill it. And they, they, they, instead of sitting around laying down on the floor, uh, they, they, they clean up their shit, they grab their kids and they go, they carry on about the day. Those are the bad asses that I'm like, I'm looking at them like, how the hell do you

do that? Um, you know, that, that's what I'm talking about. That's dedication. Um, and those ladies really rub off on everybody in the gym. Um, cause that's a, that, that's what I'm talking about. That's dedication. And those ladies really rub off on everybody in the gym. Cause that's a mindset that that's a, that's, that's, that's a, that's a dog, dog mindset. You gotta be a dog. I tell my ladies all the time who bring their kids in there. You y'all are dogs. I mean,

cause you got three or four kids and you got to cook supper or you got to get them ready for school. You got to do homework, but you still find time to make an hour of your day a priority y'all are fucking dogs and i love you so i went i went to i used to work out for a couple years at this fucking uh it was called team to funga it was a fucking hardcore like meathead gym just all just tons of juiced up dudes there and big just and and just all the old shitty equipment just just a big massive gym right and um my wife and i were the only ones in there who did crossfit there were a couple there were a couple fighters in there who trained but other than that it was just fucking monsters yeah in the two years i was there the only the only woman i ever saw a fucking bench

135 uh squat clean 135 cycle 135 go overhead with 135 was my wife i never saw another fucking woman do that women who are twice as yoked as my wife and i'm thinking to myself yeah if you if you're a woman and you can fucking power clean 135 you you're in the 1% of 1% of 1%. I mean, you're like, fuck the gym and the games athletes. Like, every man who sees a woman who can do that should be like, my two kids are safe with her. In a burning building, she can grab two four-year-olds and fucking run.

Absolutely. And it looks good. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My wife looks insane. They think that they're going to get yoked and look jacked like a man. That's the comment. I don't want like, excuse me. I don't want to look like a man.

No, you're going to attract men. You're going to attract real men is what you're going to do. And they love the way their body turns into what their body turns into after, you know, six months to a year of being in the gym, you know, and, and, you know, my, my, my clients who have a little bit more weight to lose, they realize that, Hey, lifting weights, speed that process up, process up. Yeah. It's, it puts, it puts that process into overdrive, especially when I coupled that with lean meats and green veggies. Um, so it's, it's, it's an insane combination. Um, so like I said, I think we're just just getting started i think we're just putting our rod in the ice um and i just um i'm excited i'm excited to see where this thing can go

i'm not sure i understand that uh metaphor just putting our rod yeah we just sticking our you know ice fishing we're just sticking it oh ah yes okay good okay um when um when when i invited you to come on was there anything that you were thinking like hey i want really want to share this like there's something that popped in your brain you're like fuck i hope i hope we can talk about this oh the code the the the the restructuring i hope i hope crossfit does restructure the level one and level two. Make the barrier of entry just a little bit more difficult. Yes, yes. Demand a little bit more from the owners of affiliates.

Yeah, because I know several people who are book smart and that can sit through a level one and take notes and they'll pass level one, but they're're in no way, shape or form be qualified to be a coach and represent the CrossFit brand. And I just, I mean, I, level of expectations. I just, I think that expectations should be higher. And, you know, just coaches, if you are a level one coach, if you're a level two coach, and you're serious about this, you got to make sure that you work on your craft 24 seven. Um, because, um, you know, that's, if you, if you want to make this a career, um, you've got to have the capacity to be able to wear more than one hat. Um, you know, um, and, uh, I mean, that's, that's, that you can't be a successful

gym owner without that capacity. Um, you can be a successful coach, um, but you can't be a successful business owner without having the capacity to wear more than one hat, having to, uh, having the ability to look yourself in the mirror and seek self-improvement, being the first to criticize yourself, and you got to have a good team. And you all have to be on the same page, and the communication has to be clear of the expectations. To your team and your members, to your team and your members. Right.

At the CrossFit Games this year, they had like a mock affiliate which i thought was a really cool idea they basically had an affiliate i didn't see inside of it but i from my understanding the idea was they had an affiliate set up and anyone who went to the crossfit games could go there sign up and take a class right okay it seems like yeah it seems like a no-brainer just on campus and now it's gone it even had a name i forget but maybe it was just called crossfit affiliate but on the outside they had forging elite fitness yeah and when and before they fired me at hq um there was this huge press to not call it crossfit hq anymore to call it crossfit home office to get rid of forging elite fitness to get rid of um make uh instead of it be um to uh they their new motto was like happiness.

Greg would have never made happiness the motto. So basically everything was too aggressive. Yeah. They got rid of Pukie. They got rid of Uncle Rabdo. They wanted happiness. They got rid of everything that got it to where it's at. And that was scientific.

That basically was like when you make happiness one of the goals, then you're no longer science because that's not a measurable metric. Happiness should be the byproduct of something that's measurable. And it really lost its way super quick. But this year at the Games, I saw Forging Elite Fitness back on the side of the affiliate. I see Nicole Carroll using the word CrossFit HQ. So does that mean that – Do you watch that as an affiliate owner? Or do you see those nuances as an affiliate owner and be like, okay, what's going on?

I pay attention to all those things. I don't pay attention too much as what – lately especially, when you're busy, I spend more time reading content regarding the health and fitness and metabolic adaptations, nutrition, regarding to health and fitness, um, and, you know, metabolic adaptations, nutrition, um, energy systems, uh, uh, how to scale for, for adaptive athletes. I spent a lot of time reading that. So I don't spend a whole lot of time with Zach, like, uh, as far as like the business side of the house, what's going on across it. So, but I do try to pay attention to that every once in a while. Um, but, uh, if while. But if they let people like Nicole Carroll and the other old school cats take the head of the spear, the CEO just says, hey, listen, give me your input and where you want this company to go. I promise you, Nicole Carroll and

Hobart and Chuck Carwell, Adrian, you listen to them, they're going to take this thing to where it needs to be. And, you know, I mean, you got Dave Castro back now, so I'm not sure what his role is actually. So. Ms. Pugface says moms are absolutely amazing. We have an eight month pregnant member doing a hundred burpees for 30 days with us. Atta girl.

Atta girl. I think my wife, one of the first times she ever cleaned 135 was like maybe six or seven months pregnant. I think I posted a picture. Yeah, so I had a member back in the day. She deadlifted 275, and the next day she went into labor and popped out her baby in like 10 minutes. Yeah, crazy. Yeah, it was crazy. 275.

Yeah. So would I was playing 275. Yeah. So you, what about you? So would you like more media? So just a constant drumbeat of, of, of content of media interviews with intelligent people, cutting edge coaching tip videos,

things like that stuff that kind of that they've, they've lost their way in the last four years. Yeah. Yeah. Um, I mean, I think there's tons of coaches out there with loads of information to share that are way smarter than I am that can deliver, you know,

much more productive advice than I ever can. You know, I would love to see more of that, especially if I was a new coach coming in. But, you know, like I said, if you're a new coach and if you're scratching that surface of the frontier of wanting to be an affiliate owner or maybe a head coach somewhere, you have got to stay in the books. You've got to stay in the content and you've got to, you've got to get coached by other coaches. And that's a downside. That's an unfortunate thing that I have. That's why I went to, I actually want to go to a level two again, just to go to a level two to get coached by another coach. I don't have any eyes on me when I'm coaching. No constructive criticism. I know criticism eyes. I don't have any eyes on me when I'm coaching. No constructive criticism. I don't have anyone watching. So I have to make sure that I do this right, that I explain this

the right way. I love getting coached by other coaches. I love someone watching me and saying, no, this is what you did wrong. But I don't have that. Um, and, um, you know, so, um, you know, that's why, uh, they have a coach's developmental course that I'm a coach's development course that I'm thinking about. I think Austin Maliola may host it. I think he does. I'm not sure. Uh, but I would love a coach's developmental course for like, there's 10 year coaches, there's 10 year affiliates. I would love like a, uh, symposium or, uh, symposium or a summit for us old school coaches to just get coached by each other. I just Googled it. I'm seeing if I – the coach's development program. Yeah, there we go. There we go. I'm not sure if – have they stood that up yet?

I don't know, but you know what's interesting this doesn't even look like a a crossfit course this is a preferred crossfit course meaning maybe he made this yeah yeah maybe and these are all uh a bunch of these people i recognize as being fucking hardcore l1 trainers yeah one seminar stuff i think they have a three-day and a five-day option if i'm not mistaken um and uh you know if it's if it's from somebody like austin maliola i would love uh to to uh jump on board with that if i ever can get the time so it doesn't look like it's is it going yet i'm trying oh okay i'm not sure how much uh it may be it may be a coming program i can't this is um uh jed this is i'm i'm patching in a caller and this is justin from crossfit salty hive in utah justin hi what's up did i get it right salty hive yeah salty hive i like it i saw you save my number the other day i

appreciate it um i got an email from julie simensky simensky if i'm saying that right she's a listener to the podcast she's gonna drop in at my gym when she visits um salt lake city in a couple weeks so i that's cool i got i got that yeah she's like i heard i heard of your gym on the Savant podcast. I want to come. I want 3%. 3%. I want 3%.

That's fair. I'll throw some cash at a live call and stuff. I thought it was cool. You're creating another community within the community. Sorry to interrupt your guys' conversation.

I just thought you were live and thought I'd share that with you. Cool. You're doing good stuff, Savant. All right. Thank you. If you're ever in, if you're ever in Louisiana,

you got to swing by CrossFit Amity. Yeah. I'm going to come back and listen. I was listening for a little bit. I'm going to come back and listen to this whole show. All right. Thanks dude. Right on Jed.

Yeah. Thanks. Thanks buddy. Be careful. Well, thanks for coming on. Thanks for, uh,

nearly two hours of your time i appreciate it i think that's a lot of value to other people's lives listening to this especially uh gym owners yeah like i said man i've been following you since since you've been since you've uh been at crossroads q uh you know um so sounds like we came on at the same time sounds like we came on i think we did i think we did i think actually the the first episode that I watched of you is when you were documented in Rich. I think after his first win. Okay, yeah, 2010, yeah. Yeah, 2010.

I remember that, yeah. So, yeah, man. I appreciate it. I would love to be on there again. You know, I appreciate the opportunity. We got to get you here for a turkey hunt. Got to get you here for a turkey hunt. Got to get you here for a turkey hunt. I got to get my boys there for a turkey hunt

so they don't grow up and be a pussy like me. That's what I got to do. I need to end the being a pussy. Dude, we'll take you on a turkey hunt. We'll take you on a turkey hunt, and then we'll go to an LSU baseball game. Wow. Yeah, we'll take you on a turkey hunt,

and then we'll go to an LSU baseball game. I know I'm biased, but I think LSU, the the sporting community lsu is something like you've never seen before so um unfortunately turkey season isn't during football season uh that would be even more fun to watch but you come you you bring your boys down here we'll take them turkey hunting and we'll get you uh we'll get you some louisiana food and uh we'll take you to an LSU baseball game. You demand Jed. Thank you. Keep your rod in the ice. Yeah, man. I just wanted to say that and, and, and stay in touch. We'll be in touch. Thanks for coming on. All right, buddy. I appreciate it.

Peace. Keep your rod in the ice. Someone asked him to take you snipe hunting. I fucking cry. Fucking Turkey fell down in front of me I used to shoot birds when I was a kid with BB guns and I think I've told the story but one time that I'll tell it later

okay I'm going to the skate park kids are in skate camp they left 25 minutes ago skate camp starts in six minutes i'm gonna be late uh thank you jed rogers you're fucking cool as shit really excited i got to meet you i'm really excited about this series uh not a letdown what a great guest um and uh i will see you guys holy cow we have a huge show tonight tonight's show is gonna be off the hook we got brian friend coming on and uh we're gonna go over uh the games and uh and how the athletes did and how the programming went and uh and and i'm

sure brian and i will get into what we think this means for the future of the games in terms of programming how athletes are going to train and and who's going to stick around who's going to who's good guys may tap this may be like i'm done all right i will see you guys this evening i think it's 6 p.m pacific standard time or 6 30 i'll talk to you guys soon bye