The Sevan Podcast - #600 - Conor Murphy
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Trying to be like you.
Bam, we're live.
Dude, that's the way I need to invest in a in an arm like that
my arm is so janky we we just got new ones and it has been a game changer yeah what brand is that
podcast pro what's the mic uh It's a Shure SM70.
But the mic, I think I might, I don't know what mic I have, but I'm happy with my mic.
It's my arm I'm not happy with.
Yeah.
Is that expensive?
Podcast Pro by Aculite.
Is it a $500 arm?
No, I don't think so. Wow, you're a ventriloquist i didn't see
any of that in your um that's a fucking amazing 100 bucks i think i'm seeing and what do you like
about it connor that you can choose more positions yeah i mean you can turn and rotate i'll bring like my daughter on the podcast
yeah and it just like just sits just well wherever you want it yeah that's cool i had a good joke
there um about a girlfriend who could get in a lot of positions and you fucked it all up by
mentioning your daughter thank you that's a fucking great start dude when i when i prepare for podcasts i do my notes on um on google draft
so so like the goo i use google email right so you're going to come on the show
and like if i'm sitting somewhere on my phone i'll be going to your instagram or listening to
a podcast you've been on before and then i take notes in my Google draft and then at night sometimes before I go to bed the night before a podcast
I have two windows open in my computer and um one of them I have like the Google the draft document
open and then the other one I have just whatever I'm researching on the person and then when I
wake up in the morning it's usually on my phone and my computer right because it all it just goes
to the cloud and populates this morning I woke up and the morning, it's usually on my phone and my computer, right? Cause it all, it just goes to the cloud and populates this morning.
I woke up and my fucking notes are gone.
We're just going to have to raw dog it.
Yeah.
It's like,
it's like,
it's like forgetting your wallet on the first date.
Have you ever done that?
And then the chick accused you of doing it on purpose.
You can,
I mean,
now you can talk your way out of it. Now you can Venmo. Now you can, you of doing it on purpose? You can, I mean, now you can talk your way out of it.
Now you can Venmo.
Now you can figure it out to where it's, you know, people don't think you're just a dirtbag.
My wife, actually, we were going out and then we broke up.
And then the next time we went out, I forgot my wallet.
And she accused me of doing that shit on purpose.
To this day, I'm like, I can't.
I mean, you're out of your fucking mind. You really thought I did that on purpose. To this day, I'm like, I can't.
I mean, you're out of your fucking mind.
You really thought I did that on purpose?
I mean, worse than that, I've gone on dates where my card has been declined.
Oh, that's awesome.
Yeah, so that's, there's no real excuse.
I just won't have any money.
And she paid?
Yeah, I mean, it's, it was normally,
you know, when I was in,
when I was in San Diego,
when I was in the Navy,
you know,
you knew exactly when you were getting paid and I would just drain it all the
way up to like zero pretty much every single time.
So whenever I was dating closer to the pay period,
it was,
it was a gamble.
I like that though,
that you were in the Navy,
that that kind of,
there,
there's some balance there.
Your card got declined, but you were in the Navy, that that kind of, there, there's some balance there. Your card got declined, but you're in the Navy. You know what I mean?
I always knew there were some times I'm not kidding. Cause like D fast was in Cleveland.
And if I were to get paid, you know, it happens at midnight. So it'd be nine o'clock in San Diego. So there were times when I was like, I just can't pay until nine o'clock. And then at nine o'clock, now you can use my card. Now it's going to go through.
We're going to have to stay out a little longer, honey.
Why did you join the Navy?
You know, growing up, I just, I always thought of like the SEAL teams is like the toughest,
baddest people. I was just, I was a
dirtbag in high school too. Like, you know, I just did everything to make my friends laugh and for
attention. I never applied myself. So college really wasn't, I probably could have gone to
college. My parents were willing to pay for, you know, my, my brother, my sister, everyone to go
through college. And my dad was like, yeah, we're not, we're not going to pay for you to go be an
absolute idiot. And so like my junior year, it's kind of like, Hey, this is, this is what
we're going to do. I'm going to enlist as soon as I graduate and ended up, um, uh, graduating early
and then going straight in. Hey, is that to, um, kind of punish them? Okay. You won't pay for my
college. Fuck you. I'll go on the Navy. I thought of it as that like, oh, yeah.
Well, you know, I said I was going to do this.
So now I'm going to do it.
And it couldn't have been a better thing for me. And from there, my relationship with my parents just like skyrocket.
They're two of my best friends now.
They did it in high school, still together.
And once they were no longer financially responsible for me, as I told you
in the, in the, in the story beforehand, I wasn't very good with it. Um, our relationship was just,
um, great from there. I've never heard that. Um, I mean, it makes it, it's glaringly obvious, but
I've never heard that, that the relationship transitioned at a point when you became
financially independent from them or that you didn't have a financial relationship with them.
What are the implications of that? Why did you choose that to describe
the kind of demarcation of when things got better?
I think it was, you know, they were no longer longer responsible like i was responsible for a hundred percent of what i did and like i said i would i would do silly things you know i stole a six by
four foot mcdonald's sign from the mcdonald's in our small hometown and the police came over to
the house and and got it from underneath my bed i had like three golden arches sticking out from
underneath of my futon as if like people weren't gonna it was a small town i was just you know i would do it for the stories and uh so once you know the police weren't
showing up at their house to grab the mcdonald's sign then it was like okay you know we can just uh
enjoy my company a little bit more than just uh you know being responsible for it um so you did
you do a lot of crazy shit like you were the guy who streaked like at the uh
football game or the like there'd be like some sort of like teacher's parent like pta meeting
and you and your buddies would streak it shit like that 100 whatever whatever made him laugh
whatever had stories i mean it was i was the class clown and not really understanding you
remember my dad would always be like do you know the difference between right or wrong?
And I'd be like, I think so,
but that kind of seemed right at the time.
Now it seems wrong, but at the time,
it was a great story.
Yesterday, my kids were on the skate ramp,
and they were on the skate ramp
with those three-wheel scooters that little kids ride.
Have you seen those? You can lean and shit and two in the front one in the back yeah my micro
micro scooters they're they're they're really cool and actually they have an adult one and if you
ever get a chance to ride it ride it because you'll be blown away they look like they're super easy to
ride they are not you have to be so comfortable with momentum and leaning.
It's weird.
But anyway, yesterday my kid had one of those on the skate ramp,
and he's launching it up over the skate ramp, over the railing,
into my passion fruit grapevine.
And he does it the first time, and I'm like, hey, please don't do that.
And he does it two more times, and I'm like, hey, dude, what are you doing?
You're damaging the plant, And I paid for that scooter. And he goes, yeah, it's just it's hard to control. And I go, I've seen you ride that for five years. I've never seen you launch it out of the skate ramp. But today it's hard to control. And then he pivoted to another story. I couldn't.
another story i couldn't like he said something else well um he goes it doesn't matter we don't ride the scooter i go it does matter that thing cost me money and you're hurting the plants
basically he started pivoting stories do you know that effect when people do that like they don't
they don't care what the truth is they're trying to get out of like the situation yes and i started
having these flashbacks of what it felt like to be a young boy and finally i put i'm like okay
stop everything.
Come in the garage.
And I go, what the fuck are you doing?
Why are you doing that?
He's seven.
He goes, I don't know.
And I was like, oh shit.
And that's what I felt like when your dad said, do you know the difference between right or wrong?
That's the kind of shit like, I don't understand the question.
I don't know. I don't even like, what do you mean? Like you said, I don't understand the question. I don't know.
I don't even like, what do you mean?
Like you said, that seemed right at the time.
What do you mean?
Everything I do is right.
It's so weird being a young man or a boy.
People, you can't, unless you were that, I don't know if it's like that for girls.
You can't understand.
Did you think before you threw the rock out onto the freeway?
Yeah, I fucking bore my arm up.
Like, what are you talking about?
That's not even like, I could tell that story not as like the euphemism. Did you think before you threw the rock out onto the freeway? Yeah. I fucking wore my arm up. Like, what are you talking about? Like,
that's not even like,
I could tell that story.
Not as like the euphemism.
Like I literally threw rocks on the highway.
And yeah,
again,
another thing where like the police came.
Someone could have died.
Yeah.
My dad was like,
were you thinking?
It was like,
no,
I just wanted it to make a really loud noise.
And it just kind of seemed like,
no,
I warmed my arm up beforehand like yeah
this is why um boys can't be left alone under their own i don't know if this is the right
word recognizance their own this is why it's so important um to keep uh first of all first of all
there's there's two things here and feel free to, Connor. One, if you don't help your kid build an identity, if you don't put your kid in a good situation to build an identity, he'll create one of his own.
He'll feel around in the dark and create it.
And what do I mean by that?
Put him in a jiu-jitsu class.
Put him in a CrossFit kids class.
Put him in a Kumon class.
Give him something that he can start getting good at so he can start building an identity.
Let him know that his family's from Ireland.
Give him details every day and set him up so he can start building a person who he is.
If you don't, he's going to build his own fucking person.
And don't encourage stupid things either.
Yeah, that and the security in numbers thing too. I don't think I ever got in
trouble if it was just me. It was always the influence. And not even that other people had
an influence over me. It was that I wanted to have an influence over them. So I wanted to do
these things to make people laugh and to get that reaction out of people. And it started off, I was
the youngest of three. And I remember a story growing off, you know, I was the youngest of three and
I would, you know, my, I remember a story, uh, growing up, I don't know where this is going to
go, but, uh, growing up, uh, my parents told me there was, I kept getting out of my crib
and I would like open the door and I would get yelled at. And then, you know, I would get spanked
and then I would get put back in my crib. And so when my parents
sat by the door, they would listen to my brother go, Hey, do it again, do it again. And so after
that, when I was, you know, I, they put me back in my crib and said, if you get out one more time,
Pat's going to get spanked. And then he was like, Oh, no, no, no.
This story took a wicked twist. Wow.
And so, and it was like the influence that like i would just do it
because it was making my brother laugh is making my sister laugh it was it was these things and
then when they came back in it was what's one of my favorite stories they tell and then my brother
was like i'm like starting to get out of the crib again he's like no no no no no no it's bedtime
now bedtime he's older yeah hey you were you were an overachiever that no one,
um,
I guess I was kind of like this too.
We're overachievers that we didn't get.
Um,
our talents weren't directed properly.
Like if you were going to throw a rock at a stop sign,
I was going to one up you and throw it at a moving car with,
with no,
with no concern of the side effects. Yeah. that's spot on. Have you seen, so, so you
entered the Navy and did you, did you last in there four years? Cause I saw a post where you
said, Oh, that didn't go as planned. Um, well the goal in, in was to continue in the special
operations world. I, I've suffered an injury relatively early on. And after having a surgery,
it was like coming back from that, everything was supposed to
be cleared.
And if you, if you don't have a jump dive physical, you can't continue in the job field
that I was going in, which was, you know, an odd turn for me as we talk about like the
influence.
It was like, I finally had something I was grasping.
I was obsessed with.
It was something that, you know, that started getting into CrossFit because I needed, I
wanted extra training to be the best person I could be for that job. And I had a buddy who said,
hey, here's this website in 2007, crossfit.com. And I was-
Who was that? What was your buddy's name?
His name is Billy Burnett, William Burnett. He was a-
That's a great name.
He was an ex-army ranger. He was a combat veteran, but he was going through the other service veteran programs to go through
the same program I was in.
And he was the guy who got me into jujitsu.
He was a purple belt at the time.
Now he's a police officer in,
I want to say Knoxville,
Tennessee.
He's a black belt in jujitsu.
We still stay in touch to this.
Oh yeah.
Yeah.
I saw a picture with you and him together.
Then that might've been Ruben.
That might be the guy who I train with now.
Oh,
okay.
The shorter guy who's like,
yeah,
there's,
he's a black belt and he's like,
there's days I don't even know what I'm doing.
Yeah.
He humble dude.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So he trains with John Danaher and,
uh,
no shit.
Yeah.
Holy shit.
Wow.
Did you watch the ADCC?
I didn't subscribe to it because I refused to pay for a
year. I just, I, even though I would actually pay the fifth person who's told me that it's just
ridiculous. It's like pay $120. It's like, give me another option. Let me do the $20 a month and
let it ride on my card. I would let that happen. But for some reason it's just that, you know,
I'm like, Oh, I just want to watch this one fight. And then I see myself trying to watch every flow grappling. And I'm like, does anyone have a password or anything for this? But no, I didn't watch it. But I just saw the highlights of him absolutely dominating. He is just better than everyone else by a glance. He is Matt Frazier at his peak versus the second half of the field. It's just no one can touch him.
Yeah, it was special.
I saw Nicky Rod on your podcast, which I thought was really cool,
and listening to him.
That's a great story as well.
Did you see I interviewed his brother twice now?
J-Rod?
I saw – I want to say I actually saw the second one yeah the second one the last half hour that's a crazy interview because over that hour he changes so
much not changes he opens up so much it sucked i only put like uh allocated 30 minutes for that
interview and i and i screwed it all up because the last half hour he really comes out of his show
that's awesome I'm gonna
I'm gonna have to go back and rewatch that
because I love their story I mean
just super talented
family but also now driven towards
jujitsu from that from the you know
wrestling background good mom
and dad still married
yeah
our parents support us in whatever we do oh yeah they
love each other it's like yeah duh
um when j-rod well oh yeah here he is when j-rod was on one of the cool things was is that um he
just volunteered at one point towards an interview he goes i'm not on steroids everywhere i don't
i've never drank in my life i don't smoke weed and i've never done steroids everyone thinks you
know i'm just like a fucking homebody.
And I just loved it.
It was like such a cool, not that, I mean, everyone has to take their own path.
I'm not judging people who do drink and smoke weed and do steroids, but it was just cool
that he, you know, he was like, fuck you.
Like, don't, don't put me in a box.
You know, it's kind of an interesting transition to what I've been doing a lot lately is in the music industry,
especially in the electronic music world, people will go to these shows, people will go to
festivals, they'll go to concerts and it is, you know, drinking alcohol or, you know, drugs.
There's this kind of, yeah, there's this, uh, there's this background to, Hey, here's,
here's what everyone is doing. Yes. A lot of the artists, a lot of the people that I work with
don't drink. Some of them never have. Some of them straight edge. Some of them
focus on their training. And it's so interesting to see this dynamic. And what we're trying to do
is get it out there that they don't need to live mutually exclusive. It doesn't have to be, you are either a partier or a,
yeah.
So this is,
um,
on tour with,
uh,
Dylan Francis and young gravy was the,
uh,
co headlining artist.
And is that them right there?
Is that young gravy?
That's young gravy all the way on the left.
Yeah.
Yeah.
He's cool.
That,
that video,
I obviously don't have the fucking link cause my notes went to shit,
but that video you,
where you're swinging a two poo and he's swinging a kettlebell is fucking hilarious.
He's doing his curls.
Yeah.
It's kind of a curl.
It's a curl kettlebell swing hybrid.
It was like the post-workout where he's still in like this, like, all right, well, we got to chase this pump.
And I'm like, I assure you what you did earlier with the kettlebell is going to be a lot more beneficial than what you're doing now, but you know what you're moving.
We're good to go. Is he cool? Um, do you ask him before, Hey, can I, I'm going to put,
can I put this on my Instagram? Um, I, I didn't ask him. No. I mean, we, we did, you know, we
had spent two months together and anything that, you know, he doesn't care any of the publicity
he's, you know, people will look at that too. And they're like, Oh, this guy kind of plays
a lot of his songs. And what he's known for is like, Oh, he likes milfs. Oh, he, you know, he,
he kind of like puts himself in this category and people have no idea how smart and how,
how good he is at marketing, figuring out, Hey, this is my niche. This is where it was,
good he is at marketing figuring out hey this is my niche this is where this is what i'm going to live with and um just plays to it so well yeah he's awesome he's like six seven from you know
a rapper from minneapolis min he answer his dms i want to
dm him he may i need to have more rappers on hey uh before we talk about how you got into working
oh there he is young gravy hey um so what was the injury and how'd you finally
get out of the Navy? Um, I had just had, I had had surgery on my elbows. Um, I threw the baseball
really, really hard as a kid. I just, I would throw until I could no longer lift my arm and
they didn't have these rules where you could only throw so many pitches or so many days of the week.
So being competitive and my team wanting to win when I was young, I would pitch pretty much every game. So that led to osteochondritis, that led to my elbows
getting scoped, and then that led to having issues diving. So essentially, coming up without
safety stops would be a significant issue. What the dive officers explained is that
the oxygen builds up like carbonation, almost like in my elbow to, and you know, it would swell and
I wouldn't be able to, you know, to operate in that. So it was almost like a, Hey, we have to
avoid this because of the worst case scenario, because I had had those surgeries. And then it
was kind of a dance around where I'm trying to get cleared by,
I'm trying to get civilian opinions from doctors to go outside the Navy because the dive officers
that weren't going to clear me. And then, then it just kind of got into this battle where I was
trying to go like above and beyond. So at the end, because I had gotten through my training,
they were like, Hey, you can just, we would just medically retire you. And they were like, you can spend the rest of your enlistment on a ship if you want,
or this is the route you can go.
So I was like, yeah, I don't want to do anything else,
which then reverted me back to not having the drive or purpose
until doing the CrossFit Level 1 seminar.
purpose until doing the CrossFit level one seminar. And how soon after you left the army,
or sorry, the Navy, did you take your L1? It was as I was getting out. So it's not just like a, hey, you're going to get out. I mean, it was like a year long process of medical appointments and,
and, you know, dancing around. And so during that time, I was, I didn't know what
I was going to do when I got out. And I knew some awesome guys that ran a CrossFit PB, which then
moved to San Diego athletics and Anders Varner and Brian Boorstein who are, are still around in,
in, you know, the different spaces. I don't think they're their own affiliates anymore.
I think they sold their affiliate and now they're just kind of on their own.
But I mean, super dedicated guys.
I would go in there and throw down and workouts with them.
So when I did my level one.
Are you back at home at this time, Connor?
Right now?
No.
When you're telling the story story you move back to your house
with your parents no no i never did oh okay so i was i was still living in san diego and okay
so i was down in crossfit pacific beach in sandy i'm originally from washington state
okay and then you and so you're there and you're like hey i'm gonna take my l1 or someone talks
you into taking your l1 or you pay for you, they pay for your L1 or what happens?
No. So I was, you know, I just like sold my car because I was kind of just getting rid of all the
stuff I didn't need realizing I wasn't going to have a steady paycheck again. And I was like,
Hey, like thousand dollars, I'm just going to put it toward, I don't think I'd ever spent like
a thousand dollars on something, obviously with the exception of, you know, purchasing a vehicle with
a pre-approved VA loan and all of that. So it was like a relatively large expense for me.
And I remember studying for it and, and I never studied for anything in high, anything, any of
the tests in high school. I just, I didn't care. I couldn care. If I couldn't see where it was going to take me,
it was very difficult for me to apply myself to something. And I remember it was when we used to
have to take the test and then you sat and waited and then you scored your test. And then you either
opened up a manila folder that said, congratulations, you're a CrossFit Level 1 trainer,
or thanks for coming and getting your certificate of attendance. And I remember opening that up and it was, I was not to be like
dark in this, we don't have to go down that area, but I was fucking lost. And it was like
everything that I had worked for being this, I wouldn't say troubled youth, but this person
who's always getting in trouble finally found something to fully apply myself.
And then once that was taken away, I felt fucking lost.
I was like, I don't know what I'm going to do.
Even the thought of moving back, I was like, what am I going to do?
What year is this?
This is 2010?
Yeah.
2011, maybe?
And I enlisted in 2007.
And I remember seeing that, like the level one trainer.
And I was like, fuck, I'm going to take this as far as I can. This is. And I remember seeing that, like the level one trainer, and I was like, fuck,
I'm going to take this as far as I can.
This is all, like, I love it.
I love that the course of the weekend,
the trainers, the other people that were in there,
it was something where I finally felt,
hey, here's a similar camaraderie with the affiliates
with something that I'm good at
and something that is coaching
an infinite, infinitely refinable skill where I can apply myself a hundred percent. And there's
no like, Hey, you did it. You're complete. I think you can still continue to process as a,
as a coach, as an athlete, because I was still interested in competing.
And, um, I also had a chip on my shoulder. i wanted to make it to the crossfit games to be
like hey you guys said my elbows were fucked but oh that's cool and granted it was separate you
know and there's no deep sea diving in the crossfit games but it was still you know yeah i like it i
like it chip um connor in your instagram i noticed you had a brother and he passed away um so ty was um he was
we were born and raised together he was my best friend growing up he was my soulmate he was uh
he was a combat controller in the air force so special special tactics in the air force
and he was so not not the same womb as you but but very close okay i mean like his uh when his dad passed away you know he
would they would like my dad was i mean we were just like close to family in fact i i still think
that my family liked him better than me he didn't get in quite as much trouble and was a better
athlete so it was like i would they did they did i'll i'll confirm that for you yes yes yes mr
murphy you did yes yes they did just a they did. Just a little bit, though.
Just a little bit.
Just a tiny bit, but enough.
Enough, yes.
And yeah, August 20th, 2012, he was riding his motorcycle back home. It was about a quarter mile from the house I grew up in.
And what I think had happened, because I went back to the wreck site after he passed away,
and there's like a trail that kind of came through.
And it's like a green belt.
There's some good amount of wildlife there.
When I was driving through, a deer came right into the middle of the road.
And so he wasn't drinking.
They wouldn't have any like, his blood alcohol was zero.
And he was incredible on that thing.
He's one of those guys that can hold one of those guys that could just do
everything and do everything really, really well.
And just went off the side of the road and hit a boulder. And, uh,
yeah.
It's interesting. So, so what made me ask that question right there was,
cause you said you were, it was, it was a bit of a dark period when you took your l1 but that but really the dark period
was still to come oh yeah that was different kinds of dark period right when i don't know
what i'm doing after that that was this i mean i've never lost anyone. I've lost guys that were in the Navy
guys that I served with, but I'd never had anything as devastating as losing him. Even like
my, my grandparents. And it was, he was just the closest person I've ever, you know, known or talked
to. It's interesting. So you went back to the scene of the crime and when you were there, a deer ran
in front of you and you're like, yep, a deer must've run in front of him and he swerved and that was it.
Yep.
Did he die on the site right there?
Then in there?
Yeah.
Do you know what kind of motorcycle he was riding?
He had a CBR.
I had a Ninja.
Oh, he had a CBR.
Yeah.
Oh God.
Wow.
Oh, what, what, do you remember what color it was?
It was, it was like the gold trim it was a 2008
it was a new bike but it had like the gold and black trim on it yeah i still remember because
we had like pictures and we would ride our bikes together i was again a moron on my motorcycle down
in san diego i would do i'd pull up next to a car full of girls and do wheelies on the highway and just like in wow wow you have a daughter now I do you don't have a son do not have a son my daughter's name is
Ty named after Ty oh wow I I'm uh oh man speaking of Ty that was one of the things in the ADCC Ty
Rotola wow oh my. Do you know about the
Rotola brothers? No.
You got to look these guys up.
This kid.
One of the brothers won his weight
class and beat everyone in
submission, undefeated.
And Rotola, the other brother,
almost won the absolutes.
It went to the judges and they said he
lost, but I don't think he lost. I thought it was obvious he won, but what do I know?
Are you still doing jiu-jitsu?
Yep.
Yeah, cool.
Oh, yeah, these guys.
Man.
It's a shame they didn't make it like $49.99 for all two days or something that you had to pay.
Yeah.
That's a shame.
I just think it would mean the barrier to entry. I mean, regardless, you could,
you know, you could talk someone into the argument of it being like, Oh, over time,
it's going to be cheaper. But when some people just want to walk, like you just got to get
people in the door and then once you're in the door, then you can, you know,
That must've been a hard decision. I was thinking about that, what it was like over in flow in those
meetings, because there were for sure two camps. I have to guess that there was one camp of guys who were like, hey, let's make this free. There was another camp that's like, let's make it $49.99. And there's guys like, no, full membership or nothing. And yeah.
I mean, I don't know what the right decision. I don't know. I mean, financially, they might just be like laughing, being like, we killed it. It was the best. Yeah. I mean, I don't know what the right decision, I don't know. I mean, financially, they might just be like laughing, being like, we killed it. It was the best. Yeah.
But I think the longterm, your decision makes a sense. If you're like, you want to get as many
people in the door. Right. I think it's, it's similar to a CrossFit affiliate is, you know,
but I guess similar and different. You want people in, that's why people do like the first class
free or that's why people, you know, you know, even with training people in the music industry
that are afraid of CrossFit, you know, I give them this like, like super tailored version of,
you know, like a 10 minute version of Cindy of doing some body weight stuff. And instead of
pull-ups, they're doing hand cleans because they don't want to look like they can't do one of the
movements. And once you get them and you get them in the door and you start seeing, um, you know,
the results from that, then, then we, you know, mechanics, consistency, intensity, then you can
start to dose them up. But I think with just getting people training, I've done, I've done
more probably free private training sessions for people who can afford it. Can, C-A-N. Some of these guys
are millionaires. But if I was like, hey, here's this private session, I'm going to charge you
this. Sometimes they don't want to do it. But just sometimes getting them in the door and being then
a trusted source of someone who can appropriately dose this thing called CrossFit that so many
people misunderstand, then that's when,
you know, everything else starts to come. That's when the revenue started coming for me. That's
when people started reaching out to me, but be not because I was, I was selling this best product.
It's because I was able to deliver it really well for one person and then across, which kind
of doesn't make sense to what I was talking about with flow wrestling and why they know.
Which kind of doesn't make sense to what I was talking about with flow wrestling and why they know.
No, it does.
I was making sense to me.
I was thinking also about, you know, there was a time when Snoop Dogg couldn't rub two nickels together and was looking for fucking weed under the couch.
And now probably people send him pounds of weed for free in the mail.
But but but he could afford all the way he wants.
Exactly. You know, his I think he has like a weed company.
Yes, I'm sure.
Where he has someone else running it to where now he's actually getting paid to smoke weed.
Now the time that he can afford it most, he has it in spades.
Infinite.
And so you take your L1.
Do you remember who your seminar staff were?
Oh yeah.
And well, now I get to work with them.
So now you're still on the seminar team.
Yep.
God, dude, you are, you are doing so many things.
I didn't realize what an entrepreneur you were.
I started just, I mean, it becomes very obvious once I started scratching your Instagram.
You have, you're so ambitious how old are
you 33 yeah that's a great age um so who were you who were the seminar staff when you so i remember
because i liked competing i remember almost like in order of like who was you know the best athlete
at the time i remember seeing chris spieler when I walked in there and I was like, holy shit,
I've seen this guy do a hundred unbroken pull-ups.
I made that video.
Thank you.
Two weeks before the CrossFit Games,
probably the dumbest thing he's done.
But you know what?
We didn't really know, right?
We didn't really know what we should be doing
to prepare for that.
Because he tore his hands, right?
I mean, they were destroyed, right?
Yeah.
And I can only imagine.
I mean, granted he weighs his hands, right? I mean, they were destroyed, right? Yeah. And I can only imagine. I mean, granted, he weighs 45 pounds,
but I'm sure that wasn't optimal for his training leading up to the games.
Right.
Eric Preston was the flow.
Josh Everett was there.
Nadia was there.
And then Zach Forrest.
Spieler doesn't work for CrossFit anymore but i think um all those other people
might too which is interesting right they still yep maybe not josh everett either i think josh
is still on the on the training team wow crazy yeah because when we did the last summit he was
in again another guy i went to see i went and watched every second counts it aired in pasadena
and i went with my parents because i got my parents into CrossFit. They have a full garage gym. They've
been doing it for 10 plus years now. Absolutely obsessed. But I remember seeing Josh Everett.
I remember seeing him like, like in this like button down shirt. I was like, I didn't even go
up to him because I was like, Oh man, this is Josh Everett. This is the guy who, you know,
who came in second place. He's going to be the front runner to win the games in 2009.
He was 2008.
He finished second, right?
Somewhere on the podium.
Yeah, it was Jason, Josh Everett, and Jeremy Thiel.
Yeah.
And I remember watching that documentary and was just obsessed with it.
I've rented it probably 30 times in my life, just over like different periods or try to find it in different areas and then, you know, rewatch it.
And, you know, cause I, I took a liking to John Wellborn because of the CrossFit football I thought was such an incredible program, which is now, you know, Johnny Watt or whatever it is.
It's not power athlete. That's gone too. They've changed again.
No, I think power athlete is that's kind of, that's the branding. You're right.
Okay. Okay.
But before when it was CrossFit football, I utilize that to train athletes still to this day
with the hockey players that I'm training with the lacrosse guys. I mean, I utilize the same,
you know, thought process on that to train for sports. I donse guys. I mean, I utilize the same thought process
on that to train for sports. I don't even know what they do. I trained this girl who needed to
pass a fitness test for Northeastern who's playing field hockey. I don't know what a
fucking field hockey stick looks like. And I told her dad that when he called me specifically,
don't know how he got my number. He's like, you to train my daughter and i was like uh i don't really take on private clients
i don't really have the time he's like nope we're gonna make this happen and so we train gpp she
got a she's as a true freshman a starting spot on uh defense and her coach was like i don't know
what you did and it's not it's not me. I didn't make
up any of this stuff. I just stole it and borrowed it and still use everything from the level one,
level two manual. And we worked her weaknesses and then she became a better athlete.
It's funny how you keep hearing that story over and over. The one that pops up right away is that
Dave was a buds instructor and hit the
fittest guy in the class was Josh bridges. And what did he use to prepare for buds?
Stupid main site. Yep. It's like, it's, it's, it's so awesome.
You take your, you take your level one, you, you, you you love it you end up loving it you're blown away
absolutely obsessed i loved doing crossfit because i think initially i wasn't particularly good at
one thing so cross it was really good i can kind of go across the board like i learned the butterfly
kip really fast and other people like oh my gosh that guy can do butterfly kipping pull-ups
yeah and so competing was good because I was like,
I fell in love with that side of it first.
And then after the level one,
thinking that I was this like excellent mover
and then just get your teeth kicked in
by everyone who's like,
no, this is like, here's your fault.
Here's your fault.
Getting brought into the center of the circle
for some reason thinking they're going to be like,
hey, see this guy's movement?
It's perfect.
I remember on the overhead squat,
they brought me in there and it was just like knee initiated overextended spine on the way down. Knees are collapsing in all of it. And I'm like, Oh my God,
I thought I was good at this. And then once I realized there was so much more to it, not just
on the athlete side, but the coaching side as well, it was just, I was all in. And Zach, Zach in and zach zach forest is an incredible mover awesome like like freaky so so then you do that
um and and then and then what happens do you right away also think oh shit i want to be one
of these red shirts yeah and i'll even tell this right then and there i told this story at a
seminar the other uh maybe it was a while ago but denise when you say the
other day by the way that that counts for any time in your life i use that all the time but
the other day my wife like that's three years ago i said yeah that's what i said the other day yeah
not today but another one of the days yeah so it's a great i like the other day um denise at
the end of the seminar denise thomas um we also have we haven't worked her
way into legendary status too by the way i've gotten a chance to i mean i worked with her
every day coaching at the reebok headquarters and then also on seminar staff um it's just me i get
to see her and a bunch of the group tomorrow we have like a little like northeast trainer summit
we're all just gonna go and you know just work together talk with
just unbelievable is that something crossfit's putting together like nicole's putting that
together yeah that's oh that's awesome um but at the end of the seminar she's like hey you know
we have a minute i want like you know one of the red shirt or each one of the red shirts to
to tell you in detail or just to give you a story about what CrossFit can do.
And before.
In front of the class.
So this is in front of a seminar.
This is at the end of the seminar, closing remarks.
And you didn't know this was going to happen.
She just sprung this on you guys.
Yep.
And there were.
Oh, this is dope.
I want to say it was a three person seminar.
And well, because if you've got a red shirt, you can go on the fly.
Someone can say, hey, you have one minute and tell someone something important.
And there's so many things that were racing through my head. And you can always talk. I
never thought I'd be a celebrity trainer. I never thought I would be sponsored by these big brands,
but that wasn't it. The story that jumped to my mind is I actually asked Zach and Chris at my level one.
After it, I was like, hey, what do I have to do to get one of those red shirts?
And at the time, you would think those guys would be like, hey, why don't you just worry
about passing this fucking test first? You dweeb. And they were both unbelievably open and welcoming. It was like, Hey, you got to be a
part of the community, continue to coach, continue to train, volunteer, be a part of, of everything
that you can and continue to work. And it's like, and it's, it is achievable. I was like,
holy shit. I, you know, especially after, you know, me being this like cocky, oh, I'm a good athlete.
And, you know, them just picking me apart to not to not be like, hey, just, you know, work on and not to do it weren't dismissive.
It was a very, very genuine response.
They gave you some hope and belief.
And so that's what I said to the team. I'm like, wherever you want to take this thing, whether you want to open your own gym, whether you want to compete and whether you want to,
you know, get a red shirt, like wherever, if you want to, like you can, and, and this is what we're
here to do. We're here to support you. And you'll hear it from every red shirt trainer. They'll say,
Hey, if you need to get ahold of me, reach out to me and I will get back to you. It may not be
the same day, but I'll always get back to you to help you out.
And I've created some of the greatest relationships that I have from people that went through
this seminar that actually reached out to me.
That's awesome.
And how long, how long until you became a red shirt?
Um, so this is in 2015, I believe when it actually happened and the story was actually
pretty cool because they weren't so five years five years of training yeah competing volunteering
trying to be as much of a part of the community as possible and when i came up i got sponsored
by reebok and then i came up to reebok to coach pretty much because I was the opposite at the time. I was like the opposite coach as Austin Maliolo, who was like, we called
him the sponge, the fun sponge. You know, he was just, just so regimented and how he did everything.
I mean, unbelievably organized, incredible mentor to me, really good friend. Now I think we've
gotten him out of his shell a little bit, but I was like the party guy down in St. Thomas. I just always liked the classes. Maybe I wasn't the most, um, you know,
I wasn't critiquing and picking apart people's people's mechanics as much as, as he was, but
it was just more of like the fun, the vibes. And then he could teach me all the other stuff.
So I told him my goal was to get on seminar staff.
And 2015, the Reebok.
You went to go work at the Reebok gym in Boston before you were even on the seminar staff?
Mm-hmm.
Wow.
Did someone handpick you for that?
They knew of you?
Yeah.
So when I got, because I was competing, I moved down to St. Thomas when I got out of the
Navy. I just kind of wanted to get away. I was coaching in a gym in San Diego, but I had some
friends that lived in the Virgin Islands and I was like, Hey, I'm going to go just down here.
I sold all my stuff. You know, I told you I sold my car. I sold my motorcycle. I got rid of
everything. Moved down there with my sea bag, my firearm, and like a backpack.
You can move down there with your firearm?
Yeah.
That's awesome.
I did.
Yeah.
Okay.
Yeah, you go through the right steps with that, which I've always done because you don't want to get in trouble for any of that.
No, you don't.
You're a big boy now.
You can't get in trouble for that.
My parents can't bail me out now.
And so here you are trying to live a new life over there,
have fun, and reality snaps you back and said,
hey, dude, you're a good trainer.
We need you back at Reebok.
Bam, you're back.
No, what happened was when I moved down there,
I drank rum for three straight days and realized,
I feel like shit.
I need to do a little workout. realized like, I feel like shit, I need
to do a little workout. So I went down to the beach and I did to like, uh, just a Tabata, uh,
lunges, Tabata squats. And there was another girl who was like, Oh, are you doing CrossFit?
And I was like, Oh, no one knows what CrossFit is. So then she wanted to train. And then we kind
of created this like little like beach workout session where people were, were paying me. I
didn't have an affiliate, but people were paying me to, um, do CrossFit and someone comes up to me and they're
like, Oh, I've been doing CrossFit with this Navy SEAL guy at his house. And I was like, one, no one
else knows what CrossFit is too. Right. Some guy is really, really tricking someone into thinking
that he was just like Navy SEAL who moved to the Virgin Islands. So I was like, I want to meet this
guy. You know, I had a chip on my shoulder from like my injuries suffered
and who I thought, like, I thought the world owed me something. And I go into this bar and they're
like, oh, that's the guy over there. And I look across the bar and I'm like, oh yeah, he, he,
he probably, you can just tell. And so I go up and talk to him and he was like,
I can't wait to know who this is. Do I know who
this is? Oh yeah. And so I go up to him and he's kind of like, Oh yeah, you're doing this stuff.
He's like, we're running the affiliate out of our house. Things are going well. I'm like, Oh,
this is what I'm doing. And you know, he's kind of dismissive. He's like, who was your,
Oh, I see this and who is this? And then he was kind of much realized that like,
like sure I was tough and could, and could make it through training, but I didn't do shit.
And he's like, like 16 year, like eight years on DevGuru.
And so he's like, hey, tomorrow we're unloading some equipment and then we're going to do a workout of the house if you want to show up.
And I was like, OK.
And I kind of walked out of there like the guy's a dick and he kind of walked away like being like the guy's a chump.
So next day we go head to head on some long hero workout, just whatever so you go over there so you went over there to help oh i
showed up yeah and he uh we finished like right at the same time and it was kind of like all right
maybe we can you know join forces and do this together so uh his name is chris erwin he's the
head of partnerships at Navy SEAL foundation,
was a president of Kill Cliff, had competed down in Latin America. Uh, it ended up turns into him,
his wife, their kids were just like my second family. I ended up moving in with them at their
house. We started CrossFit St. Thomas and it was the, the community that we had down there was one of the most unbelievable things I've ever been a part of.
It was so amazing.
It was very, very special.
Is it still together?
Is that gym still there?
So CrossFit St. Thomas, there was a second affiliate that opened up and then they kind of worked back and forth.
When I left to go up to Reebok from there, we were still just one affiliate.
And then some other people opened a gym and then it kind of all transferred to one.
So a lot of the core members are still there, but now it is offsite at a different area owned by different people.
Did you like St. Thomas at school?
I loved St. Thomas.
Yeah.
Like you would even consider moving back there.
Yeah, I would.
Um, you know, I always talk with James Hobart about
this. We're like, at some point in time, if we ever come across and make a bunch of money,
we're going to move down to St. Thomas. And whether we own the gym or not, but at least
just coach one or two classes a week and just be a part of a community down there. It is something
very, very special because there's a decent amount of people that
are from there. And then there's a large amount of people that we call transplants or stateside
locals that have moved down there to be a part of any job or tourism or want to be bartenders.
And so it's like this land of misfit toys. And everyone down there likes to party,
but everyone obviously needs to understand that there's got you have to offset it
you can't be the person who only does one side of it but it's great weather shirt off go to the
beach swim in the water just fucking oh yeah and as if when i talk about chris erwin he hasn't done
enough in his life he also uh plays the guitar and sings so he he went to do this like it was
like an open mic night, but he was
like, Hey, if I just like play a few songs. So they're hosting him at this beach bar called
Iggy's and he's like, Oh, so we announced it to our gym. We have 150 members at that time.
And it was full. We, it was, our gym was packed and 75 people show up to this. And,
and so it's this wild party, you know, it's all of the,
the crazy CrossFitters hanging out. People are drinking, people are dancing,
people are having the best time. Some people are doing burpees.
Oh yeah. It was all, all like the cheesy stuff too. People will be squatting each other and
everyone is like, eh, you know, and then every bar in St. Thomas is like, we need to bring this
Chris guy over because he just brings this,
you know, this crowd of people. Cause our community was so tight to support Chris.
We would all go to these same places. So you were, we were known as like the CrossFit crazies.
And there were some people that were like, I'll never do it. I'll never do it. And they see,
you know, then they see their buddy who takes their shirt off when they're having a boat trip
and they're like, damn, he looks good. Or damn, she looks good. And maybe good and maybe i need to start doing this and then you know you'll get a message being like
hey interested in you know the elements on ramp for this like weren't you the person a couple
weeks ago who was like i'll never do that it's stupid you know you all the bad stuff about
crossfit you're a crazy cult like come on in we got room for you while you were um uh uh messing around with um austin maliolo i just want to show you i was
on bike rides with matto tool so i just wanted to flex on you a little bit
i didn't get i didn't get many bike rides at matto tool i do have a pretty interesting story on
what not to do on company trips that involve that involves matto tool oh i can't wait
by the way for those who don't know matto tools the ceo of uh reebok or he had said he president
of north or something great guy by the way fucking awesome dude i enjoyed every minute i spent with
him unbelievably supportive of our gym he was the reason why we had the gym was what it was a
support that we had and how high
he regarded denise and austin which then trickled down to the rest of the coaching staff full
support took time out of his day to make sure he was taking class even if he had to show up a little
bit late it's like oh what are you gonna do to the president oh you gotta do burpees to start this
fucking no we were we saw him like walk up the stairs of the locker room like all right we'll
get his bar and his area set so when he comes down here he can be warm and safely do it he had like five or six kids too he
had a huge family right huge oh so so tell me your story about your interaction with him what not to
do well this this can be a lesson on how to fail quickly and to to to, to own your mistakes. So, and again, I still have like, you know,
this was maybe this was before I got on seminar staff. So this is like maybe 2014 when I'm up at
Reebok. Anyways, are you traveling at that time back and forth between St. Thomas or you actually
just make the leap from St. Thomas to that piece of shit called Boston. Sorry. I had moved up here full time. Okay.
So we have a GMM, a global marketing meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada. And so there are a thousand
retailers that are from all around the world that are going to see the products that are going to
do, you know, all this stuff and they have everything displayed. They have a huge event with
dancers showing off the new Reebok gear. Kendrick Lamar shows up,
makes an appearance.
We have all of this stuff going on.
And then the John Jones UFC fight was on Friday.
On Saturday.
A lot of people don't know that about Matt O'Toole.
He's this six foot three skinny white guy,
but he's super assimilated into the rap community no shit i mean yeah like
like homies with them like like he did mdma with um
told me this great story one night he did molly with um
i'll remember the guy's name some rapper though we all know huge huge rapper huge yeah but otul was cool man
he could fit in anywhere yeah i didn't do mdma with him i'm uh i'm still maybe i'm not that i
understand i understand you probably he only does it with guys who spit mad bars so yeah and i'm not
i'm not quite there yet maybe maybe that's my next venture anyways i, we'll try to make it. Have you done MDMA with Dylan Francis?
No.
Okay.
No,
those guys don't.
My job with them is to,
is to not have them do that.
And I,
and I saw some stuff like that on your Instagram where you basically talk
about that too.
You need to keep up with them and then also train with them at seven in the morning. We'll
circle back to that so that they know that they can do both. So if they're staying up till two
in the morning, you stay up till two in the morning because at 7am they need, they need to
be able to get it. They can't be like, well, he didn't stay up as late as me. Anyway, we'll get
to that one second. Okay. So tell me, so you're, you're in you're in Vegas. You're smoking a blunt with Kendrick Lamar.
Where were we?
This is definitely the first time that I've come out with this story.
But now that I guess I'm not working for Reebok anymore.
They're good people.
They're going to be happy you told the story.
I just said Matt O'Toole did MDMA.
Yeah, it's fine.
It's all good.
So it was Austin and Denise were supposed to go out there to run it because they run
the giant fitness events, but they both had stuff to do.
They were either at the CrossFit games or they had seminars.
So they send me out there and they're like, you do not fuck this up.
I'm like, of course.
I was like, I'm not going to drink until after we run this fitness event.
So we were there for a few days before, there for a few days afterwards.
Good rule. So the first few days in the morning, we're this fitness event. So we were there for a few days before, there for a few days afterwards. Good rule.
So the first few days in the morning,
we're running these classes.
I mean, it's like 50 to 100 people,
bodyweight workouts all over the different areas
we're staying in Vegas.
And this event is at this huge open field.
We're talking, we're putting thousands,
thousand, close to a thousand people through a workout,
five different instructors that all rotate around.
There was like a 10 minute running, a 10 minute CrossFit. So I was in charge of putting together
all the instructors, making sure they knew their roles. So rather than just me being there as a
CrossFit coach, I was essentially putting the entire event on. And I remember telling Austin,
I was like, I'm not going to drink unless like Matt O'Toole wants to have a beer with me.
And I was like, I'm not going to drink unless like Matt O'Toole wants to have a beer with me.
And he's like, okay.
So there's another person in this factor who is very close friend of mine, but an absolute weapon.
His name is Chris Froyo.
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.
He ended up becoming the man over there.
Yeah, Chris is dope.
I loved Chris too.
What a cool dude.
Incredible.
You know, CrossFitter owned an affiliate, ran stuff for Reebok.
Him and his brother actually started off in the mailroom at Reebok.
I can't even tell those two apart.
And worked their way up. After a certain amount of time, I started getting to it.
So Chris is an absolute animal.
We're going to the UFC fight and he just brings me a drink.
And it was supposed to be a vodka soda, but it was like 90% vodka.
I'm like, okay, we'll have one and then we'll be good.
Next thing you know, we're at the blackjack table.
It's like Matt O'Toole, Lenka, Corinna.
It's all of the higher ups, the president of the company.
I'm like yelling at Matt because he's trying to hit when, when the dealer's showing like, like, like 16, you're just like, it's like, stop. And we won a bunch of money. He had rented
out the club Hakkasan beforehand. It was like the Reebok pre-fight party. And then you got
stamped to be able to go back in the club later that night. Right. So we were like, Hey, we're
all going to go back into the club. I'm like, Hey, I'm with the president of the company. We should
be okay. Yeah. So we're going to go back in and they're like you guys can't come
in with shoes on everyone had re-bought classics on that's what everyone got and it was like no he
like you know corinna was like this is the man who rented this place out we all have our stamps
he's like that's fine but you can't you know where you can't wear shoes in there i'm not allowed to
let anyone in and then two guys walk next to us
and they get let in and they're wearing casual clothing. And she freaks out and she's like,
what is it? How come they're let in? He rented this place out. And the bouncer's like, they're
on the guest list for the DJ. They are with the DJ. We don't have any control of that.
Two days prior to this, one of the DJs that I know well had reached out
like, oh, you're in Vegas. You got to come through. Didn't even think about it or mention it. And he's
like, I'll put you on plus whoever you want. And so I was like, I'm on that list. And I'm just this,
you know, I'm like, and did everyone just look at you like hardly even an intro?
The guy's like, yeah, okay. And I was like, no, my name's on that list, Connor Murphy.
And I think the guy just assumes that I saw a name on it and he goes you show me an id that
says connor murphy and i'll let you guys all in here and i just pull on my id and they're like
good to go and awesome how the who are you how did you get this so next thing you know
we're in there we're in the dj were you tripping were you like fuck this is that was couldn't have
been more perfect i could have looked yeah it was so such like there was no other club
that that would have happened to like that just so happened to like work out right
so we go in there matt's buying me beers chris we're we're ripping shots we're in the dj booth
we're with john jones dapping up like everything is good wow and we stayed up until
5 30 in the morning and i had to be at the event at six and then the instructor showed up at seven
so chris is like yep just don't go to bed i was like nope i went up i showered i messaged all
the instructors like hey bus is gonna leave at seven I'm heading out early. So I call you hating life at this point. I knew, I knew. Well, I mean, I've,
I've gotten into those before and I'm, and I, and I pride myself on my ability to show up the next
day. However, in this instance, I call Jake who I'm going to the venue with an hour early. And
he was like, Hey, we had to leave early. We had some issues. Just go with the instructors. So I was like, okay, sit on the edge of my bed. Like I could probably just nap
for 30 minutes. Woke up at nine o'clock. Oh shit. Oh shit. All mixed text messages. I remember that
the CrossFit coach who we had brought down there, who I was, it was one of my best friends. I just remember seeing the last text was, bro. I mean,
missed calls from Denise, missed calls from Austin, missed calls from Yon, missed calls from Fro,
missed calls from, and I'm like, I mean, when I woke that feeling, I was just like, I think I
actually crumbled down to my knees and I put my head in my hands and I was like, you just fucked
up. You just fucked up. Dear God. Can we go back? Can you give me a time machine?
Oh, it was that feeling. And I'm like, I'm like trying to put my shirt on and
I go get in this random cab to try to find my way there. But like the event's already over.
And I look at my Snapchat story and I'm like, I got to delete all evidence. I don't know if
I posted anything. It is me in the DJ booth
pouring gray goose into my mouth and then pouring it into Matt O'Toole's mouth and then pouring it
into Flo's mouth so I'm like without bringing it back it's just spilling everywhere oh yeah and it
has like one of like the handles on it so it's like a you know like a gerbil and oh and we're
just pouring it out and everyone's just yeah and i'm like and i look down at like who's
viewed the story it's like denise austin and i was like oh so the next day i found i was like hey
you know you can't hide it you can't make up a story it was just i made a series of poor
decisions i went out drinking granted the people that really would have been mad I was with,
and they thought it was funny. Luckily, the event ran off fine.
That's what I was going to ask. It did go smooth?
We had done enough work on the front end. I wasn't there to announce all the instructors,
so Jan Martin took that over. He was pretty upset at me from that, but it was so weird
apologizing to people. for every senior director,
I'm like, I'm going to talk to everyone. I'm going to say, I went out, I got too drunk,
I missed the event. It won't ever happen again. And first person I talked to was Jan. He was like,
I'm so disappointed. You had a chance to show that you're more than just the fun party CrossFit guy
and you could be really squared away. I'm so disappointed in you denise didn't denise didn't talk to me for three weeks austin was so angry and then you know i go talk to matt and he's like oh yeah it's fine i'm like
okay that was a different one and then i go talk to chris maddo tool maddo tool you guys this guy
is the big wig like thousands of president of the company yeah like he it's a massive company just so you know so it's it's
it is i i have to cut you a lot of slack i have to be like yeah you did the right thing i did i
don't i haven't heard anything where i'm like you fucked up me personally if i would have just if i
would have showed up i think i would have gotten a little bit more credit but when i finally get
back there's one other guy chris waldeck who who's a senior director at the time. And I sit down with him after class. I'm like, hey, here's what
happened. And he's like, if I were there, you wouldn't have shown up at all. He's like, I would
have made sure you were buried. You would have been so drunk you'd been flying home the next
day. He's like, you got the Lindsay Lohan Award. And I'm just like, I don't know how people are
going to react to me. I don't know what they're going to say.
I don't know how it's going to happen.
But from that one,
it was like,
Hey,
if you fuck up,
don't hide under a rock.
Don't,
you know,
own it,
own it right away.
Hey,
here's what happened.
You guys can get over it.
Everyone's made mistakes.
But at that point in time,
and I was just,
I was just a part-time employer.
I was a temp coach.
I'm like,
Oh,
my contract's going to be up.
Ended up talking with Matt O'Toole a few weeks later. And he's like, hey, when is your part-time
contract up? I was like, I think it was up a couple months ago. I was just still there.
He's like, don't worry about it. You're a great guy. We're going to extend you as long as we can.
It's crazy. You started the story by saying how supportive he was of the gym.
And in the chain of command, there were 20 people between you and him, and yet he would still talk to you.
I always heard about that at Reebok, that you guys had 800 employees down there in the gym and that it changed the whole vibe there and that everyone, you know, the guy who fucking worked, picked up trash, was working out doing thrusters next to O'Toole.
What a fucking cool scene.
I mean, he'd be partnered with interns.
Yeah.
Crossfit workouts and asking them questions.
And after like a big, like a really good session, you know, everyone would be, you know, doing
the typical like bacon sizzle on the floor.
And he'd get up and be like, hey, guys, like, I just want to like talk about how specialist
is now.
Amazing.
These coaches are for all the work and effort they put in for us to be able to experience this like let's give it up for our coaches like you would do that stuff all the
time is he still there i think so man i wonder if that's all do you know do you have friends who
still work there yeah i actually still coach class there once a week because I miss all the people that we coach.
And since my company doesn't do a lot Friday mornings, I'll go there and I coach one class Friday morning and it is still an absolute blast.
Yeah, what a trip.
And is Reebok still in the is it in that second building you moved to i only know two locations i knew that you guys had that one massive crazy location like in the forest
yeah and then and then you moved okay it's in it's in seaport so it's actually about a mile
away from my office at big night well okay and i've been i've been to the seaport one too that's
where the gym is upstairs and upstairs and downstairs.
Yep. Yeah. I remember actually having a conversation with you in one of the downstairs offices. I don't remember what you were in town for, but.
Wow. Crazy. Crazy. Yeah. I, I, it was you and Austin and maybe Hobart was there. Yeah. Maybe Spencer Hendel. Holy shit.
Spencer Hendel. Holy shit. When I, I just was on tour with artist Lauv and the first place that I flew into was Denver and they were busing from Texas. So Hobart actually picked me up from the
airport. We went and visited a friend, hung out that night and then took the like 6 30 AM class
at CrossFit mafia, one of the gyms he trains at and it was just an incredible i i have unbelievable things to say about james so he's one of my best
friends i just think he's such a good dude he is such a good dude smarter than he'll ever let anyone
lead anyone to believe and people think he's smart but i don't think people really understand
how smart he is i i i couldn't i could have, I could have made Hobart famous.
Why didn't you?
He doesn't want to be.
Probably because he's smart.
Hobart.
Maybe I'll text Hobart after this.
I drag him back onto the show.
Come on,
Hobart.
Um,
how,
this guy Lauv,
how do you how does how does one get what kind of music does he play
he's a pot he's always he's a singer um james just said hi oh there he is um he's a singer
uh so don't text me i think that's for me not for you don't text me, not for you. He's a singer and like pop music.
Super interesting is that he's an independent artist.
So he doesn't pay a record label.
He doesn't do it.
And so all of his, he writes songs for BTS,
which is a big K-pop band for Celine Dion.
I'm pretty sure everyone's heard of her.
And then writes all of his own music.
Incredible songwriter, incredible voice, super talented, but because he's had so much success, none of it's gone. And I mean, none of it has gone to a, you know, a company that he
signed with. He owns everything that he does, which is super cool. Yeah, that's super cool.
And so he must be, he must be busier than shit. Yeah. I mean, on tour, you would think is when people are the busiest, but it's usually leading up to tour, creating albums, doing all that.
When you're on tour, you actually have a decent amount of downtime, which is usually now why we're trying to kind of change this culture from it being like a rockstar party life and have people actually feel good during it
and prioritize their health and prioritize their fitness and, you know, use that time to actually
improve your quality of life through fitness and training while you're playing these shows and
traveling on a bus all around the country, all around the world. Can you tell me how you met
this guy? Like, like in your first encounter with him.
Yeah.
I mean, with now, because I've had a lot of success with some of the EDM artists, specifically Dylan Francis.
EDM?
Electronic dance music, DJs.
Okay.
Because I've had the amount of success with Dylan, he's really well known in the Hollywood
area, in the music industry area. He's really well known in the Hollywood area, in the music industry area.
He's hilarious. You have to find his Instagram and TikTok. He's a hilarious, super creative guy.
Now people will see he's posted about our success in training. Now it's kind of like,
hey, if you want to do CrossFit, Connor can help you out or Big Night Fitness
with Big Night CrossFit can get you you did you did a backflip
on stage at a dylan francis concert yeah yeah that's a pinned in your instagram that's crazy
you know it's funny when i couldn't when you put i thought that was him when i first saw that i
thought that was him doing the backflip and you were proud that you taught him that but that was
actually you out there yeah he's like hey, do a backflip in my show.
Well, the two, so this was Young Gravy's DJ and tip.
And he was like, come on stage and dance.
And everyone kept telling me to do it.
Everyone was like, oh, you should come dance on stage.
Your butt's too big to moonwalk.
You see that?
Your butt's too big to moonwalk.
I think we did a heavy squat down that day.
No one's even looking at your moonwalk. They just looking at your ass those are some good pants i think
yeah your ass looks huge in there congratulations thanks man i appreciate you pointing that out to
everyone too um yeah so so tip is uh young gravy's dj and just loved love you know hyping up the
crowd he would play the the funnest songs before Gravy's set.
But I was like, this isn't, you know,
I haven't earned dancing in front of a crowd that big.
Like, this is your show.
You guys have fun and do it.
And he's like, just do it on one show.
So I was like, all right.
So kind of last minute, I just ran out there,
threw a backflip, did a couple of dances.
Were you scared?
Oh, heart rate was through the roof.
I mean, even when I started thinking about when I was going to do it, I still get that like nervous,
like pit in my stomach. What if I mess it up? What if I, you know, what if it doesn't go well?
What if, you know, something happens, but you did a moonwalk dude on stage at a concert.
I bragged to people that I testified in a murder trial i would much i mean i think that's a
moonwalking on that's so crazy is that the only moonwalk you've done in front of a massive crowd
no you've done other moonwalking for a crowd that big yeah probably but
moonwalk in the kitchen for my mom that's how i learned is inside watch music videos on channel
472 it's like digital cable Comcast.
It would just loop music videos.
I would record it on VHS and then I would rewatch it back and just try to learn how to moonwalk.
Dude, you moonwalked at a concert.
I think the fact that I was allowed to go on this stage is as cool as whatever I did on it.
Oh, it's I mean, I like as cool as whatever I did on it. Oh,
it's,
I mean,
I like it cause you took full advantage of it.
Every movie.
I mean, you've run out there,
you're fucking shaking that ass.
You fucking do a backflip and then go into a moonwalk.
I mean,
you didn't fuck around.
You could have just gone out there and been conservative.
That's the same.
Yeah.
First time,
every time.
Okay.
So,
so,
so Dylan Francis posts you basically, it's like him saying i take i
drink this this sports drink before i go out and people start buying the sports drink because
because they see his success so people see him affiliated with you and you instead of a sports
drink you're a person who has some sort of effect on him that keeps him healthy based on your knowledge and
the way you take care of yourself. So he, he posted like before and after pictures of him.
He had lost a bunch of weight, gained a ton of muscle, felt better, stopped drinking,
hasn't drank since that tour. And that wasn't the original plan. The plan is just, we just don't
drink on tour so we can get healthy, but it changed his entire perspective on taking care of himself.
And then when he kind of pushed and promoted that there's a there's a post where you see him yeah
and um yeah it's like it looked like he he kept putting the dryer like he got all the wrinkles out
and this is post workout this is what we did you know a test retest workout of
kettlebell swings uh burpee over the box and then a cow row.
And that's just in a club somewhere that is in the venue. So we have a production cart full
of equipment. And while they're setting, setting up the stage in the venue, I set up all my
equipment. I set up all my equipment on the floor and then, and I'm like, I'll train whoever it
doesn't need to be the
artist that has hired me or the headlining artist anyone who wants to train i'll be here from this
time let's go through workouts we had people you're so cool goner fuck i just i mean the if
the changes that it's had on my life and it's and it's for selfish reasons i mean now think like i'm
able to give this to someone else. Like that feels
good. Seeing Dylan happier, look better, be fitter. Like that's yeah, sure. It's great for him, but
it's also like, like that's such a cool thing to be able to do. So it's not just selfless. And it's
like, it's very selfish because it, it makes me feel good. It gives me that self-worth that I can
help some, you know, incredibly famous artist at, you know, they need me for something. It's cool. It's, it's,
it's unique. And I, and I never thought I would have, I never thought it would get to that point.
I want to just send an open letter right now to anyone who is on tour with Dylan Francis
or anyone who wants to meet Dylan Francis. Ifnor has that shit set up and you know dylan
francis is going to be doing fucking helen and you've never done crossfit before but you want
to meet dylan francis go over there and do helen and then later as you walk by dylan francis ask
him what his helen time was he'll actually stop because he won't fucking believe
you did it and he'll be like it was nine minutes and you'll be like mine was 13 minutes and you
guys will bond like you can't even fucking believe i know i'm preaching to the choir because most
people on the show know this but two people who fucking hate each other or maybe don't care to
talk to each other the second you ask them what their hell in time was from the workout they did
earlier in the day to pick any workout you guys are going to bond.
So if you want to meet Dylan Francis for step one,
do CrossFit with Connor. If you're on the tour, like just do it.
You can, you'll become homies with them.
We had, we had the photographer for young gravy.
Who's like famous on Tik TOK for dancing,
wanting to train every single day.
You would have people from the, from the stage and production team that, you know, they're,
they're grinding all day, getting everything set up.
It would come by and, you know, I'd tailor the workouts depending on what people wanted
to do.
Some guy was like, I just want to lift today.
I'm like, let's deadlift, throw a bunch of plates in the bar, deadlift in the center
of a venue is fucking cool.
So cool.
And then maybe I'll dose them up with a little bit of something they need rather than just what
they want. Right. Once they're warm, you can kind of talk them into anything.
That back. All right. Because I just deadlifted with you. Let's just do,
we'll go five burpees over the bar, back and forth for five minutes. You do five, I'll do five. You
do five, I'll do five. We'll just see how many we can get. And if you start to get tired and you
want to start just do four, I'll do six. And that'll give you a little bit more rest time
so we don't have that
partner tipping scale,
which is if you've ever
done a workout,
a partner workout
with James Hobart,
this is how it goes
when your rest starts
getting shorter
and he gets more rest
so then he's fresher
and moving faster
and you're moving slower
and you want to die.
That's what training
with James Hobart is like.
He's so he's fit.
He's so fit
and he'll be like,
here I've been training.
It's like you're fucking fit.
What do you think happened?
Why didn't he do masters this year?
What do you think happened?
Do you think I'm trying to figure out whether the other guys are that much
better than him or if he just didn't train hard enough?
I don't think that was,
I don't think that was his,
if he wants it,
he'll do it.
He'll do it.
Okay.
He doesn't want it.
He's still incredibly fit,
you know,
and maybe,
maybe as he was training, he's like, hey, I still have a shot at this.
But no, if he wanted to train to do that, even the year that he took second in the Masters,
he had only started training kind of on the open set.
And he was like, oh, I guess I should put in work for this.
And then once that light switch went, it's full dedicated.
Were you really close with James?
Mm-hmm.
Were you ever jealous of his and Rich's relationship?
No, I was, I mean, James and I were good friends
during that period of time.
But once James moved back to Boston
is when we started getting really close.
He's been there for me a lot of times in support
in times when he didn't necessarily need to be.
This was old school. This is when I was still, uh,
you know, down in St. Thomas, we would get, we would do little boys trips down
there. What's that guy's name next to James to the left of James? AJ. Yeah.
I still, I, I, I catch up with JJ once in a while. I'll text with the AJ.
Yeah. And this is a, I mean that guy all the way on the right there,
Gabe Groover, again, another very, very close friend of ours had had lost i want to say like 80 pounds since we started training together just
incredible incredible dude one of my very best friends the guy next to him can i say something
about that guy by the way when i look at that picture the guy on the right in the green shorts
that's the guy you're talking about yep um i saw this picture last night and i stopped and looked
at it that that i i love that body that's like man that's like man by it looks like he like he's
a nascar driver doesn't it like he's like an oversized nascar driver he builds houses he
drives boats he does yeah he's got man vibe oh yeah from him he's got he has like a
thunderous laugh too and you just want to be around him he's just like he's will ferrell all juiced up
with a high t count if will ferrell did crossfit for two years that would be very very similar
yeah it's so funny that guy so stood out next to me all those dudes dudes are cool dudes. Yeah. Even Bubba in the middle competed many years as a master is like 58 years old now. Still one of our close friends still. I mean,
we like go out together. We'll hang out. We'll grab food. We'll train. He's a, he's actually
been getting into jujitsu as well. But I mean, we're, yeah, all of us are still really tight.
And that was 444 weeks ago. How about when Hobart got married? Were you concerned that you were
going to
lose his friendship a little bit then?
Did that give you anxiety?
I officiated the wedding.
Oh, so did you try to sabotage it?
There was no sabotaging.
I love Cass.
They're awesome.
If James is going to make a solid decision like that,
I'm on board.
I don't care what it's going to be.
If he's going, this is what I want,
good, no matter what it is.
And Cass and I have always been friends. When James was down with Rich, Cass and I would go
to the gym and we'd catch up and do workouts together. She's awesome. She's always been
super sweet to me. She also loves that James and I have a friendship and relationship.
She's like, oh, James and I went to a wedding.
James was my wedding date for one of my buddy's weddings a couple months ago.
And Cassandra's like, yes, go, go spend time with him.
Go hang out.
Is that James's wedding?
That is.
I wasn't invited to that.
I think you would be now.
If they were to re-up again, I think you would be now.
No, I would not.
We have a weird relationship. i think you would be now no i would not we have a weird
relationship i think um he um i he when i first started this podcast yeah he would come on with
me and do a new show and then shit got squirrely he we would be just like current events you know
what i mean like how maybe like they were coming out with a new hundred dollar bill or maybe how like um you know the oldest living
elephant in captivity died or you know what i mean just current just current event shit
and he always knows stuff like that like he was like reading random he'll just be sitting on the
phone and we're hanging out and he's scrolling through and i'm like what are you reading and
it'd be something like that oh how this hundred year old elephant has,
you know,
you know,
X,
Y,
Z.
I'm like,
I don't know.
How do you,
you just,
he was almost too stoic for the show.
He's very stoic.
He can be,
but he's funny,
but he's stoic.
Yeah.
Very dry humor for what that,
that side of like intelligence piece there.
Like it's,
I think he's guarded.
Probably putting himself out there in front of everyone i would say yeah he'd probably be guarded especially you know you kind
of like to pick people apart too sometimes yeah i yeah yeah he maybe that's what it was he was
he didn't want any loose threads on his sweater like he was like nothing I could like he buttoned up.
Um, okay. So tell me how, um, so, so, uh, I want to hear how you first met Dylan Francis, but let's close this door on loud. So can you give me like the details of like, you're sitting
at home and you look down at your phone and Dylan's like, Hey, my buddy loud needs somebody.
Or can you tell me like how that happens with this guy? I was working a seminar in Albany, a level one, two person level
one. So you don't have much time to do anything. Albany, New York, capital of New York. Yep.
And old school, old school gym, CrossFit Albany. It's still in that room with all the racquetball courts um so I was working a
seminar with Pete Shaw and I had a voicemail great dude I had a voicemail on my phone from
Lauv's tour manager and said hey can we get you to come out on the road with us
but how did he get your number he got my my number from Ari, who is loud.
His name is Ari.
Ari's assistant because I've toured with her boyfriend with Dylan before.
So it was like, hey, we need this guy's contact info.
And then it was just I had a voicemail on my phone.
And I reached with my business partners at Big Night.
I'm like, hey, do we find this beneficial for me to go on the road?
He has kind of two weeks left to tour tour but just wants some structure and wants to get some
diet um nutrition advice and wants to you know just get you know just a bit of a training regimen
um ari is a jew uh are you are you oh it's a great jew name i got my son's name is ari
this is his last name is leff l-e-f-f i think
i don't know if that's a jew name is that jew name beaver beaver's definitely not a jew name
um uh so they
and it's in the entertainment industry i gotta be i gotta be like 95 close to being right yeah you can if
you pull up what his most famous song um yes thank you fuck i should be teaching at a um
with my just claiming whoever you can huh yeah i should be teaching at a university with my ability
to pick out jews Drop him in this category.
I can pick out Jews, Armenians, and black guys. Those are my specialty.
Yeah. So you get the call and you don't just jump on it. You go to your team, you ask your team.
Yep. I talk to my business partners. Hey, do we find this beneficial? I'm building out a gym right now. So instead of me having to use the Reebok training facility, we can capture a lot more of the content of the celebrity training that we're doing here. All the artists that come through create on demand content, create more so instead of just training this behind closed doors.
fucking difference between Diplo doing CrossFit and your grandma doing CrossFit with the small exception is that people give a shit about Diplo doing CrossFit. If we can promote and push that,
there's a greater likelihood of someone seeing that and saying, I want to give this a shot.
Now, when we push grandma doing it, you get the people who say, oh, maybe my grandma wants to do
this. When you have someone with whatever, six, 7 million million followers and it's posting about hey
i'm doing crossfit i'm training with connor where you are at you know big night fitness
with big night crossfit and then people start to care so we can reach that broader audience
and also it's cool self-promotion because people somehow think you're cool when you
train celebrities as if it's any different from getting someone else success well it's
just from the selfish point it's it's a great experience for you.
Like, like a life full of stories,
a light of the being on a tour bus with someone who's touring the country and
the, and the tire breaks down and you end up staying out all night, um,
drinking, doing burpees and well, sorry, you guys don't drink, uh, um,
playing cards out under the stars with a famous person.
I had some drinks with Ari.
After he played a sold-out show at The Greek in LA,
he was like, would you maybe want to have...
I'm like, hey, if you're drinking, I'm drinking.
I don't want to, but I need to be...
I need to drink as much as you,
so tomorrow I know where you're at, what state you're in.
And, and tomorrow, or, you know, we went back to his house in the Hollywood Hills, beautiful
home.
And I went back to my hotel that night and we agreed on our training time in the morning
and his, his, uh, tour manager messages me, Hey, have you spoken with Ari?
Are you guys still on for training?
And I was like, Oh, I'm, I'm showing up at his house.
I'm not going to give him the opportunity to say, no, we're not going to do this.
I don't think he had a ton to drink either.
So we get there, hit this awesome workout.
We got a little warm up, like walk through the Hollywood Hills, do this workout at the
top of his driveway, just like beautiful view, 360.
And afterwards, he's like, man, I feel good.
I want to make my next meal.
I'm going to have like a healthier meal.
Let's not drink.
And it's like, great.
We can just get him on the right path. But when you start to have this
divisiveness as if he wanted to, you know, he just sold out a show in his hometown and he wanted to
have a couple of drinks. If I'm like, well, we're training tomorrow. So, you know, and it almost
puts this like bad damper on it, whether it be the right decision or not the right decision
with my experience in training people. If we're on that
same path, it's like, hey, maybe we're not going to take a step in the right direction tonight.
Maybe we take a step in the wrong direction tonight, but I'll be there tomorrow for us to
take two steps forward. It just opens and creates that relationship and that trust area where I
don't need something from him. I'm just there with him to hang out because after hanging out with a
lot of these people, do I want to be rich?
Yes.
Do I want to be famous?
Fucking no.
Not like they are.
Not have to put a show on every time you go out.
Not knowing who trusts you, who actually likes you, who actually wants to be your friend,
who just wants something from you.
I feel fucking bad for those guys.
I think it was Tupac who said, fuck the fame.
All I want is the money.
Yeah. I mean, I would, I don't know if that's yes i agree with that yes connor murphy check um so when have when you're called and you start working with uh
lav lav l-a-u-v when Lav. When you start working with Lav, is,
does he know,
is he,
is he the one who's like,
Hey, I'd like to get someone on,
I can train with.
And,
or is it sort of like an intervention?
Have you ever been called somewhere where it's an intervention where they
haven't told the celebrity like,
Hey,
that we're bringing like someone on to like get you on the straight and
narrow?
Um,
never as much as,
Hey,
this is going to be an intervention more.
So it's, Hey, you know,
like they want you to be a good influence on the dude. Yeah. Here's, here's kind of,
you know, Connor's going to come in. The guy wants a trainer and they're like, we know Connor's done
this before. So we're going to bring them in. And, and I'm not like here, here's what you have to do,
but I'm more like bumpers when you're going bowling. Right. It's hard to get off a little
bit too far. And if I'm there and i always use it too
i'm like hey you're paying me to be here man use me right you want we'll train in the morning we
can do fasted cardio in the morning we can lift in the afternoon i'll go we'll do whatever i'll
take you to a gym we can go to an affiliate i'll look up a gym we'll go to the hotel gym
whatever you want i'm here for it and so you and so get called, and then so you basically go out with Lau for two weeks.
Mm-hmm.
And he wanted to continue.
He still has the last leg of his tour this week
and then plays iHeartRadio in Vegas.
There's so much stuff back here.
The flooring just got in for my gym.
I had to record this podcast today.
Tomorrow, we actually have that affiliate or
not affiliate, the trainer kind of summit, a little like Northeast trainer summit. There's
just a lot of stuff we had to do, but I'd love to be on the road with him. He actually utilizes me
as a trainer, listens to my advice when we talk nutrition and, you know, has seen even in two
weeks, has seen success. Other people, hey, you've been working out.
Have you been training?
His parents came out on tour in San Diego.
They're like, have you been lifting?
Like, and, you know, and like seeing him, you know, then gain more confidence from that.
And it's, you know, we just do classic CrossFit.
First workout we did was 10 minutes of Cindy.
I wanted to usually try to assess people. So if I
can get on a treadmill, I'll have you walk for a minute, run for a minute, and you get to choose
what the speeds are of walking and running just for 10 minutes. And if they have the push at the
end, then I know they're a little bit more conditioned. If they're maintaining the same
pace or going slower as we continue on, it's like right they're pretty deconditioned we'll take it a little bit easier because i can't train them as
if i have them for two straight weeks i need to make sure he can still perform at his show that
night that's the most important not the fitness side of it unfortunately so we have to appropriately
dose so i'm not just fucking destroying him Any idiot trainer can go throw someone into a
workout and make them so sore they can't walk for a week. That doesn't make you an effective
trainer. In fact, that makes you an ineffective trainer, contrary to popular belief.
You ever do two-a-days with these guys? Like Dylan's like, hey, I want to do another one.
Oh, Dylan was on. We would even do a fast. Dylan follows intermittent fasting for the main reason
that the easiest thing for you to eat and to find access to at two in the morning when you finish
playing your show is nothing. So if that's on your diet guideline and then we're sleeping on a bus
and I can be there for breaking our fast at noon, awesome. I found that to be very effective because
you don't necessarily always have access
to whatever your diet foods are. Not to say it's better, same or worse, but we've seen a lot of
success in that. And a lot of people even on the tour, his tour manager on the first tour that we
went on lost over 20 pounds. Wow. From just jumping in the workouts with you guys. Just
hopping in the workouts. And I would also train him outside of just training Dylan.
So if Dylan was training, sometimes Mike needed to be working.
And then, you know, if Mike wasn't working, you know, and Mike's a good friend of mine.
He's actually how, he's my kind of ace in the hole.
He's always worked at Reebok and trained.
And then he became the tour manager for Dylan Francis.
Then actually James and I went out to one of his shows.
It was Dylan Francis, Zedd, and Steve Aoki.
And we went out to one of the shows and we were going to do a workout.
We had some equipment on the side of the bus.
And Dylan came out to make fun of Mike because he had his knee sleeves around his ankles.
And it looked like Uggs.
And he was just being funny.
And I just reached out and asked him, you want to do a workout?
He was like, sure. We went in and went into one of the green rooms.
Who's this? Who did you say that to? Do you want to do a workout?
This is Dylan Francis after I was just out to train and hang with Mike.
James, Mike, and I did a workout with some of the people from Zed's team as well. Then Dylan
saw it, came out and was like,
oh, you guys doing CrossFit? I was like, I'll take you through a workout. Do you want to train? Yep.
This is the throwback picture. And so I brought him into the green room. I had a medicine ball,
that medicine ball that I'm squatting right there, which for some reason we were doing wall balls.
We did a team series earlier and I had to do Karen Karen and then we were like, Oh, let's do some more wall balls. I was just like, ah, fuck it. Um,
so the workout was, he was going to do 75 squats for time, but every minute on the minute he had
to do five burpees. So the first round he did like 30 air squats. I'm like, Oh man, this might
not be a good enough workout. Had him squat down to the ball,
talked about mechanics, a couple of things.
All right, pull your chest up, drive your knees out,
same shit.
And then he does his five burpees.
And the next round he does like 17 squats,
does his burpees.
And the next round he does like six squats.
And it was just so quick and effective
for people that aren't doing full range of motion,
functional movements,
especially something as foundational as the air squat. And he, I mean, I think he finished like
seven, eight minutes, just wrecked laying down on the floor. Like, oh my gosh, but not a ton
of volume, but we got that little intensity dose for him. And then when he comes back to life,
45 minutes later, he was like, this is the best I've felt. The next day he talks to Mike.
He's like, we got to figure out how to get Connor out on the road with us.
Wow.
That's how it all started.
Wow.
Hey, that's the Glassman way, right?
You just got to get him to do one workout.
Mm-hmm.
You just got to get him to do one workout.
He must have been sore as shit.
I mean, it was 75 air squats.
I think he was sore, but I don't think he wasn't completely wrecked.
If I were to have him do 75 wall balls on his first workout,
he wouldn't be walking for the next week.
Right.
Do you know about, were you at Reebok before the Nano 2?
That's right. I went right before the Nano 2? That's right.
I went right after the Nano 2.
And do you know who the designer is of the Nano 2?
Probably one of many people.
It is.
It's one of many people.
What do you know about the Nano 2?
I'll tell you what I know about the Nano 2.
What do you know about the Nano 2?
I'll tell you what I know about the Nano 2.
Greatest shoe ever made.
Absurdly, absurdly durable.
I still think I have my original pair.
Yeah, absurd.
I had actually heard while we were working with them that they were actually concerned with how durable they are.
That it wasn't making them money because it was just lasting too fucking long um you could wash them you could do anything to them they were fucking nuts and the toe box you
might as well have not even had a toe box if like my toes are just like just free and free just free
first never could wear another pair of shoes i i still have i have probably i don't want
to tell you how many pair i have a closet full of nano 2s brand new in boxes well and i'm just
dying to know who how that happened how it stopped why it's not any of those it's not any of those guys who were at um uh noble is it i think so the
person who worked on the nano was one of the guys who went and started noble but on fucking real are
you serious i want to say that judson vancour uh was one of the guys who was working on the nano
i don't think tal was working on at the time but i don't know who those guys are i don't i don't know who they are by the way they did a lot of like design
stuff but okay uh the two guys that i still but they still work for reebok that do a lot of like
the you know there's like the creation and then there's the kind of like design piece and the
creation guys uh tommy piancentini who is just like he's just the best. You'd love this guy.
Father of two girls, just comes in, hits one workout a day, is unbelievably fit.
Beat me and Fran the last time we did it head to head.
He did like 13 Fran.
Wow.
Just a monster. Just puts into work one hour a day, lives the rest of his life.
Him and then Dan Hobson, who looks looks like professor x but the most jacked version of
professor x those guys were i think behind a lot of like the skeleton area of the shoe not
necessarily as much the design of it but i also and those and those guys are still there
tommy definitely is and i think dan if he isn't still recently left.
It's interesting because you have a shoe like the Nano, and I wanted them to do so much more with it.
It was pretty plain looking on the outside.
I wanted them to get fucking crazy with it. Right.
Just make it just full blown gangster and nobles kind of gone that way.
You know, they have all the outside different looks on the outside,
but,
but I mean,
for me,
it's not a wearable shoe.
Same,
same with the Metcon.
Like,
like for different reasons,
the Metcon is just,
just too narrow.
I just can't wear a narrow shoe.
I don't want my toes on top of each other.
Yeah.
I don't want my feet to fucking look like Lebron's have you ever seen lebron's feet
no bad oh my dude maybe that's the answer though dude i can't i can't dump from the freezer
destroyed his toes are so smashed together oh no oh no oh that's not that's his foot oh no that's not it that's not it
show me that's hey dude so my kids are always barefoot right but but they play but they play
tennis and and they and they wear tennis shoes special tennis shoes and they're so they're so fucking pointy at the front i am
blown away i can't that has to be photoshopped what's his pinky toe doing what it wants to do
it does not want to be there
oh my goodness and we're talking about just a superior athlete.
I don't know.
Okay.
Maybe we don't need to tell us.
Maybe that's the point that we can take away from this.
I don't like the direction you're taking it.
Hey, there's only one person's foot I've ever seen like that.
And there's only one LeBron James.
And so the correlate right now, 100% of the time, if you look like that, you're a superior athlete.
Science with Savon and Connor.
Look up Corvette.
I'm just fascinated by that shoe.
There's another brand of shoe named Victos.
They have a shoe called the Core One.
I've heard of those.
Say it again.
I've heard of those.
Haven't worn them, though.
Yeah.
The Core Two is kind of a disaster.
It's,
it's,
they,
it's so thick and mushy and it's,
it's just not,
but the core one,
but it's not nearly built as well as the nano two.
I can go through a pair of core ones.
Like I don't even wear shoes that often.
I can go through a pair of core ones in three months,
but man,
but yeah,
you see the toe box.
I mean,
it's the fucking nano too.
And I heard that basically just, they, I heard that they they ripped off the nano 2 that they actually took the nano 2 and
just rebuilt it but they got cool designs the designs are like cool they're tough looking yeah
i like that i usually keep i like the nano 2 so much i usually like keep yeah those are nice i just got some of
more of those the white ones i i would just i would just love to know like what the i just
would love to talk to someone extensively about the nano 2 how many they sold why they stopped
making it why they don't go back to it was it really the best shoe is it just me but i've never
heard any i don't hear anyone say anything bad about the nano too we can make that happen i'll set you up with with those guys and if it's not them they know
exactly who it was it was in charge of it and and all of that yeah i'd love to know all about it
i and i don't understand why everyone should be just making sure i mean there's people who like
the metcon but you can find tons of people who don't like me like my foot just doesn't fit in
there it just doesn't it's like regular size condoms they just don't work foot just doesn't fit in there. It just doesn't.
It's like regular size condoms.
They just don't work.
I just don't fit in there.
What's a condom?
Yeah, right.
Good answer.
They don't have it.
They don't sell those on St. Thomas.
Oh, I don't think so.
So tell me all the ventures you have.
You do the, you have your big night fitness. through that we have big night crossfit which is we have affiliated big night live which is
um this incredible music hall slash club so we run fitness events in there i'm also trying to
push for crossfit to do the final open announcement there. You have to see it. This place is beautiful.
What city?
In Boston.
Okay.
It's in the TD Garden.
Can you move it to another city?
No.
Okay.
No, you got to come back to Boston, Simone.
Okay.
All right.
Fine.
I'm going to get you out of California.
I cannot.
Well, I can leave California, but it's not not to go to Boston.
No, you're going to go to Idaho, huh?
Something.
It would be like I would never ask anyone who's trying to leave Boston to come to
California. Oh, I can't these, these fucking nut jobs. It's, um, the mute it's, it's amazing.
So we've affiliated that as a CrossFit gym. We run some benefits. We ran, we ran a CrossFit workout
to raise money for the Navy SEAL Foundation through the Boston Frogman Swim.
Oh, that's cool.
Yeah.
You're going to get canceled doing that shit there.
Oh, shit.
That's a dope venue.
So this is a few of our venues.
We have the Grand.
We have Memoir.
So we run all these fitness classes, and it's everything.
It is, you know, I could sit and talk about why CrossFit is more
effective and I can define fitness and I can do all that stuff that maybe not, maybe none of these
other fitness disciplines can, but if you're going to get 60 people, I've actually gotten,
we've had a hundred cycle spin bikes inside of a club and ran three sequential classes,
having 300 people go through there with just the
most energy going through, you know, in a nightclub, CO2, lights, everything. It's, it's fun.
It doesn't have to be as regimented as what I need everyone to do, but fuck, if someone's going to do
it, it might as well be us. So it's both. It's at night, it's a nightclub during the day. It's
CrossFit gym. Yeah. It's like this place is what we just got the numbers back.
It is the number four most tickets sold globally of any of any venue for a concert hall on
Polestar.
Number four.
Well, I mean, Big Night Entertainment Group, my sister company, it has their hand in everything.
They do everything really, really well.
They don't cut corners. They take care of their employees. They take care of that. And it leads
from the top, from the GMs of every venue. They have 18, soon to be 19, I think different night
life and restaurants in the Boston area. And they're just so well connected through
everyone and everything. It's, it's amazing. And so that's the... Go ahead.
No, no, you go ahead. Sorry.
So when they brought me on, why we even have this relationship is because I had done,
I had trained some of the DJs that come through their nightclubs. They were coming to Reebok
before going out to do the dinners and to do all of that stuff. And that's when Randy,
my business partner, the owner of Big Night Entertainment Group, co-owner with Ed Kane,
came out to Reebok. And then I've trained them. I've trained his son. I've trained their
DJs, our producer here, Hurley. We work out Tuesday, Thursday mornings here in our little
gym inside the office. And so that's how we got connected and started doing a
lot more actually offering to any of the artists that were coming into town. Like, Hey, if you want
a free outfit from Reebok and a free workout, we've got you covered. And a lot of people took
advantage of it. And then from that, um, throughout the, uh, throughout the lockdowns, when gyms,
when these boutique fitness studios weren't allowed to open because you didn't have 24 feet of space in between there. We also couldn't open club venues
because we didn't serve food or whatever the guidelines were at the time that we kind of
merged those two. And I was just, I actually only came up to help them discuss the idea.
And after about a four and a half hour meeting, they were like, Hey, Connor, like you're the guy
we want to run this.
Like, what do we have to do?
And I'm like, I'm in.
If I'm understanding right, I'm getting this vibe that there was this thing that Greg used to talk about.
Like, Hey, if your CrossFit gym is busy in the morning and busy at night, what are you doing there during the middle of the day?
Maybe you should find some use for it, whether it be AA meetings or running a SAT tutor program. But you should be doing something during the middle of the day maybe you should you know find some use for it whether it be aa meetings or running a sat tutor program but there's you should be doing something
with the space a chess club whatever something that you know a positive in this it's kind of
so these are venues that basically when there's not when they're not doing what they're supposed
to be doing you've turned them into health centers.
Yeah, it's fucking cool.
We do, even in some areas in our event space,
we do blood drives once a week there. They have it for private event spaces,
but do all sorts of things with it, utilize it.
And if someone can do it and run with it,
and these guys trust you,
they're like, you do what you think is best
and we'll support you there's something weird about crossfit i'll get your opinion on this
um people who do it are so fucking passionate about it they it's it's unbelievable it's
transformational to to their lives right and i always use the same the um running parallel to
it is people who have some
sort of religious awakening right people who find jesus or people who uh you know what i mean they
they change their diet to vegan and all of a sudden their their hemorrhoids clear up and so
like they've been torturing them their whole life there's crossfit has that effect on people. Then they misunderstand it and they try to monetize it. And no matter how hard
they try, it's just not that thing that makes you rich. So an example would be you get someone
like Matt O'Keefe and Reebok who does CrossFit, and if anyone could have done it,
it would have been Reebok, right? And all the employees there start to love it. So they get
indoctrinated and there's sort of this confusion that happens between doing what Greg Glassman
used to say, focus on excellence based on what Reebok's fiduciary duty is, which is to make
money. And I'll use even another example is Williamiam morris endeavor the people who own the ufc one of their vice presidents over there had gotten to crossfit
and they wanted to be involved with crossfit so fucking bad but
it's not it's not there you know what i mean it's like it's like trying to sell god he's not there
you know i mean the best you can do is sell some crosses and some bibles and uh you just see
that over and over people want to mix this passion they want to make a living doing it right um
whether to be a trainer or open an affiliate or um but it's not easy it's not a it's not easy. It's not it's not you're not selling fucking cigarettes.
Or Harley Davidson's or or you're selling something that's like really you can't grasp, it's not.
It's a trip, I don't know what my question is, but but you're in the business space and you must see that like all the time it's hard to promise people stuff around financial success around crossfit
because it is so it's like god right it's like shit it's some some sort of like a non-existent
perfect thing well what happens is that part of what you sell with crossfit is yourself
i can right right so sorry just to be clear on that people aren't people aren't going on tour
as great as crossfit is these artists would never work for you if it wasn't for connor murphy
they would people don't quit jobs they quit people and i don't i'm not i'm not just trying
to jerk you off and i know you don't want to brag but it's like they're they could have chosen from a thousand trainers right that
are great and they chose you okay and and it's that do the same methodology there's people that
have ran their affiliates that they own from the beginning and they coach their you know and they
can do they can deliver the same product i can it's just a matter of they're not going to be in that time or place or have experience in that. But with the monetization of it, I've ran my own private
training endeavor. I've charged whatever I've wanted to make as much as I can and have six or
seven clients a day. But at some point in time,
I can no longer duplicate my own product. And I think what happens is people and why there's
like the affiliate split model, why it happens so frequently is someone will open a gym and
they'll coach and then they'll have a head coach that then takes over everything. And then the gym
members are like, this is who I want. And so the coach sees,
you know, the owner being like, well, they're not, they're not providing the product that is
getting these people, but they're making the money off of it. So then they want to open their own
gym or the worst model is someone who just purchases an affiliate thinking that it's going
to be a fucking thing. You're going to make a bunch of money doing it being like, Oh, I'll just
hire coaches to work X amount. They'll run everything and I'll make a bunch of money. It's like, that's not how it happens. And, and CrossFit at its best
isn't going to get you rich. CrossFit at its best is going to get other people healthy.
And sure, we're, we're trying to find ways to, you know, expand it. But I don't think for me,
my idea is I'm going to see how much money I can make from
CrossFit. But instead it is, I want to get everyone to do it. I want every single person to improve
their quality of life through CrossFit and through understanding the definition of fitness and the
definition of CrossFit. From there, take with it what you will. If you know and understand the definition of fitness, what Glassman put forth in the article, What is Fitness
in 2001, if you can fully understand that, call it whatever you want. Call it whatever you want,
what you're doing, but get that message to other people. And I've found an avenue to expand beyond
the Boston area of just already CrossFitters, of people who are doing all
these different disciplines, as well as through a artist or celebrity, they can put it out there
more than I can. They can post about it and get other people interested in it. Dylan was telling
me after that post and him talking about how he wasn't drinking anymore and how he did a sober
tour. He had so many artists that were responding and reaching out to him being like, Hey, can we like chat about this? I want
to do this. I'm on tour right now. I feel like shit. This isn't going the way I want it to go.
But when, when people try to sell it, I always think when people try to like deliver this
package, it always just gets diluted. You're not really selling, you know, I don't know.
I don't think. Well, you just nailed, you know, I don't know. I don't think.
Well, you just nailed, you nailed it. People, people kind of have to come to you.
I don't know. I mean, we'd have to ask the Mormons. I don't know if the door to door model works. You kind of have to more like sit in your, in your church and just kind of like.
I have a close friend that, that, that really preaches it to you. And for you to be,
you have to be, be you have to be
or you have to be desperate like like you're not desperate that's the right word but you have to
be in a situation like like you're saying someone's on tour and they've they've all they do is in
their off time is drink and hit the vape pen and they're like fuck this sucks that's funny because
people fucking hit i don't understand it but people are vape penners like we already would
finish the workouts and like hit his vape pen like you know um i when i was in college i used to uh
work out and then smoke and i had some real concerns about that because i would figure that
probably it's worse than just regular smoking because all my lungs are fucking wide open.
Capillaries are fucking wide open.
Like the whole, I don't know what the biology is, but something was like, man, I'm really hitting the cigarette deep right now.
It's like I worked out and now I've set myself up for a real fucking bad case of fucking emphysema or lung cancer yeah the if uh if there's it is interesting that you go on tour with these
in an environment where there probably are vape pens and you um you're supposed to be a good
influence on them you really do not let those people be don't pick up any of their habits the
vape pen is the it's it's bad it is the most addictive thing i've ever fucked with i i've fucked with one before
it's not it's scary it's very scary do you ever smoke do you ever do any nicotine yeah chewing
tobacco yeah military yeah i um yeah i don't know there was just something nostalgic about it
it's super addictive i've yeah that's the thing with the vapen the nicotine's crazy
i cut it out when i was competing and then i remember we were running i used to run this about it. It's super addictive. I've yeah, that's the thing with the vape pen. The nicotine is crazy.
I cut it out when I was competing. And then I remember we were running, I used to run this training camp called the training grounds at Reebok. We would invite every person who qualified
as an individual to the CrossFit games to come out and train with us for like a two week or a
month period. I remember that. And I would bring in Chris Hinshaw. I would bring in, uh, Durante,
uh, Chad Vaughn, well-born Mike, Mark Bell. That was you who ran that? Yep. Austin tasked me with
creating the best training camp for these people and Reebok supported it. So yeah, I ran that camp.
Wow. I can't believe how much shit you've done with the support of you know a multi-billion
dollar company behind you but yeah that was i loved that and we still have great memories i
mean i still stay in touch with so many different people with with pat velner like the connections
that we that you make out there with you know every different athlete now so back to the story
i hadn't been chewing tobacco because I'm competing in 2017.
I made it to the games with Team Reebok CrossFit 1.
I just rode the coattails of Austin Maliolo and Spencer Hendel,
two people that were significantly fitter than me,
but either here nor there.
And Albert-Dominic LaRouche, ADL, the, uh, you know, the, the French Canadian Superman,
we, uh, this was, this was the team after me, but, um, he, he comes in from a road trip with
Paul Tremblay, who is just a fucking absolute beauty, uh, Albert Dominic LaRouche. And I think
one other Canadian and, and ADL just had a fat too. And, and I was like, Oh, maybe I can still
do this and train. And then I found out there are some other CrossFit athletes, high level
CrossFit athletes that every now and again, we'll pack a lip. And I'm like, Hey, maybe it's not so
bad all the time. And, uh, and then of course I was on a seminar and I was working with Joe
Westerlin and he's like, yeah, he's like a lot of people talk about the lip cancer from tobacco, but here's this book. And so, you know, I read the sugar blues
and it talked about how the sugar is actually more responsible for the cancers than a lot of the,
than the actual tobacco and the people that- God, that's an incredible book, by the way.
Anyone who hasn't read sugar blues, you have to read sugar blues. It's such an easy read.
Okay. Sorry. Go on. It will, it will, it will very much, it's such an easy read okay sorry go on it will it will it will very much
and it's super easy especially you know relative to a lot of the stuff that's on similar topics
but um but yeah so i still like every now and again they have these new little things called
zen packets they're just like nicotine pouches and every time that i'm you know i also do some
stuff in private security and so if i have to stay up all night, instead of chewing tobacco, I would try to put one of those in.
But it would just make me feel like shit.
So I'm just, yeah, I think I'm off it.
Yeah.
I fuck with those.
I tried those in things too.
I think they're so fucking addicting.
They're so addicting.
They're so addicting to where I'll put one in and be like, I feel like absolute shit.
And I'll take it out and I'll be like, well, I'm going to put another one in to see if it feels any better.
And like, it's not, it doesn't.
Dude, I have friends who wake up in the middle of the night and pack one.
Oh, no.
And then go back to sleep.
I feel like, I mean, I don't know.
That's crazy, dude.
I don't know if I have crazy dude. I don't know if I have an
addictive personality or not, but like I would get to that point and then culture, I would be like,
if this is how obsessed I am about something, I, uh, I just, I snap. I won't do it anymore.
Uh, yes, Bruce sugar blues. Great book, dude. Such a great book. Crazy. Blow your mind.
Great book, dude. Such a great book. Crazy. Blow your mind. Such, such, such a great book.
Connor, is there anything that I didn't go over that you want to go over that you were like, I really want to talk about this? I think just, just stressing in that people are afraid of the CrossFit crazies and the CrossFit
crazies are afraid of like the nightlife and partiers.
And I think these worlds don't have to be mutually exclusive.
I think that you don't have to, if you're like a nightlife and party person, or you
like to go to these shows or you're influenced by these people, know that there is a better
quality of life by just adding in constantly varied functional
movements, executed at high intensity, meats, vegetables, nuts, and seeds, some fruits,
little starch, no sugar. We know that. But sometimes it's a scary barrier to people
because they see the Matt Fraziers and they see the amount of super committed and dedicated people
to look like Greek gods. And it's like, that doesn't have to be you. If you can just start
to add this stuff in there, maybe at some point in time down the road, we get there. Maybe we don't.
But if you can see the influence that these people have, that they're doing it and making
posts on social media, being like, this is the best I've ever felt. You can add that stuff into
there. And so if you're like, Hey, I'm too far removed. Like I promise you, you're not go to your local affiliate, go to literally just Google CrossFit. If you don't like the gym,
that's there probably just go to one that's, that's the next closest one. And it will probably
be the opposite of what gym that you were just at. So, and you can just go take your iPad or
your phone and go to any, any fitness facility and just start feeling around in the dark.
I mean, that's how a lot of us started, right? Yeah. And I think there's definitely a more optimal way of doing it. But my first workout was ring dips and pistols. And I was like,
whoa, I can do this stuff. That's really cool. My second workout was Fran. I did it in 30 or
so minutes. And then my buddy Billy, I messaged him my time. I was like, nah, it wasn't that bad. He goes, no, no, you got to do it as fast as you can. Yeah. That my first time I did it, I,
I was probably 30 minutes. I did with someone else. I didn't know you were supposed to time it.
It killed me even in 30 minutes. I went, I was on base. I went back to my room and I was,
I drank like maybe a half, maybe like a quarter gallon of whole milk.
And like, I'm going to recover from my workout.
And he's like, no, go back to the gym right now and do it as fast as you can.
So I went back with my arms locked in this position with this fat bar that didn't rotate
with 95 pounds.
I did 21 unbroken thrusters.
Wow.
I did one pull up from the pull up rig and threw up milk all over the wreck.
Awesome.
I was like, yeah, this is that, that got me. And he's like,
yeah, maybe, maybe skip the milk next time and then we'll try it again. But yeah, definitely
more optimal ways of doing it, but fuck, I was addicted. I loved it. I used to watch Freddie
Camacho over at a one world CrossFit. He would work out and he had a beer cooler there and he
would drink a beer right after. And, and I used to trip on that.
I'm like,
wow,
how's that guy do that?
But as time went on through my CrossFit career,
there were many,
many times I bet you I've done.
I bet you I've drank during like what had people over watch the UFC fight at
my house.
People leave at 10 o'clock.
I've had,
you know,
five drinks and I go in the garage and work out just in you start with safe movements obviously i'm not fucking doing fran i'm not
putting a 95 pound bar but uh you know um uh 100 cows on the assault bike and then 10 burpees on
the minute every minute for 10 minutes and go to bed feeling fucking sober. Thank you. Yeah. There's no, and I just bring that up because
there's, there's no reason to be afraid. You have to do both. You have to fucking be exercising.
Life is so much better. I cannot imagine people who, do you ever trip on that? Do you ever wonder
what it would be like to, if you didn't exercise, it'd be so weird. I can't imagine. And what's,
what fucking kills me is that usually it's those people that need it the most that are just like, I'm too far gone.
And you're like, you're giving up?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
If you were to say, hey, Connor, you're going to live one more year with your current fitness level and you can make it the best year possible.
Or you're going to live the rest of your life sedentary.
You can't move or work out.
I'm taking one year.
Easy.
Hands down. No questions asked. Wow work out. I'm taking one year. Easy. Hands down.
No questions asked.
Wow.
Wow.
It's not for me.
Someone could become proficient enough to like in a couple of weeks,
even if like you're like stuck on the couch.
Have you ever had,
what's it?
What's the,
what's the,
have you ever had a client who's in like pretty hardcore decrepitude?
Like.
I had seven clients that have lost over 100 pounds holy shit wow so they come in and their their their vision of their burpee is to lean on the wall and then
push themselves back up and then by the time you're done with them they can lay on the ground
and get up by themselves yep yeah that's fucking fucking nuts. You must be so proud of that. Stuff well beyond that. That's the coolest shit I've ever done.
Unfortunately, that's not what people want to, you know, that's not what gets a hundred thousand
views on social media rather than some artist training, but that's fucking cool.
Like that, you know, giving people their life back is, is fucking awesome. And it has, and it's not,
I'm sorry, I don't want to say I've had
these clients. These are people who have come into the affiliates. Sometimes I've worked on
with a one-on-one basis. Sometimes they're just members of the gym and I get to be a part of
their fucking journey. And that is so fucking cool to think that you can give someone that,
like it's, it's fucking powerful and you don't need to be the world's best trainer.
You know, we talked about it before.
I know James just commented on here, but it is that it's the level one kernel.
You have enough in there just to get people to squat, deadlift and press.
And you can change their fucking life.
One workout and then they're taking a step in the right direction.
And they might feel the best they've ever felt.
And then you can continue that in the momentum.
But a lot of times the people have to, they have to hate themselves or hate their quality of life enough to go through
all the hate that it takes to change it, to go through the miserable days of waking up early,
to get that stuff, to just be so sick of living that lifestyle that they're willing to make
those sacrifices to change it. There's people who come to my house who can't walk in my backyard because they'll trip and fall.
They can only walk on, on paved areas.
Yeah.
You imagine.
Because they shuffle their feet.
No, I trip on that because, but I, but I do remember when, when I did, when I first started CrossFit and I started doing, being proficient at muscle ups.
first started crossfit and i started doing being proficient at muscle-ups then one day i was flying somewhere for to film something for crossfit and the flight got canceled and they took everyone
on the flight on buses to a hotel and we went to this hotel and um uh that hotel was booked so we
had to go to the hotel next door right so everyone's walking around this 10 foot high chain link fence.
And I would have never thought about climbing it.
And I'm like, fuck this.
I'm beating all those people to the next hotel.
So I don't have to wait in line at the lobby.
I threw my fucking luggage over the fence and climbed over the fence.
And that my whole world was different because of CrossFit.
I can't tell you how influential that was to me.
Like I saw the whole landscape. But imagine not being able to walk in someone's
backyard because you're going to trip over a dirt clod and fall down because you're so fucking out
of shape something that that glassman had the ability to do that i'm trying to work on is he
could be so fucking brutally honest to someone and say like you're gonna die before your time
you're overweight you're obese you're like your time. You're overweight. You're
obese. Your quality of life is shit. But then followed with, I can help that. I can help you
with that. If you're fucking sick of being embarrassed every time you get on a plane
because you know the person next to you is going to be pissed off because you're spilling over into
your seat, if you don't like that, I can help help you so it's not like they're making fun of someone it's not
like they're they're in there trying to like talk shit oh i'm better than you know that's not it but
if you're so sick of this i've got the cure i would see him do that hey that reminds me of something
else that you brought up earlier um the brutally honest thing i would be somewhere and there'd be a group of affiliates and an
affiliate would be like Greg don't you think that you should put restrictions on number of
affiliates and cities and Greg would be like well why would I do that and he goes well because
someone opened an affiliate down in the town or in the you know five blocks away from me
and all my clients left and went there and And Greg's like, well, that's because they hate you. And you just be like, oh, fuck. Just like, and everyone's like,
and it's kind of an interesting thing. You know, people don't leave jobs. They leave people,
right? They don't leave gyms. They leave people. And it's like, yeah, he, he could be brutally honest. He could be, he could be, but man, like, don't, don't start the story. Don't
open the door. If you're not willing to be around people who are brutally honest, you're, you're on
the L one team. And I try to convey this to people and I can't really, maybe you could shed some
light on it. The feedback, the the brutality it's not from some people
being on the l1 team would be or on the seminar staff at crossfit inc would be unbearable to them
because of this high level of feedback that you guys give each other right i mean it's like a
knife that's always sharpening itself right and it's it's from your friends it's from your friends. It's from like, from fucking James after like every like lecture.
And it's like,
Hey,
like when you said this whole rant,
like,
stop,
don't fucking say that you think it's cool,
but like there,
you know,
you're,
you're trying to give a lecture to impress the other level one trainers,
give the fucking material lecture.
And you're like,
yep,
you're right.
Got it.
And then good to go.
We go,
you know,
grab a beer together. We go get a workout together. I mean, it is like, you have to, you're right got it and then good to go we go you know grab a beer together we go get a workout together i mean it is like you have to you have to be humble was that hard when
you got on the l1 team just getting feedback after like you're like hey i hit that one out of the
park but you still get feedback that was hard and i was in the northeast as a trainer so the flow
masters are austin maliolo, James Hobart, Denise Thomas.
It's like three people I work with every day. I'm going to see them and coach class with them
at Reebok on Monday, yet we worked a seminar at Reebok over the weekend. And they hold true
to the message. There's been some Flowmasters I've worked with. They're like, hey, I thought
you did it. I thought this was a great job. And they're not afraid to give stylistic feedback to where if I gave a lecture verbatim and everything was good, it's like,
hey, here's some new things I want you to try to continually improve. And that's why I fell
in love with CrossFit. And that's why I fell in love with coaching because you never have it.
You're never good. Oh, got it. Now I have this degree. Now I'm a good coach.
It's like, no, you have to be humble and you have to be willing to take feedback and continue to learn in order to get better in order to be the best coach.
I thought I was the best coach in the world when I was coaching at St. Thomas. Why? Well,
because CrossFit's fucking effective. And if you do these things, even if you don't do them well,
your clients are still going to see really good results. Yeah. The, the level two or the, the coach's prep course at the time. And again, this was before I knew Austin James,
Eva Claire Sienkowski, Jen Hunter Marshall. And I was after day one, I was like, maybe I shouldn't
be coaching anymore. I don't know anything. It was another one of those moments that just,
instead of me taking it from my ego, it was all right. all right, I'm going to learn. I'm going to learn everything that these guys have to teach me on day two.
And then I'm going to take it back and I'm going to continue to learn. And then I took it back and
my clients, the members of the gym knew. It was actually Chris and Jen Erwin who were like,
you got to go take this course. And once that happened, there wasn't an amount of information that that i that i didn't want to read
or i didn't want to know you know it's like it's like the more you know the less the more you think
you know about something or the more you learn about something the less you realize you know
right and there's no amount of information that will have me satisfied on this and there's so
much information out there and you know clinical trials with things, people that you start programming one
way and you see how the results are, not just knowing you have it. And that's what drives me
nuts about a lot of the online programs, the people that are doing all the promotion, paid
promotion behind these. This is the best program. It's like, just take care of your clients. You
don't know everything. You know an effective way this has worked for some people but
be willing to learn because then if not and it doesn't work for them then it's their fault or
they were doing something wrong so people josh bridges takes the piss out of a lot of those
programs too he goes let's not forget guys at the end of the day we're all just selling crossfit
like he he really he really pounds that in he's really loyal to the, uh, to the brand, the methodology, to his roots.
Well, he's had, you know, he's another guy who had an incredible, you know, career in
the Navy and, and then he had to do something else and he found something that he's good
at.
He's dedicated his life to dedicate his life in multiple ways for, for competing.
And now with the programming and I mean, he's, he stayed doing it multiple ways for competing and now with the programming.
And I mean, he stayed doing it, gave him the ability to, it's like a second chance,
a second career, rather than only thinking you're pigeonholed into this.
I mean, it's life-changing stuff.
I wouldn't be here today if it wasn't for, I mean, we can go down as dark as you want
down that alley, but I would not be here today.
One, in the position that I'm in in so fucking fortunate to be where i am but it is because of
what i've been able to do with crossfit because of my passion because that level one because
following.com the articles the quotes that were on there it's like it got me sucked in
and it's what do you mean when you say that was stuff going to get really dark in your life before you found CrossFit? Like, what do you mean?
Like, were you suicidal or drugs or alcohol or unprotected sex?
I never used, we'll stick with the first ones. I never used drugs or alcohol. I'm not a big
drug person. I've never used alcohol as like a coping mechanism. It's always been fun for me.
never used alcohol as like a coping mechanism. It's always been fun for me. But when you,
when I wanted to be something so bad and it was taken away from me that I didn't think it deserved to be, I got to a point that. The Navy, you're talking about being special forces
in the Navy. Yep. And, and you do stuff and you have, you have your old instructors vouching for
you and other guys, you know, I just, unfortunately went to a funeral a couple months ago and met up with an old friend that
I served with.
And he's like, oh, we all know you'd be X, Y, Z.
You'd be this now and that.
And it was fucking hard because you dedicate yourself to something and then it doesn't
happen.
And it's like, hey, great.
You did all the stuff that you were supposed to do to get here, but fuck off.
And I didn't know what I was going to do from there. I made that my identity.
And I had to pivot. And at that level one, if those trainers would have been more standoffish
and not as caring. Spiel and Zach Forrest.
Zach, Nadia, Preston, Joshett dave castro showed up day two
during the day two workout kristin clever who had just won the games in 2010 uh just showed up to
hang out with some of the other people like it was it was cool and there was there was so much care
and it was more care than i had ever received from the navy and obviously you have your brotherhood
and you have everything brotherhood and you
have everything, the people that I still stay in touch with. I've helped other people train to go
through training, to go through buds that are now seals. I can still help with that. But if I didn't
have something I was good at and something I was passionate about, yeah, there was... I mean,
suicidal is a weird thing to talk about because I. Cause I was never like a, Hey,
I'm planning it out. But I was always like, Hey, if it all goes wrong, you know, if,
or if I don't find something or, you know, you get into these, like these like deep thought process
of, you know, if I didn't have my parents or I didn't have that, you know, it probably could
have been something I really considered, but it was, or, or, or maybe taking just abnormal risks. Yeah. Putting yourself in
situations. Yeah. It's like, fuck it. Fuck it. And you do have a little bit of that in you.
You, um, is it on one level, you're very sober person talking to you. Um, but there's also this um you're all or nothing guy all in yep i'm either in or i'm out yeah so
you don't want it to be something like uh you don't give a fuck because then you'll be all in
with i don't give a fuck right and i have been before yeah wow is your is your body on one of your um um
i'm not sure if i'm going to use the word favorite or best um tools to use
to help your clients by that i mean yeah wow okay i'll answer this question because
so many people fucking avoid it and they always
have this like politically correct i know i was trying to be safe asking thanks for fucking just
pulling the cork off my bullshit thank you do you need do you need to be fit to be an effective
trainer no but you fucking should be and if you are it's going to help you it's not going to not
help you the most successful trade it's going to open more doors to new clients it's going to open
more and you know people always talked about this with glassman being like well he doesn't do it The most successful trade, it's going to open more doors to new clients. It's going to open more.
People always talked about this with Glassman being like, well, he doesn't do it. And it's like,
there's a whole lot of other stuff going on there. But I'd be willing to bet right now,
CrossFit would be further in advance, more people doing it if Greg looked like Rich Froning.
If the product that he was pushing and selling, I think it would be further. I don't think it needs to be. And I fucking would never try to take away anything that
Glassman has done. The most revolutionary person in health and wellness and fitness that there's,
that there's been of our time. But if he was fitter, more people would be doing CrossFit.
And when, so you, and I, um, I really like being around people who just always have their shirts
off. There was that picture of you when you're with, um, I think it's loud and you're standing
there and you have your shirt off. Hanging out with rich is always cool. Cause he always has
a shirt off. I love that. That's the liver Kings thing. Just always have your shirt off. That was
the thing with Brendan Gillian. I don't know if you remember him from back in the day he's one of the ogs
at crossfit santa cruz he always had his shirt off um and dutch lowry always had his shirt off
remember him yeah dutch yeah and there's this thing about that that um
what i've talked about this endlessly but there's this thing that whenever I go somewhere,
like when I was in Newport beach, I probably drank more alcohol in those two weeks that I
was there than I drank in the previous year, but I always had my shirt off.
And so I was way more conscious about what I ate. I was way more health conscious. I was way more
dedicated to my working out. I was, and i think that those are kind of healthy
pressures and it's good to leverage your ego to stay on i think it's perfectly okay and smart to
leverage your ego to stay on the health track but also like that guy um the guy with the fro young
gravy is that his name the raw mcdonald cat that that dude sees your body and he then can be like okay i want to eat
like connor i want to do the movements that connor does i want to sleep like connor whatever recipe
he's doing to feed his robot i want to do that so my robot looks like that my avatar looks like that
and i think that's um i think it's brilliant. People are visual learners.
Even if I can give you the same thing that Glassman can give you, which is unbelievable definitions and life-changing things, some people, it's going to fall on deaf ears if
what they see is not what they want.
Again, I don't want this to come off as people thinking I'm saying anything negative about Coach Glassman, about Greg.
But if someone could just see, just like what you said, I had my shirt off training, and then he would take his shirt off.
And then he would ask me, what should I do for this workout?
What should I do here?
Now I'm a trusted source because what I've done to myself, it doesn't mean you have to
be, but it's going to be the most effective way it is. And then if you have the knowledge behind it
to add in there, that's the best recipe. Some people have one or the other, but it's the
trainers that have both that are going to be the most effective. Here's my cake. Look at it. Oh,
would you like a bite? Holy shit. It tastes as good as it looks.
Yeah.
You want to know how I made it?
Come on.
I'll show you.
Did you ever see any of your games athletes?
How many?
You competed at the games?
Yeah, as a team.
I competed as an individual at regionals three years in a row.
Never made it to the games as an individual.
And then 2017, we finished place uh as a team of games um did you ever see any of your um cohort um taking performance
enhancing drugs no never nope um did you did you do you think that there are that it's um
that performance enhancing drugs are being abused at the highest level. At the highest level in CrossFit?
Yeah.
Fuck.
I don't know.
I don't know either anymore.
I used to, did you used to want to say no and now you're, I don't know?
Well, no, I want to say it's still a no.
And here's the reason why I want to say it's a no.
Because the only time I think someone is on performance enhancing drugs is when they test positive for it. Because outside of that, I'll look at what someone is capable of and say,
that's not, you haven't worked hard enough for that. And a lot of these other people
that are competing at high levels, but maybe not the highest are saying, well, everyone's got to
be, you always see these comments on Instagram. Everyone's on it. When someone tests positive,
I'm like, no, I don't think everyone's on it.
I really don't.
And I,
I don't know that much about it.
I do know how fucking fit I got from where I was to where I am.
And if someone is getting like,
I don't think Matt Frazier has,
was on drugs at any point in time in his entire CrossFit career.
I don't,
I saw how hard it worked.
And I think I would be taking away from him by saying, well, it'd be really hard to get. That's
like, I don't fucking know. I don't know people's genetic potentials. I know his is better than mine.
I know he said he sold his soul to the assault bike every morning. And I know that you can't
find one in a million people to do that once a year. Do you know what I mean? Like you do that once and you're not,
you don't want to do that ever again.
Yeah.
And I think that,
I think he is genetically superior.
I think his body type is made to do well in this.
I also think that he moves better than everyone else.
I think that he has his medication.
He has the crazy switch off
whether it was finishing second two years in a row
to where he took every advantage that he could with diet, nutrition, training, and in order to get that fit.
Yeah, I would never try to take that away from him.
For what reason?
Just because he can do it and other people can't?
He can snatch 300 pounds and run a sub five minute mile and I can't?
That's why I'm going to do it?
I even wonder if you can, even if people test positive if they're guilty how about that chick in africa where they
had the did you did you follow that story at all um they put they put she tested positive for drugs
and they for the regional down there and the the note said, um, uh,
um,
I can't remember what it was,
but they referred to her as a,
he,
and they called her athlete number two.
And she wrote back,
I'm athlete number three. And I'm a girl.
That's not me.
Like I didn't,
I didn't,
but they're like,
Oh no,
sorry.
We said it wrong.
It actually still was your sample.
She's like,
fuck you.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
It's like, that was like what i mean yeah it's like
that was like the nate diaz what what happened with him you remember that when uh ufc was like
oh you've tested positive for banned substance and he was like fuck this fuck the ufc i've never
put any of these substances in my body like goes so hard bad back no and then it comes back that
it was in this vegan supplement there was something that isn't performance enhancing but does make you test positive for it oh shit it wasn't like the
oh i must have it must have been something he's like fuck it fuck everyone fuck the ufc i didn't
do this shit just but just awesome i think i do vaguely remember that it's weird in the ufc when
someone tests positive too it feels like it's not a big deal like it just kind of just like goes away how he may not
fight I remember when Sean Shirk tested positive
and then BJ Penn smashed him anyways
I don't remember that was
a little bit before I was into it
because that was when BJ Penn was doing
CrossFit yeah
uh fight gone bad right
mm-hmm made for BJ
Penn absolute
miserable workout.
Yeah, I did take my shirt off around Hiller and Hunter.
That probably wasn't good for me psychologically.
I appreciate you coming on, dude. This is probably obviously the most I've ever chatted with you.
It's really cool.
I really appreciate it, Siobhan.
Thanks for having me.
If you ever have questions or anyone listening to this has any just genuine questions about
training, CrossFit, private training, celebrity training, whatever it is, reach out to me.
I'm here to help.
I'm not just sure I would love to be wildly successful and have my company explode, but I'm here for,
if you want to help people and that's what your goal is, I'm here for it.
And where would the, at Connor, just DM you?
Yeah. DM me at Connor T. Murphy. Hurley, our producer just put on there,
Big Night Fitness at our Instagram as well, at Big Night Fitness, our YouTube channel. We have
a podcast. We bring people on YouTube channel, we have a podcast.
We bring people on.
We talk about stuff.
What's the name of the podcast?
At Big Night Fitness.
Or Big Night Fitness on Instagram.
And we get to interview some cool people.
It's just all around fitness.
And yeah, we're just, you know,
we found an avenue that we've found success in getting
people to train and getting people to move and we're going to keep going on this until until
the wheels fall off so what's what's your producer's name peter hurley peter hurley um
have you seen the other connor murphy on don't don't no no yes i've seen him that fuck oh why i watched two of
his videos yesterday i really enjoyed him you didn't you don't you're not a fan no i'm not a
fan because people will reach out to me thinking that i'm him i'm not the guy getting girls numbers
for taking my shirt off in santa pier. So this guy, so,
so quick story.
Do you remember the wad on the waves cruise?
Yeah.
I can't fucking believe you.
That was you too.
Yeah.
That was Austin and I,
that's my minority owners.
Oh,
it was,
it was one of the wildest experiences I've ever had in my entire life.
But this kid reaches as his kid,
Connor Murphy reaches out and he's like
hey i have this many million followers i'd love a spot on the ship like no you know and i'm i have
like it's my fucking instagram on the you know on the bottom of the waves and i was like no and then
one of our um one of the other partners and it was like well if he promotes it do you think it
could help for the future ones and i was just, I don't want this fucking kid on here. But I ended up being
like, it was like a week before I'm like, here's a promo code, do a YouTube review afterwards.
And we'll go from there. And then obviously our second cruise got shut down by the pandemic,
but that was the most, it was so fucking awesome. The entire pool deck lined
with rowers, skiers, assault bikes, the whole basketball court had dumbbells, kettlebells on it.
We had two pull-up rigs built on there. We had sandbags on the helipad, just classes going on
nonstop. And then in the afternoon, people were just having themselves a good time.
Any chance of a start? Is the pandemic. I think I saw Joe Biden
said the pandemic's over, even though more people are it's spreading faster and dying.
More people are dying than ever in New Zealand and Australia. Yes, I think it's funny. I just.
Is it over? Can you do cruises again? Well, I think we just need to make sure that people
want to go on the cruises. Right. Right. where it all started right remember that ship off the coast of japan
yes the pandemic is over holy shit have you seen this interview right here no don't watch it okay
i can't i just can't watch any of the political stuff anymore. I'm just saying I'm in my lane.
Good on you.
Good on you.
It just gets me too fired up.
So, so I wanted to go back to this Connor Murphy dude.
So the video I saw, I saw two videos he did yesterday.
One, he hung up a picture of himself shirtless at the gold's gym in Venice, which I thought was fucking pretty awesome.
Like, you know, next to like all the the like all these other famous posters yeah and and the yeah and the other thing i did see is he the videos are absurd but it's like just him talking to girls and then
he takes his shirt off yeah and then he like gets their numbers i mean you know what the guy's doing
his thing i don't want to i don't want to send a bunch of hate out there and you didn't it sounds like you did invite him yeah i gave him a free pass to come
on board and i saw him on there and was like oh but but he actually did come on the boat yeah
oh wow okay i thought maybe it got canceled and it didn't end up happening does he know that your
name is connor murphy too yes because I kept getting announced, um, as like, they wanted to keep pushing me as a CrossFit athlete. They were
like, well, no, you're not just because people really didn't know that Austin and I ran that,
that that was, that we were minority owners in that company along with, with Chris and Liz Browser,
who they were worked together now married. And then, um, and then then ed and zach it was all of us and austin and i ran
it from the top down programming equipment order logistics every single thing the difference in
the menu we brought ec sinkowski to come on and did uh did a full different menu because as opposed
to getting you know 9 000 pounds of flour for there was a lot it was a lot more protein heavy
and it was so we we, we did that
entire thing. And so, but they were like, Oh, people still like you as an athlete. I'm like,
no, one's going to go on the cruise because of me. Sure. I can coach a couple of good classes,
but I need to make sure that everyone else is going to be at their position at the right time.
And all the athletes had fun. Pat Velner was having a blast. He had just won Wadapalooza.
So he secured his spot to the
crossfit games so he at one point in time on the last night he we all went out to this like irish
pub we'd kind of gather around an area and then i would send out a message that went to everyone
who had the water on the waves app about where the athletes were and pat came out in like a shorts
and short sleeve romper like one piece and you're like're like him and Paul Tremblay were like dancing.
We were singing karaoke.
It was so much fun.
So there is a chance it could come back.
I think so.
We'll talk with the big man, the financial backing,
the majority owner, Chris Browser,
which Austin and I went down to his wedding last year.
And I think we have plans.
I just messaged him about coming up.
So we'll see.
I know with like big night stuff there,
you know, we had talked about it.
I just, logistics were such a nightmare on that thing.
Yeah, it sounds like it.
You're spread thin as shit too, right?
Oh yeah.
Yeah, I mean, I'm getting better
at not saying yes to everything.
It's just, I have a very tough time
uh saying no to things that may be potential opportunities which is also why i'm uh single
and no longer married so i just you know i'm trying to do it all and uh i'm i did not manage
it very well and so i'm trying to be better at that.
I think your thirties are your years to just fucking grind.
I just think,
I just,
I,
I sounds like you're doing everything right to me.
I,
yeah,
I, I,
I just put my head down and went from airport to airport with my camera from when I was 30 to when I was 40 and filmed and shot and did every fucking thing I can.
And it paid off in spades.
And you sound like you're doing everything right to me.
Trying to.
A lot of, I mean, sometimes the day-to-day stuff.
I think overall, just, you know, what's going on with this company, the amount of support that I have.
Even just in here, having
Hurley be here to any time that I'm going to interview someone. I went and trained one of
the artists that was in town. And I'm like, hey, do you want to come record a podcast? I'll message
Hurley. He'll get to the amount of support system that I have in order to continue to grow this and
to continue to spread the word of CrossFit with the seminars,
with Big Night CrossFit, and just highlight just movement in general.
I think as a company, our head is in the right place,
and we just got to keep going.
At every stage in my life, I wonder if you relate to this.
Sorry, I'm keeping you on long.
You got some minutes?
Yeah.
At every stage in my life, there was someone who wanted more security in in a partner of mine whether it was
a romantic or business they wanted more security than i was willing to than i wanted in my life
meaning they wanted to use the money to buy a house i wanted to use the money to buy a house. I wanted to use the money to buy more camera equipment so we could maybe buy four houses. You know, they wanted to settle down and have a kid and get a job with
health insurance. And I wanted to dig further into being an entrepreneur, make a bigger movie.
And everywhere along or even crazier, which I think is even more apropos, we would go somewhere and we would be there to work and we would only be there seven days and they would have scheduled five days of work and then two days of like hiking because we were in the Himalayas.
And I'd be like, nah, I'm working the whole time I'm fucking here.
Came here to fucking work.
And throughout my life, I lost all those people.
And throughout my life, I lost all those people.
Now, when I look back at them, Connor, and I'm 50, I have security, and they don't.
Right? So they settled for one house with one mortgage working the nine to five.
And I was like, fuck it.
I'm not going to get a house.
I'm not going to get a wife.
I'm not going to get a kid.
I'm just going to keep working and see what falls into place.
And now I have all that.
It came later than theirs, but I have more security, right?
They're still paying off their house.
And I've paid off almost all my houses.
they're still paying off their house and i've paid off almost all my houses it's it's a i i want to just i can't encourage you enough especially someone who's sober like you
you know sober by sober i mean like the sober clean mindset keep grinding just do it there's
and and that that um i'm all in attitude man you're a fucking winner like it's dope
makes me makes me want to go back
to being 30 again, talking to you. Usually I'm like, fuck that. I never want to be 30 again,
but yeah. It's it, there's been a couple opportunities, a lot of opportunities where
I feel people like, what do you do outside of work? I'm like, I've made work. We have made
work some of the funnest times that I can have,
whether I'm training, whether I'm coaching, whether I'm traveling for seminars, whether I'm on a
bus tour with a celebrity, whether I'm coming on a podcast, catching up with old friends,
doing a fucking cruise ship full of fitness things. It's like that you, to be able to mesh
those things together, make my work fun and make it sustainable for me. I don't need
the week vacation. Yeah. You're not compartmentalizing. Yeah. I want to work and I
fucking love it. And I love giving back. I love when people see results. I love when you get the
credit. I'll be selfish. I love the notoriety of someone being like, Connor's this trainer or,
or the, the, the most, you like, Connor's this trainer or whatever celebrities
are seeking out that trainer. Fuck yeah, I love that. I love that because there's been a lot of
hard work, been a lot of, I would say some luck, but more so I'm so fortunate to know the amount
of people that have been able to trust me and put me in these situations. I hate the word lucky. I
hate when people say you're so lucky. I'm very, I fucking hate,
but like the must be nice or you're so lucky.
It's like, this wasn't luck.
I didn't get this from luck.
Sure, I was fortunate,
but I utilize those situations
that I've worked hard to get there.
But don't call it lucky
because no one just dealt all these cards out
and here I am.
Oh yeah, I'm a managing partner of Big Night Fitness.
That's what I am. Oh yeah. I'm a managing partner of big night fitness. That's what I, that's what I won. I, uh, I, I, I have people very close to me who think
that I've gotten lucky. And it's like, dude, you for 12 years in a row, when we worked at that
place together, you went home for Christmas every year to be with your family.
I never did.
And I have a great family.
So I'm like, I was lucky, huh?
I was lucky, huh?
You fucking ding dong.
The two were, you know, it was just, I had almost like an hour and a half conversation with Hobart.
I called him when I was driving back from New York.
And we were talking about this.
We were talking about the lucky fortunate.
And the other word in the English dictionary that I hate more than anything is potential.
And because when someone, I mean, if someone says, oh, that person has potential, it's
like, yeah, they're not doing it.
It's essentially about being like, oh, they have the potential to do this. Well, I don't care about your potential.
I care about what you're doing. And that's also the difference between when the people that say
lucky are the people that probably have the potential, but just aren't doing it because
they don't realize that once you just do it, there's no more luck involved. There's no more
like you create your own. Sure. There's been situations that I've been put in because of, you know, whatever there is,
but, but when someone, I used to, people always would say that to me growing up,
a lot of potential, a lot of potential as an athlete, but I never, I never drove myself to
do it. I never drove myself to be committed to football, baseball, or basketball, or to my grades, or to this. Every teacher. Connor has a lot of potential. He just doesn't give a
shit. It's like, we'll stop and just start giving a shit so that no one has to say you have the
potential. You're just there. You have the end goal. Are you referencing when people say it
about themselves? About anyone. That person has potential or if someone because
i've heard it and it was almost like a comfort thing for me like oh i have the potential to be
good i have the potential to do well in school but i'm not oh okay i see someone uses that word
this this chick said to me one time um we had been going out a long time and we just broke up
i was i was homeless at the time. She was a college student.
She goes,
man,
you have such,
you have such fucking earning potential.
And I kind of liked that.
It stuck.
I was like,
Oh,
I'm gonna be rich.
I'm like,
I'm gonna hold onto that idea.
Yeah.
But at that point in time,
that's saying you're not right.
And it was,
and it was,
it was like,
you're such a dirt bag just living off me.
And then until you were able to, you know, put the car in gear and stop having potential and
just having it like, that's what you want. That person's successful. Not that person has the
potential to be successful. It's like, great. Everyone has fucking potential to do something
great. I just, it just bothers me. Bruceuce what about your 40s so this is the this is
the this is my perspective i went for whatever it's true but connor's in school right now
so basically and he's in school with a bunch of other people who are in school so lauva's in
school and i don't know how old dylan francis is but he's in school and they're all in school
and they're um they are uh they're they're just growing their banks of experience.
They're just piling in the fucking experiences.
Flying, driving, sitting, learning, studying, growing, creating.
And they're doing all of this.
And they're building this fucking massive repository that will be the PhD that is Connor Murphy.
So in your 20s, you get strong. And you're in your, so in your twenties, you get strong. Um, and,
and you, and you, and you, and you work through your insecurities and then in your thirties,
uh, you, you start using that and hopefully you start experiencing some bit of humility and
enlightenment and you put your head down and you grind. And that's when you're, everyone's in
school, you're with your cohort and you guys are building your bank. And then in your forties is
when you start using that equity of all the
shit you learn and you start like this mentor kind of phase for other people. So then it will be like
all the artists he's working with now will be all the shit they can learn. They start kind of,
you start passing it down. And I don't want to say you rest on your laurels. It's not that I'm
resting. It's just that I'm not building too much new new um i'm in a different phase of learning in my life i'm you start learning
about what it's like to get older instead of in sharing that more than like uh than grinding
like right now from the moment fucking connor wakes up to the moment he goes to bed he's learning
he's creating something new whether it's a a business, a new workout, a new client, a new relationship. And then slowly,
I think when you get to your forties, you start closing those doors, fewer relationships,
fewer and new endeavors. You get more focused on specifically what you want to do, but you're,
you start really, um, selling what, you know, as opposed to these guys are like carpenters.
selling what you know as opposed to these guys are like carpenters now they're building shit right they go to a venue and he's building bodies and someone else is building fans and
it's like that's the best i could kind of explain it you still grind in your 40s it's just different
it's it's a it's a more hopefully by then you've really put in the work so that you can, you can, I don't, I don't sway like now it's no big deal for Connor to swing a 40 pound
hammer. Like I have a two pound hammer. I just do this little tiny taps,
you know, my cohorts just doing, it's just different.
So I hope that explained it. Well, thank you.
So Vaughn, thank you so much for having me on here we've uh holy shit we've been on here for a while yeah do you have to pee no yeah me neither that's amazing no it's kind of crazy
no i bet hurley has to pee though i think we uh look caleb says he has to pee
these guys have been staying hydrated i've just been over here just yapping it up
okay well we have each other's number uh you can text me anytime i don't sleep next to my phone
24 hours a day likewise brother text me anytime thanks again for having me on here and uh
yeah we'll follow up soon and we'll awesome again just grateful thanks brother yeah and if there's any endeavors that
you're starting you want to come on and talk about them i won't keep you on for 2 hours and
40 minutes you're always welcome to come on for 10 15 minutes and just shoot the shit beautiful
i'll take you up on it thanks ciao
you know when he's so mellow it made me feel like i was hyperactive
yeah it was pretty chill very measured yeah
cool dude though yeah very cool uh i'm 46 and hustling harder than i ever have wasted too much
time in past years word you demand and i love everything you do for me and thank you for being
so supportive of the podcast vindicate also has a new female sweatshirt that's fucking dope a ceo one
excuse me you're getting it caleb yep and then we'll go p uh Guys, in 24 minutes, I'll be coming back on.
Oh, there it is.
Yeah, that's super cool.
I really like that.
Oh, my God.
Oh, my goodness.
Hey, Travis, can we send one of those to Danielle Brandon?
God, she would look so hot in that.
If Danielle's only a seven now with that on, she'd be an 11.
Wonder if I could pull that off
take no that if you put that you're you're a nine now if you put that on to make you a seven
it's weird how it would work that way it would invert you and fuck you up Oh, awesome, Heidi. Thank you.
Heidi said she got one. So cute.
Travis, text me if you don't.
Will you text me and remind me to send I'll text her and get her info.
OK.
All right, so I'll see you guys in 23 minutes.
It'll be I think it'll be a short show.
We're going to go on with Devin Lorette.
He was over at ADCC.
Devin Lorette's one of the best arm wrestlers who's ever lived on the planet,
been on the show.
I hear he's exploding on TikTok.
We'll just sort of catch up with him.
Are you around for that one, Caleb?
No, I won't be able to do that one.
Someone's going to be being operated on in that room?
Yeah.
All right. All right, guys. be able to do that one okay someone's gonna be being operated on in that room yeah all right all right guys uh we will see you uh in 22 minutes or whatever that is 10 a.m pacific
standard time and then also again tomorrow do you know who we have on tomorrow
i don't remember i was really i was really proud that i pulled out that picture with
mad o'toole that I got to flex.
Live call on show tomorrow.
Oh, okay.
Tomorrow's going to be wild.
Maybe I'll invite James Hobart and Caden to do the news tomorrow.
Maybe.
That'd be dope.
Just kidding.