The Sevan Podcast - #736 - CrossFit Affiliate Series | Trish Evangelista of Babylon CrossFit

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Support the showPartners:https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATIONhttps://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK!https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

bam we're live we did it holy cow i was a wreck this morning i don't know i don't know why how are you this morning great i had a police officer at my house at 4 a.m oh your story tops mine mine's just mine's just i think i took too many vitamins what happened what happened we have uh i live on the water and uh you live where on the water, like in the, um, like so I'm on long Island and my house is physically on a canal. You heard that too, Caleb. It's good shit, huh? My accent. Oh, you guys live in a different, we live in different countries. We live in different countries. Don't get this twisted people. Okay, go on.

So you're by the H2O we'll call it H2O. H2O. Yeah. Um, and our neighbor had a dog who has been a nuisance for quite a few mornings and I have a toddler at home and sleep is limited as it is. And this person chooses to leave their dog out from 4am to 7am. Just continuous barking. Oh no. Today was the last straw because my husband's away and yeah this podcast that i was excited slash nervous for yeah yeah me too sleep was like okay

already minimal and the last thing i wanted was a dog waking me up so i had my last straw today and did they and did they knock on the door and be like hey can you ask your dog to be quiet yeah well that the police officer was like i'm not can you ask your dog to be quiet? Yeah. Well, the police officer was like, I'm not sure what you want me to do. And I was like, truthfully, I've written them a letter. I wrote them a letter like anonymously. And I was like, as a neighbor to neighbor, like, please help me out. Please just stop your dog barking. And then I just called the local precinct and the woman came out and she's

like, I don't think it's on your block. And I was like, no, ma'am. I was like, come in my backyard. I was like, I know exactly what house it is and the whole thing so she just knocked on the door they didn't answer so she left me like a note in my mailbox telling me that she left him a note saying like you know just out of respect if you can be more cautious of it and whatnot so i'll do it again myself like i said to my husband i was like i'll go over there this weekend knock on the door and be like please just help hey i think they're gone to work and they left their dog outside i think he's a chef this is the story i've built in my head i think he's a chef in

manhattan yes yes then he comes home and it's around like three o'clock four o'clock after the kitchen's closed and cleaned up he goes in the shower and leaves the dog outside when he's in the shower getting ready for bed because it's i'm not a big fan of medicinal marijuana use like i think it's just an excuse to do drugs but that dog could use the medibles just give it to him just fucking give it um you know someone uh i i i went on a trip one time to actually into new york city driving across the country and i left my three great Danes with a friend of mine, and they were barking so crazy that a neighbor told him, hey, if I hear those dogs bark again, I'll kill them. Yeah, well, that's kind of the point I'm at. Don't do it.

Yeah, that sucks. Tough morning. Yeah, that sorry you're gonna throw up from vitamins i just didn't i just my stomach was tossing and turning a little bit this morning so i what i just had another cup of coffee just just so stupid um what uh how can someone put their dog outside in new york right now isn't like i just saw a piece i just did a piece on a guy in buffalo who was saving people who were trapped in their cars because it's so cold isn't it so cold there the dog would die or now it's warm so that that was what the police officer suggested to me the police officer said that the next time it's cold to call like animal protective services because you know i have all this extra time in my hand to do all

these things right um how many kids How many kids? How many kids? Just one. Just one. Thank God. Right now, one. How many husbands? One. One husband.

And one gym. And one gym. Thankfully. Yeah. Babylon CrossFit. That's the fam. There he is. Where's your husband?

So my husband works in sales for a company called Celsius, and he is currently, I think he's in Connecticut today. Huge hit out here, Celsius. What do they sell? Crazy energy drinks. Oh, oh. It's like bang, I guess, but it's like the only thing we can get out here. Does it say creatine along the top of the,

that's the only reason why I ever drank a bang i'm a sucker for that word creatine if i just see it i think i'm gonna get buff and fit where are you located that that's the only thing that you say i'm in i'm deployed so that's we just have a bunch of like that's what we get we get rippets and celsius hey is that drink carbonated uh trish they have carbonated and non-carbonated and is it the same company that owns o2 it's not no okay because i can't do in my affiliate the only two beverages i carry are celsius and o2 yeah i can't do o2 at all i i um because there's no carbonation i'm avoiding carbonation know, in the last six months, I sound like someone got into my head that it like gives you osteoporosis or some shit, but, but, um, I can't do a, I just couldn't do it. Cause it wasn't, uh, I've been, I, I will drink Fide that I don't even

like the taste of it tastes like cough syrup just cause I love their carbonation. Yeah. I love Fide too, but Celsius is carbonated celsius carbonated and carbonated yeah yeah this morning i should have had one of those behind a glass break in case of emergency and that's like two cups of coffee it is yeah so it's like extra caffeine for you i'm uh i've really tried to reduce do you drink when's the last time you drink caffeine in the day me yeah like do you have a time like four o'clock shit i better drink one at 358 i can't have anything like after one o'clock i see my coaches drinking like a celsius at 4 p.m and i'm like what are you doing like how are you gonna go to bed at night because for me if i do

it after 12 or 1 i'm like super sensitive to it i had one cup of coffee today and i won't when i'm after this call i won't have anything else because I won't be able to go to bed at night. How was it always like that for you? Or as you get older, that happens. Or as you had a kid, I got older. And as I had a kid, cause I never was pre-baby. The only caffeine I ever had was a pre-workout. Like I would have my pre-workout before workout. And I really, that's actually sort of a lie. Cause I worked for a coffee company. I really didn't have caffeine until I worked for a coffee company before my pregnancy. So, but after I never felt the need for it or anything that until I became a parent and it just, yeah. What a great, yeah. I think I've never read anything about this,

any literature on it or anything. I don't know. I'd be curious to get your opinion on it. But I think when a woman gets pregnant, her body kind of goes into an auto detox mode. Yeah. I mean, and then when they come to the other side, they're more sensitive about everything. Like, yeah, I think it's a case by case situation, but the one, I mean, I deal with a lot of pregnant moms and one of the things that's hardest for them is like the first conversation we have is the cup of coffee. Yeah. You have coffee when you were pregnant. And I was like, well, I didn't crave it. Cause I wasn't really drinking it before. I was like, so I understand. I think it's definitely different for everybody. I think the more you can withdraw it going back after

post baby and your postpartum journey, like try to push it off. But it's so hard to say when, if you're doing all the things, if you're breastfeeding and you're doing all the wake ups and things like that, you, you, you just take whatever someone will give you. and you're doing all the wake-ups and things like that, you just take whatever someone will give you with caffeine in it. Yeah. I think that if you have to – my opinion, if I were a baby, I wouldn't want my mama to drink alcohol or caffeine because I think that stuff goes right to the boobies and then the –

Oh, when you're breastfeeding? Absolutely. Yeah. I've actually seen a drunk woman breastfeeding and then her telling me, oh, this is fucked. And I go, why? And she goes, look, I can see something, something, my baby's different. own thing that it's in our blood and in our, in our breast milk. Uh, and they encourage us to breastfeed because of how much they get from our breast milk. So I agree with you. I think there's a certain rationale to drinking anything when we're eating, not even just drinking and eating. There's certain things that you can eat in your breast milk that will set off your baby as well. Like my sister couldn't have garlic because the baby, you know, indigestion or whatever it was. So she had to eliminate garlic

from her diet so it's not just what we drink but our food too um my wife uh onions all of a sudden bugged her and she was a full-blown vegetarian she was disgusted by meat and soon as she got pregnant i swear we went to a hamburger place she didn't even say anything to me she ordered a hamburger and just devoured the whole thing and it just became and she never has gone back i mean she's reduced her meat since she after you know having three kids and babies but she became like a mad carnivore when she was pregnant it was so weird because years i saw her as a vegetarian yeah craving it yeah so crazy craving it still can't stand bacon which is weird i know i'm trying to stop i'm trying to stop bacon too i'm trying to avoid processed meats so hard though bacon bacon's like the hardest to like even just trying even with turkey bacon

trying to replace it with that it's just never the same oh yeah i will if i never had turkey bacon again i'd be okay please don't tell me they did that to you overseas. Yeah. Oh, God. Turkey bacon, turkey sausage. Oh, God. I literally want to vomit every morning. It's disgusting. I try to make bacon the treat for just when I go out.

I love bacon. Yeah, it is good. It is good. How old are you? 34. Oh, you're still young. I found Cross are you 34 oh you're still young i found crossfit at 34 34 what i just turned 34 happy birthday thank you and crossfit babylon just moved to its new location on may 2nd 2022 congratulations thank you i i say that again big things i i watched your interview um uh not with jason ackerman but

with his sidekick and then the other guy the guy who looks european yeah marcus and fern and i i was so they said something to you or you said something about it being a pain to move and i was so glad to hear that because every time someone says they move their gym or they have to move their gym like my the executive producer of the show, Matt Sousa is like contemplating, maybe moving his gym a few blocks. And that shit gives me anxiety. And when you said that was hard, I was like, Oh, I'm so glad to hear someone say that the thought of moving, moving a gym or a house makes me want to vomit. Disgusting. It was one of the worst experiences of my life. I say it, you know, and I was, I only moved 800,000 meters down the road.

Imagine, like, I imagine that if it was further, like how much more of a process it could have been. We were like lucky that it was so close because we were able to use like multiple trucks and go back and forth. But it was, I'm terrified for seven years. Like what happens in seven years if I can't buy my building or, you know, what, where do we go next? Or can I not renew my lease? You know, you hear all the nightmare stories of people with the affiliate owners trying to renew and their landlord just tell them the night before, like it's no longer possible kind of thing.

So I have that thought process in my head already about in seven years, like what's going to happen. What, um, what city in New York are you? Babylon. Oh, that's the name of the city. Okay. Oh, Hey, was it hard getting that name? I know CrossFit sometimes doesn't want to give a city names if the cities are too big. I didn't actually acquire the affiliate name. So there were two previous affiliate owners before me. So when I purchased the affiliate from the second owner, he had already had it named. So I didn't have any issues with it. Um, I truthfully, I don't know, like the, I don't know,

like the population of Babylon and, and those numbers, but I mean, we're big, but we're not huge that I would foresee it being an issue. Cause it's just like, it's a city within a county, right? If we would have named it like Suffolk CrossFit, they might've given me a hard time, but because it's smaller, maybe that's why they didn't have an issue with it. Where is it in New York? Like I know New York city. So there's New York, there's New York city, right? We're probably like an hour, just an hour train ride outside of Manhattan on an express train. So we're one of the main portals for the Long Island railroad. We're actually hosting an L2 this weekend with CrossFit. Wow. Congrats. that's awesome they like gave us the approval is because people can come straight out from the city and come right on the train from the long island railroad car ride depending on

the day depending on the hour could be anywhere from an hour to three hours right right right you could be three miles outside the city and you're two hours away yeah um is that the can you pull out a little bit more caleb is that the atlantic ocean or is that a bay that's the bay so like actually like where caleb just was like if you zoom in even more like on that borderline is you could literally zoom into my house and see what canal i'm on but like is that can you go to a beach there is that is that coastline right there can you go to a beach and get in your bathing suit and throw a frisbee yeah if you go on the the babble and cross we did a beach there? Is that, is that coastline right there? Can you go to a beach and get in your bathing suit and throw a Frisbee? Yeah. If you go on the, the Babylon CrossFit, we did a beach wad and we had probably like 80 to 120 people come this summer and it was wild.

I saw that. Yeah. previous year on the beach pod to this year's because it was like that picture tripled in size and it was like a last minute effort like hey guys we're gonna do the beach pod this weekend if you're free bring your kids and family down and everyone showed up and they came at like 7 a.m we worked out for literally maybe 10 minutes had food beers hung out and then everyone went off and did their own thing for the day they stayed at the beach some people went to parties whatever it was when you buy so you're the third what are they called loa license of affiliate or something lor license of register or something yeah that picture makes me so proud yeah it's cool yeah yeah that's a great beach yeah we're lucky we're very and then the whole community all summer tuesday wednesday thursday night they're all on that beach playing volleyball together oh that's cool yeah so sport of fitness yeah a hard a hard sport underrated sport uh beach volleyball that'll that'll work

you yeah and it's a lot you know it's some of it there's very competitive players and and they all even the five ammers they'll go 5am class beach volleyball from five to nine p.m and they're at that five am class the next day they live for how old's your kid he's two so you could bring him to that event kind of if you have someone with eyeballs on them yeah i did bring him actually and i don't think my husband came i kind of and i didn't have eyeballs on him the community did so your husband just travels like crazy for your job for his job yeah recently they got acquired by pepsi in august um so is that a good thing this sounds like a great thing the travel's been wild um but we're managing it you know i i built the affiliate that i can bring jayden with me so like last night i did an onboarding session in the gym and i had him in the kids room I have a

baby monitor I just keep the baby monitor on I have a few members check on him every once in a while and I'm good to go I built the gym so I could bring my kid with me I freaking love that what does that mean what does that look like so when we move well my old affiliate when I first took over there was an office and right away before I was even pregnant, just seeing parents like struggle coming in and out. That was my main priority was to convert that to a kid's room. So I have a painter who's a member. He helped me redo the room. We ripped it apart. Then we asked members to just donate whatever toys they were getting rid of. I bought like one of the alphabet maps and a cheap couch from Amazon. And then my father-in-law, my father-in-law built a

mirror in the window of the office so we could see the kids in and out. That was at the old location. So I probably invested like a minimal, like, I don't know, $3,000, $5,000 with the help of family and friends. But that was a main priority for me. And then we put just a baby gate. So there's a door, the gate stays open, we can see them through the mirror. The kids can see us in and out of the gate. If mom and dad want to stay in that back room, they were able to stay in that back room and work out. Or I can just go check on them every once in a while to make sure the kids didn't need anything. So then when we moved locations, there was, I'm subleasing my building now. And a part of like the negotiations was like, the guy didn't want to give me the office because he was renting it to a chiropractor. And I was like, you don't understand, like,

that's a main part of my business. I need something for the children. Like in my whole head, that whole office was going to be the kid's room. We also have like a loft area on top of the facility, but it just didn't seem safe. And I wouldn't want my kid up there. So situation. So then we negotiated, he wouldn't rent me the space without the office. So I told him, I was like, that's kind of like a break, you know, deal or no deal for me. Um, and it was a fight, but we got it. He, he decided to move the chiropractor into his business. And now we have that specific office that we built a wall in between that split for me and my coaches, like just a little private space for us for meetings and things like that. And then on the other side of it is the kids room. There's a TV

in there with Disney plus, uh, so the kids can put on whatever they want. Cool. Keep like minimal toys in there. Just try to keep them a comfortable space. And like I said, I have the baby monitor was the great idea because now we could just watch them and bring the baby monitor on the floor and you can either give it to the coach or you can watch them yourself, whatever works. Uh, the gym that, uh, my wife used to go to here in town, a great gym, uh, CrossFit Aptos, it had a baby area and people used it like crazy. People loved it. I mean, it was the difference between people going and not going. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the same conversation I have with all the moms. Like, like, how do you look as good as you do? Like, I didn't give myself any excuse not to get here. That's the thing. Like, it's not easy to do it for anybody. It's just you got to figure out the right way to do it or the right supportive people to do it. And that was my thing. My main thing with the gym was like, I have to give myself a space that I can return back to where I want to be personally. Right. like i i have to give myself a space that i can return back to where i want to be personally right i can't do it the gym owner then how can i expect a member to be able to do it or

brandon waddell i can remember going for a run at my crossfit gym coming back when my gym was at my home a member was standing there rocking my daughter back to sleep with a bottle because she woke up that's the crossfit community hell yeah brandon yeah that's a great story um and if you don't there's really only two ways you don't want people to start hating the kids and that can happen if you don't have the kids they'll start hating the parents that let their kids run around or interfere with the workout or shit like that so if you have a place for them then it's a then it's uh it's it's a positive yeah it's hard and it's you know you want to be sensitive to how you handle it. Even with the kids, we still have our struggles with a kid that gets out

or a kid that's screaming, whatever it is. There are certain things you can't navigate, but just giving them that option, it makes it so much easier, I think. I just remember coaching and always having kids on the floor. And instead of watching the room, I was worried about the kid in the corner and I was taking away from the member experience and things like that. So like everything that I struggled as a coach, I try to remember as an affiliate owner. And I always try to incorporate that into my business. When, when you, um, when you purchased this gym, uh, Babylon CrossFit,

what happened to the name of your other gym? What happened to the name of your other gym? It's kind of like a – so it was CrossFit 231. Okay. My affiliate was originally CrossFit 231. It was owned by a woman, Chris Hartigan, who's still a part of my affiliate. She had gone through, I think, about five years of ownership and then chose to take a different path in life and do something else. So she sold the affiliate to another affiliate owner who still has an existing

affiliate. It was the owner of Bayport CrossFit. So Mike, who owns Bayport CrossFit, took over 231 CrossFit. He did a ton of construction and things like that. Bayport and Babylon are probably about 30 to 40 minutes away. When he took over at that point, I wasn't really, I was in and out of the affiliate. I was still helping Chris coach a little bit. But at that point, I was trying to make money for my wedding. So I was coaching at another affiliate that was paying coaches. And that's kind of like where I really like built my path a little bit, I think more as a coach at Islip CrossFit. And then when I was at Islip, I just kept checking in with Mike. Mike

wanted me to kind of work for him full time. But at that point, no one believed that there was money. At least I didn't believe there was money in CrossFit. And I didn't want to work for someone. I didn't want to do someone else's business because that's essentially what I was doing at iSlip already. I wasn't there. I wasn't an owner, but I was doing all the onboarding. I was dealing with all the new members. I was doing all their selling. I was closing all the deals.

And I didn't want to do that again for someone else. So I just mentioned it to Mike. I was like, listen, I wasn't in the place to buy the affiliate from Chris because my husband and I were getting married. I said, our wedding's over. If there's any chance you would ever sell, I'm very interested in having a conversation about it. And I'd love the opportunity to buy the affiliate. At that point, he was like, I'm not doing that. I just put in a lot of money, blah, blah, blah, whatever it was. And then conversations back and forth. And I'll never forget the text message. I was on an Amtrak headed to Washington DC for my old company.

And he texted me and he's like, fine. He's like, I'll do the deal. And I remember calling my husband and be like, holy shit. Like, can I really do this? And the name of that gym and the name of that gym at that time was isolate CrossFit. It switched from two, three, one to isolate. No. So it's CrossFit two 31 switch from Babylon CrossFit. I was actively coaching at isolate CrossFit as their. Okay. Okay. Okay. That's why it's like kind of a confusing story. Um, and so when you, let me see if I understood it correctly. So when you were there, it was CrossFit two 31 and you had no issue. You changed CrossFit two 31 into Babylon CrossFit. Mike did that the in-between owner.

on CrossFit? Mike did that. The in-between owner. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. Wow. And wow, that's smart. I wonder, and how long did it take before you made the first offer to where he sold it to you? It was probably like three weeks. And he had to, that was his second gym. So he still has a gym. He still has a gym. Yeah. And, um, do you do you know the the the original owner that opened Babylon CrossFit what year was that uh 2014 wow okay so that gym's been around for a while yeah so I think this year's our ninth year ninth year as an affiliate or eighth year I can't do math and uh yeah eighth or ninth year and ninth year and when um so you buy this gym and uh that you but but then that guy sells it sorry so that guy sells it in 2014 what year does he sell it and why does he sell it yeah so chris sold chris is a woman she's again she's one of my members still so she sold

it to mike who's the owner of bayport cross oh now i'm getting it wanted to go through a different angle in life she was sorry no no it's okay again it's confusing like who's the owner of Bayport CrossFit. Oh, now I'm getting it. Chris wanted to go through a different angle in life. She was- Sorry. No, no, no. It's okay. Again, it's confusing. There's a lot of overlap. I was a part of like 10 affiliates.

It's only going to get more confusing as our conversation gets deeper. But she decided to do a different path. She sold it to Mike, and then I purchased it from Mike, who's the current owner of Bayport CrossFit. And that was in October of 2019 that was well it was actually September 2019 legally I was in Berlin the day we closed on the business legally so that's just prior and were you pregnant at that time no I got pregnant in November okay so you're that that's the part of the story. That's so intense. You, you bought a gym,

you got pregnant and then, uh, it was, people started asking gyms to close down. Yep. What a ride. What a ride. Did you, when, when, when the, all the COVID restrictions started coming up, did you think, Oh shit, I'm going to lose my gym. I didn't think it was going gonna be as long as it was i don't think any of us did um right two weeks two weeks flatten the curve two weeks yeah two yeah that's what it was it was like and the drama that like came with it from all angles like gyms yeah earlier you were still trying to operate look i'm gonna cry um if ackerman's on here watching this he's gonna make fun of me immediately for just for crying in the first 20 minutes.

No, it's intense, man. It's your baby. Yeah. So when we first closed down in that first two weeks, like the buildup to that alone, because people, you remember, like people started closing the affiliates a little bit earlier before the government told them because one person got COVID and whatever the spike was. So it was a very intense buildup. And then like, we didn't know how long it was going to be. It was like two weeks, then it was a month. And it was like, it was very hard to plan for what was happening. And I think when we got to like the, it was probably the month that, that April month marking that like

one month in, I had lost my job too. So I had- Why did you lose your job? So I had a full-time sales job for a coffee company. And this is the funny part, that this guy founded his company based on his pregnant wife. And I worked for him and they laid their whole sales force off. So anybody who was like street sales

or a district manager or a territory manager was laid off at one time. We all got on a call with HR on like a Monday morning and they let us all go at the same time. So that was our health insurance too. So during my gym shutting down, my husband and I lost our health insurance. At this point, my husband didn't work for Celsius. He owned his own business that we had to claim essentially bankruptcy on because of COVID.

And so that way I could do the gym and he could get a full-time job with health insurance. Wow. That's a lot of moving pieces. Yeah, it's a lot. God, that's impressive that you came out so well. That is, that is crazy impressive. It's really wild. I get stressed if two bills come in the mail on the same day.

I had a lot of support, a lot of conversations. And again, like I, when I look back on what we did, so I'll tell you like kind of what we did during the COVID shutdown. I think when we realized at that monthly part that like, we didn't know how long this was going to be. We were just getting jerked around. No one knew the real timeline. We were like, we have to come up with a plan to survive at this point. Like, cause if not, you know, we had no money in the bank. We just started. There were minimal agreements. Like, you know, it's that typical, when you buy an affiliate, you're really just buying the equipment unless you have an actual business plan. So there were no membership agree. It barely gave me time to like get membership agreements

into place, change rates, do anything, build any type of community. Um, so when it happened, I literally took it. My, I took it, my rent, I took out my bills and I was like, these are the bills I have to pay. Um, this is the money I need to make. This is the amount of people that I have available in Babylon right now, knowing that people were going to struggle. And I didn't think of this plan on my own. I had two friends that really kind of saved my day here. And he was an affiliate owner previously. So like he knew the numbers to look at. So he was like, take those numbers, figure out what that number looks like. Assume that 25% of the people that you're accounting for aren't going to be able to pay it, that they lost their jobs. They're not whatever, they're going through COVID, they got to save money, whatever it is.

Because knowing that everyone at that point is struggling, right? Like, yes, they all want to support you because they want your doors to reopen. But I'm not the only one struggling. Everyone had their own. Right. Everyone else is losing their jobs and having their businesses closed. And yeah. So it's like, you know, it was a very sensitive time for everybody.

So we came up with this number, which was $60 or $65 a month. And with that, they were able to rent a piece of equipment that could be a barbell, a kettlebell, a dumbbell. They could run plates. If they wanted to rent a bike or a skier or a rower, I was happy to do that. I just asked that they paid their full membership rate, which at that time was only $13 Um, so that way they're what the reason, just because it's a more piece of more expensive piece of equipment. Uh, so if they want to do the, and if they had the money, like, right, I had members that were still making their salary and wanted to support me because they knew the struggle. Right. And they don't want their gym to close. It's their gym. Yeah. Yeah. Like everyone felt it. It wasn't just me.

It wasn't just my gym at that point. It was everyone's gym. So we gave that number out and that's literally what we did. I went to the gym one day, we met everybody, my husband and I, and we rented out all of our equipment. I provided programming. I didn't do the zoom classes. I couldn't buy into it.

It's so not me. And I think that's where I live and breathe the CrossFit life that it's just not real group classes. I just, I can't get into it. It's so not me. And I think that's where I live and breathe the CrossFit life that it's just not real group classes. I just, I can't get into it. I struggle with it. So I never did the zoom. We tried like one and we were like, no. And then we just waited and waited and waited. And my old location, thankfully had a backyard space. So as soon as they started making like rufflings that they were going to allow outdoor fitness, my husband and Steve and I, we went to the gym and I was seven, eight months pregnant and I have the pictures and everything. We literally cleaned out the whole backyard.

We like ripped all the trees down. We got, there was just a bunch of shit in the back. We cleaned it all out. Then I told the landlord, I was like, we have two options. I'm either closing down or you're going to pay for the backyard to be repaved. And if you can't pay for it to be repaved, instead of paying rent, I'll pay for it to be repaved. And that will be my rent. And that also, you know, brings the value up in your building. I got him to agree to that. So we got the whole backyard repaved and we were able to run outdoor outside exercise

classes. So because of that, that was going into summer. That was going into summer. So that's nice. Yeah. June, July, August. Um, and I was seven, eight, nine, you know, seven to nine months pregnant during this whole process. When we first reopened, because we were outside, I did limited classes. So I did like an eight, nine, four, and five, because I wanted to be respectful of the neighborhood. We were in the village, right? So I'm not in your normal, or I wasn't in your normal industrial area I was in the village like mom and pop deli mom and pop hair salon houses behind my gym so we were doing all these outdoor classes everything was great um I had my baby and as soon as I had my baby, that's when things started.

You had your baby during COVID. Did you have your baby in a hospital? Yeah. August, 2020. My husband must've been wild too. Yeah. Well, I don't know any different. Right.

So I don't have anything to compare it to based on other people's stories. Right. Um, was your husband allowed in there? He was. Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I don't think he, he wasn't allowed to stay overnight. He was.

Oh, that's cool. Yeah. I don't think he, he wasn't allowed to stay overnight. Um, but like every mom and husband and wife that I speak to that have that hospital experience, they tell me that it was better off. Nobody was allowed to come visit me cause I was able to rest and like do the whole thing. Yeah. Nice. So when we reopened outside again, like so when we were outside, then I started to deal

with like local government issues as well. Um had a neighbor complain about noise. Because now all the like regulations and stuff in New York, like if you remember, they had us in New York reopen indoors, as long as we had all the doors and windows open in gyms, as long as we wore masks, as long as we had the six foot boxes, whatever. So I did that. I had two garage doors in the back. I had the front doors. Again, I'm on the main strip of the village. So if I'm not following procedures, people were calling the police on us or Suffolk County or legislature. How many times did the police come during COVID to your gym? Three to four.

Yeah, crazy. Three to four. I never got, how was that experience? Were they cool? They were very cool. I, again, I was pregnant when things happened, so I had a lot of sympathy. Right, right. Nice. You got a big old belly. You're coming out and they're like, Oh, hi ma'am. Yeah. Yeah. Nolan wanted to talk with me. Um, so that, that definitely helped. Um, but it was just like, again, you felt like you had one thing solved and then the next thing came up and you just kept dealing with it. I never got to the point that we checked for vaccines or anything like that. It wasn't something I wanted to do. Um, I'm praying

and hoping it never comes back up. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And you're very close to the hive. What I call the hive is like, there's these epicenters of fear in the United States, you know, San Francisco, New York City, Portland. There's these places where it seems like all of the decisions are based on fear as opposed to risk assessment. Right. And what's amazing is you have these, I hesitate to call them newspapers anymore because they're so bad. But you have someone like the Washington Post who's posting two years of fear. And now they posted three articles that any exercise will mitigate your risk towards COVID. And it's like, wait a minute. how are you reporting on both of those how did those first reports come out it sucks too because we all knew right we all knew because we had heard from crossfit for the last you know 10 years we'd seen the five buckets of death we knew that eating properly and exercise was your best hedge against any sickness, whatever it was, even the healing of a broken

bone or the common flu, right? Yeah. It's, it's, it's frustrating that there's no other word for it besides frustrating. It's like the same time when you get a, a freeze or a cancellation request, because the doctor said that I have a herniated disc and they want me to stop moving. Right. Right. Like you think stop moving. And again, I'm, I'm big on the pregnancy thing right now, Right. Right. you, does your doctor want you to stop doing weighted step-ups when you have to physically functionally do it every damn day? Like, think about that. I wonder what the, uh, I mean, I could see, and everyone should take the path for themselves, but if you're stepping up to a 30 inch box and you want to take it down to a 16 inch box, uh, go for it. But, um, and if you were doing, uh, if you can, if you're not doing burpees anymore and you're just doing pushups. Yeah.

I mean, I think that there's some smart things, or if you have some apprehension about going upside down or double unders or jumping rope, like I, I, there's some things like I get, but yeah, it's, it's absolutely insane just to say stop. Yeah, no. And again, there's there you're, you're totally right. Like there's definitely reasons to modify and scale. And, uh, this is something I'm very big right now on in my career. But it's like you you shouldn't tell someone to stop moving, especially a pregnant woman or someone, a mother who has to do this. You know, they have no choice. There's nobody there to pick up the child. My wife was setting all sorts of strength PRs during her first pregnancy. During her second pregnancy with twins, things slowed down a lot.

But I want to say that all of a sudden cleaning 135 became like nothing for her. Whereas before she couldn't even do it once. And it wasn't right away. She went through morning sickness. But I want to say like in the fourth and fifth month, this lady got strong. Yeah. In my pregnancy, I was definitely lifting heavier. Um, I didn't know as much as I do now about it, but, um, I felt stronger. I mean, I was eating more carbs than

I ever had. Like you talk about your wife eating meat, right? Yeah. Yeah. She ate the bun and everything. She would eat whole hamburgers. I'd never seen her do anything like that. Just like there's a job. Yeah. You gotta go out and get another one. He's like, you're joking. I'm like, no, no, no. Like I need another one. And she would pour a bottle, you know, in college when you're hungover, like you wake up in the morning, you just pour a bottle of water in mouth. My wife used to drink water like a hummingbird. And then she, now when she was pregnant, she would just wake up in the morning and just be like a dude, like a hungover dude and just pour a bottle in.

I'm like, wow. Like, like one of those cars, it's burning oil. It was crazy. It's so wild. Yeah. Really. I, and same with breastfeeding. I mean, she couldn't drink enough water, which was just to convert water to breast milk machine.

Yeah, but you've got to drink like triple the amount. And you're not sleeping either, so you need even more hydration. Yeah, yeah. She didn't sleep. She stayed awake for three years. I want to say I'm lying, but I'm not. Do you have a total of three? Yeah, three. Three? Yeah. three years i want to say it's i'm lying but i'm not um you have a total of three yeah three yeah um the one thing this is like off subject i didn't think we'd be going here but the one

thing that she did um i think she was the most cautious about is there was some drug that your body chemical your body produces while you're pregnant that makes you more flexible yeah you have more of like a tendency i don't know the name more flexible. Yeah. You have more of like a tendency. I don't know the name of it, but I like you have the more of a tendency to roll your ankle. Um, your hips are moving, right? Everything's growing. There's a lot like that. That's something I'm that's like my neck, like this year I'm branching into this. This is all I want to do. Like a lot of, of the pregnant, like work with pregnant women. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Awesome. I love it. There's a lot of like, like work with pregnant women yeah yeah awesome yeah awesome i love it there's a lot of like you just go to the doctor and they're like hey do do whatever

yeah what a great name for a chemical relaxant what it seems fake yeah yeah there's no stuff relaxant is a reproductive hormone produced by your ovaries and placenta it loosens and relaxes your muscles joints and ligaments during pregnancy that is, uh, to help your body stretch. So that was one thing. I mean, she wasn't paranoid about it, but she was cognizant of it. Like not to push a range of motion, not be like, Hey, all of a sudden I have the perfect overhead squad to be like, okay, I need to like respect the fact that this basically you guys are on a, what's it called a PED performance enhancing drugs and not to overdo it. Yeah. It's pretty much it that when I When I went, when I was pregnant, I went to CrossFit New England, Ben Bergeron said to me, he's like, oh, like always be able to have a conversation. And that

is what I've taken home to my mom. So I made up this thing, like always be conversing. So if I have a pregnant mom in the gym, she should always be able to have a conversation with me because that means she's controlling her heart rate. Um, she's able to, if she can control her heart rate, she's controlling what the baby's experienced. And that's like what I try to really push to my, yeah, I think my wife switched to nose breathing for that during a pregnancy. Just the rule is you can only breathe through your nose. That way you don't go to some crazy level of intensity where you're panting like a dog. Exactly. And then it also has to do with the pressure that we're putting down onto our pelvic floors

and things like that. Like when we squat, we don't realize we're taught to brace, which is actually the worst thing for us to do. And it applies more pressure to us. And that's why women have more symptoms post-pregnancy of like peeing their pants when they double under and they squat and things like that. It's because of things we're doing during our pregnancy because no one's guiding us correctly. Navy Vet 09 nine currently breastfeeding. I drink

over a gallon of water a day and I'm still thirsty. Yeah. That's how my wife was. Yeah. It was just like, she couldn't get enough water. Um, what is the, what is the pelvic floor? What is that? Pelvic floor holds everything together. Is it, is it a group? Is it a group of, um, is it bones and muscles and ligaments? Is it a it's like an area like hey there's new york state hey there's the pelvic floor essentially yeah it literally holds everything together and it's crazy that it's not down there on the bottom so like like like i don't know like that that space between your butthole and your vagina it's like there and then and then scoops up the anus and the vagina and that is your pelvic floor exactly when i was teaching my other my husband how to breathe down

into his pelvic floor he was like literally it's to breathe into like the skin between your butthole and your squirt yeah i just tried it i went straight to my butthole that's not good but like it's like you just have to like really think about think about exhaling and creating this food baby right and then like think about when you go to do a back squat or you think about exhaling and creating this food baby right and then like think about when you go to do a back squat or you think about pulling the bar down yeah squeezing all this tension now imagine you have a 10 pound baby in your belly yeah no and you go and you teach somebody who's in seven months pregnant because we see people seven months pregnant on social media back squatting 150 pounds but they're bracing now

they're holding all this tension in their core yeah and they're putting all that pressure down onto their pelvic floor so as opposed and that's not what you want to do it's not what you want to do because we already have enough pressure on the pelvic floor if we work like through your breath like through your breathing like your wife was doing through her nose and things like that it controls the breath work and then we're not putting like an extensive amount of pressure onto our pelvic floor. And then what that helps us do is in that postpartum return to fitness, you have less symptoms. So the reason I, there's multiple reasons I became so passionate about it. Obviously I got pregnant, but like one of the things that sticks in my head

when I first entered the CrossFit world was seeing women in multiple affiliates that three or four affiliates that were peeing their pants when they were double laundering. And everyone's like, oh, that's normal. Like, yeah. Yeah. That happened to my wife after she had the baby. Yeah. And it's normal. It happens to a lot of people, but we can do things to help it. Like there's certain things that we can do. Does this still happen to your wife? No, I haven't heard her talk about it in years. Okay. You should ask her. Yeah. Um, so I always just pictured like there's a bladder, right? And then there's a tube that comes to your vagina. And when you jump, it's just the pressure from the water, from the, the, the urine and the bladder,

just pushing out the tube. Yeah. Can you bring up the picture of it again? Yeah yeah did you bring it up of the actual pelvic floor anatomy i just saw i didn't i couldn't even tell what that was i just saw a bunch of stuff hey that that there's this thing that boys do where like you can like flex this muscle and your penis moves like when you're a little kid you discover it and like you hang a towel on your penis and you walk around like as a little boy you have a boy yeah oh yeah you have a lot to look forward to and um that's that's not that's is that not is that part of our pelvic floor is and is that what you call a kegel that thing when you do that thing i'm not 100 sure i don't it's not oh i always thought that was a kegel when you do that thing where

you move your penis up and down look mom no mom, no hands. Throw a towel on it. That's the cremaster muscle, and that's not what that does. That's a great muscle. It's a great muscle. It doesn't get enough attention. We'll come back to it. Go ahead. Sorry.

This big hole holds everything in above you. Okay, so I'm looking at – that's a woman. I'm looking at her with her legs open. This is you too. Oh, okay. I have that too? What's that woman I'm looking at her with her legs open. This is you too. Oh, okay. I have that too. What's that big hole? What's that big hole?

You know, like when older men pee their pants, when they get older, they have like issues. That's a part of a, that could be a pelvic floor syndrome or it could be a diabetes symptom, but it could be a pelvic floor symptom. There could be certain things that if you have a grandfather who's peeing his pants and he's hunched over, I'm going to get up like a weirdo. If he's hunched over like this, walking around and your grandfather saying he's peeing his pants, it could be just a posture thing that if we can get grandpa to stand up functionally, that could fix him peeing his pants.

Maybe. Wow. Okay. It's like little, there's so many different things. There's so many different symptoms. And, and again, I'm still learning and building. I treat it like CrossFit because like, I'm still learning my confidence in it, but it's like, and that's how I'm helping other girls get their certification now too. And they're having some issues like going through the coursework. And I keep telling

them, I was like, we were never as confident as we were in CrossFit without the practice and the conversations and the things that we're doing. And our biggest thing right now is just trying to educate people on this because it's so, it's not spoken about. And I had a C-section and I'm somebody who came back, never had issues lifting or anything like that. I have lower back pain now. And from working. Yeah, my wife got some pretty crazy sciatica after the twins. Yeah. And that's all connected to your pelvic floor.

Did she? I don't mean to X this. No, it's OK. Vaginally or C-section your wife? Vaginally. How long did she i don't mean to x this no it's okay vaginally or c-section your wife vaginally how long did she push oh 25 the first baby was 20 hours second baby was five hours so like that all plays into all the symptoms she had postpartum are all things based on her delivery and the things that she had right your wife right 25 hours that's 25 hours of pressure down into her pelvic floor maybe she tearedared. The other thing CrossFit affiliate owners, you'll have people that come in

and have prolapse, that their vaginas are literally falling out. They have a net to catch their vagina. There's all these things. From my knowledge, outside of America, maternity care is much more relevant and they have a lot more support. The issue with the pelvic floor is we have pelvic floor therapists, just like you would with knee surgery, right? Like you, if you had knee surgery, you would go to physical therapy for eight weeks. Like I come to you, by the way, I would go to a CrossFit coach for my therapy, but,

and that's what I'm trying to do with the postpartum moms. Yeah. Come, come to me because I know what I'm doing and I can try and help and guide you a little bit more than maybe someone who's going to tell you to go to, I don't know, like you can't, you just have to keep peeing your pants. Like what if you don't have any issues? Should you still start addressing it? Like learn that, like, because basically it sounds like, at least for me, that there is a really what you're doing is, is you're teaching people, like everyone can do this. Savant, close your middle finger. Savant, close your index finger. You're basically teaching people to move better for less symptoms in the future. We'll also connect to that. You know, like some

people you'll be like, put your hips back and instead they bend their knees or they do something and they can't like they don't have the connection with the words to the instruction. You're basically retraining people like, hey, you have to concentrate down there and i'm going to find we're going to you're going to connect to some body parts down there exactly like when and again not to keep right but when your wife peter pants in the box jumps do you know at what point she was peeing it was pretty quick it would be pretty quick like when she jumped and landed yeah yeah when she oh i'm making i always just made that assumption okay because like then there's other people that some you know how to cross few, our, our main cue to get to full extension,

we've cued to squeeze the butt at the top of a rep and squeeze your glue. You're actually putting more hypertension onto your body. Right. So you use your butt. Sometimes you pee. Yeah. It makes sense. Cause you're putting pressure down. Yeah. So it's things like that. Like, and, and. Is that still a good cue then to squeeze your butt? It's not. No. Here's the thing. When, when I always thought that the fact that I didn't squeeze my butt kind of exacerbated my back, my lower back issues. And that when I did concentrate on squeezing, squeezing my butt. So, so which one do I do? Do I, do I pee my pants and don't squeeze my butt? Or do I squeeze my butt and protect my back?

Don't squeeze your butt. You said you're saying when you squeeze your butt, when you don't squeeze your butt, you're saying you pee your pants. No, I don't pee my pants yet, but, but, but I'm open to it. But what I'm saying is, is I feel like a lot of my back issues were exacerbated because I didn't squeeze my butt. Like I should have been squeezing. No, no. If you were squeezing your butt and told me you had lower back pain. So I'm a candidate, right? So I went to Idaho in September and I did the Brianna Battles in-person pregnancy and postpartum certification. She took me.

We and her worked on the side and we spoke about my squat. You triggered me, by the way, using that word Brianna. But go on. Okay. Just so you know. Just saying. What are my trigger words? I had her squat. She had me had me squat down and I like literally squat, like my lumbar collapses

at the bottom of my air squat. Right. So with all my core strengthening and coming back from pregnancy and postpartum, I never had lower back issues until post baby. And because of the weaker core that I had, I started to have back pain because of the way I was squatting so low and slamming down. Does that make sense? Yeah. Are you suggesting that your abdominals weren't able to protect you as your lower back? OK, OK. And that's where the pelvic floor becomes essential, right? Because all of that's connected here, which is all connected to our core.

So if you've recently seen to like Annie Thorstadter has been very vocal about this on social media. horse batter has been very vocal about this on social media. Like she was at the rogue, uh, invitational and she posted a reel of her actually like that people were calling her pregnant because her lineal elbow, like the top part of her abdomen was sticking out and they thought she was pregnant, but that's a sign of just her core. Not fully. Yeah. Yeah. My wife's was like that for a long time too. My wife has a very muscular midsection too. And it got like distended for a little while. And well, and it's very slowly coming back. I mean, my oldest, my youngest is six and it still hasn't come all the way back. And she had the diastasis and all that. So there's things in pregnancy with coaching that you can do to help. Again, you can't prevent any of these things to happen, right? You're growing a baby in your body. Your

body's going to stretch to your point, that ligament pain that your wife spoke about. Your body's stretching and moving, but there's things we can do as coaches to try and advise people to help make these symptoms less, right? Versus like the reason you don't want to do a woman doing a pull-up in pregnancy is if you literally watch a woman do a pull-up with a belly, you can see- She quit doing pull-ups and i couldn't believe it she's like hey i'm not doing pull-ups anymore and i go why she's like anytime i hang from the bar i feel pulling on my stomach and she stopped doing pull-ups and she's she was great at that

was that's interesting okay that makes me happy to hear you say that is your wife a doctor no no she was she was uh she was a crazy yoga fanatic for years, like traveled all over the world teaching yoga, taking yoga certifications. So she got a lot of body awareness. Yeah. Because that's so awesome that she recognized that because, like, again, and that's what I think. And I've never heard anyone else say that except for you, by the way, about the pull-ups. People are like, no, you can do pull-ups. But she said when she would do pull-ups, she would feel a tightness in her stomach.

And she's like, that can't be good. No. Yeah. And it's not, it's listen, you can do whatever you want. It's making better. Why? Like, what is your why? And why are you doing things?

And you know, the women that I talked to that struggle when they're pregnant and they can't go to that full intensity and you just have no, you have no, I don't know, like you have no support or guidance. It's just like, do what you were doing before pregnancy. So you assume pull-ups are fine, but I would want to know like, Hey, this can happen, you know? Right. What about, um, so this is something, obviously this isn't how we're wired as human beings But this is something if you're a woman Or if you're a woman who plans on getting pregnant or a man who plans on getting old start this shit now Like how much easier would it be to work on your pelvic floor before you get pregnant than after exactly it it happens in kids

gymnasts dancers You have to yeah, it's not just pregnant people. I helped a 25 year old girl who couldn't have sex and enjoy it because she was having pain she would come to the gym and she was talking about all these symptoms and i was like i don't mean to ask you an inappropriate question but what about sex like when you have sex she i hate having sex like what do you mean yeah what's the relationship between a a inoperable pelvic floor and sex? Why does that hurt? Because if you have a tight pelvic floor, if your hips aren't shifted the right way or if different symptoms. So in this situation, this particular female fell down the stairs when she was younger and her hips shifted.

So think about this in the CrossFit world. This woman fell down the stairs. We constantly have CrossFit athletes fall off a rope, fall off the rig, fall off a box, slamming their tailbones. It's not the ideal world, but it does happen. So there's constant pelvic trauma that we're not rehabbing these muscles and these bones correctly. And then long-term, this girl may go get pregnant and then she would have worse symptoms on in her pregnancy versus now she's able to work with a therapist, work with me, work with, I have a PT on staff. He's helping her like everyone's helping her. So that way she one can enjoy her sex life to hopefully in the future, get pregnant and have less pain that we don't know that could happen. I would have, I, you would have, I would have handled

it differently. I would have said more doggy style, less missionary. I just, I don't know why, but I just think like, holy cow, that would suck if sex hurt. I know. What a trip. But like, again, like that's. And you guys are, you guys are wired differently than us. Now we're really off subject, but you guys have to be like guys. We hold on like it's a fucking roller coaster for you guys to enjoy. You have to do the

opposite you have to let go so if you're feeling pain like a guy you could chop off his arm when he's having sex to still ejaculate a woman needs everything to be like perfect yeah well think about that if they're like holding tension or if they're in a position that's where they're holding tension in other places as well yeah wow this is the best affiliate uh conversation i've ever had congratulations i'm pregnant with twins and i had to stop with pull-ups the other day. Definitely failed to pull in. Yeah. Yeah. And to tell you the truth, uh, Kay, it was, uh, when my wife was pregnant with the twins, it was just like, man, the twin thing is bizarre. I, I, I couldn't stop staring at my wife because it didn't seem anatomically possible what I was looking at. Like, have you ever seen like a goat

when they're pregnant? They're so big, like the belly. Yeah. You just can't, it's like, something is not, I just couldn't, I just, I would look away and I would look at her and I'd look away and I'd look at her and I'd be like, walk around a little bit. And I was just like, I couldn't figure out how the human body was staying together. Pregnant with twins. Yeah. Like what is this yeah that's what my wife looked like it was nuts hey you guys get so we had a little dog that always sat on her lap and in the first pregnancy like a dog couldn't sit on her lap anymore i was like this is so weird and then when she had the twins like the the first kid couldn't sit on her lap anymore she couldn't even drive in a car like if i took her somewhere like more than a 20 minute ride she had to like recline the seat all the way back because it bothered her yeah she said this is this isn't doable yeah it's too much

way too much it's like uh sometimes you'll see people who are so obese that they have the seat completely reclined flat and this and the car seat pushed all the way back. And it was kind of like that. Well, you brought this up not to go off topic again, but obesity also huge pelvic floor issues. Oh, that makes sense. Have to, uh, diastasis recti, you know, especially in the CrossFit affiliate world. We actually have, uh, Athena Perez, her seminar, the larger body, larger minds coming in April. Awesome. Holy shit. That's awesome. Yeah. So they're coming in April. And that was part of the reason I wanted them that seminar specifically, because I do think there's that lack in education for us as CrossFit coaches, like that this is a symptom that they're going to go through. They're going to go through this weight loss journey. And that's great. But

they're also going to have a lot of issues that come with it because of their previous health. And it's things that I want to be more aware of. So I actually, Athena's coming in April. Yeah. I want to put you on the spot here. I apologize. I've never asked any of the other affiliate owners this, but I'm going to put you on the spot. Here we go. You ready? I guess so. I train at your gym. I've been there for two years and hi, Athena.

And I, I I I I uh tell you hey I have a friend who has type 2 diabetes and I told them that you could help them uh reverse it but they don't want to come um would you give them a free uh month if I brought them in and they have type 2 diabetes. Would I personally do this? Yeah. If it was a member? I've been going for three years. Yes.

It's my father-in-law. He has type 2 diabetes. He fucking can't stand CrossFit. He is my father, and hopefully he's watching this because he has something to link. As an example, my dad had open heart surgery July of 2019. Right after open heart surgery, normal, never uh-huh okay right after open heart surgery normal never had diabetes before got diagnosed with diabetes that like happens apparently after open heart surgery like it's like a thing so we got him a nutritionist we were able to get him to stop taking insulin and he is no longer has to treat it but goes for like routine checkups he did a

great job with his diet in the beginning lost all this weight and then like won't come to the gym. And him and my mother have put on this weight again. And if you guys are watching, this is frustrating. Yeah. It, it, to your point, I have the answer to their longevity. I have the answer for my father to be here. If I get pregnant again, I have the answer for my father to be here. If I get pregnant again, I have the answer for my mother to be here longer, but there's only so much I can do as a person. And I say, I actually have one of my coaches that like, I have it on the back line up for my dad to start training with. Like I would have, I would pay her to train my father if it got his ass in the door, because I know what it would do. So to answer your question, if one of my members that somebody I have a relationship with for three years, and again, we did do it.

I did do it with a member's father. He's no longer here. He just moved to Texas. But his dad was really unwell. And he came in and we had him doing just walkouts on a box. He would come to the 5 a.m. class with him. And we would just come up with like a plan with a PVC pipe and walkouts. And he would do it.

And he was in a better place then. Do you charge for your kids' care? I don't because we don't have a sitter. Right. It's kind of like that then. Hey, if you come to the gym and you've been a member for more than a year, you could bring your old fucked-up parent too, and we'll let them walk laps around the gym while they work out for free here's what i mean here's here's what i was thinking that idea i i'm

not i'm not a religious uh person but i have a lot of friends who are religious and i love hearing them talk about uh i love hearing about scripture and all the different religions and i like the there's i don't know if this is true but my memory of this one guy said hey like if you're not um one of the rules about being a christian is you have to fish for other souls. You have to be a fisherman of other souls. And so you have to introduce people to Jesus. And if you're not doing that, then you're not really you're not doing you're not following the rule. Like everyone has to have a little bit of an apostle in them. of an apostle in them. And I'm thinking to myself, how could you go to a, but in our Bibles,

we read Jesus thought on fishing in Mark 1, 17, the verse states, come follow me, Jesus said, and I will make you fishers of men. Become a fisher of men meant that Jesus was going to use his disciples to grow the kingdom of God. And you can do that in a lot of different ways. And you can do that in a lot of different ways. One of the greatest – I hate to just continuously blow him, but one of the greatest Christians I've ever met is Rich Froning. He's so just subtle about it. But even in that documentary that we made at CrossFit where he talked about adopting, it was so subtle, but his Christian values were screaming without them being Christian values. And so – and I've heard of people who came up to Chris Spieler and say to him, hey, how are you so successful? And then he uses that opportunity to say, well, it's because I'm a believer in Jesus. But if you go to a CrossFit gym and you haven't brought someone there, I'm thinking like maybe you're not doing your part.

Like, you know, like every member of every affiliate should at least once a month invite someone to come to the affiliate with them. Totally. We do. And talk to the affiliate owner and just be like, hey, there's this guy I know. Like, just bring people there. You're doing something so good for them. You're have the uncomfortable conversation with someone, you know, your God, I hate to sound like my sister now, but you know, your heart is in the right place. You're not asking them to, you're asking them to come because you want them to be

better. Like drop all, I know we're all crazy about it and we're excited to share it because of how good it made us feel, but just be like, hey, I have this coach, Trish. She had a father-in-law or a father. He had type 2 diabetes. They reversed it for him. He got off his insulin. He extended his life. Do you want to come try?

I talked to her the other day and she said you can come for a month. It's like, dude, if they say no and they're mad at you, it's on them. Yeah. Right? The worst is when you get them in the door and you solve the problem and then they quit well at least then they know i mean you can't you know what's the thing my mom used to say to me as a kid you can bring a horse to water but you can't make a drink but at least they know yeah and here's the thing they may tell someone else they're gonna tell someone else i'm

sure you're was that your father you were talking about your father-in-law yeah you know your father's told his other friends you know he's told his doctor he's told other people i mean here's the other thing you did that for your father and your and his doctor witnessed it and his doctor probably didn't even know that was possible and so now the the it's spreading i mean i just feel like you haven't. We have it's such an easy way to be a good human to support an affiliate. I remember I got a lot of slack for this, but I remember during a lot of the BLM stuff, people were talking about donating money to BLM. And I'm like, donate money to a fucking CrossFit gym. They're fucking struggling the vast majority of them. And then you'll kill two birds with one stone because that gym will, will, will be open to anyone of any color of anything. And, and, and that, that's actually a breeding ground for, um, for help. It is not a, it is not a preposterous idea to donate money to, uh, an affiliate. It

is, it is, I cannot think of a, and I'm not saying any affiliates are asking for that. I'm just saying I, everything that happens there is good. Everything. Well, unless someone bangs your wife or your wife cheats on you, but that could happen. That could happen at church too. That, I just had, yeah, yeah, that could happen. That could happen at church too. That I just had. Yeah. Yeah. That could happen. That could happen anywhere. But man, what a, what a great every day you get to go into a healing center that sends ripples out into the village. Yeah. It's cool. It's really cool. I don't know. I never go to, I never go to burger. I never go to Starbucks or Burger King or anywhere like that. And then later on, they'd be like, dude, I had the greatest quarter pounder.

Oh my God. You have to try the coffee at Starbucks. They're brewing right now. But I promise you every day, someone at your gym leaves your gym. Or I went to the dentist. I got the greatest cleaning. No one's doing that. No, we have like five within our gym.

I can name five business owners within our village that own all own the places we've had one recently joined joe from hitch awesome what's hitch what do they sell hitch is a really cool store he has a bunch of different vendors that he sells so if you have like a like a homemade ornament or homemade candles or things like that i like he has all their vendors and they can make commissions and he sells all their products. And then he also has a forever fuse company, but Joe's forever.

What forever fuse it's called. What's that? He's cool bracelets. They never come off. Oh, it's forever fused on me. This one is actually the barbells for boobs, breast cancer one.

So all of the money that he raised on these pink, pink gems, he donated back to the gym event for our fundraising event oh that's cool and that stays on you always forever oh that's cool some type of terrible thing happened to me until you do it until you have to do a bar muscle up on a log and it rips it off yeah yeah so that's it but with joe joe's a phenomenal like person in the sense of he was at orange theory and he plateaued and it was because he was just doing the same crap every day. And, you know, he was doing well with nutrition. He was working with a nutrition coach and, but he wasn't seeing additional changes

within his workout. And he was so afraid of CrossFit for the three years that I've known him now, we've been trying to get him in the door. and then we finally got him into the door and he's like my ultimate sales rep because people walk in, they're like, holy crap, Joe, what are you doing? And he's like, CrossFit. In the last month, in the last three months, he's gotten me probably seven new members. Wow.

Yeah. Yeah, that's awesome. And it's just clicking, right? And he's not even at the point of CrossFit that he really is at the full experience of CrossFit. Like he's still just ordering like that beginner line and like he's crushing. It's it's insane. And I don't think he realizes how much he's doing by paying that forward and telling other people about it, because as much as I'm changing lives, they're changing lives as well. Did you buy your first gym or the first space you went into? Was that

Ackerman's Jason Ackerman's gym? No. So Ackerman and I, the way I found Ackerman was through the whole George Floyd thing. Um, I was pre it's a full story. Pre COVID. I was like the Ben Bergeron train, loved Ben, read everything about him. I to crossfit new england in february of 2019 i did his immersion program how far is that from your house through four hours okay okay so you just you didn't go there like uh you weren't a member there you went there for the immersion program oh yeah i went up specifically for the program i had to pay for it it was like an exclusive program with five affiliate owners yeah matt souza did that too by the way the executive producer of this show he He did the Ben Bergeron immersion program. Oh, did he? Yeah. Yeah.

Huh. I didn't know that. So when I went, it was like, it was interesting, right? Like at that point, I only owned the affiliate for four years. So I was just trying to learn how to do everything the right way. Learn as much as I can. Also just fangirling because I love Ben and Heather so much. And then when that whole thing went down with CrossFit, I didn't really, I didn't relate

to the way Ben handled himself through that experience. And that's when we were with CompTrain as a programmer. And I decided to make the switch to ham after a conversation with Austin and James Hobart and Spencer. So Austin had gotten on a call with me. We spoke about everything that was going on at that time, my fears, my concerns and Austin, like really, you know, was the CrossFit person I needed at that point. Austin was? Yeah. Okay. He saved me. Like I was terrified that I was gonna have to de-affiliate and all that and CrossFit was just going to end. I didn't know what the hell was going to happen. So he really got me back like in a mental state. And so we switched our program from Comtrain to HAM at that point. And that was pre CrossFit acquiring ham to, which is now cap. So which James Hobart now runs,

which James Hobart now runs. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Um, so again, James and Austin, like really helped me through that path. And then I found Ackerman, I think in June of 2021 or May of 2021 through their podcast. Best hour of the day, the best hour of your day, the best hour of their day podcast. And it was more about coaching and more about Greg Glassman and more about the L1 that he made me feel like there is hope. Like, even though Greg's no longer here, everyone is falling apart. Like Ackerman just he's stuck to the path. Like I read his book right away. His book was like very relatable. He said to me, like, you know, when we first connected, he's very real. He's very upfront. I was very, we're very, we're very open relationship him and I. Yeah. There he is.

And our connection. Is he a New Yorker? Is he born and raised. Yeah, there he is. And our connection, New Yorker, is he born? Hi, Jason. Is he born and raised in New York? I don't know if he was born yet. He's from Albany. He used to own Albany CrossFit. Okay. Okay. So he used to own Albany CrossFit and now he owns best however the day CrossFit in his garage in Colorado. Oh, he has a gym again. He's in Colorado. Last I heard he I heard, I thought he went to Florida. He owns an affiliate just to have an affiliate because he supports the affiliate network that much. Right. I thought he retired and was just going to grow old and work out in Florida for some reason.

I thought after he sold his gym in Albany, he went to Florida to just mate. I don't know. I don't know. He's got a baby. He definitely mated. Yeah, he did that part. Uh, he, uh, him and I connected just on that podcast alone. And then I started learning about the affiliate was affiliate you or best hour, whatever it was called at that point. And I had, that's his company affiliate you affiliate you. Yep. So it's best hour of their day podcast. And then affiliate you is the, the coaching, which is approved now through the affiliate partner network,

um, which is huge. So it's business coaching through CrossFit. Uh, it's him and Fern, like that they're co-hosts. And then I think Marcus is like their boss. And then they got this girl,

Katie, who is my, my go-to girl. Fern's the Fern's the guy with the tattoos that works out. And the other guy, Marcus is the guy who looks like he's European. Yeah. Fern owns CrossFit Rife in Virginia. Okay.

Um, so he, they, my, my original connection was always with Ackerman. And it was like, I, I just got in the business back on board from COVID. So we're talking June, 2021. Finally, like restrictions are fully lifted at this point from New York doors don't have to be open. No more masks. We're finally able to do it. I always like, I didn't know where I was at that point in the business, like how I was going to take it up to the next level, because I didn't understand like the backend of my business. Like, I didn't know what I was looking at. I didn't know how many members I had. I didn't know how much money I was bringing in. I like couldn't figure it out and I didn't know how to figure it out.

And I came from sales and marketing. So like, I knew how to do like the social media stuff. I knew how to do like the advertisements and things like that, but I needed to figure out how it made sense to like the affiliate world. And as soon as me and Ackerman spoke and again, the money upfront was terrifying. I mean, I think it was cheaper then, but whatever. Yeah, I talked to Cooper about that too.

Yeah, it scares people. Chris Cooper about that. It scares people. But you've already shown that you're willing to invest by going to Ben's thing. I mean, clearly, you've taken the L1 twice. You've taken the L2 twice. I mean, you at least had the right mindset that you knew investment, you could invest. Yeah, well, it was either that or I had to go get a full-time job again. Right. It was either, you got to figure out a way to make this work for you and your family and for Steve to do what he

wants to do. Or I was going to have to go get a full-time job. And then the affiliate would have stayed maybe open, but it would have been ran half-ass just like the rest of them. And I don't mean to say that, but the reality is, is like a lot of these people just do it for fun or just have their own jam. And I'm really working really, really hard with Ackerman to make this like the best hour of people's day. Yeah. Yeah. Like it's, it's, uh, it's mind boggling, but the, the programming from best hour and the modules that they give you, like I made my money back in three months. Wow. Congratulations. That's awesome.

And then I just signed up with Ackerman for the grad program for, for this year. So that starts next week. Wow. So I invested another $10,000 into them. So your gym makes money. Sorry to be so. My gym makes money. Yeah. I usually try to avoid asking that question. No, I, because I, I want it. I don't, I'm not afraid to talk about it because I think the stipulation within CrossFit that there's no money to be made and like Ackerman

has changed my world and not just him. I won't give you all the credit dude, but like he gave me that path that I needed to make the business a business essentially. And I'm able to do all this pregnancy and postpartum stuff now. And it's, it's just like exciting to see all of it happening. Um, but yeah, the gym's doing well. We tripled our revenue through COVID. Holy smokes. Yeah. So I, since I, I, I doubled it during COVID I've tripled since then, since taking over since 2019. So it's three years effectively. I've tripled my revenue. I have doubled my location in size, meaning I have, I went from 3000 square feet to almost 6,500 square feet. And you had the, um, I was listening, uh, when you were talking to Fern, you were talking about how, even though your other gym was 3,200 square feet,

it wasn't practical 3,200 square feet. And now you have 6,000 practical square feet. Yeah, the space now is beautiful. I think it's a dream. I say I treat it like the field of dreams. Like I built it and now everybody's coming. And the other space you were in, you were having problems with your neighbors. Non-stop. And those were noise problems?

Yeah, it was one neighbor and it was another local business owner who has a lot of pull within our village unfortunately what what do they sell uh he owns a diner in the village oh okay and is his is his location more square feet than yours his location is not more square feet than mine. His house was physically behind my gym. And that was his complaint. Wow. He's a great person. Oh, my goodness.

Is there a business in the village that creates the most foot traffic? For example, in Berkeley, there's this area of town called fourth street and it's very little and there were a lot of struggling shops there and it was very cute and it was very posh you know and but it was it was tough because you had to get it was basically in it was it was sandwiched in between section 8 housing the freeway railroad tracks and just it was just off the beaten path but it was it had all the cool shops like our village is beautiful like that we have like the the top swell we have this place small taco like i made firm to marcus when they came for the drop-in i was like you guys got

to go there for lunch like we have so many cute boutiques so many cute it's a beautiful village. So then an Apple store moved in and all the businesses skyrocketed because an Apple store brings in. So I think I think in the United States as a retail space, it generates more revenue than any other retail space per square foot. And so like every day, an extra 5000 people would come to that part of town. Right. It was nuts. Like every day, an extra 5,000 people would come to that part of town, right? It was nuts. Do you know which business is driving the most in your village? Do you know which business drives the most amount of people to come to it?

And you should ask for an Apple store. Can I take this? Like, I think it's me. I know. It's you. Whoa. Driving to my gym, that drive past three other CrossFit affiliates on their way to come to my gym. So then that restaurant and probably people who work out at your gym eat at his restaurant. to my gym that drive past three other CrossFit affiliates on their way to come to my gym out. So then that restaurant and probably people who, who work out at your gym, eat at his restaurant.

And the owners in my business. And we go there every week for a lot. We support every single one of our businesses. They all go there. They go out for beers. They go out for dinner. They go out for, we had, we have one of the business owners whose liquor license was taken from him a week before Christmas at the Brixton. And I posted in our community group, if you guys need to buy gift cards or if you need to just do takeout or catering, if you can, you know how hard this is going to be on his business. My whole gym went there. They coordinated a dinner and went to go support this guy. Why did they take away his liquor license? It was like a business partner thing.

I don't know the full story. I think his business partner passed away, and it was like a filing issue. They didn't file it. Did he get it back? I think now he officially has it back. That's scary shit. Yeah, and he went through a lot too. But that's the team, the community that we have, that it's like they're going to do whatever they need

to support everyone around us um why why you were a um basketball player and soccer player more soccer basketball when i was younger but yes and then and then you played soccer in college played soccer in college i actually coached the varsity girls last season in our village too oh wow yeah i was the assistant head coach for varsity and we won Long Island County championships. That's a high school team. I'm sorry. Suffolk County championships. Yes. Wow. Congratulations. And have you had knee surgery? I have not had knee surgery. Wow. You played collegiate soccer and you never didn't have knee surgery.

No, just right ankle surgery from that. Wow. That's incredible. Have you ever heard Joe Westerlin's take do you know who joe westerlin is i don't he's one of the he's been around forever he was a strength and conditioning coach i want to say like at a big school in one of those weird states like where do they do the world series of baseball? Is that Omaha? Omaha, Nebraska. Yeah. I think maybe he was strength and conditioning coach at Omaha. He's a flow master has been on the L one team forever. Oh, I know him now that you're saying.

Yeah. And, um, I remember him saying in, I've seen like all, all the girls I knew who played, uh, collegiate soccer, they all hadn't ended up having knee surgery. They all got that lying down the middle of their knee. And he was sharing with me one time that he thought, God, I wish I could remember. It's been so long since I've tried to remember this. But basically, he said it was basically just the root of that, I think he said was ankle flexion.

That basically people lose ankle flexion and then all the problems start heading north. So then your knee has to compensate for it. Your hip has to compensate for it. And basically that's one of the reasons why CrossFit was so great because it forced you to, you know, overhead squat, ankle flexion,

squatting, ankle flexion, like everything, as long as you know, to maintain position, keep your torso upright, that you basically are forced to start working on your ankle flexion. And for me,

that translates also as to not putting shoes on my kids. Yeah high tops yeah the pts love that no shoes yeah like we struggled with jade and not walking and that's they were like the whole time trying not to have shoes on them oh yeah and and do you remember when um what do you mean struggled to walk like he was just a delayed walker so they were were like. Did he crawl? He did, but not as fast as he should have. Yeah. But he's fine. Yeah.

I think, I mean, I think that the best thing you can do for your kid is not teach them to walk. Yeah, because now my life is hell. Well, also, you're going to walk your whole life. life if i think i've always i i suspect there's this guy who has an instagram account where he he walks on his hands and feet like at minimum 30 minutes a day we had him a guest on this show is that the same guy that did the new york city marathon like that i'm not sure there's a guy that did the new york city marathon during i think it was during covid he did that john on it he bear crawled through the whole old manhattan i cannot believe this guy's body what's happened to it um from just walking on his hands and feet at least 30 minutes a day it is nuts his forearms his wrist flexion his core i mean he uh

he looks like oh my god he's turned himself in he looks like a uh like a real life werewolf you know like they're all muscular and shit. It's crazy. But yeah, I never wanted to teach my kids how to walk. I'm like, hey, man, crawling has got to be the holy grail of fitness and great for the mind. And then they're going to eventually stand. And then eventually you see them pull themselves up on the couch and they start walking. But yeah, you put shoes on a baby and you're tripling the tripling the, uh, the difficulty of standing up and walking. Yeah. That look at his forearms.

People are buying like the wrong type of shoes, right? Like people buy the cute shoes to put on their babies and it's not what you want their foot to develop in. This guy. Yeah. This is a really interesting, uh, Instagram account. He's documenting the whole thing. Yeah. His, everything Yeah, everything has changed on him. I got to see his whole body. I can't believe, really? He's staying up like that? Yeah, his whole, he's just a BJJ practitioner. And yeah, his whole body changed from, yeah, his arms and shoulders and forearms, none of it look like that. Holy crap.

Yeah, it's pretty cool maybe show uh caleb can you show one of those things where he's like running he's running like full speed like on his on his feet and then he just turns into a dog it's so nuts like a real yeah yeah all everything has changed for him yeah yeah all everything has changed for him anyway yeah crawling i love crawling are you gonna have more kids yeah we're trying you are yeah yeah that's fun that part's fun it's exhausting it's been a long few months so so you fit when you find crossfit were you uh tell me about that how old were you when you found crossfit and who introduced you to it how'd that go down so i was just out of college i just finished college soccer um and i was coaching a local

school team not a school team i'm sorry a club team 21 years old uh what am i now 34 it was probably like 10 years ago so 24 yeah 24 23 okay um and one of the mom i was just like you know talking to one of the moms and i was like you know i just struggle going to a gym now i'm like putting on all this weight now that i'm done with college soccer can't do what i was normally doing when i was still playing and she's like you should crossfit i was like what the hell's crossfit and i would be that person that would go to like the gym down the road and like pretend to run on the treadmill pretend to do bicep curls thinking I know what I'm doing like isometrics and stuff like that had no idea what I was doing so then when I found CrossFit I was introduced with an onboarding experience so that was nice it was like a one-on-one experience

with a coach I remember trying to do like going from a chest push-up to like the tricep push-up for the first time and learning that whole thing. My first affiliate, which is closed, was CrossFit Diamond. And that was owned by a female. And when I first found CrossFit, it was all through soccer. And the reason I decided to start getting into coaching was for kids. So my first certification was my L1 because at that time they required your L1 to get your CrossFit kid cert. Okay.

So I went and took my L1. And I did it at Gorilla and Paramus. And then I did the CrossFit. How long had you been doing CrossFit when you did that? Six months, maybe. Okay. So I was like one of the people that right away. That's why when people, they first get into it and they're like gung-ho about it. I'm like, go for it. If you have the money and you can do months, maybe. Okay. So I was like one of the people that right away, that's why when

people, they first get into it and they're like, gun ho about it. I'm like, go for it. If you have the money and you can do it, go. Because like, I think it just gives you a better concept of like the longevity in it. Like the moments that you like might have a bad day in CrossFit and you want to quit. If you have your L1, you always remember like why and the benefits of doing this and the long-term benefits of it, at least for me, that's what works. So then I did the kid certification. And so this day, the kid certification is still one of the funnest certifications I've done through CrossFit. And then I went back to Diamond and I started coaching kids right away. We were doing team training with soccer kids. We were doing just regular CrossFit kid stuff and all that. Never started adults until I left that affiliate and went to another one.

Uh, Devin Levesque bear crawled the marathon. Um, were you, when you did that, um, L one, uh,

what was your reaction? Were you pleasantly surprised? Were you underwhelmed? Were you blown away? It was the greatest weekend of my life. Yeah. Even going back, I,

you know, I, I, there's something ackerman and i talk about like why i went back for the l1 i'm i i'm so glad i went and retook it you've taken it twice i've taken it twice and it was a different experience the second time things did adjust certain things in the methodology certain ways they approach certain stances like in the deadlift with the deadlift one sticks out to me like i particularly remember being that being taught differently and just a different setup um and it was just like cross it was at a different wavelength five years after

that so taking it again was much more memorable for me really the second time the second time wow that's amazing because you do cocaine the first time it's never the same that's it just quit it's done but you take your level one you think maybe you take it the first time it's never the same that's it just quit it's done but you take your level one you think maybe you take it the second time it's going to be a tedious two days just to re-up but instead it was better your second time that i knew like my journey i thought my journey with crossfit wasn't going to be my journey with crossfit when i initially took my lr1 versus now like i knew my journey like this was just the beginning of a reborn, like reborn again journey. Let's call it. Like I really just got back into coaching again. I was really helping

people again. So I was in a different place as an athlete, as a coach mentally going into my own this time around. What did you think about the culture that was shared there? What did you think about the, uh, like that's the big thing that I don't think people expect. Like you go in there and everyone's kind of like this, right? And everyone's like assessing everyone else. Everyone sits in their chair and they're trying to stay in their space. And then by the, by the end of day two, it's just a completely totally different vibe.

Everyone's cheering everyone on exchanging phone numbers. Like, did that shock you about how they kind of, that culture that they share there? With how open they are, like at the end? Yeah, the trainers don't allow it to be. Because you have to keep standing up because you have to work out with people because you keep having to talk to people because you guys get called out in the circles because you guys cheer each other on. I feel there's this whole culture that's disseminated onto the, to the, uh, uh, participants of the L one that I don't even think they realized. Like, it's not one of the selling points, right? I mean, it's kind of hard to say that, Hey, come over here and we're going to teach you how to act like a

CrossFitter. But by the end of those two days, you know, all the movements, you know, how to cue other people. You can coach other people. You you can coach yourself but you also leave different on how you treat other people and it's it's fucking nuts i went i don't know how many hundreds of l1s that i've attended but every time that's like my favorite part one of my favorite parts to watch it's like oh yeah you show up on the first day and everyone's so quiet and to themselves and by the end it's like they've been best friends like they've been in a frat together or sorority for five years. Yeah. I mean, I still, I'm still connected with like one girl that I did the L1 with 10 years ago who now owns her own gym as well. You know, we reconnected after I bought mine essentially. Um, so like there, yeah, I mean, there's definitely

connections. I mean, for me, I look at as more as like my coach connection, like James Hobart is someone I met in the beginning of my journey and he's been a huge part of my journey and probably doesn't even realize how big of a part of my journey he is, but he's somebody that if I email him or I DM him or I go to the CrossFit games and I have my community with me and they want to take a picture with them. That guy, like he is CrossFit. Like he does everything the right way. And he, there just needs to be more of that in Austin. He's slow to respond to texts.

But other than that, he's a near perfect human being. Yeah, that culture, and that's the culture you see in all the CrossFit affiliates. At least all the ones that I've been to. There is a camaraderie there. Not all of them. 99% of them. There's a camaraderie there that I feel like is learned at the L1. I wish everyone could take the L1.

You know, we got a discount code when we went to the games and I shared it with my members. I was like, none of my coaches need this. If anybody has the money and they're thinking about doing it, like you don't have to coach to go do it. It's just, it's an experience. Everyone, if they can, should do it. I have one guy, Lewis, whose company like will cover the certification for him to do it. And he's going to go do it. My husband who won't CrossFit is taking his L1 this year. Oh, that's awesome. Yeah. Because I think if he goes, he's going to love it. Yeah. And he understands it. Right. He sits here and he talks about how he wants to be here for Jaden and he wants to be here longer. Like, dude, you have the answer. You own the answer. Like,

when will you realize this? So then I was like, you know what? F it. You're going for your all one. Oh, he's going to love it. What a cool thing. I, I basically, I did CrossFit for just a little while. I don't know, six months before I took my L1, but I never did it in an affiliate. This was like in 2006. And I was just like on the website and I would just go to a globo gym and do it. And I never even set a timer or nothing. I just like, was just trying to figure out the movements, right? Like what's a snatch, what's a clean, what's a deadlift. But I went to the L1 completely green and it blew me away. Absolutely blew me away. I cannot, that's so cool. I,

I think it's cool that your husband's going to take it completely. I mean, I guess he, he knows what he hears you talk about on the phone. Don't get me wrong. Like when I was pregnant, he was, he was in the best shape of his life because we were at home and that was the only thing I had with him. So he had to work out with me every day. So he, he knows CrossFit, but he is your, I don't have the time. Meanwhile, like in my head, I'm like, dude, you're in Connecticut. Go drop in at another affiliate, see what they have there and bring it home to us. Learn from them.

We have a bigger opportunity here to learn from other people, take ideas and stuff like that. And also like, I love dropping in other of their boxes because I either learn something or truthfully, like sometimes it just gives me the pat on the back that I need for my staff and the community that we have. Like you get a vibe every time you go into a gym and that's all I want him to do is like, I would love for him to travel to Connecticut for work, go do a drop in and then be like, Hey, try doing this with the five pound plates in the affiliate.

Like this was a really good idea. Yeah. But you can't force it. Like for me, at least with him, I won't know him. It's too hard to force anyone. He will figure it out. Hey, um, uh, how have you kept the fire alive for so long? This is 10 years. Have there, have you ever, I mean, you seem you, you act like in a someone who just found crossfit still how have you kept this fire alive uh surrounding myself with people like ackerman to be honest yeah uh there's a lot of rough days there's uh moments that i cry and i don't want to

do it anymore um yeah i'll cry again yeah but i think it's just, you know, one, I figured out a way to make the gym successful, which makes it a lot more enjoyable. My community, I know, like, I know every day someone tells me I changed their life. So as bad as, like, certain things get or as sometimes, like, the challenges come, like, that's what keeps me going is the changes that I'm providing to the community you know and and it's fun I've made it fun building the business out so I don't have to stress as much I think also like I've had a lot of experience I've been a part of four affiliates previous to my own so I've dealt with all the drama I've seen all the bs I've seen the way of coaches felt in a negative way. I've seen the way coaches felt in a positive way. I've seen the way affiliate owners have treated people poorly, have treated them well. Everything I have felt as a coach, I have taken it into my affiliate and embraced it within my team. And that is what keeps me going. The team, the community, my affiliate, my people. Did you ever think of yourself as a person who serves like as a child? No. No.

You think that. You can't think of yourself that way. But, but that's what you're describing. You're describing someone who is, uh, has found their home and serving other people. Yeah. I say, I'm like, I'm, I'm so much more than affiliate owner. And we all are anybody's an affiliate owner. Like we wear so many hats, you know, the conversations I deal with from suicide to health, to financial, to real estate, like I deal with so much and I love it. And that's like,

I guess what keeps me going and where my energy comes from. Are you sure? How often do you train? Are you training every day? Um, I'm probably like four to five right now. Um, I'm currently training for a weightlifting competition. Wow. Which is like very nonchalantly. Like we're not trying to get a medal here. We're making a very less stress it was really just to kind of distract me um working with danny casey from new york weightlifting academy and we're doing it on january 14th and i'm just gonna go for it i have no idea what to expect i know that i gotta wear a singlet and i'm hoping for the best uh alexandra i have a friend who goes

to your gym she says you're the reason she kept up with CrossFit. Eric Wise, my wife and I are taking the L1 the first weekend in March. I love it. Trish, it's too fucking expensive. But this is just normal. This is normal Trish talk here. Trish just hangs out and throws rocks. Trish, find someone who has a 20% off good. thank you for all you do trish sounds like you really get it

sounds like it what what about what about a second box sorry just to just it would is that anything you would ever do it's just got to be the right time and the right fit for me like what i'm trying to do now is one, continue to develop myself and then develop my staff to like branch off and do more things too. So like I mentioned earlier, like I have one coach who's in physical therapy. I have another coach who's interested in opening his own affiliate. I have another coach who is big in menopause. I have another coach who is big in menopause. I have another coach who is into meditation. So for like this year's focus and what it looks like is really establishing

what the pregnancy and postpartum programs will look like. So I'm going to launch some things there. I really want to help my coaches develop themselves and give them platforms to like continue to branch off and improve and do what they want to do. Um, I do think I have the potential to open another affiliate. Uh, I think it's the, a matter of when and where and what the right opportunity is and doing it the right way. The one thing I don't want to do is take on too much too quickly. And I don't want to risk anything that I've worked so hard for at Babylon. And do you need another affiliate? Like that's the other question in the back of my head with everything and how well it's going. Like, do I need another affiliate? Maybe. I do think I have

a bigger picture in the world, whether it's that pregnancy and postpartum chapter, whether it's helping affiliate owners, like there's no reason more affiliates can't make money. Um, and I, and that's where Ackerman and I are just so aligned. Like we just, we see it, you know, and I didn't do anything special. I mean, I definitely work hard and I definitely put the energy in, but it's like just finding the right stuff to do. Um, we had this guy the show, an affiliate owner, Matt Schindeldecker. And he ran, someone brought him a, like a youth who was going to go to jail. And the person who brought, I think it was like a probation officer. And they said, hey, instead of sending this kid to juvenile hall, what if this kid just works out with you for three months?

Matt's like, yeah, I'll do it. So Matt trains this kid for three months and this kid like flourishes, right? And one of the things, and then so Matt says, okay, somehow they figure out, bring me some more kids and bring me some more kids.

And then next thing you know, he's grown this program, I think to 14 locations in the state of, I don't know what state it is, Arkansas. And now, or maybe, I don't know how many locations in Arkansas. And I think it's spread to like 14 states now. And like Craig Howard at like Diablo CrossFit in California

is now going to try to do it. We have someone on Long Island doing it. You do? Yeah. Okay. This woman, Lori. And Matt basically said, hey, there's a lot, I'm paraphrasing, but basically there's a lot of good programs out there.

But I think that the reason, not he, I think he's being, I'm saying he thinks, but he knows. And we all know the reason why this program is working more so than like the running program or the weightlifting program is because they think they're coming here for CrossFit, but really they're in a support group. So when you bring a new kid in, there's already a kid who's been there for three weeks who never talked to anyone in the first three weeks and now has opened up and there's people there in the program who are all different phases of being there but they open up and they find out they have a support group it becomes as you guys say the best hour of the day and it becomes a place where it's safe and they can ask questions and

they can be like hey did you they're with other kids whose parents beat them yeah we have we have multiple people in our community that are in recovery. One specifically that like recently started and to your point was very quiet when he first started and then recently came out and just he said he literally thanked every single coach. It was like, you guys have no idea what you did for me. Yeah, gives it right. Is there. So when when my wife was pregnant, we went to a, it was called hypnobreathing or something. I can't remember, but every week, one day a week for three hours for 12 weeks or something like that.

But the coolest thing about, I don't remember much about it other than like I got to spend three hours sitting on a couch with my wife. But she made friends there and you were in a community there. And is there, are there enough pregnant women to where you could have a pregnant woman class that's like just runs all year round where it's like, you know, 12 pregnant women or however many and they get to talk to each other. Are you doing home birth? Are you doing hospital? Which hospital are you using? Do you, how is it? You know how like they test you guys, they get to compare tests and gynecologists and all that shit yeah glucose

fast all that fun stuff yeah um my my intention is so i'm gonna either release it probably releasing it next week but i'm gonna be doing it in seminars like in the sense of like i'm gonna do a six week in-person course for moms and i'm gonna do it it at 10 30 to 11 30. So if they have other kids and they have drop-off, they can handle drop-off. They come in, they can bring their kids if they need to. Uh, and then I'm going to keep it small though. That's my thing. So like keep it to 10, maybe 15 because I need to be able to connect with them one-on-one. Yeah. That seems pretty big. That's it. I mean, our, our birthing class was, I want to say it was six couples. Again, 10 is my goal.

Are there enough? I'm going to do pregnancy and postpartum at the same time. And the reason I'm doing it together is because whether you're a postpartum journey or whether you're in the pregnancy journey, all that information I'm going to give you is going to be relative to you. And the pregnant women can talk to the women who've already had the baby. They become a resource for them there. Exactly. I use this hospital, try to get this doctor, do this room, get this. Um, and, and the, and the pregnant women can talk to the women who've already had the baby. They become a resource for them there.

Exactly. They can, I use this hospital, try to get this doctor, do this room, get this. Exactly. So, yeah, I do. I don't think it's a class. Like I'll offer again, stick to CrossFit, right? Like that's the main core. I, even when athletes call me and they want to get better at soccer, it's like, what specific training do I do?

You do CrossFit, um um stick to crossfit and then offer segmented like specific things like the pregnancy and postpartum seminar yeah it's cool added value let's call it it's cool yeah i i could just see i just i don't know how it works but i could just see a class of just pregnant women where they just come in and they just do the pregnant woman wad. Yeah. And they get to talk to each other. I mean, it's that,

I mean, that's such a crazy time for women. Right. And they got, it's, they got all these fucking questions and no answers. Well, yeah. And,

and, and, and, you know, there's only so many answers you want to hear from a doctor. You want to hear someone from someone who went through it. Yeah. And you don't want the generic answers either.

Like do, do what you did before this or it'll be done when you're done after the baby and stuff like that um you took you've taken uh five five certifications two l1s two l2s and the kids kids i did weightlifting weightlifting i've done you did the ben bergeron immersion you did you're doing the coaching uh gym coaching with denise thomas is coming in april and i'm pumped she's coming to do cdp at the box what's that so coaches development in person so denise will be coming to babel on crossfit for five days the first. They judge the shit out of you? Essentially, yeah. Hey, isn't that what the L4 is?

So there's the L3 and then the L4 is like in person. Yeah. So don't they just send someone to your house and they just judge the shit out of you? How you brush your teeth and the whole shebang? Yeah, essentially. And then she'll like survey me for two days and then she'll work with my staff for three days and just kind of like guide me and critique me. And it's like a full, fresh level, too.

Is that you do that through CrossFit? I did it through CrossFit and it's a five thousand dollar investment through CrossFit. Holy shit. Yeah. Actually, it's probably more because I have to pay for our board, too. Yeah. God, when are you doing that? April,

the first week. I would love to hear about that after you do that. I would love to do that. How long has that program been around? I don't know. I think Denise started it. I don't know exactly how long. So.

How, how did you like the level two? I never talk about the level two. I've only been to like maybe level two. That's something like I think CrossFit should do with my affiliate thing. Be like, Hey, you can go refresh your LTO as an affiliate owner free once a year, because it's just a refreshing coaches. Like, yes, we're all good coaches, but there's still certain things I forget.

Like when Fern came in, like that, there's one cue that feedback thing that he gave me. And it was like, when I was coaching my toes to bar progression, he was like, don't say forget like when Fern came in like that there's one cue that feedback thing that he gave me and it was like when I was coaching my toes to bar progression he was like don't say if you don't have toes to bar say if you're still working on toes to bar because it's just the tone and the way you deliver the message and I was like you know what it's a really good point because like as an athlete I think about that I'm like damn I don't have that and I want that it's like address it to the point that you kind of like want to be addressed. So like in my case, I think we can, I would do the LTA whenever I could. Um, I had this idea. I didn't run the numbers on it or the math, but I was thinking like when it

came to like the country managers and all that shit, I was just playing, like I would scrap theoretically. I'm going to say like, I would do it, but I haven't figured it out. I would scrap all that shit. I would scrap like that. I guess you guys have some website you can go to and get discounts or whatever. I would scrap all that shit I was thinking. Dump all those resources and bring them back and offer free continued education for affiliates. That's how I would do it. I wouldn't do – I wouldn't –

I said that to – I had a call. I posted something on Instagram before the holidays and I tagged Austin in it. And Austin went on a Zoom call. Yeah, get rid of all that shit that Austin's running. I would take it back to the old school. Get rid of all that. I don't think it's all bad.

I just think. I don't think it's bad. I would just get rid of it and bring those resources to be like, hey, offer affiliates, like continued education. Well, that's what they need. Yeah, that's it they need yeah that's it yeah you have me who's investing all this money into being better and like i am good like i'm not

your worst affiliate it's like it's frustrating as a affiliate owner who cares as much and then you go to a bad affiliate with bad coaching because that's what hurts crossfit overall and that's where people get hurt and that's where our name is hurt. Yeah. You were on that podcast with that guy who said like he tried CrossFit once and he didn't like the place he went to. So he's like, I fucking hate CrossFit now. Yeah. That was interesting. Yeah. He was overweight. He, the guy had him come in, do too much volume too much quickly. And he got hurt. Of course he got hurt. And I said, Freddie, no shit. Like, of course you're going to get hurt. It's the same conversation. When I talk to someone and they're like, I've CrossFitted before and I got hurt. I was like, well, let shit. Like, of course you're going to get hurt. It's the same conversation when I talk to someone and they're like,

I've crossed it before and I got hurt. I was like, well, let's talk about it. Who did you cross it with and why? When my members, I had probably about 10 to 12 members leave New York this month, this year in 2022, leave New York, move with their families. Okay. Every single one of them, I had a conversation with what box they should go to when they left. Wow. Because I did not want them

to go somewhere and not have the right staff or i gave them the guidance go look at the about us on the coach files if they don't have an l2 and their affiliate owner only has their l1 do not go there bottom line wow wow wow hey what why were this is off subject but why why are people leaving new york why are people why did you have so many members move out? Why do you think politics? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

One, one was not political that I'm aware of. Oh, and where did they go? Do you know where Arizona, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Colorado.

Uh, one was just upstate New York. Um, a lot of Florida. Some are going to, we're going to south carolina soon uh texas who else was there there were a lot there were a lot of people i got one guy that got deployed um a lot of people left the last year and the guy that's deployed so you know i give him free access to my programming you're a good dude and he works and he works

out at the affiliate and he sends me messages and he makes me so damn proud and he probably gives and he probably shares the programming so you're helping more people than you know and he wears my shirt and he's so proud of everything and he's the greatest human yeah there's a box in our area where people always get injured makes me very upset because it gives crossfit a bad name yeah and that's where ackerman and fern and marcus don't get enough credit because if you don't if if you're if you go to an affiliate and they don't know who Ackerman is or they don't know who you are or they don't know who anybody is, that to me is like a red flag because they generally just don't give a shit about where we're going and what we have going for

us. Meaning that they're not, I wouldn't say me, but if you don't know who Ackerman is, then that basically means you're not in the continued education space. You're not, you don't care. Yeah. You don't, you don't care enough to advance like your coaching or do what we need as a brand. You're not, you're not looking at the resources that are available out there to make you

better. Yeah. By the way, you come across like you really give a shit. Maybe as much as any affiliate owner we've ever had on here i mean i care too much yeah yeah i almost i almost when i when i saw that interview with i i i know it's probably the premise of their show but when i saw you with the european guy in fern and the way they were talking to you i was like yo like i i was like not that they were talking down to you but i was like yo like i i was like not that they were talking down to you but i was like yo steph she knows what she's fucking doing guys chill but i know that's also their job you go to them to get a direction yeah like pardon me i go to ackerman with problems

right like i'll call him like this happened and he's like and i'll literally send him a voice like i even stopped texting him and i just sent him a voice note and i'm just like and he said he's like dude he's like you have all the, he's like, dude, he's like, you have all the answers. He's like, stop bothering. Oh yeah. That's great. You know, because like, he's great. He's just trying to help me build my confidence and learn that I know it. But I'm also like, I overthink everything I do. And I care about every little attribute and every action I take. And I'm like, okay, I know this conversation is going to impact this person this way. This is what can happen this you know i just i i overthink it and i care well i appreciate i appreciate having you on uh i was actually

thinking i i uh i had um dave i tried something new last night with the podcast and i had dave over to the house and well he forced me to do it and and he and we didn't it was a great show and there was a lot of energy and when i went to to bed last night, I was like, Oh fuck, am I going to just crash tomorrow? Like the affiliate series is kind of, it can be, it can be hit or miss. And I was like, I got to make sure I bring my a game. And I'm so I, and man, you brought your a game and I really appreciate you having you on this way exceeded my expectations after the high was on last night. So thank you. Yeah. You are nervous. Yeah. You are awesome. I, I've never told any affiliate owner this and not because it's not

true, but after having you on this series, like I would recommend anyone to your gym. I mean, I'd recommend them to any of the other gyms, but I've never thought it in my head and like, man, you are awesome. You, everything good that happens to you, you deserve, man. You're, you are a cool ass person. Listen, I, and this was part of the reason I wanted to happens to you you deserve man you you are a cool ass person listen i and this was part of the reason i wanted to talk to you so bad it's because like it's what greg did for us like yeah you know like that's where i get so butthurt by the whole greg thing because like i wouldn't be where i am without that l1 handbook like i'm living what he wants for every single person and what not just what CrossFit has

provided to me, but what best hours provided to me and Ackerman has provided to me and what all of the work and hard work I put into this, like people can make money here. You know, when my coach tells me he wants to become an affiliate owner, I'm like, I look at my husband, I was like, that's an opportunity that other affiliate owners would be shitting their pants thinking he's going to take over their business. But I'm like, we can develop this kid to go do it on his own. Yeah. And that's the biggest one of them all. Why aren't you afraid? Why aren't you, why aren't you like, fuck that? No, uh, that guy's going to take my members. Why, why aren't you afraid? Why, why are you supportive and not afraid?

Because the people that are with me are with me because of who I am and everything I believe in. Um, the people that I have gotten very good at firing members or firing people that aren't right for our community. Um, in the sense of there's enough people in the world to have multiple affiliates that people are going to mesh with me and other people are going to mesh with a different affiliate owner. And I understand that. So, and, and, and it sounds like you also said this, I'm reading through lines, but, um, they're going to open the gym regardless if you support them or not. And at least if you support them,

maybe hopefully you can make sure that they're good coaches in a good gym so that they don't hurt your business. Exactly. Like I have, there's a gym five minutes up the road for me. Him and I talk often. We are two different people. I am, as they like to call it, the mom and pop gym,

which I don't really see it that way, but fine, let's call it me the mom and pop gym. And they see themselves as the competitor gym. And that's fine. I'm totally fine with that, that being their angle, because at the end of the day, like his demographic is perfect for him as an affiliate owner. And my demographic is perfect for me as an affiliate owner. And like, I'll text them and be like, FYI, this person just quit and they're coming to your gym oh awesome awesome hey let me ask you this people like you from from are you're not coaching any classes right now right i coach i go i just went back to coaching within the last few weeks i coach about like three

to six a week so in one of those interviews you said that you were building the um one of the interviews that i saw you do you said you were building the company the gym and that you were building the, um, one of the interviews that I saw you do, you said you were building the company, the gym and that you hadn't been coaching much. Um, is that, is that a mistake? I'm not coaching. Yeah. Like should the owner all like, and if you're not coaching, how are you in staying engaged with the members? Cause it sounds like you still stay engaged with them even if you're not coaching. you still stay engaged with them even if you're not coaching? Yeah, because I'm still taking classes with them. And when I say I'm not coaching, I mean I'm not an affiliate. It just means that I'm not heading the class.

Like I'm there doing Instagram or I'm there doing just networking or taking classes alongside them or co-coaching or whatever it is. Well, that's cool. You're taking classes with them. Always, always, always taking classes. Lately, it's been a little bit more difficult, but they understand what's happening behind the scenes so you're still there to say hi to people every person who walks in you're there to say bye you're there to talk to them about their new dog or their kids or you're still there

whatever it is i i like that's what i said we wear many hats and there's not enough to but i chose to stop coaching. The reason that was the thing was to take a step back and just focus on the business. And that was something I didn't really want to do. And that me and Ackerman relooked at that and we're like, well, then let's start coaching again. Like I, I enjoy coaching more than anything. It's, it's what keeps me going. And I know my members appreciate it when I coach a class. Cause you just,

you feel it, you know, you get that feeling and that's what keeps the lit fire lit. Yeah. Well, I hope I get to meet you in person someday. You're awesome. Thanks for coming on. Yeah. Uh, please stay in contact. I'm very curious how that thing goes in, uh, April with Denise Thomas. Uh, she's a powerhouse and got a great reputation. I'm curious. That's quite the investment you're making. I can't wait to see how that turns out for you. Yeah, I'll reach out to you after that for sure. Okay. Thank you.

I appreciate it. Bye. Stay safe. Always. Wow. For the most part. Man, I really was tripping. I was like, oh, God, how am I going to keep that energy up from last night? That was easy.

Super easy. She's great. You're all choppy today. Yeah. I don't know why. Am I, do I look choppy to you? No, you guys look great. Oh, Hey, does he look, does, does Caleb look choppy to you guys? Does the beaver look choppy to you guys? Does the beaver look choppy to you guys? Uh, Trish is eyebrows are perfection.

You mean Caleb's eyebrows? What are you talking about? Uh, the tank talk always gets Seve excited. Yeah, maybe that's what it was. Just go straight to the legs wide open. Yes. There were other things that led to my quitting, but I just found out that one of their reasons for the shit they did was because i wasn't at their competition oh he must have fallen out with his affiliate i can't share the interviews the interview looks uh intriguing definitely

definitely going to go back and listen elise car redow you're killing it trish you use the passion thanks for your time what i think it's rodeo it's redacted she corrected us one time i did she was she's wrong oh okay she's right she's right today rodeo would be uh eo rodeo ceo rode Oh, right. Nice, nice, nice. Oh, my shit's backwards. Oh, that's what's going on. I knew something was fucked up on this show. I knew something.

Look it. I knew it. I knew it. I was tripping. I had flipped the camera so that when I talked to Dave yesterday and I looked that way way my head would actually be going that way did you see how my ceo was backwards no it was correct you're talking about what no listen listen listen watch i'm gonna do this again watch i'm gonna go to settings camera look at now a ceo backwards no oh shit for me it is oh maybe i can't do it mid-show

oh i'm tripping okay well i'm going back to uh settings and i'm flipping the camera back the other way heads up if you have an overlay that covers a lot of the screen you might cover yourself i don't know what that means a lot of the screen you might cover yourself. I don't know what that means. Caleb is sleeping. I know, yeah. His screen froze and his eyes are closed. Oh, Radeo.

Radeo. We'll then tell her to change the spelling. Athena Perez, great show, guys. Trish, see you, Oh, Rade, Radeo, Radeo. Well then tell her to change the spelling. Athena Perez, a great show guys. Trish, uh, see you this spring. Oh, I, at first I thought she was going to say she is the spring seven, seven. I quit my affiliate of 10 years. The new owners held it against me that I was on your podcast instead of volunteering at their. No, come on.

Come on. Held, held what against you? boobs a penis what do you mean held what against you hopefully some boobs uh yeah it's always nice to have some boobs held against you clay dupey awesome woman yeah she was great what a powerhouse that's a good that's a good place to go. I wonder how long she can keep that up, man. She's been doing it for a while. I know. But that passion, man, she's here. I'm guessing eventually it just becomes habitual,

and that's just the way that you live your life. I guess, but after I did that Daniel Brandon show, there were some comments saying, hey, Sevan, you really brought your A game. And I realized, oh shit, that means that I've kind of gotten complacent in some shows. I'm not paying enough attention and bringing my A game. And I'm guessing that that can happen to an affiliate owner too.

So that's really haunted me since I saw that comment in a good way. Like, okay, I need to be really engaged sure right and i was probably like it toned it down to like an 8.5 for some of the guests i really fucked up the podcast the other day with that cop i was not i was not myself she kind of explained it a little bit though she was just having like ups and downs like she may have that persona but it i mean it also fluctuates day to day it's like when her uh landowner or whatever told her that she didn't want to sell or didn't want to give her the office and stuff like that like i'm

sure it just fluctuates day to day like that like she yelled at some of the people in there i told you to get your fucking elbows up right she's not perfect members she's not perfect seven uh i thought you were spastic mess for the daniel brandon interview you needed to smoke that bag fuck off i was fucking amazing you'd have dick i thought that she was hilarious yeah you can't bring me down from that. That was, thank you, Matt. Thank you. That Danielle Brandon interview, I was, she's so great. She was, she's so great. They needed all hands on deck that day.

They have no clue who Sevan is. Probably don't know who Dave or Greg are either. Well, I'm glad you... I'm glad you... Oh, then I had Athena on, and that show I took a beating. A little spanking. A little haircut, as they say. A little haircut. A little trim off the top?

Yeah, she gave me a little trim off the top. Our personality is simply based on the moment. Oh it's so deep of you trish wow i know uh eric vice as much as owners engage with their clients clients need to engage with the owners and see how they are doing so they can maintain their game well yeah i guess that's important right because especially if you really care about your gym, you need to nurture the owner back too. Thank you. I know that one was great. She brought her fucking A game.

Man, hey, I told Susan after the show that was the best Susan I ever clicked. Really? Yeah, it was great. I mean, not that there was... I'm never like, fuck this guy. But I was like... Every time he talked, I was like, thank you.

Drinks four C4s in a day like killer well you know i've really cut back on my caffeine intake and i actually was gonna start blaming it on that but you know what i'm not gonna blame it on that i'm just going to just try to like fake it a little more till i make it personal accountability do you think i came in too hot on this show? No. Okay. It was good. Cause I was kind of like, yeah. One of my buddies is at Disneyland today.

Hmm. I had a cousin who did, who went to Disney world for their like slash New Year's birthday, whatever thing. I was like, I just couldn't. I just can't. I just can't get on board with that. Going to Disneyland for your honeymoon? Yeah.

Getting some mouse ears? Eating frozen yogurt all day? For one, it's so stressful. Like, it's not. Try going there with kids. Literally, that's what I'm saying. I mean, it was just the two of them, but I just could not imagine. Like, just no thanks.

Dude, I spent a fucking thousand bucks and went on five fucking rides. And, like, one of the rides was, like, a teacup ride or something. You know what I mean? Like. God. Yeah. But my kids had fun, and that was really cool. like like one of the rides is like a teacup ride or something you know what i mean like god yeah but my kids had fun and that was really cool and now they can check it off their list and they don't notice any of the bad shit like i notice they don't notice any of the we went to universal studios one time yeah that's expensive but that's cool

holy shit the uh like on the price board like they have payment plans i was like if you're gonna go into debt to go to the universal studios you need to rethink your life like hey swipe your credit card it's 189 to get in we'll charge you three and three monthly installments yeah yeah it'd be like a year long like 20 bucks a month that's fucking nuts dude yeah absolutely and what's crazy is like you can't is if you just get the normal ticket, you only go to part of this park. So you have to get an additional ticket to go to all the rides. But you can't get that ticket by itself.

You have to get both of them. I'm looking. Oh, shit, yeah. Universal Studios, you can make a down payment. Yeah, it's crazy. Hey, I was there one time with my kids. Uh, just like, you don't have to walk in like you, they, they have like that mall that just sells all garbage there in front. Right.

It's like, it's probably like a quarter of a mile long. It's just this strip of just stores and Starbucks and goofy, just all the stores that sell kids, crap to your kids. And my kids were running around and they're jumping on shit and running in there. I made a post about it in my old Instagram account and security came up to us and says, Hey, your kids can't be playing like that here. I'm like, what do you mean? They're like, there was, there was no one there. We got there. We were at the hotel right next door and we just went there early and they're like, they can't be running around and jumping there.

And it was like these concrete steps and benches that they were running up and jumping. I'm like, OK, well, where is the place that kids can play? They're like, we don't have a place where kids can play. I'm like, your Universal Studios is a family friendly place. He goes, yeah. And I go, but you don't have a place where kids can play and jump from stuff and climb on stuff. They go, no, we don't have that here. And I was like, bingo. kids can play and jump from stuff and climb on stuff they go nope we don't have that here and i was like bingo like at that point i knew okay that like these places are just what they don't have anything yeah at least disneyland does have that disneyland does have

like this island you can go on with a boat and the kids can just fucking go parkers and like yeah sand pits and shit like all sorts of stuff yeah city walk yes christine yes city walk dang that's terrible yeah i boring it's like dude you just spent like probably a couple grand trying to get in there and you're telling me my kids can't run up and down the sidewalk and climb on the concrete steps i i think this yeah right no no jumping uh vindicate do you need no he doesn't need attorney it's not a big deal at all listen that thing is just nothing someone fucking tattled on him that's i so let me tell you what happens when you work it let me just show you guys something really quick can you you go to Amazon, uh, Caleb? Caleb's going to go to Amazon and he's

going to type in the word, uh, CrossFit. And I'm going to show you, we're going to find someone who's breaking the law, like really breaking the law. Like it's going to be someone who's selling something like a bar or some grips or some shit like that. Okay. So, uh, go slow. So go back up to the top top um oh i found one i found one already go back down sorry right there that black one okay so that company right there is breaking the law gymnat uh with the over one more uh gymnastic grips uh gloves for crossfit so that person can't say that that's illegal there you oh cracking the crossFit Open. I don't know if they can do that. That's interesting.

I don't think they can do that either. I've never seen that book. Go back to that book. Let me see that book. Maybe that's someone we should have on the air. Oliver Norris and Christina Roth. No shit. You guys have Cracking the Open.

257 reviews. Anyway, you can't do that. but you can find this all over amazon so what i used to do when i would run across these i would report these to the general counsel at crossfit marshall brennan or dale saran or whoever it was and then they have outsourced to look there's another one yeah they're all over here There's people just doing illegal shit. And so someone obviously didn't like what Travis was doing and reported them. It's the same thing with with the they got some asshole over there. I have to assume they all they work at CrossFit Inc. who keeps reporting my show.

Yeah, I don't think they realize how true that is there's a i don't think and so some like they don't they they but once someone reports it to the council the council then reaches out to this outside a legal firm that they have a contract with that's in charge of sending out all the cease and desists and to tell you the truth crossfit probably won't even do anything but they're going to send one to the dod because they're we have a crossfit tent and it's labeled crossfit tent it's not a failure that would be stupid if they did that um uh the thing is is they have to do it in crossfit's defense they have to do it because you can't let there be on record that you're not defending the trademark or else you have a chance of losing the trademark. Get it? Do you guys understand?

How many people in this list do you think that they're giving out? Anywhere from five to 100 a day. I mean, mostly that legal team is probably mostly preoccupied with telling gyms in Mexico just to pull down the word CrossFit. But I'm not joking either. I remember seeing that. It was hilarious. It was just like cross-fit. Yeah, that shit's happening all over the world.

That's a billboard. So the vindicate thing, it's like, hey, someone reported you. That's just the way it fucking is, and they have no choice. They have to send the cease and desist because if they don't, then there's evidence that they're not protecting the trademark and that is really bad for crossfit that that that is a uh a battle that um will at some point will become if they yeah anyway it was a it was a constant issue over at uh hq when i was there so so don't don't. So don't worry.

Just don't worry about it. Just nothing. They just have to do it. You would do the same thing if someone was using your shit and you had to follow the rules too. I don't think CrossFit per se is like worried about it. They're worried about the fact of the precedent it sets. Make sense? Yes.

Thank you. Okay, tomorrow morning. Wow, tomorrow morning is going to be a run. You guys ready for this crazy shit tomorrow? The great James Sprague speaking about energy. Then Sam Dancer. Then Rich Froning. What food will I never eat?

I can't think of anything. Turkey sausage. I'd eat it in a pinch. I don't know. I don't think I could. I'd have to be in a real pinch to be a cannibal. Yeah, thank you. Ass.

I'd eat ass. I'm sure I have, like, pig ass or something ass or something isn't that like don't we eat the back isn't that where the bacon is or something yeah i think sure lamb hocks so seven is the og snitch yeah i guess i guess you could say that. When I was on the mothership, I wanted to protect that shit. Fuck Mary. Oh, wow. Heidi's on a roll. Fuck, marry, kill.

Sprague, dancer, phony. We won't even. Okay. Guys, we will see you tomorrow morning at 7 a.m. The shows are going to really start piling up. We got John Young and Brian Friend coming on next week to do two days of reviews we have shit loads of athletes coming in i am excited i think i just saw we signed page powers up for a full-length interview of uh i'm pretty impressed by that uh young lady and uh other people as well

i thought we were going to get roman but we had a small hiccup so we'll have to postpone that until he learns 12 more words of english and uh we will see you tomorrow love the show seve and caleb can't wait for tomorrow peace and love mad dudes thank you jethro buh-bye