The Sevan Podcast - #74 - John, Taylor, and Brandon - Behind Bars

Episode Date: July 14, 2021

The Sevan Podcast EP 74 - John, Taylor, Brandon CrossFit behind by bars The Sevan Podcast is sponsored by http://www.barbelljobs.com Follow us on Instagram https://www.instagram.com/therealsevanpodcast/ Sevan's Stuff: https://www.instagram.com/sevanmatossian/?hl=en https://app.sugarwod.com/marketplace/3-playing-brothers Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Oh, okay. Well, I got another question already. Oh, okay. Well, I got another question already. Look at Aaron. He had used his one minute allotted talking time. Hey, guys. I'm Sevan, and this is my podcast. I'm honored to have you guys on. Where do you start? I've never spoken with anyone who's locked up before.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't even understand the, I sat there in the shower this morning trying to get my head wrapped around what it would be like if I was locked up and I failed miserably. It's only questions, right? Like, hey, can they get a glass of water when they want? Where do they go to the bathroom? What, like, what if they want to talk to their mom? Like I, I just can't even get my head wrapped around it. But before we get into what you guys are doing, can you guys tell me your names and I'm going to write them down. So when I want to talk to you guys, I can address you guys one by one. Yeah. Go ahead. Uh, I'm Brandon cruiser. Okay. I'm Jonathan Willis. Okay.

Go by John. Okay. Taylor Ducey. And where are you guys? We're in Sterling Correctional Facility, the east side of Sterling Correctional Facility. And what state is that in? Colorado. Colorado.

And what state is that in? Colorado. And when you say the east side, what's that mean, besides the designation of the north, south, east, west? Sterling is the largest prison in Colorado, and so they have multiple custody levels here. And so they've designated half of the facility as a higher custody and half of the facility as a lower custody. And we are on the lower custody side.

We're a minimum restricted facility. And, yeah, so it's nicer living than where we started out. Oh, you guys didn't start off on the lower custody side? No, sir. I have almost 16 years incarcerated now. Brandon how many years? I've got about 13. Yeah I'm going on 10 years. Yeah we all started in either closed custody or medium custody which is designated as a level 4 facility, which is more security conscious because you have

an initial crime rating or points rating according to the severity of your crime will put you in a higher custody level. And through good behavior and proven track record and earned trust, you're able to work your way down to a lower custody level. And do you guys mind if I ask you how old you are, starting with John, then Taylor, then Brandon? Yeah, I'm 37.

Taylor? I'm 28. Brandon? I'm 31. So, John, you've been in since you've been 21 years old? No, 23. 23. And Taylor, you've been in since you guys just – I always tell people I'm great at third grade math.

Yeah, going on 16, so it was a little bit – yeah. Okay. And Taylor, you've been in since you've been 18? I just turned 19, and I was four months out of high school. And Brandon, you've been in. Don't tell me. Let me do the math. If it's not 21-59, I can't do it either.

You've been in since you've been 22? Since I was 19. 19. Holy shit, guys. I have a similar story as Taylor right out of high school. Math is hard. And so you guys have never – did you guys arrive at Sterling? I did, yeah.

My first facility was a Lyman Correctional Facility. I did 25 months in county jail, and then after sentencing, I went to Lyman in 2008. And when do you guys get out? I currently have a life sentence without the possibility of parole. Wait, wait, wait. Sorry, hold on a second. There's no chance of you getting out of there? Yeah, my minimus is four nines.

And so that's my current sentence, yeah. What's that mean? What's that mean, minimus is four nines. And so that's my current sentence, yeah. What's that mean, minimus? Minimus, that's when I'm to be released, what my release date would be. And, yeah, it's basically it's, you know, you're 9,999. That's how they do that, my parole eligibility date. And so, yeah, that's how they quantify that. It exceeds your life expectancy. Correct.

And Taylor, when do you get out? I have a 28-year sentence, and I'm doing half of it. So I actually am looking at halfway house in about two years or less. Okay, and Brandon? I have a 50-year sentence, and I'll be eligible to see the board that determines whether I can get out the first time in about 2045, I think. John, can you even get your head wrapped around that? How do you process that? Well, it starts with recognizing what I did and weighing the rest of my life in light of the pain that I caused and being realistic about that first.

And so that's how you begin that journey. And it didn't happen until about 10 months into my county jail sentence when I was doing anything and everything to kind of escape reality of, everything to kind of escape reality of that's usually the knee-jerk reaction to you know a murder case and committing a crime like that and but when it really sunk in and you know everybody has their aha moment at a different time I was very blessed to have mine 10 months into my county jail sentence to where I just came to the realization that I caused a tremendous amount of pain and an immeasurable amount of pain for the the victims and needed to reconcile with that and so went back and forth with with myself and with my lawyers on what my options were and the best option was to plead guilty to what I did because um i owed at the very

least that to the family if a an apology was going to be real and so in um you asked about the start of it okay and so um when i got to sentencing i pled guilty my i was able to address my victim's family and give a formal apology and they were able to give able to address my victim's family and give a formal apology. And they were able to give a response. And my victim's sister, as I was leaving the courtroom, told me to go in there and help people, Jonathan. And so that was the start of how to deal with that was, number one, she recognized my value and that I still could help people. You know, it was a subtle way of saying you still matter and you can matter to others. Don't waste it. And so that's how that's how I dealt with that.

You know, I'm in prison for the rest of my life because I I earned the sentencing according to the current laws. according to the current laws. And so I'm able to move forward every day because I was given a purpose by the very people that I hurt. Do they have a program in the prison, like a 12-step program, instead of like a 12-step program might be like how to quit drinking? Do they have a program like, hey, how to reconcile with your situation, like a 12-step program for you guys or something? Not that I'm aware of.

They have victim-offender dialogue programs to where you can write a letter to your victims if you choose. And if it gets accepted, it goes into a letter bank in which the victim's families are notified that there is a letter if they ever want to read it. But beyond that, I'm not aware of anything else. So it was just fortuitous that you stumbled across this process? Yeah, absolutely. I've said this about John a bunch of times. about sorry i lost my internet earlier but john's like a way better person than me i wouldn't have done that i could just say i wouldn't have done that i would have taken a deal he had he's being very humble in that he could have not pled guilty he could have gotten a deal um but he owned what he did, I would have taken the deal. He's an amazing person because of that.

I wouldn't have done it. And I think most people wouldn't have done it. So it speaks to his character, and hopefully the right people hear that message someday. We've had clemency for one of the program founders. He's outside now on the board, and we're always hoping for that. Sorry, now I'm really falling into these. John, have you ever thought about formalizing your process in writing

for other prisoners? No, I'm allergic to writing. All right, I understand. I fully understand. I'm allergic to writing all right i understand i fully understand i'm reading yeah no but um a real talk um redemption road and the idea that cooked up between brandon brandon's ears five years ago to do this program has created an outlet for exactly what we're talking about and you know our our message and motto of changing prison through mentorship accountability in community is exactly that and so even my personal journey started with somebody outside of me recognizing my value communicating that to me um and on their worst day you know and that's what we hope to reproduce through the medium of barbells and the access that that gives us to other prisoners and so um it's a yes no question and so i believe our program is a good

example of um and our crossfit affiliate behind bars of of the journey that i took it may not be the exact journey that i took you know everybody's gonna look a little bit different and um but just because everybody else's may not have started in their during their sentencing in a course room or a courtroom doesn't mean it can't start in the gym tomorrow for any one of our guys. And we're there to help them with that. There should almost be like a master's class, like a 10-part video series that you teach like in 15-minute segments of how you came to that process. I bet you it would bring a lot of people, a lot of peace.

But I appreciate you doing it in your own way. I'm writing your idea down, Siobhan. I will give you credit when we do it. Taylor, what did you put on your lap just out of curiosity? I saw you said a black box on there. Yeah, it's actually a laptop. Oh. I'm taking notes for the, uh, we usually just have little meeting minutes that we do just,

uh, just to go over and refresh my memory in case I miss some gold. But I got caught up in the story. I didn't have time to take notes. I thought maybe it was a 50 pound weight and you were going to go. Yeah, that's, that's behind the chair.

We got a good pump. I was going to say, and I, and I really appreciate Brandon's V-neck. That is nice. Yeah, it's good. A little chest hair never hurts. I'm a huge fan. I always said, like, if I went to the zoo, like, people, I like the CrossFit Games because no one's, like, wearing any clothes,

and people will say something like, hey, isn't that shallow or this or that? I'm like, dude, if I went to the zoo and the giraffe was wearing a turtleneck, I'd ask for my money back. I came there, and if the aardvark had a sock on his nose, I'd be like, yo, I came here to see that giant nose. I came to see the giant neck. At the CrossFit Games, I want to see these human bodies moving. It's amazing.

Brandon, so John was giving you credit for something that popped up between your ears five years ago. What is that? Well, five years ago, a guy named Damien and I were looking to throw out a challenge to our unit. And we decided upon the... Sorry, one second. What's a unit? A unit is where they house a group of offenders in a similar common living area. And so, like, if a prison has 1,000 people, that's subdivided into several units, and then every unit has several wings,

and then each wing only consists of a limited number of inmates. So for security and all that, they have smaller numbers of inmates that they're dealing with at a time. And how many people, let's say, so if a jail had 1, people how many do just roughly so we can visualize it a unit then would have how many well it depends on the prison each facility is different they all have different layouts they all look different they all operate differently and so uh for example where john and I started in Lyman, the units had about 150 people per unit, about 50 per pod. There were three pods per unit. Pods are the same thing as wings?

Yeah, pretty much, yeah. Yeah, it depends on the footprint. Over on the high side of the facility over here, which is similar to where we came from, Lyman, they have 300-person units. And so, you know, correspondingly, there's more people in each pod because there's the same amount of pods. There's three pods. Don't worry, Brandon.

I'll get you back on that story with Damien. I just have one more question that's going the wrong direction here real quick. Did you guys come from another prison together? Did I just pick up on that? so john and i met uh in shit now we got like four stories going on this is great story time um so john and i met when uh we were at lyman i was both of our first facility and we worked in maintenance. John is a professional welder.

He's the greatest welder I've ever seen. And I ended up in the welding shop as well. And I just started studying under him. And that was 11 years ago. And him and I have spent almost every waking moment since then either living next door to each other or working with each other or eating at the chow hall together. I mean, we really have as close of a friendship as you can imagine.

And so this ties in with the previous question that you asked because uh eventually um this program uh we pitched it to the major programs at the time and this program meaning you wanted to throw a competition out to the other guys that's right yeah okay and uh and so major warden long i'm sorry major uh jeff long um Jeff Long. So, Major Jeff Long, he was in charge of programs at the time. John and I worked together and we talked about this competition a lot and we talked with him about that and Jeff gave us the go-ahead to do that. And Jeff Long ultimately became the warden at this facility. And so he knew what our program was. He knew that he liked it. He knew that it was effective at changing culture.

And so he asked myself and Willis to come down to this facility. And initially we said, no, that's okay. come down to this facility and initially we said, no that's okay, we got it just about as good as you can have it for serving your life in prison at Lyman. But he was pretty adamant because he believed in the power of the program. And so he asked us to give him a shot and just come down and visit the program as inmates and just for a couple days and take a look and see if we were interested. So we agreed to that and we were skeptical and hesitant and we came out and immediately we got through the doors and we looked across the yard and we said, man, we believe without

a doubt that this program can change the face of rehabilitation at this facility because guys are getting out frequently because they have short sentences here. Like we're talking one to five years. And so John having life, me basically serving the rest of my life, we want our lives to matter. the rest of my life, we want our lives to matter. Although we're going to be in here forever, but that doesn't mean that we don't want to matter. That doesn't mean that we don't want to make a change. And that also doesn't mean that we just gave up. Because like John said, you can take the failures of your life and let that be the last page that you write, or you can use that to try to create and script a whole new world that's better than what you did

in it. And so we looked across this yard and we said, this program could change everything. And it was kind of hard because we did, John was at Lyman longer than me. And I mean, I was there for 10 years. And you have so many people that become family to you because at a place like that, almost everybody's there forever. And so the guy that lives next door to you is kind of your family. And so it's kind of hard to leave that. At the same time, it's worthwhile if you do it for a purpose. And so wrapping that back around, that's why we're here at this facility. But this program, going back to the original question of how did that come up? Damien and I, he was a guy, he lived next door to me, a close friend of mine.

And we wanted to host a competition. And so we started brainstorming on what that could look like. So, sorry, let me stop you here. So you guys were already doing CrossFit in the prison? No, not really. No, not at all. Okay, so when you say competition, you guys were just like, you guys worked out in the yard. You guys were like, hey, let's do a competition.

So they had weights, and John and I and a third member of our core team, Trevor Jones, we used to work out together. I just did whatever John told me to do for the day. And we did cleans, and we did deadlifts, and we did basic powerlifting. And we were strong, and we won a lot of the weight meets around there. So we were all fitness guys and when we put together this idea for a competition, we really weren't sure what this was going to look like and how to do a massive competition

like that. And so, uh, we started looking into the idea of the CrossFit Open. Um, I got ahold of my dad who is a 42 year, uh, Denver police officer. And, uh, I just kind of asked him, hey, can you look on the internet and see what a snatch is and see what a double under is um how did you even know about crossfit we didn't yeah well i mean we we were aware of it because um they were broadcasting the games on tv and so okay when we saw somebody like like amy and sophia lifting weights that we were struggling to lift we were like oh there's something to this we want that number one my pride hurt you know and I want to figure out how to do that number two that we just never seen any any kind of compilation between the kind of exertion of power under weights as

well as gymnastic capacity and different, you know, things like that. So it sparked our interest, mainly his interest. And I was, you know, I was kind of the I'm kind of cool doing what I like training like a football DB. I'm cool with that. But yeah, that's what he's talking about. OK, sorry. Sorry. No, that's cool. Okay. Sorry. Sorry. No, that's cool. Uh, yeah. So, um, I reached out to my dad and had him start looking up these movements. Um, and he wasn't really sure either. He's not a fitness guy. And so he said, Hey, I do know a guy, uh, that does know some of this stuff. Um, let me give him a call. And that was Aaron Brill on the call here. And Aaron said, well, hey, why don't you guys look into the CrossFit Open? It's an online competition. You guys might be able to do that. And so we're like, awesome. Still it out there for the inmate population.

And what was really cool is the cool thing about CrossFit. CrossFit is this lure. It's a beacon. And it attracts a certain kind of person. It attracts a certain kind of person that really has this hard work mentality and this fight and their fire within them that wants to give everything they can to try to become better. And it's very noticeable in prison. It's always that kind of person that finds their self in that situation. Don't get me wrong, there are awesome people all around prison. The common prison idea, that exists, but that's not the whole story.

And so when we put this competition out there, we had about 30 people, was that about right? About 30 people show up. And we just said, hey, whoever wins will you some brownies and uh give you some soups some chili ramen and uh these guys showed up and this is where the idea was birthed because it was the 2016 open and i think it was event number two, we were outside and there was an older black guy and there was a younger white guy and they were doing the competition together. If you don't know prison, that might not seem like a big deal. But in prison, especially in Lyman, that never happened. Honestly, prison is a place where it's very racially divided.

It's very age divided. It's affluence divided. It's divided in every single way that you can imagine so that people are very, very selective of who they spend their time with and oftentimes aggressive towards those that they don't. don't. And so right away, when you had these two contrasting individuals coming together under this one idea, I was standing there and I was judging and I watched this younger white guy who's doing burpees and the older black guy got down on his knees and was cheering for him. And it hit me so profoundly that I thought, what if that became prison? What if you could use fitness to change the way that people interacted with each other and to change the way that they use their time to better themselves?

Because a lot of people in prison have this natural lure to fitness. They want to be big. They want to be strong. They want to be in control. And so it's very different from being really great at something else. When you have big biceps, it speaks. Aaron, are you leaving us? I'm sorry.

I said, Aaron, are you leaving us, Aaron? Okay. That was fun watching you get dressed, by the way. Brandon, you know what's crazy is CrossFit spread to 162 countries on all continents, including Antarctica. It did it with no marketing plan, no dollars spent on advertising, and with no intention, with no vision to be a business. And you just explained why. to be a business and you just explained why um it is not only is it for every single human being but it um when my anyone who suffers next to someone else doing 100 burpees it's like being in a fight you know it's like when you see like conor mcgregor hug nate nate diaz afterwards it's

like they now share something that two other people will never share together right but but we can share it as a community this sort of suffering and it's funny because my mom my mom started crossfit at uh 69 she's 77 now and at first she always felt the first year was really hard for her because she always felt like the old person who was slowing the class down but um the the she was at one gym and she had this uh she had a coach there who was Filipino. And he broke off and started another gym, and my mom went with him because she really liked him. Young kid who was just really cool to her. And so then my mom did a competition at that gym, and it was the first time I visited that gym. And I went there, and there's 70 Filipinos who are between the age of 18 and 35.

And then my mom, at the time time 72 year old armenian lady i'm like mom you never you never told me that they were all filipino and that you're the only white kid in here and she's like i didn't even know wow like yeah and it's just like that's of course she didn't know you know i mean she's in my mom's trip was that she was the old one not what so everyone has their hang-up right but this thing you nailed it and it's so funny that no matter who digs for the CrossFit treasure, they always find the same treasure. And you even found it in prison. I'm going to tell you one more crazy story along that line that I noticed. When I lived in college, I went to school in Santa Barbara.

And I went to college at UC Santa Barbara. And in my backyard, I let homeless people stay in my backyard, as many as wanted. It meant like just whatever. And half of them were like – and I was homeless for two years too. So the vast, vast majority of them were addicted to something. I would say all of them, either meth or alcohol or something bad had happened to them and they were just drowning their sorrows, everything. There was one guy in there named Carms.

He was a Rastafarian dude, super dark dark black and then there was another dude in there we called skinhead dave and he had the swastika tattooed on his neck and hate on his hands but they both stayed in the backyard they both came into the house when i cooked and they became best friends and i would even often see them sleeping on the couch together like heads in opposite directions and it was so fascinating to me at that point i realized man all that shit is just like luxury like but when it comes to survival like if two of you can get on the same page for survival and and that's basically what i'm hearing that you're using crossfit for is like survival it's survival for your meaning of life right it's adding value to your life and when

i saw that and i saw that at a young age i was like oh shit this is like when it taught when you need shelter and and food like some things change right like your priorities change you're like all right i'll throw that racist shit out the door you know what i mean like i all i have to do is stop being racist and i can and i can eat and sleep here or or this guy's going to be in this i mean it's just it's um in in the most crude sense i know this is going to offend some people but to be racist or prejudiced it's it's a luxury it's a luxury of our times like if we were all fucking running from dinosaurs with spears we'd all be huddled up in the same cave together trying to figure out how we're going to take the

t-rex down and where we're going to store them absolutely so i have to go on sorry yeah luxury is a community thing in the sense also that uh here in prison you don't get to choose who you're friends with necessarily and so like and I, we think oppositely half the time. And what's really cool about that is in the real world, it tends to divide people. And like somebody splits off to do their own gym. Here we have no choice. We have to work together. No matter how bad things ever get, this is always going to be my best friend.

So is he. And so are the guys that are doing this with us. And so it's really cool because we can monopolize on that and use that to our advantage to bring other people that aren't like us around. And then you can use that for rehabilitative purposes. Right. Capitalize on your differences as opposed to use them to fight each other. Yeah, we like to use the language of the gym. We call it the forge, but we also, you see that forge, when you go in there,

I mean, obviously you got to become, you need the heat to make something valuable. And that heat busts something down into its primal state, you know. And in that primal state, I like your language because we just use the same we use the same thing in that primal state all those luxuries fade away you know you're just trying to find oxygen where's the water you know water and oxygen that's all I need and then they you know the other guys need water and oxygen too you know and that's all they care about too and then all of a sudden they're caring about each other in that shared suffering and, you know, in that pile of sweat and blood.

Yeah. You only, you're only going to fight over cups when you have a hundred cups. If you all have one cup, you guys are just like, we just need to fill it with water. Yeah. You guys, there's this book, it's called the doubt at chain. And it's written by,'s a stephen mitchell translation and i think you guys would be it's it's you guys man it's it's that there's there's a saying in there stop thinking and all your problems will end and i and i found that book

before i found crossfit but i remember one time doing 100 burpees for time and i'm like holy shit this is cheating this is cheating meditation This thing just shuts the brain right down because you're just trying to survive. And then so how does Taylor fit in? Is he the third wheel? Did you guys meet him at Lyman? Like what's he doing? You felt bad for him, so you just throw him on the – give him some screen time? Where's he?

So when we got – when we were slated to move over, Taylor was already at Lyman for a few months and hanging out. And Taylor has a unique role in the startup and founding of Redemption Road 999 and Fremont Correctional Facility. Our friend Trevor Jones, who we spoke about, who is another one of our really good friends, he's a current level 2 instructor he got moved to Fremont through a program for juvenile lifers and in that move you know anytime one of our core dude shoots out somewhere we're looking at expanding our program right now we have somebody there who knows knows what this is and how to implement it and so he teamed up with Taylor who was very active in the powerlifting program there. And they already had a CrossFit-style program currently there

that was not RF2. So with the addition of Trevor and Taylor putting their heads together, it was a really easy rollover into a new Redemption Road affiliate. And then I'll let Taylor pick his story up there. Can I see your water, bud? Yeah. Everybody needs water. We staged that.

We just had a competition yesterday and I was yelling for 72 hours for the last three days. So Fremont was interesting. I started my time at 19 here in Sterling, and Sterling was vicious, especially back then. It was all politics and gang life, and I came from the gang life. And I left the gang life because I realized. Taylor, can you come? Is there any way you could come closer? I'm sorry just so we i just want to make sure you get the audio and see your face

perfect whatever now so uh sterling was a little bit different um uh than where we are now it was a lot of politics and i came from a gang life, and when I was really young and easily influenced, that seemed really popular, right? That seemed like a good idea. I was looking for some kind of community. I was looking for some kind of structure. I was looking for some kind of purpose, right? And so that was the only thing that prison had to offer me with those three things at the time. I realized that all that is is crap.

It was a facade, right? So I left that. When I went to Fremont, we were doing CrossFit. We called it CrossFit. We didn't know what CrossFit was because we didn't have an example. We were doing the workouts without the community, and it didn't work. There was no no it wasn't thriving we weren't doing good that's why I eventually broke off into power

lifting because I was finding something different there and that was more of my style of workout and it was more of a family when Trevor Jones came to Fremont he came with he said I'm coming with Redemption Road CrossFit. And I was like, okay, well, we did CrossFit here. What's the difference between Redemption Road CrossFit and what we were doing? Because we were doing the same kind of stuff. He's like, it doesn't matter what you're doing, what you're training. Look at this.

There's accountability. There's community. There's mentorship. Right? You add these things in this environment, this place that those kids that are 19 years old looking for structure, looking for community, looking for something to have a passion about or some kind of purpose. That right there is exactly what all these kids are looking for. But man, when you put the right things behind it, when you have a foundation that's solid upon principles, upon things that never change, like being loyal, just being a better person,

right? I have these guys. These guys right here are those examples, those giants that I stand on the shoulders of, right? The better people that I want to be. Because I took a deal, right? Just like Aaron said, he wouldn't have done it if he had that opportunity, right? Well, guess what? I did have that opportunity and I took the deal. But... I would have taken the deal too, sorry. It's a big time. It's a big thing, right? But when you see somebody and you're like, man, I know what he went through. I know what that took to not have to do that. You're like, I'm going to follow you. What are we doing? Are you going into the fire? I'm going to follow you into the fire too. So when you bring those things, and I figured out it was more than CrossFit. It was a tightly knit community. I found out what real CrossFit was. We didn't have

an example to follow. And so that's what Trevor Jones showed us at Fremont. It's contagious, absolutely. You see that, you feel it, you want it. You got all these knuckleheads in prison that are passionate about doing the wrong thing. But man, when you get those knuckleheads who dive headfirst into the right thing, they are the best people to have behind you that will eventually be in front of you and the people carrying the flag for you and those are the guys we're looking for and eventually that's what these guys did with me they gave me the flag they

were like carry that torch man we need you at fremont to take on it yeah no i just want to i want to follow up with that because through through some, he ended up in Lyman with us. And a couple months before we moved over, so we got to get to know Taylor and Trevor. Through Trevor, we got to get to know Taylor. I was getting letters actually about him before he arrived. And like, hey, he's coming your way. And they said we were twins but i was just born in the smaller tent yeah they cut off my pinky toe and grew shorter than him yeah true story

and so but he arrived and he's everything that you know that that was was said about him and more so when the opportunity came for us to leave, because of some of the relationships we had and him being actually eligible to be at a minimum restricted facility, Taylor expressed, hey man, I wanna be where you guys are at. How can I do that? And so we asked some of the staff

and that got, a couple phone calls were made and a week after we arrived here, he showed up, you know. So it was really cool. And so he's been answering that call ever since because if you're building something, right, if you're not building for the next generation, you're not building something that lasts, and he's a perfect example of what this program looks like,

the next generation of the program so so you guys are in sterling now and you came from lyman correct yeah all three that correct and and how long have you been in sterling since what was it january 2000 2000. January of when? And who took over the CrossFit program there when you guys left? What we do. Sorry, and let me follow it up with this too, and then you can answer both. Are you guys going to go back?

By the way, these are all great questions. Thank you. Thank you. I pride myself on being the absolute. You guys got the best in the game. Can I jump in real quick? I'm going to switch over to my phone. I've got to drive to work. Don't forget to mute your mic.

Oh, no, that would be some good sound effects. Gotcha. You said Taylor and Brandon. Oh, that would be some good sound effects. That's it. You said Taylor and Brandon. Yeah. So I want to hit on a core principle that I think that we're kind of dancing around here, which ties in the questions that you just asked as well as the previous question.

What we do and what I did at the very start, I had a cool idea, but what we do is not possible without a really amazing team of just incredible people because it is very hard to start something like this in prison. It's why we're the only one. And so what I did was I found guys like John and Trevor and a core group of guys at that time who were the most incredible people I had ever met in my life. This is the guy that changed me. And when I was not on the right path, just getting around him put me on the right path. Just watching him, like Taylor said, just watching him live. And so there was a couple of guys like that. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of guys like that in prison. These were the most significant ones to me. They were also the fittest guys that I knew. John is the strongest dude I know. And so, yeah, that's true. I have a bigger back squat and deadlift than Matt Fraser.

Sorry, John. Is that true? So, better at everything else. And it is true. Just so people know, they do know Matt Fraser, so don't think that that was a joke. We'll get to that. These guys have a regular interaction with the kid. brandon the strongest guy you know and the circle of people it takes to get us yeah and so what we do like our biggest role in here and as a program

redemption road what taylor talked about what's different than than crossfit in, is that we just identified a process to find extraordinary men and women and give them a leadership role that they earn, that they achieve. These are people that have done, I think all of our core members, if we call them that, all of our coaches have done five to 10 to 20 years in prison. One of our guys right now, he's done, what's Chris done, 25? Chris is rounding to 30. Yeah, he's more than 25. 28 years, that's right. So what we do is we find people that have been consistent and excellent,

and we give them every tool that we can out of our experience. And with all the training from CrossFit and all the positivity and support from our volunteers like Sophia and Amy and Peter and Aaron and a whole board of them. And those individuals are very capable. and when we establish the CrossFit program somewhere our immediate goal is world-changing leaders creating world-changing leaders disciples making disciples however you label it our idea is to take those people that are so powerful by the presence alone that they change people and give them those tools and then once they're good we try to move on and find that again somewhere else so that they're all still pushing that same purpose and then we have that confidence

that at all four of our current affiliate facilities that is the same torch the same banner that Taylor is talking about is being flown there and with the three facilities that we're currently expanding to, those teams are also building that. And so it's all based out of barbells, but the shadows of that behind that are always the same. It's the same. I really liked your idea of taking John's character and putting that in a package for somebody to look at. It's the same idea that we take leaders and give them the package and say, you have it. You have all of it.

I just want to exploit that and make more awesome opportunities for people to do that themselves also. And make more awesome opportunities for people to do that themselves also. Because when we're not… We want to fill your amazing vessels with a little bit of CrossFit knowledge. We know you're contagious already. We want to give you something else, another flag to carry. That's right. And one thing that we're not about is just saying, hey, you did a workout, therefore you're redeemed. Or, hey, you did a couple of years in prison. Or, hey, you beat Halo workout, therefore you're redeemed. Or hey, you did a couple years in prison, or hey, you beat Halo, you're a great person

now. We are very demanding on what we are looking for from people, because we expect them to stop doing drugs. We expect them to stop tattooing or fighting or hating people or hating themselves. And so sometimes those are challenges for people, but a lot of times people just have never seen what that looks like in another way. And so they get around a guy like him and they say, wow, you know what, I never had a brother like that that said I shouldn't treat a woman like that or that I shouldn't treat somebody else's possessions like this.

Because everybody in my life was saying the opposite. And so now they're rethinking everything. And then we throw them out a barbell and say, think of this while you're in your primal state of failure. And then once you're used to failure, then it's all uphill. And then once you're used to failure, then it's all uphill. Yeah, I think what I love about the CrossFit gym is it's hard to find and identify where somebody can find wins in life and to develop a mindset of adapt and overcome that builds that character trait. And in our CrossFit gym, over that barbell, every day you have an opportunity to walk away with a personal win in some way. And that personal win,

you know, when you meet the challenges of life, they weren't as hard as Fran at 6 a.m., guaranteed for most things, right? And the things that are hard or harder than what you face in the gym, at least you're primed with not the panic response to the traumas that you will inevitably face through a tragedy or whatever. watching guys and gals break through and develop that mindset of, okay, well, what's my next win? What do I need to stack on top of this last accomplishment so I can reach my goals and start thinking about goals? And that's one of the things that we love about the environment in the gym is because it translates so easily to the rest of life and why it's so effective and why Redemption Road is more than a name. You know, and it's already we saw it already happening or are happening organically in the gym. We just put a label on what was what's happening all across the world in CrossFit gyms.

And it's just a little bit more noticeable in here because our our our our clients have have started in a really low place in life you know so so the change it tends to catch more eyes and be a little bit more dramatic are you concerned that your warden will leave and that you guys the next warden won't that's an everyday concern with everything we do in here absolutely Absolutely. And so one cool thing about Warden Jeff Long. Let me say one thing real quick. And we've seen that happen, not in prisons, but in the military. We've seen units flourishing doing CrossFit. And the funny part is then they think they're shutting it down, but you can't.

Uh-oh. I hear an echo. You guys hear that? Okay. but you can't uh-oh you're in an echo you guys hear that okay so um so there were there were units in the military that basically they shut down crossfit and the funny part is it's really hard to shut down crossfit because once someone has it they keep doing it but um but but politics get in the way and we've seen just whole whole amazing CrossFit gyms that we know are changing people's lives for the significant better. Life-saving, right? And we've seen them get shut down.

Yeah, yeah. It's real tough when you have other people in absolute control over every situation. And it just takes us grinding day in and day out. It's one of the reasons why we create actively and on purpose, try to create the biggest footprint possible so that so many people have seen what we do. And we have a saying, we've seen too much to do anything else. We want, we want to do that. We want, you know, visibility is everything. Trust is built on it, right? Visible consistency over time and well-doing builds trust.

But that visibility part is crucial. If nobody sees it, it's as if, you know, it's as if a tree makes a sound when it falls in the water type of thing. And so, yeah, that's one of the biggest missions on our side is to create such a wave that it's almost impossible to come back from if we have a change in power. But nothing is certain. Warden Jeff Long, he says he wants to be here until, because that was a concern of, that's

a real life situation for him and I. The reason we're here is on a high-level severe variance, and that means that our custody level was overridden based on our earned trust in the system and good track record to bring us here to start a program like this. Is that unprecedented, by the way? Yes. That never happens. I'm the only person in the Colorado system with my current sentence, exact sentence that

I have, that's in a medium-restricted facility. Yes. And what about using prisoners to propagate a positive program? Have you ever heard of that being used, done before? We've seen it being done the wrong way, absolutely. So the thing with that is you have to live it. Inside here, you don't get a break. 24-7, the guys that you are preaching to, they live with you. They use the same bathroom as you. They brush your teeth next to you in the morning. So they see you at

your very best and possibly at your very worst. So if you build a team or you have a program trying to find individuals preaching the right thing, but yet behind closed doors, and those closed doors aren't private. They're public. Wow. It's different. So the team is everything. We've seen programs that have awesome messages,

but yet the people doing the program, the team that they have, is the one example. When the doors close and those masks that they wear come off and get hung on their coat rack, it's clear that that message has no validity. That's a really powerful thing you said. Unfortunately, the first thing i thought of

was the catholic church but um as an example where it went sideways i didn't really want to use it but but but i but i get what you're saying if you like if you're going to try to walk the walk like like i could like i can go out and tell everyone hey don't smoke cigarettes don't smoke cigarettes and then when i come home at night i can light up a cigarette and be like well i know they're bad because i smoke and so i'm not being a hypocrite but you can't do that what you're saying is you're you have wow and now i get the back to what brandon was saying why it's so important to find the people the apostles the correct apostles yeah when you light up that cigarette you've done more damage than if you would have said nothing at all

Yeah, when you light up that cigarette, you've done more damage than if you would have said nothing at all. Brandon, did you say your dad's a cop? That's right. He's a retired Denver police officer. Do you have any kids? I do not. I have three boys, and it's a man, your dad. Did you talk to him a lot? Yeah, we're pretty close. And, in fact, CrossFit has brought us much closer together.

Yeah. I can't really talk about it. I want to talk about it, but it's too much for me. Sorry. I got overwhelmed. I started thinking of my sons in prison and I can't really, I can't do that. Yeah. You know, uh, in prison, you don't have, uh, you don't have as much, um, connection with your family as you would out there, obviously. But especially when you're serving a lot of time in prison, ultimately people like us have served maybe half of our life in here or more than half of our life in here. And so the idea of family becomes kind of a different thing. Okay.

But at the same time, you try to fight for connectivity with your family out there. But it's hard, and it's been much harder with COVID. But even so, it's a very different world. But even so, it's a very different world. It's almost like a different country, but it's more than that because it's hard to explain. But I guess my biggest point here is that our life in here really affects our families too. And so when there's one person in prison, that's three, four, maybe 10 people that are severely affected by that as well.

And, you know, you also have victims that are affected. And so it's a complicated dynamic. One of the things that we try to do with this program is to repair and rebuild and restore family dynamics through CrossFit, specifically with the prison population. Just to give one short example, we had one of our first CrossFit Level 1 trainers. He got out of prison. But while he was here, he did the CrossFit Open, and he pulled me aside one day, and he was in tears because he just talked to his grandfather for the first time in 10 years. And the reason that they talked was they both found out that they were doing the CrossFit Open.

that they talked was they both found out that they were doing the CrossFit Open. And it's incredible because that happens on a really interesting level because of everybody's separation from their family because of prison. You know, people have, I don't know what people's idea of prison is, but the hardest thing about prison is at the end of the day, no matter what access you have, what barbells you have, you go back to a cell and you lock the door and it's you or it's you and a cellmate. And you don't get to spend time with who you want to. You don't get to spend time with your family. You may never see them again. And you have to live You don't get to spend time with your family. You may never see them again. And you have to live with that every day. With this program, when we can bring families

together, not just during somebody's incarceration, but also after, if somebody gets released from prison, maybe people don't have family. And so Aaron and Sophia and Amy and Peter and our volunteers, they kind of become their mentors and their family. And so when somebody's only experience in the real world is terrible and they don't know where to go, they don't have anywhere to go, people get released homeless all the time, every single day. the time, every single day. And so when we can connect them with somebody like Aaron, who's a Denver police officer, and Aaron meets them at the door and says, come on, let's go work out. Let's find you a gym. That person now has something that they maybe never had before. Wow. And that's a really huge aspect of this program too.

Going back to your warden real quick, does your warden do CrossFit? No, but he sure gets excited about it. That's really cool. That's a trip that he doesn't do CrossFit, and he's bought in good on him. He must be really, really good too. There's no way to say it better, I guess. I mean, we can't reach for words to describe his level of buy-in when he sees something that's positive. Not just, I mean, he's progressive, but not for progressive's sake.

If it doesn't touch lives and change hearts, he doesn't want anything to do with it. And he's constantly looking for new ideas and how to implement those concepts to the population. He's very passionate, and it's evident through the kind of change and the way he humanizes the prison situation at his facility. Do you guys have, what kind of news do you guys have access to? Do you guys have access to everything? Like, can you see Facebook, Instagram, Fox News, CNN? We have Fox News and CNN and local

channels. On TV. We have no internet access. Oh, you have no internet access. So you guys can't go to the CDC website? We cannot. So you couldn't read any, could you read scientific papers on

SARS-CoV-2 or COVID-19? Could you get access to those? The thing that we can do is we can request information from like the library or in the programs department. Programs, like staff members, they can look stuff up. staff members, they can look stuff up. You can also have your family look anything up and print it out on a page or send it through a J-Pay letter, things like that. I just wonder, because I wonder what the world looks like to you guys from the inside.

Looking from the inside to the outside world right now like what's it look like like with just just all the politics and the um and the the so-called pandemic and the response to it and all that stuff like pardon me okay uh yeah i juxtaposed against last year but at the same time it's hard to make a value judgment on something that I'm 15 and a half years detached from. Because I remember the world way different. There was no smartphones when I got locked up. There wasn't a thing that came out when I was in county jail. And it doesn't mean I'm not up to date on what that is or whatever it's it's hard to say what's good or bad because the context changed right about about it um i do know my gut reactions but as far as um

you know some of the the law changes in in different things um but i i mainly ask because they're sent that there's such a control over information in the outside world now that i was wondering if it must be even more intense in the inside because because it is really there's there's definitely control of information flow that i've never seen before there's also more information than there's ever been before too so we're kind of spoiled but um yeah but it's interesting so i was just wondering how it wasn't there like are you guys scared of getting covid and dying from covid19 or are you guys like yeah no we're no it might be crazy to say but i don't know if we can get it yeah we've been around

everybody that has it man we yeah we've been moved like like six times in the last year and a half um close to it and every every place that we've been moved, we just recently got vaccinated within the last two months we got vaccinated. But all that time prior, while it was COVID cases were exploding in this place, it seemed like they exploded in every hallway we went. We've never tested positive for COVID. And we watched whole hallways that we lived in, um, get moved out to isolation units. Um, and so, um, are there obese people in jail? Yeah. Yeah, there are absolutely elderly, obese, um, diabetic, all the, all the elements that you can knock off a list. We have those here and we work with a lot of guys in our

gym that have diabetes that have that no like no mobility basically and their lower extremities things like that and boy they love it because they see that with a little bit of care and work that sadly sometimes i want to say sometimes but for the most part, for sure, our medical facilities do not even offer. They offer none of those. And having a CrossFit gym in here, it's cool for the guys that are just V-heads or the guys that are dedicated and fire breathers themselves, but also for the ones who are just like, I want to be able to get up in the morning and feel better than I did yesterday.

Those are the guys that were like, come here. We have you. You got our full attention. You got our one-on-one support. And they've never seen anything like that. And most of them have been in prison for decades. decades and that's where they've caught the diabetes or the elements that they have because they've been they've been in this in this box with cement walls and the only thing to pacify them is a television with 15 channels and that that obviously leads to sedentary lifestyles and

and bad diet choices and all the things you sound like g Greg Glassman. You sound like Greg Glassman, Taylor. Well, we've, you know, devoured his stuff. I love, yeah, we read books. We sweat it out, I guess. He's allergic to writing but not reading, man. These guys that I'm sitting next to are some of the brightest minds that I've known in my life, so I try to soak it all up. I don't say this loosely if you guys are interested

in speaking with him um i can definitely arrange that for you guys to speak to him so if you guys ever want to pick his brain um he is probably one of the most brilliant human beings uh his brain is a trip that would be great yeah that would be crazy and now. And on a side note, and I'm no doctor, but I spend a lot of time researching SARS-CoV-2 and looking at pictures of people who died, and I've never seen anyone who looks like

you guys who's died from it. Not one. And I spend a lot of time. So, and by look like you, I mean chiseled faces pecs sticking out collarbones one of the uh topics that i think we're brushing up against is prison diet um yeah tay Taylor, he's hitting on that really well. In prison, you have the standard diet that the state offers you. In an attempt to make it as affordable to the taxpayer as possible, they have chosen to make the diet very largely consist of spaghetti and bread.

Well, beans. And beans. Like what they feed our kids at school. Yeah, exactly. It's exactly the same thing. That's all I know is high school meals and prison meals. Yeah. Yeah, very.

And lunchables. Yeah, lunchables. None of which are great for you. So, what happens is we get these guys that have ate nothing but ramen noodles honey buns and carbs empty carbs and they come in and they say I have 16 health ailments and I'm dying and I don't know what to do because everybody says there's no answer, go lay back in your bed.

And is that the only answer? And what we have done is we have created kind of a side option to the CrossFit stuff that we're doing, which by the way, we're very, very, very much into CrossFit. We believe it is the answer and that gymnastics, rehabilitation, it's all CrossFit. It's just how you apply it to specific populations. It's scaling. And so we take guys that have those health ailments. We have a guy right now.

He's 300-something pounds. He was 400-something pounds. And they say, man, I can't even walk. And we have literally taken multiple people that were in a wheelchair that had terrible diabetes, that had terrible blood ailments and other health concerns that medical was saying this is not good and put them through simple CrossFit applied very very particularly we are level two trainers and Taylor Taylor hasn't taken

his level one but knows all the stuff that there is to know and we take these guys through this and we change their diet we change their workout their lifestyle and their their self-perception. And a lot of times in prison, one of the biggest things is people are coming into the CrossFit gym and they're not quite sure where they fit in in life. And so we can take them and we can just sit down with them and show them that we care and listen to them. And they start to bear those weaknesses, whether it's physical or whether it's personal. And so far, of things that we can fix, we've had 100% success rate on rehabilitation and getting people to lose a lot of weight.

And what's really cool is that every facility that we do this at, these guys end up, they're very constant with medical and in the doctor's office, you would say. And so they start coming back and the doctors are saying, hey, your blood levels are looking better than I've ever seen them. Your diabetes, they're lowering. Everything on paper is looking better. What are you doing? And they say CrossFit. And this has happened so many times that the leading medical staff at Lyman started doing the CrossFit program.

Yeah, they got so interested in it, I started programming for both of our both of the the providers there they were like well we want to know more about this brandon wrote up a an awesome little paper handout for everybody that was interested on on that track you know an alternative to um prescriptions or whatever. He wrote up a CrossFit prescription, basically. And so I was in there on a checkup and struck up a conversation, and both of them were two of my main staff clients for programming. So, yeah, I want to talk about our friend who walked in who was, you know, tipping the scales on 300 or 400 pounds a little bit um give you a little bit of backstory on that because i mean personal stories trump everything right it

touches these concepts to ground and he walked in and goes man i everybody told me that this wasn't for me um you know and i was on the on the knife's edge, you know, back and forth on whether to come over here because I can't do that, you know, talking about muscle ups or whatever. And everybody said, ah, those guys, they won't have nothing for you. He's like, but I said, forget it. I'm coming anyway. What can you do for me? I want to lose 100 pounds. That was about four weeks ago. He's lost 17 pounds so far in four weeks. He says his knees feel better. And it's amazing. Every time we see him, when we walk across the yard, we have to walk across two giant yards to get to our gym. Our gym's on the other side of the facility from where we're at on this side. And it takes us about a half hour to make that walk because guys like him stop us to say, oh my gosh, I didn't know that I could feel this good. I didn't know I could come back from this. And so I just wanted to highlight that a little bit. How do you change his diet? What do you do

if all they're feeding you is crap? Good question. This guy and Damien, the co-founder of the program, they took, we call it the Prisoner's CrossFit Diet. They took what's available for

canteen items and what is offered on our menus put them together very similar to zone blocking and how to how to calculate that with with measurements that the guys would understand like there's a certain black scoop that comes in a carbohydrate meal replacer that they sell on canteen that you could use as a measurement for for different items and and made meal plans based on that so the canteen is where you have to pay for it and where do you get money for that go ahead well yeah you got family um that support you uh some people do some people don't

that support you. Some people do, some people don't. And then most people in prison, at least in Colorado, make about $0.80 a day. Minus restitution. Yeah, minus 20% usually. And so honestly, you can't support yourself. You just can't. There are certain industries jobs that you can have and that they're very limited and very specific, but for the average guy you're working with after restitution, 60 cents a day. So unless you have somebody... Correct. Yeah. There's part-time too that makes about 30 cents. Yeah. Yeah. Panics.

What can people on the outside do to help your program? That's a great question. That is a good question. We have, it just depends on what, who we're talking about on the outside. You know, we have obviously word of mouth and increasing the visibility of basically dragging the spotlight over something positive that's happening in a dark place. That's the greatest asset that the public can bring. But within that, we just held the competition in Denver last Saturday, which raged. I'm still waiting to hear how much money we raised, but it was

specifically to raise money for barbells, bumper plates, CrossFit equipment for our affiliate in Arkansas Valley. They didn't have a lot of equipment, so we wanted to support our affiliate with the greatest needs so that they can reach more guys through this medium that we've known to affect this change. And we had Sophia, why don't you tell us how many people showed up to that event and what some preliminary numbers are. And is this an event that's outside the walls of the prison? Was supposed to be, but go ahead. Yeah, I can talk about that a little bit. So we initially intended on the event being

held at the Denver Police Academy. So we wanted it to be outside of prison walls. Unfortunately, some of the logistical stuff for that did not work out. So we ended up having it at Denver Women's Correctional Facility. And we had 22 teams who participated as competitors. So that was some of the teams were just community members. And then I think we had 14 insiders, right guys? i think it was more than that was it uh there's 14 athletes oh okay well so we had um our insider athletes paired with a community member for 17 of the teams and some of them had met before but most of them had not. And then we also had a ton

of family members, just community members who were volunteering, and then all of us on the board who came and were kind of coordinators and judges. And then obviously tons of correctional staff, each of our facilities sent staff with their participants. And then we had the staff from the actual facility that we were at. And I think that Aaron mentioned the donations. We're looking at around $10,000. It's incredible. One thing I want to highlight is all the volunteers that came as athletes. It was a $200 buy-in for the comp. And so these amazing people comped the $100 that we didn't have to. So individually, they paid $100 for us, so $200 total as one participant. And as well as some of them donated more. I'm aware that my partner donated a significant amount more to the cause.

And so, yeah, these are just amazing community people, community members that recognize a good thing for what it is and are willing to put their money where their mouth is on creating real change. Another option that people have, especially with COVID parameters releasing a little bit, is proximity and presence. And the board members here that are on this call with us, I use them as an example. They come in and they work out with us. They come in and they work out with us. Sophia, she comes in and she makes us all look slow. And Peter and Amy come in and they work out side by side with us.

And that changes a person's heart when you're an inmate. To know that Peter's out there and that he cares about me and that if I ever got out of prison, Peter would probably invite me to a barbecue at his house. That really affects me in a huge way. It affects every single decision that I make. And for a guy in our program that's pretty new to all this, that can really affect his rehabilitation. A lot of our guys have addictions. And so when they encounter that struggle between do I use or do I not use, somebody like these volunteers that we have is a factor it's a large there's an

accountability there's an accountability factor I want to be account right just like I want to be accountable to my wife my friends on different levels okay this guy's making the effort to come in and work out with me the least I could do is not a piece of shit so he keeps coming yeah yeah and not only that human human relations and uh so if if you're if you're not doing the right thing you can uh how do i explain it you kind of go to jail within prison um they take you from where you're at and they can put you into a segregated place uh where it's just you and so for people that are still doing the wrong thing they can really lose the program and so if they are getting high

or whatever they might get in trouble and be removed from the program and then they don't get a see Peter or Sophia or Amy again. And so that's a real factor when they say, man, not just am I accountable to them, but I may never get to see that friend of mine again. And we're all accustomed with loss already, so it's that much more impactful. Absolutely. And another answer to one of your questions that kind of piggybacks on his presence is getting to know us. Like, so just through video calls, like one of the first things was like Matt Frazier was like, he wasn't as hesitant as I thought he would be. Wait, so before you tell me about Matt Taylor, tell me how did you guys get hooked up with Matt? This is a good one.

Wait, so before you tell me about Matt Taylor, tell me how did you guys get hooked up with Matt? This is a good one. Okay, so we got a guy who got out of prison who was one of our coaches, a coach candidate. We had different tiers. That's another story. But he was an awesome friend, first and foremost. Just a great guy to be around. He came to prison at a young age. He was still young.

He did do a lot of time, but he did do enough time around these guys right here. And that rubbed off immediately. He didn't have to go through all the crap, you know, at least minimal crap he went through. And he ended up getting out of prison very recently, I think in February. And he got out as somebody that was on fire. He got out still burning, still smoking on the way out. And he was like looking for ways to help us, but he didn't really need to look too far because he knows our position. He's lived next to us. He's brushed his teeth next to us in the morning, like I said,

that proximity around our team and stuff like that. So he took the initiative to reach out. He just DM'd Matt Frazier on Instagram and was like, Hey, what's up? You know? We're RF2. And Matt was cool enough to be like his response was like, excuse my language, but he was like, man, that sounds fucking awesome.

He says that was his first response, and so it just went from there. And then Matt was like, cool, ask him more questions, this and that. And TJ's number one thing, the thing that my answer to you is on this question is, how do I help? And he's like, schedule a video call with these guys. And then when you get to know us, things will pop off. Ideas will pop off.

We know how to collaborate with each other. We know who you are. You know who we are just a little bit. And that leads to so many more answers to that question how can you or anybody on the street help us and it's very specific to who you are so those answers will come with just that proximity whether it's a zoom conference or whether it's brand so you guys zoomed with Matt or whatever? We did a video call with him. We had an initial one, and it was good. We ran down.

He asked us questions about who we are and what our plans are, what we're presently doing, what our plans for the future are, and we spoke to those questions. And to our surprise, it's funny because we don't think of what we do as special. We know it is funny because we don't think of what we do as special we know it is but we don't we don't think of it just because you you know you do it every day and it's just what you do when you get up you if that's the thing you're doing and we were shocked at his response in a way because he was just like wow I'm floored he's I talked to a lot of people he said

and with a lot of ideas, but you guys have your stuff together. And how can I help? And when a guy like him, we all look up to and respect, says, how can I help? Tell me how I fit into what you're doing. It's very humbling. And so we use that as an occasion to invite them to our competition uh that was it was coming up because uh there's nothing like seeing what we do you can hear about it we can talk about it here

but savon there's no way you can really understand what we do until you come and see so we're inviting you right now you're welcome haha thank you i'm gonna tell you one thing i am so attached to my so many people have been asking me to come to the crossfit games i'm so attached to my little boys they'd have to bring the prison to me i am so selfish with every second i have a two four-year-old and a six-year-old and it would take the world that's why i do this podcast from sitting behind this desk that's a greater priority but if i'm ever in Colorado, I would love to do that. And maybe if you guys, maybe as I stay in touch with Peter, if I ever hear about a competition. The weird thing is, is I have a podcast with Matt and we've done 21 episodes and we've built a bit of a friendship over the last four or five years.

I was on the media team for CrossFit and he was obviously one of the athletes. And so what a small world this community is then to, for me to then also meet you guys. I had no idea until Peter just kind of slid it into the conversation I had with him yesterday. Um, there, there's one observation I want to make before I leave. And one more question I want to ask you three, and I'll let you answer the question first, especially speaking to men. I, I have my my own i have my own thoughts that if you see men who are 16 to 35 year years old who don't have direction or with idle hands in a civilization you know that civilization has a lot of problems because basically no matter how good of a person you are you leave 10 16 year old boys on the corner too long they're going to start

rock throwing competition. I'll hit them. Yeah, you just can't help it. And next thing you know, someone's like, I bet you I could hit that moving car. I bet you I could hit that bird. I bet you I could hit that old lady. And no one's thinking of any consequences, nothing. You're just a 16-year-old boy, and there's a section of your life that's just like that.

What advice, and I'd like to hear from each of you, do you have for people who are on the outside and who aren't having to deal with the consequences in the path you guys ended up on? Number one is to those who are in a position that should be looked up to as role models, you know, fathers, big brothers, those who are in the positions of authority. those who are in the positions of authority, it's never okay to do what I say, don't do what I do. Never underestimate the power of your actions. These guys spoke to it. And there were also awesome men in my life when I first got locked up that we use the analogy of everybody that's messed up is a crooked stick, right? And this is the course of their life doing this. And then when you, it's noticeable when you find somebody that's living a straight path that, you know, yeah, they're making progress and they're

not having to navigate a bunch of unnecessary nonsense. And so when you live that straight path, you lay a ruler next to a bow, it becomes real obvious that this one is crooked and this one's straight. And that would be my primary advice is be that ruler, that thing by which somebody can measure their life by your life. That's a scary thing. That's a scary thing to accept that role and say, I'm not perfect, but look at my life. I'm authentic. What I say and what I do is there's continuity, and that should be the norm, not the anomaly. Taylor? I can't follow that, but I will try. Taylor?

I can't follow that, but I will try. You already did the pec muscles dance, and you already own that room. Those boys ain't got nothing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So on a smaller scale, that is obviously the bigger scale. That is the thing that is most important priority. But I notice a small thing and a change in my attitude, how I network on a small basis. Go up to somebody that you might not know.

Give somebody a good morning. Shake their hand. Find out. You never know what that leads to. But I've gone through times where I might be a little depressed and I walk through the yard with my blinders up and I don't talk to anybody and that's infectious, right?

But sometimes I don't have that. And I walk through this yard with a big smile on my face and I don't even know the gentleman that's walking by me, but he might be having a bad day. And what he needed me to say was, what's up, man? How you doing? Looking good.

Or whatever the case may be. Those little small things, the small gestures, being, trying to be a better person, those go a long way and are infectious, just like the big things. Well, those are both hard to follow. I think that what makes a big difference for me is having, so John approached it from the top down. I guess I'll approach that from the bottom up, which is get yourself an accountability relationship. If I don't show up to work out today, these guys will be at my door, especially him, as soon as he gets back saying, where were you? What's going on already? And that's the relationship that John's talking about.

For me, for the other side of that um, make sure that you are in that relationship with somebody, make sure that you are expected to be somewhere in a fun way. It doesn't have to be, um, where were you at 10 o'clock, but it's, Hey, why weren't you at the gym today? Um, I really believe that the answer is get into a CrossFit gym. Go start working out. Be a part of a team. And secondly, considering what matters to you. For somebody that's on the verge of ending up in here, there's a lot of guys that we run into that are like, oh, I didn't really care. It's not like I had anything out there. But you do. You know, just losing that accountability relationship,

losing that family unit out there can be a really, it's the worst thing in the world. be a really uh it's the worst thing in the world um you know and so what matters in your life make it matter uh because when you've lost that uh it really sucks i noticed this right away and and i was wondering if it would wane or if it would ebb and flow or like what would happen uh as i talk to you guys more and more. But what's the trip is that you guys are locked up, and if I didn't know you were locked up, I wouldn't know. You guys are like three of the most grown-ass, confident man-childs with no bravado no fakeness there's a bit of child in all of you

and yet there's i feel all of your guys is like willpower and i i it's just amazing you guys hold your head up high and that would be a very very that would be the biggest challenging thing for me if i was in your situation to still present that my voice rise from who I am. Because I would probably like be in more of a survival mode, right? I mean, just like you've seen the big dog like running around on the street, but it's still got its tails between its legs. It doesn't mean it's not dangerous and won't bite you, but you can tell something's wrong with it. And I don't get any of that from you guys. And I'm pretty like attuned to that stuff, you know, watching for that stuff so that i don't mirror that in people um but man you guys are

i really enjoyed speaking to you um you guys feel like you're whatever you're doing keep it up you you're you're on the vein i john i think john nailed it that that straight thing man i'm going to use that on my kids now and i I think you straightened me out a little bit too because there are things – I do do that, John. Like there's things like, you know, my kids will hear me say words and then I'm absolutely not going to let them use those words in the house, right? So – and my wife's like, you know, that's not good. And I'm like, nah, shut the fuck up.

They do whatever I say. Actually, I don't say that to my wife, but I go, honey. Why don't you speak to that a little bit but anyway please please yeah let me reiterate too i don't because she's stronger than me she does and actually and she oh i i get it if she was in the room yeah you wouldn't be saying half that yeah right right and so what i wanted to say is that when um when we're talking about that that kind of lifestyle um it is it's hard to accept that um i don't how do we present ourselves as as humble and confident and that's a real a real life you know it's usually a dichotomy not a both

and in prison if you're meek it's usually what's not a dichotomy not a what okay and so walk in the yard either you're you're meek and you're humble or you're you're strong and confident one or the other you know and we we hear it all the time i didn't know it was a that you could be a strong good guy in prison either it's you're a strong bad guy like you know that's why you know the bravado the the machismo whatever you want to call it is is paramount because why yeah and we want that we we fall into those things because of our own fears. When we're scared, we tend to overcompensate in a certain direction, right? But if our decisions are based on, you know, or somebody realizes that that's possible to be a confident, strong guy that your stuff is character driven not fear

driven then it allows for that and and what we also find is that's contagious you know when you when someone with your with your kids and you set that bar and you it's amazing how they will not they now i'm sure you've seen this they naturally raise to the level of a bar that you set for them and and and it happens yes with you know any of our bros it's just how we work as humans um the people around you tends to rise to the highest peak that's around them and so that's why we find it so important that that we we preach that message in here. Don't quit asking for things, become it. Be that. Because you're infinitely valuable and you have infinite potential.

And so just attack life in those parameters and it will happen. I appreciate you reiterating what I said. You not only said it better, but you completely understood what I was saying. And, you know, one of the things people have criticized me for the way I've raised my kids because I set the bar so high for them. But the thing is, is they'll live up to how high you set the bar. So to not set the bar is to disrespect your kids. And it's really, I know it's so hard for parents to get their head wrapped around because they want to nurture and

feel sorry for but like man you that that's not you're not there to be their friend you're there to set to get make them capable humans so um it's 12 25 and this is the longest i've gone in a podcast all right well, well, before you pee. I'm already patting myself on the back. Before you pee, Siobhan, I want to say these are board members that are present and non-present. These are all non-paid positions. These are all volunteer positions. And the work and hours that they put in are on their dime and their time. And they do it for us in here. And, um, it'd be a crime to end this podcast without recognizing them and their sweat

that they do side by side from a distance, ironically, but very effectively. Thanks. That's great. And John and Taylor and Brandon, uh, Sophia, Amy, Peter, thanks. Uh, I don't know if you guys know, Peter just reached out to me on Instagram. I think we chatted a few times before. And obviously, he's a CrossFitter, so I'm a CrossFitter. Yeah. You know, we know. All right, guys, I send you my love.

Thank you. I'm glad our paths crossed. Thank you for the invaluable experience. Yeah. Go ahead. We were just wondering where we can get this recording or where we can find it. So this, I'll be completely frank with you, this is going to be extremely challenging because there's been a lot of echoes and funny stuff going on and people in and out of the call. And I'm already, I feel my butthole puckering at the thought of editing this because it's going to be so choppy.

But thank you. You're very solution-oriented, John. So I would probably say at least two or three days. I did one with Elijah Muhammad this morning. I'll work on that one first as a CrossFitter. And then I'll start working on this one next. But if all goes well, it could even be tomorrow. And it'll be on Spotify, iTunes, YouTube.

But if all goes well, it could be like even tonight. But I'm already terrified. The cool thing about prison is like a few days to us is like an hour out there we we're used to waiting maybe two weeks two weeks for something that usually just takes a about a day yeah that's are there any comedians in prison like like like a guy who will stand up and do it happens every yeah if you don't have a sense of humor in here you're going to be a miserable person yeah yeah but i mean there's no one who like does like a routine like like a routine once a week like a guy who's just like the closest thing i found to that is one of our

friends who's presently on the high side who yeah he would just get going in some monologue about something. But, nah, I haven't seen any formal comedy acts, but a ton of informal. That might be considered rioting. All right. Now you don't get hit with a beanbag gun. Yeah, yeah.