The Sevan Podcast - #77 - Max El-Hag

Episode Date: July 16, 2021

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Let's go seize the night. That's the powerful backing of American Express. Visit amex.ca slash yamex. by card other conditions apply that's good to hear i'm are you guys using a road caster pro uh is this a road caster pro yes your boy's smart what's your boy's name his name is chris norman Your boy's smart. What's your boy's name? His name is Chris Norman. Did he set that room up? Yes.

Yeah, smart dude. Yes, he has been very helpful. Max L. Hodge. Yes, sir. Not Max L. Hag. Yeah, I've heard that before enough. Is there a hyphen in there? Yeah.

Have we started? Yeah. Oh, perfect perfect it's the only way to go good man i like it authentic is um is uh it's weird to have a hyphen in your name you learn that as a little kid like you're in the in the kindergarten they're teaching you how to write your name and you're like yeah you got a hyphen yeah it's also been kind of a pain in the ass with DMVs. And if you go to a hotel, sometimes they don't put it in. So my Wi-Fi doesn't always connect. It's like constant. I thought about changing it when I was a kid.

How about on your passport? Passport, it seems like it's not as big of a deal because I think more international people have the hyphen. If I looked in your passport, would I see a hyphen in there? Yeah, it's on my passport and my license. Wow. So E-L-hyphen-H-A-G. So it takes six squares? Yep, I think so.

All right. Dude, just cracking, just learning stuff already in the first few seconds. all right dude just cracking just learning stuff already in the first few seconds max have you ever thought of and maybe i'm making a huge presupposition here of telling travis like laying out the mathematical chances of him winning and showing that he has like a three percent chance less of winning every time he has a kid have you ever like showed him like on a spreadsheet the uh i should i should dude stop the only conversation i've ever had with him about that was before his first kid i was like hey just wait until you have kids until you retire and i was like i just think anybody's career in this will be over because they won't have enough time

to train and then he had a kid he got got better. And then each subsequent kid, he's gotten better too. So I've never brought it up again. I'm like, all right, fine. Dad's friends are real. So from the little bit of data we have, it's a false premise. Yeah. Well, I think he's in a lucky position. Both of his grandparents are here to help. He's got the gym infrastructure to help. His wife is super supportive. So I think most people in that position probably wouldn't continue to be able to

train like that, but he's got a good setup. You run this training program called the... That's not for dramatic pause, people. Stop saying that. That's just a fucking slow brain. You all eat a dick. Do you have live stream comments? No, but I comment on YouTube all the time.

I'm just answering it to my head. I saw a little YouTube thing pop up. I love someone's dramatic pauses. Those dramatic pauses are stupid. Like quiet. I just don't feel an obligation to talk if if the first you know that you know the movie terminator have you seen that movie yeah terminator one or two or three terminator one yeah and there's a scene in the movie where

like someone says something to him and then there's like five responses that pop up and he chooses fuck you asshole i don't remember my memory's not good enough to remember but i like the concept and anyway i in my brain that all five don't pop up at one one pops up i'm like nah not good and then the next one pops up i'm like nah not good third one pops you know so i'm waiting for the right one to pop up yeah you're waiting for your point yeah and some people don't um some people who who i would argue aren't comfortable in their own skin or don't understand what uh meditation is they just go with the first one they're like a fly that twitches from one pile of shit to the other just just just drawing on that first reaction right it's a good it's a good metaphor. I like that.

And sometimes it's – go ahead. Go ahead. I was just going to say I might be one of those guys jumping from shit to shit. Probably not. Probably not. I think maybe you are the smartest guy in the room. I think – and maybe it's just because you're not well-known yet so that there's not enough to – or you're soft-spoken. But everything that I – when I dig around about you, the little bit that I've interacted with you, you seem like you're the smartest guy in the room.

I don't know what exactly that means, but it's probably like a composite of you care about your athletes. You understand fitness. You're humble enough to grow. maybe humble is not the right word maybe it's that that's a maybe it's just that you have the desire to win and get better so much maybe it's your egomaniac enough to grow a little combination of both of them yeah yeah who knows what a balance between engine is that pushes that um and and your trajectory you know you know someone comes on the someone comes on the scene like matt frazier's programming or proven or and they're immediately just in the limelight and this thing training think tank you feel that way yeah no i i mean i

definitely think it is i think the like it was never on the hype train yeah yeah yeah well i think the hype train is governed largely by champion performances and in our sport it's been there's really only been two male. I mean, I know Ben Smith won in between, but I think the consensus from the fan base was that Matt lost that games more so than Ben won it just based on the end. So Matt was still touted as the next rich froning.

And then he kind of became that. So he kind of took so much limelight from the male side of the sport and the female side of the sport had its champions that kind of like, you know, training plan with Annie and comp train with Ben. And I think those singular people kind of brought light and visibility to those programs.

Whereas ours, we actually joked about, I think the in-person interaction we've had the most was during the segment you did on Travis. I think it was in 2013 or 14 with Brooke Wells about his social media following. It was kind of a joke, like in spite of how good he was and being a pretty good performer, you know, he's just not super visible. So, you know, we kept putting in work with Travis and, and then other athletes and it just kind of grew until it was more coaches and more higher level athletes. And I think that just made people start noticing you're not doing it with like one superstar figure. You're doing it with kind of a, you know, an, an army of really talented people that are

striving to be the best and there can only really be one champion. So that's a, it's a difficult thing to leverage your business and brand around. And, and we can't forget about the mayhem empire. Yes. Mayhem too, for sure. I mean, that's a hard one to ignore, but that's like the champion, the first champion that I think created probably, you know, I know Noah has publicly said that one of his role models when he first got into the sport was Rich Froning. They're not that far apart in age, but I think that kind of was the catalyst for a lot of the male athletes

that you see right now. That interaction not only was – Travis is an interesting story because not only was he pretty good and he's been around a long time but he's easy to look at too he's not only pretty good but he's pretty and it was and Brooke Wells was a great sport about this

I'm actually quite impressed by her because the joke I was cracking and it's a joke but it's also true is the fact that she probably loses more followers every day, especially at that point. Yeah. Then, then he was putting on, right. Because, because the Instagram accounts are losing and putting on followers. I mean, I'm sure she put on more than she lost, but the flux in her Instagram account was, uh, uh was and she was a great sport about that that was awesome i think her response was do you want me to take a picture with you travis or

something she played right yeah she did yeah it was good and she and she did it with that humble kind of that humble tone that she has what did you think what did you think about your interview with um arm and hammer what do you mean what did i think about it did you think about your interview with Arm & Hammer? What do you mean, what did I think about it? Did you think it was good? How do you judge the success or the goodness of a podcast? Like the enjoyment of the conversation, the views, whether or not you got good positive feedback? Sure. Or whether you, maybe not even from the outside world, but like did you grow?

Did you enjoy it? Was it a positive experience? Yeah, I think so. I think talking to anybody that I feel like maybe it was my just introverted nature, social anxiety, especially when I was younger, the, I've kind of always kind of operated as like, okay, this is my, you know, thing that I'm working on with my people. And I wasn't really like a good networker. So even though I've been friendly with a lot of the people that have risen to authority places in CrossFit, when I actually get to have a deeper conversation and learn their story, where they came from, how they think about it, generally pretty positive for me. And also good to reflect on how far I've come, what we've done, what we've built and kind of see the manifestation of

the decisions that were made back in the day. I thought it was awesome. Oh, good. I'm glad. I'm glad to hear that. Thank you. Yeah. I watched it last night and I was like, holy shit, this is, this is, this is good. This is's gonna thank you for sending viewers to it this is really really good oh his podcast he's got tens of thousands of more subscribers than i do he doesn't he doesn't need to thank me yet why haven't you posted anything on instagram it's very difficult to learn anything about you because you haven't posted anything on instagram on your private account zero yeah yeah no i yeah. No, I have. One less than one.

Yeah, I have. I think I have like 300 posts on there or something. I archive them all. So it's funny. When we first were kind of coming up and Noah came on board, obviously Noah uses Instagram all the time. And I didn't really know what the platform was. I heard everyone talking about it, but I kind of just like stayed in my little bubble and he made it. Uh,

I took him on in 2016, I think right after the games of 2016. And I don't, sometimes shortly after that, he made an Instagram account for me and he was like, come on, you got to post for it, which I'm assuming was cause like tagging your coaches and doing that kind

of stuff. He made the account for you? Yeah, he made it. And I just sat on it for like, I don't know, three years. And sometime in the middle of last year, I started posting and I started just like posting thoughts and rants and, you know, anything, pretty much anything that came to my mind about training, about life, about philosophy of training.

And my following started growing. And I realized like, hold on, this thing is a more powerful vehicle to influence my business, influence the type of athletes that I'm taking. I need to put a little bit more mindful effort into it. So I archived all the old posts. And for the last six months, as I've been working on games training, I've been trying to figure out what good content is to put out that actually serves the TTT community and myself. So I felt hiding the stuff so that I could do it more purposefully made more sense than leaving stuff up. Then people's first impression of me is just me talking shit on the internet or, you know, so, so I'm not sure how that works when you, i'm not sure how that works when you i'm not sure how that

works when you archive but so if i followed you i would see your post no no as long as it was up and then no archive it yeah so they're just saved so if i if i put it back up now all the comments that were on the post and the actual image can just stay there but right now if you go to the account it looks like i haven't posted anything but there are posts just hidden but if i did fall do you still post at all i haven't in the last i don't know eight months let's say i did follow you and you posted something new i would i would then see it is that correct yeah yeah yeah yeah and then and then maybe like a week later you might archive it and i wouldn't be able to see it anymore and you'd be back down to zero so you

could just someone could run their account like that it's just one post at a time yeah i actually thought about that so we see people using the platform i'm like almost in the same way it's like constantly archiving their lives i've actually thought about and i'm not gonna i'm most likely not gonna do it this way but i thought about making it a static page that was almost like a piece of art. So all the images kind of lined up and each one was topical relative to something I wanted to talk about. And then just maybe every quarter going in and refreshing it. That probably wouldn't be good for building a following though, because then you're not getting a lot of engagement, a lot of comments. And I don't, you know, my life, my livelihood is not going to change whether or

not I get a big following on there or not. So maybe that could serve me, but I think in, you know, in the long run, it probably makes more sense to attract more people to the page to, you know, to just to network, to have people that want to come to your camps and clinics and know where you are and do that type of stuff. And I guess you have the think tank, you have the think tank training page. So you also have that as a vehicle. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I mean, well, that's Chris. So Chris Norman, uh, he does media for all of TTT. He started barbell shrugged with Doug and Mike, I don't know, whenever that year was. So he came on and he's basically done all the media for training think tanks so that I could kind of be a,

a social recluse or whatever I am on the social media world. Do you not go on social media every day? I think I still use it every day. Cause I'll look at our posts. I, I do have a habit every once in a while of just scrolling and, you know, seeing what's on my search filter. have a habit every once in a while of just scrolling and seeing what's on my search filter. But I don't really follow that many people for keeping up with them for their lives or what they're posting. I normally just use it like, okay, I want to know something about sprinting, who are the famous sprint mechanic people on Instagram, go to their pages, look for what I'm looking for, grab it and go. I kind of sneak in.

I want to circle back to Chris Norman. I have some questions. But what do you think about the knees-to-toes guy? Knees-over-toes? Knees-over-toes guy, yeah. So we use their – Yeah, yeah. The guy himself or his methods? Either. Let's start with his methods.

Yeah, yeah. I don't know him personally. I think the... So in the context of CrossFitters, just the nature of what we do, the amount of squatting, the amount of muscle mass, the amount of upper body muscle mass, I think a lot of people

putting those practices in because they're not plyometric athletes. Like you look at a basketball player, they're explosive. They can jump. They can absorb force. But generally, they're not thick, heavily muscled people. You don't develop upper body mass because you're shooting. So if you do those kinds of protocols and you're just using your body weight and doing slow progressions, you probably wouldn't do as much potential like

damage. I think for CrossFitters who are, you know, trained to have their knees in one spot, not track too far forward, push them out. I think that you would likely start to create some, I don't know, structural issues or tendonitis pretty quickly, unless you change the whole training program around it. So I think the methods can be used for specific things, but I don't know. I think it would be a strange thing to say everybody should use that because it's you know i think all methods are goal dependent for training do you own that device that that he sells that that that triangle with the wedge yeah the wedge and then and then and then he's got like a little step he sets it on to to make it higher or lower we have a slant board but we've

had that before the knees like paula paula quinn step ups peterson step ups um sissy squats some of the stuff that he does it you know it's it's full circle i feel like in the training world because things become very popularized as if they're new and no one's ever thought about this but really it's just somebody charismatic who can put this information out and make it digestible and give it to the right people. But a lot of that stuff we've used before in the past, it wasn't as systematic and maybe not, he's very niche and deep dive into that thing. So I don't think I would say that at my knowledge base could equal his in that realm, but we basically just had some of the stuff already built. And then when his stuff came out, it's like, oh, here's a system to use this stuff.

And one of our coaches specifically experiments with it a lot. But when we put it in a lot of programs to figure out what people can tolerate. And I would say I'm very easily influenced by things like that. Like I just stumbled across his Instagram account recently, and I was just thoroughly impressed with the stuff he does. But I have no idea. I mean, my instant reaction is, holy shit, that can't be good for you. Of course, I immediately start trying to do it, and'm like oh actually that feels fine yeah that's a it's a that's a weird re not a weird reaction but i feel like it's the same reaction that people get when you talk about crossfit or when you talk about uh jujitsu like

there is there's definitely joint risk to do anything physically impressive and if people aren't willing to take that and they want to be safe, then they shouldn't do those things. But you're also not going to become physically impressive not taking those risks. Right, right. I was with Greg one time, Greg Glassman, and he said, he was talking to someone and he said, if you want to fight, what was it, cardiovascular calamity, you're going to have to take some risk with orthopedic calamity. You have to. You get off the couch, there's going to be a chance you're going to fall down or twist your ankle. Yeah, for sure. I struggled with that in my earlier years of coaching because I didn't go to school in the academic world for strength and conditioning, but I studied myself. And a lot of the information that originally came

out from CrossFit was very conflicting to what the just popular opinion was in the academic circle. So the smartest people in the world were saying this, this, and this about training. And then you have Glassman coming out and saying this, this, and this about training, there was a lot of conflict. And I think in the beginning, I took a lot less risk with people that were trying to be great athletes. I still take a lot, you know, much less risk with people who are just general fitness trainees. But with athletes, I think as I've gotten more mature into the sport, I'm like, well, you have this number of years in your life to commit to being great at something physically, you got to take some risks, you got to push it. And now how do you do that in as safe of a way as possible? I think I've almost become more aggressive as I've gotten older in that realm.

You've brought up a really good point. I think what you said is a lot of people's, uh, introduction to CrossFit. I don't know about now, but 10 15 years ago and i think with one of the most famous you know arguments and things that freak people out is the squat below parallel yeah and to think that now it's just a given in the united states but the truth is that if if you ever went to china or the middle east or to india yeah you would see these dudes with ass to ground 20 dudes sitting around you know heels flat on the ground you know toes flat on the ground and their ass on the ground and it's like yeah and you can walk around India and see some of the most mobile old people in the world and then

unfortunately due to the introduction of western foods they also have 100 million type 2 diabetics yeah yeah there's a a phrase i think it's ralph waldo emerson i'm not entirely sure who it is but it's uh the creation is trying to one-up me now no no no no no no i'm i'm just i'm trying to build rapport so like the the... With who? The audience or me? Both. Okay. Okay. Yeah.

With everyone. Okay. Ralph Waldo, go ahead. Yeah. He said something like the development of carriages in society made us forget how to use our legs. And I feel like that about Americans. And I don't even know if it's him or that's definitely not the exact quote, but it's something along those lines. And I really do think our current society has

heavily invested in tech and media and disease prevention and a lot of things, but our collective knowledge of what the human body is capable of is pretty low. And when I like, actually, I've seen your son's Instagram channel and some of the stuff that you do with them. And when I think about long-term athletic development, balance, coordination, ability to pick up novel tasks, I'm like, this is what kids should be doing in physical education programs. This should be part of the schooling system. It should be part of the infrastructure. It should be the same way that we learn how to read and write. We should learn how to use and take care of our bodies. And

everyone has a little bit of a unique, different subset of limb length and all the stuff inside, all the internal stuff is different, lung size, heart size. So without a really good educational system for kids to develop self-awareness about their own systems, I feel like we're just, you know, we're dealing with the issues you're talking about. You know, you know, what's interesting about my, my kids in that regard too, is one, I just like to say, and I've said this before is my kids are not talented. Maybe one of them is talented. There's, there's one that's got the giant Jew brain. But none of them are physically talented. And that's just really just a ton of just like, I say hard work, but that's just a ton of just allowing them to play.

And that's a ton of attention and that's a ton of just giving them smiles and love when they do what I want them to do. Just manipulation through, through, um, through, through clapping, you know, the same conditioning.

Yeah. The same reason why you hear the CrossFit games athletes saying they love live events. You know, they're, they're, they're conditioned. Everyone wants to be on that floor,

whether they know it or not. Um, because, because the cheers are great. We're human being. It's like, it's like all the other cells in the body clapping and cheering and rooting you on and loving on you. Right. Yeah. And giving you attention. Um, and then the, and then the second piece of that is, is that's how my kids have learned so much English or English, um, and math is through working out. And the first time for all three of my kids that I realized that

they could do, do math was when they were like three, four, five years old as they pass through that age. And you're like, hey, will you squat 10 times for me? And they do three and they stop and they go, do I have seven left? And you're like, holy shit. Yeah. Yeah. Homies doing math. Yeah. Yeah. I think about that or I have been thinking about that a lot recently, I have some athletes that get into like a very primal state, especially in CrossFit, because you're used to having judges count for you. And it's very different to the way that I operate, because a lot of times when I'm working out or doing things, I'm counting in my own head, talking back to myself. I'm like, huh, maybe disconnecting from my thought process and just

letting myself go full animal mode and letting somebody else do the quantification for me would allow me greater physical expression. But then it just, you know, it's a question of like, what skills then do you ultimately want to cultivate for yourself? You know, you got to make those decisions. Do I want to become more primal to be better here? Or do I want to maintain some of those quantitative skills by practicing? Because it's like, you know, it's like any skill, I'm guessing, that I need to practice the constant repetition to make sure that I'm still good enough with the numbers. So it definitely is interesting.

There's a tie between the mind to the body. I got that right here on our little seal, corpus animus. What does that mean? It's loosely translated from Latin into mind and body, just that they're an integrated system that you can't really disconnect it to. I even wonder little things like, is a really, really genius level thinker who sits and reads all the time, is it almost necessary for them to have a lower physical capacity because they have to spend more time in thought and doing those things? Or if they did train and they did spend more time physical in the physical realm,

would their IQ drop or would it raise? It there's, it's such an interesting, I don't know. It's the human experience is just interesting to me. I just like investigate it through training and competing. And, and, and maybe, maybe you just revealed something about yourself. I called you the smartest guy in the room, but maybe it's also the fact that, um, you're able to think of stuff like that, which involves a huge component of self-reflection, of knowledge of how the, a curiosity of not just how the outside world works, but how the inside world works.

Yeah. How you can maximize the outside world by being aware of the inside world. So I like that a lot. Going back to Chris Norman here. So Barbell Shrugged is a, that's a podcast, right? Yeah, it was like a website.

It was a podcast. I think they also did training programs. Like they had similar to like what you would see from an online training program, but not necessarily as geared. I think they had like a road to regionals program and like bikini. Are they still around? I am not really sure. I don't know chris has been here for like four years so and it was that was the one where the guys traveled around with microphones and they and they would do a podcast and there would be like three of them standing and yeah

yeah be there and they would stand and they would talk to them yeah yeah yeah it was kind of the first podcast in the crossfit space. I don't know. I mean, I know that they. Justin Jenkins. Justin Jenkins was the first. Oh, I know what he's talking about. That was CrossFit radio. That was CrossFit radio.

Wow. That's Chris? Yeah. He knows his shit. Yeah, he's been around since the beginning. So it's been an interesting process. I think what I've tried to put out training-wise, he's tried to make me more

publicly digestible, entertaining, I'm not sure in what capacity, just figuring out what the best way to share our stuff is. And what was his attraction to you? Why did he come to you? Did his girlfriend move into your town and then he moved in and hit you up for a job? Mike McGoldrick was one of the podcasters for Barbell Shrugged, and he's been an athlete that I've known for...

I've coached his wife for nine years, who's on our team and is the general manager of Travis's gym. He's the general manager of Travis's gym. And I worked with him when I was working at OPT. And he was currently, at the time, I was programming for him as an athlete. And I was like, hey, we're getting so many inquiries for coaching. And I feel like you and Brandy being here would be super valuable. So I created a job opportunity. He came out.

And then I think Chris just kind of followed. He came to one of our camps. And I don't know. we just vibed and chatted about how we could work together are you married no i've had the same yeah for a long time you've had the same girlfriend for a long time yeah like how long 15 years and how old are you 35 and. Oh, okay. That is a long time. And do you not believe in the institution of marriage? Yeah. I mean, I think that was my youthful belief. And then now it's just been so long that I'm like, all right, well, do we really need to do it at this point? If we've made it this far, it doesn't really matter. I feel like it's just a societal signifier more than it is something that's meaningful.

Unless it's done for like tax purposes or something, which then it's not really what that word means in my perspective. Blasphemy. Blasphemy, Max L. Hodge. My wife and I met not when we were 20 out maybe she was 20 maybe i was like 23 or 24 and we were together for 15 years and maybe at least 15 years and and we we thought i mean i should just say what i thought i thought marriage was just um for tools i thought it was just for people who just went along with the, um, with the show. Yeah. Yeah. Just like, Hey, fuck you. Like that's ridiculous. And my relationship with her, um, relationships are really, really, really, really hard. If they're, especially you want your relationship to be a super, super successful relationship. You want it to be,

you want it to be the, um, Travis Mayer of relationships by that. I mean, he's such a great CrossFitter. You want your, um, relationship to be that great too. You want it to be championship caliber relationship with love and openness and, and, and high, super high level communication and self-awareness and cultivation of making both people better, not just stagnant. And after 10 years probably of that occurring, then it was just basically like five years of coasting. We were just living the dream, wake up every morning, coffee shops. We both love our jobs.

We're just killing it. And then one time I was on an airplane somewhere. I don't remember where. And I, and I, I'm assuming everyone does. I despise turbulence and I used to fly a lot, like every five days I was flying. Yeah. And when I would do, when I would, uh, whenever there would be term, uh, turbulence, I would start going through and who's ever name popped in my head, I would say, I love you. So sometimes it would be like people I hated even, you know, hold on. You would actually say it to them, like text them or call them. No, no. In my head, I would say, I love you. So sometimes it would be like people I hated even, you know, hold on. You would actually say it to them, like text them or call them. No, no. Just like in your

head, like a meditation practice where you're sharing love. Yeah. Yeah. I just decided that anytime there was turbulence, I would just start focusing on, I love people. Yeah. So I would just do like, I love, Oh shit. Max's name popped in my head. Okay, go i had a hajj and and it didn't matter who it was i would just say i love that person and then i would just do that and then one day i was doing that practice and some crazy turbulence and i in this it was probably one of the loudest thoughts i've ever had in my head it was almost like i heard a voice and it said man this is going to suck if I die and I don't, uh, and I didn't marry my, I didn't marry Haley. I was like, well, that's really fucking weird. Yeah. That's a really, really weird thought. So then anyway, flash forward and we had our first kid and then two

years after we had our first or maybe a year, year and a half, two years after we had our first kid. And I think you nailed it. I think it was for tax purposes. I think someone said, Hey, you should get married. Yeah. It wasn't the voice in your head. It was taxes. No, that's just a data point. But, um, but, um, but, uh, I, um, I think I was concerned that if I died or if she died, that I wanted it to be as seamless as possible, especially if we had kids. And by then we had bought a house or maybe two houses. And so I said – so we went and got married. We went to the courthouse and got married.

And they actually do like a real ceremony. Like you go into this – and I didn't know that. I thought we were going to go there, sign papers, and walk out. And they actually did a ceremony and it was this uh chinese lady came out with clearly wasn't born in the states and she had really really broken english and then when we were done getting married she said something in chinese like to bless our marriage at least that's what she told us and it like really moved me i was like really moved and then i everything felt a little different it was weird like i can't really uh

i can't really put my finger on it i should have thought about it more so i could articulate it better at the time but um but now we're married and it's hard to tell because now we have three kids and it's hard to tell what has changed whether it's the marriage or the there's something biologically definitely has happened to me yeah now that i have three boys i'm a totally what do you mean like well for example like more aggressive or yeah yeah significantly significantly more aggressive like i knew my whole life i wouldn't i had no intention ever to hurt not my whole life but at some point i knew that i would never hurt anyone that like i would i like if someone broke into my house i would just climb out the window and go to and get a hamburger you're

a flavor yeah whatever they want yeah and now um if i if i hear a noise in the middle of the night that's disturbing enough i'll get my gun and walk into my backyard and just be ready to blast someone down and it was never it was never a conscious thought yeah it was just and then i because i remember the first time that happened and i'm like oh shit i would have no issues doing anything to anyone to protect my kids and i was like wow that's just so i have to assume that was some sort of biological shift it never it never felt i'm pretty introspective and it never it did not feel like an intellectual yeah yeah you know what i mean you said you're you had your three boys do you think it has anything to do with them being males or you think it'd be exactly the same no matter what as long as it might be worse it might be worse if they were girls maybe that would like yeah

into my sexist nature too yeah my toxic my toxic uh, culture nature. And I wish if they're boys, I'd have to see your face first. If they were girls, I'd shoot a cricket in the backyard. Who knows? Yeah. Yeah. I wonder too. I mean, if you say it's biological, then is it just proximity that creates the biology or is it have anything to do with the dna or if people adopt kids is it the same exact type of biological thing like how does that biological shift happen and could you see it in blood work i mean do you get regular blood work no yeah i've never had blood work yeah yeah that's interesting yeah and you're right and you're right i have no proof that it's biological that's just me making shit up but something but something something did happen yeah something did happen yeah we all change um just like um

how old were you when you started wearing your socks high my socks high yeah your socks high i know you wear your socks high i i mean, that was literally two weeks ago. I normally wear cutoff socks, but Noah got a sponsorship with Gymshark, and they sent me high socks. So I started putting them on, and I was like, I didn't like them ruffled down by my ankles, so I pulled them up. So it's a new thing. Okay, because that's like, that's a, that's something, like I would have never wore socks as a, as a 17 year old young strapping stud. But as a 49 year old man, I catch myself like I'll be wearing shorts and I'll be at my kid's tennis practice and I'll be laying on the grass watching him play tennis.

I'm like, God, you look like a goofball with your socks. And I'm wearing high socks. You look like a goofball with your socks pulled up high. But I don't push them down. I don't give a fuck for some reason. I'm like, it's weird. I'm like, hey, you should give a fuck and push those down but my hands won't go do it yeah i just think it's because i just got it's biological now yeah you're biologically driven to wear high socks without give a fuck i like it so um you're born in 1986 yeah i'm born in 1972 i'm older than you yes respect me yeah i do

and i respect your experience and uh and where were you born new york new york city westchester county it's like 45 minutes north of the city um i lived in Bedford, New York growing up, but I think the hospital was Tarrytown. Okay. And you have some, Elhaj is an Arabic name? Yeah. My father's Egyptian and my mother is like Irish and German. She's just from New Jersey. So they met at Rutgers University when he came over when he was, I think he was like 19 or 20. Oh, interesting. Similar to my dad. Um, because if you type in Max Elhaj, you get a shit ton of videos about you, by the way, congratulations on just, it's really cool how much content you've put out. It's really, really impressive. But then every like 20 videos, there's like some dude singing in Arabic, you know, that writing that I can't read. So I'm like, okay, it must be Arabic.

just much about his culture. When I graduated from college, I got a gift to go over there and I went around Egypt and met his family, but we didn't really have that much interaction with that whole side of, I guess, where I came from or my heritage. So it's kind of interesting. Growing up in the melting pot of New York, you have every type of cultural person, but I think I never really identified with any of them because I wasn't really like purely white. I wasn't really Arabic because like, you know, I wouldn't really fit in that culture. Uh, so yeah, it was definitely an interesting process. And is, does your dad have a lot of brothers and sisters? He's got one brother, one sister who are, who both passed away like when i was really young and um did your dad come here on a scholarship he went to high school in egypt and then got a scholarship

to rutgers he went to high school in egypt i think he did university in egypt and then he came here for like advanced degrees he got i don't even know where he got him from but i think he had an mba a phd and another master's and just like kept kind of going to school so i don't know if he got i don't know i don't remember which degree it was that he got at rutgers back then but i think it was something in science and food like food production he was a scientist for general foods and did he bring your grandparents here are they here no no they're still back there well they're both passed away now he's my father is in his mid-70s so they would be like over 100 now my grandmother was like 90 something when she died i met her when i was 23 and sometime shortly after that, she passed away. So probably over a decade ago.

So on a trip to Egypt, you met her. Yeah. So your dad came here and he was all alone. Yeah. He's got a weird story, man. He came here, didn't speak English all alone, $10, just figured it out. But that makes for an interesting kind of man, especially to have as a father, just the level of intensity and survival instinct that's required, I think, to do what he did. And also you're like living under a shadow. He was also an Olympian in judo. So it was a challenging process, I'd say.

He was, man, too many questions. So, so how are you selecting, how are you selecting from your thoughts? Let's come back to that Olympian thing. Cause I have some questions about that in regards to your own, um, uh, practice growing up. Um, so when he he when your dad came here um is your dad a republican or a democrat does he have a political affiliation i'm not really sure to be honest wow that's interesting yeah i've never voted and i've never really participated in politics um i know that maybe is giving away my democratic freedom, but I never really felt... I actually reached out to somebody last... Or maybe it's using it too. Maybe it's using it too.

It's a free country. Yeah, yeah. I'm not sure. When the last election was happening, I actually reached out to somebody that I know is a poli-sci major. And I'm like, look, I would like to vote, but I just feel like right now it would purely be an emotional decision or me jumping on the bandwagon of people that I really care about. And I'd really like to understand, not who are these people, but what do they represent? What are the things they're going to do over the course of the next four years? How's that going to impact me? How's it going to impact my community? How's it going to impact travel? And I feel like I had a two-hour conversation with him, and I felt I'm even more ignorant than I was before. And now I don't feel comfortable doing it because I don't know what I'm voting for.

So I'm still a non-voter, but I'm assuming as I get older, I'll get a little bit more connected into that and have reasons to pick a side. have reasons to pick a side. Right now, the reason why politics are interesting, because it's fascinating, because theoretically they both want the same thing, but the means of which they want to go about it are significantly different. What's the thing you think they want? What's the thing you think they want? Peace, equality, love, healthy functioning society. All humans are in the melting pot, feel at home and equal and able to express themselves and i'm no poli sci major but there's one side that

there's there's uh there's deeper thinkers on one side so um then then on the other side so one of them one of them is really really concerned about the outcome about like one of them wants to build the hundredth floor on the building and just have and build it like they think that you can build that they think that you don't have to uh plant the seed to focus on the foundation and the other half just thinks that it is very very concerned about the outcome and the other half is like no no you you you can't you you you have to focus just on the foundation yeah and let and let it grow organically this is nothing you can force and so you have these two it's um but the name call but but i don't think they the people in these tribes don't realize that they necessarily want the same thing because of the name calling

the people on the hundredth floor like hey fuck you you don't believe in the hundredth floor because you're just focused on the foundation yeah but you don't necessarily hear that from the people who are on the foundation but the people who are in the foundation are tripping on it's it's a mess yeah it's a mess but they do want to from what i can see they do want the same thing they want this hundred story building but the but the um but one of them is uh the people who are trying to build the the hundredth floor they're exacerbating the problem by neglecting the foundation yeah i don't fully catch the metaphor but i agree with you that doesn't seem like both of them are on the same page and it also i mean i, like picking a side all the time, it's a very human thing.

I know we're very tribal by nature, but when it comes to leadership, it seems corrosive to have the leadership of our societal structure creating two teams, as opposed to having maybe a singular team with multiple different viewpoints and then somebody in a leadership position being able to pick from those viewpoints based on their own best guess intuition analytical thought emotion whatever so it seems like and i think that i think i vaguely remember somebody talking about george washington saying the deconstruction of what was created would be something if you created two sides. And that's why they had the, if you're running, one person becomes president, one person becomes vice president. And then over time, I forget who it was, one of the founding fathers, Hamilton.

No, I don't know. But basically somebody at some point took that out. And basically your vice president you could choose from at that point. Oh, interesting. Yeah. I don't't know there's a lot embedded in history and again it's like one of those things where i'm like i i'm drowning in my own work i'm just trying to figure out what i can do here um and you're right there is a lot of fandom it's like it's like people who are like no matter what the quarterback of their football team is the best. And they refuse to, because it's their favorite team and they refuse to use intellectual,

like, no, he's not the best, but that can still be your favorite team. Yeah. Yeah. You know, like you could be a,

why can't you be a, and why can't you be a Republican and be pro choice? And why can't you be a Democrat and be pro-life? Well, because the party says those aren't the core tenets and it fucks everything up. Yeah. I didn't expect that we'd be in politics, but I'm happy to be here. How is that? How is that?

How are, um, we're in a, in such a, we're steeped so – how many athletes do you have? Me? Yeah. I think I coach 12 now. Holy cow. That's a lot. I mean, at one point I was coaching a lot more than that. Just the – go ahead.

So the conventional wisdom, I think, in sort of the – in the business world, the structure of running a business is that you wouldn't have more than four to six direct reports. And I don't know if there's a direct one-to-one look at that, but like it's very difficult to have more than four direct reports. It's crazy to have six direct reports. And by that, I mean, so, so just to explain how that, how that, well, how many employees do you have? We have 13 coaches and two, like a media and a business administrator. Holy cow. So 15 people. And how many of those people are allowed to talk to you? By me, allowed to talk to you. Do you have a head coach? how many of those people are allowed to talk to you? And by me, allowed to talk to you,

do you have a head coach? No, it's funny. We actually had a meeting a couple of days ago talking about business infrastructure and creation of some of that type of architecture, a management team, a better way for the whole unit to operate because I'm so much in it. I don't do everything.

I have coaches that write programs for me that help me with my coaching load. And obviously, Chris does media and there's business admin, but I am almost in some sort of a management role for all of those different things, which takes away from whatever my core competence is, probably as a coach and as somebody to investigate and think about human health and performance. I mean, it's what I've dedicated my current life up to this point too. So we actually have talked about what that would look like. And I agree with you. I think that the more lines of direct communication, just the more time, because it's managing a relationship. Like you talked about it in terms of your wife. There are so many different types of love and relationship and, you know, they're different, but in order to cultivate a good, you know,

worker and, or employee and boss type relationship, you still have to invest a lot of time into it. So as you cultivate each one of those relationships, you just slowly dip out of units of time you have in a day to do anything. Yeah. Like you, so you don't have a head coach. Well, I mean, I would guess that I would be the, I mean, like, so like, let's say a bumper, let's, I mean, so a bumper plate needs to be replaced. Someone wants a raise. Someone's going on vacation. There's water leaking under the door of the gym this year. One of the athletes claimed that another athlete peeped at them while they were in the changing room.

Like, is there someone who catches all of that? Oh, yeah. So that you don't have to talk to four different people. Yeah, yeah. And someone's like hey max i'm meeting with you on saturday i have a list of 20 things and they bring them to you as opposed to you spending an hour with all the you know what i mean yeah yeah so john is our business admin and our business is kind of or like our gym setup is kind of unique because in 2015 training think tank it was more of an idea at that point it was really just me coaching people and having two coaches 2015 you said well 2013 is when i started but 2015 is when i moved out here

okay um travis had his gym crossfit passion which is now crossfit united um and by the way horrible shirt you gotta tell him to change his shirt. You got to fucking tell him to change it. It's so bad. It's so bad. I hate United Airlines. They're fucking a despicable fucking company. They're despicable how they treat people. They are everything that's bad about humanity. And when I see his shirt, it's almost like a test from God for me.

Like, here's a man that you – here's your horse in all things CrossFit. You love Travis and he's wearing that goddamn airline shirt. Okay. So he has a square footage and a bunch of offices that he wasn't using. So I moved here and then convinced the two coaches that I was mentoring as part of training think Tank and one other coach to move here, take that space up. And we were really operating a purely digital business. Each one of the coaches has their own group of athletes that they work with individually. And then we have some of those coaches work together to do the one-to-many programs, the programs that would be an athlete following, like the programs that we, you know, that would be like

an athlete following like a CrossFit mayhem program or comp train program. We originally didn't do that. I didn't really go down that route because it was very difficult to try to figure out how to get people to follow the right training program and put them in buckets. And I feel like there were a lot of training programs out there that were putting out this really hard shit to do. But a lot of the people that were following them didn't really have the requisite ability or training background to be able to tolerate that. So it was like, yeah, I could make more money doing that. But I don't really feel like I can support that type of infrastructure and

properly coach people this way. That changed a couple years ago, because when you have 13 other coaches to lean on, then you're like, okay, now I can try to put work into figuring out how do we create divisions? How do we create clear explanations to people of who should follow this program and why? Doesn't mean it's going to be perfect, but I felt better about it. So the digital side of the business all has its own chain of command that goes up to our business admin, John. And then Travis for the onsite has his own chain of command because he's running his CrossFit business here. And we've talked about figuring out over time how to take the next step

and integrate those communities into one forward thinking vehicle. But things go really fast and business development is a process. You need the right resources. You need the right people. You need a right vision. You need all the staff in support of what that looks like. You need good partners. So I've just been slowly trying to figure that out. And in the meantime, thinking of how do I be a great coach? Cause that's what my current role is. And I feel like that's going to drive a lot of what we want to do in the future anyway. Well, you're doing that. You're, you're definitely being a great coach. At least that's what it looks like from the outside. And that was very impressive. I'm like, Oh, he just changed the subject on me. But then you got in that word chain of command and I'm like, Oh no, he's on. When you have this many athletes and this many people, and there is so much social drama

and opinions and, and, and, and is there drama in the gym or does that stay out of the gym? Uh, I, I mean, I think every community has social drama. I think ours vets it out maybe a little bit better because there's just more clear lines of like, hey, this is where you train for this specific outcome. This is where you train for this specific outcome. But I'm sure it's there. I'm sure some of it too, I'm unaware of. Sometimes I can just not notice things. I walk into a training session and leave. And then somebody would be like, oh, did you see the mural on the wall? And I'm like, I didn't even notice.

So it's possible that I'm just a little bit absent-minded in not perceiving it. But it seems like we just have a culture of people that have, you know, gotten together. Or maybe it's just right now, because we've definitely had more drama in the past. I think it's just, maybe it's a cyclical thing. You just get into the right time and you have the magic and, you know, you got to kind of ride that wave for as long as you can and try to keep moving in the right direction. You, you also have, um, the two athletes that I, that I know the best in your camp. camp, not that I know them great, but Travis and Noah, they seem to be, for their own reasons, for their own 50-cent analysis I could give, above that. Noah seems to be above that, and Travis probably's life is too full to entertain any of that shit, right?

Yeah, for sure. Jim's family trying to be the best at something in the world. Yeah. And Alessandra moved out here too. And all three of them, like collectively they have seven, eight and nine CrossFit games appearances. So the behaviors and the stress adaptation abilities and the way that you integrate in a social, like all of those things that you would be required to have longevity and trying to strive to be great at something for that long, generally you can replicate in other people. So they've kind of acted as a role model for some of our younger culture. And, you know, they've been, they've been a huge gift to me, you know, like I've invested a lot in

them. And in turn, that investment has, I think, helped their careers and also helped my career in helping create an environment that when they decide to leave, which every athlete has a life shelf, or maybe they go into masters, but the limelight won't be the same. So whether that's five years from now or next year, we don't really know, but they've left their legacy in terms of how to operate as a human being embedded into the culture. So I'm super grateful for that. That's interesting. You say that you have Alessandra Pacelli, Travis Mayer, Noah Olson, and they figured they've definitely cracked the code on longevity. They are the, I mean, they're three of the most hardcore CrossFit Games athletes that exist in the world. And if they had bad habits, let's say they had a – let's say they were fucking a new client every six months or they were the people who always left their water bottle out.

Or if they were the one who, who knows, peed on the toilet seat. That – they wouldn't have lasted this long. And so whatever habits they have leads to some sort of cultural success in the gym. I'm understanding that right, right? Yeah, cultural success and people aspire to do what they're able to do. So the mimicry behavior generally doesn't go downward. You don't look at people that are less good at things than you and be like, I'm going to do that. You look at that and say, I'm going to do the opposite of that. But when you have people that are better than you, I think that's why the champion effect is so strong is because you figure like, oh, they're winning. They're better than me.

I'm going to mimic what they're doing. Because we're like, you know, our mirror neurons and our desire to just take over and watch what other people do to replicate it. So you assume that, oh, they're doing everything right because they're better. And I think that same thing is, could be said for Travis, Noah, Alessandra, like maybe they're not doing everything perfectly, but they're just setting a role model because they are the, you know, the peak of fitness of our internal community. And there, and there can be no other trait better. Trying to think of a better word than better, more valuable than whatever the components are that give you longevity. Because once you're out of the game, you're out of the game.

So it doesn't matter how fast you can run, how much you can lift, if you show up on time. But as much as it matters in the pyramid of what can you do to last 15 years in the sport. Because once you do that, you can work on all the other stuff, right? For sure. And a lot of people always talk about physical health, uh physical health um right not being injured or whatnot or diet or this but but there's a there's a cultural component that's massive that i actually don't ever hear anyone ever talk about that we're kind of scraping the surface on now that like yeah if you're a piece of shit or if you have some bad habits like um you're boning all the chicks or all the dudes in the camp then you're going to be switching camp to camp to camp to

camp because you're a disturbance i'm not passing judgment on whether it's a good thing or bad thing to fuck a bunch of people. I'm just saying it's not going to lead to the success of a long camp. Yeah. I mean, I think that your underlying ambitions and what your highest value systems are generally will influence your actions. So the people that are in it for whatever it is, fame, sex, money, the behaviors that are cultivated for that specifically will not be as good if it's, you know, striving to be your best self as measured by X. So yeah, I agree with you. I do think those behavioral traits weed themselves out. I think that's why you see a lot of athletes you know meteoric rise not as relevant or you know good one year and then lifestyle stuff happens takes them out and

then come back up and they're good i can't tell if it's good every time i say something and you repeat it and sound smart probably good for the listeners and bad for my uh for my image oh shit. Um, these, um, man, first time I'm going to say this in the show,

I lost my train of thought. I usually don't have the humility to do that. Um, great. Let's go back to, let's go back to your dad. Your dad was an Olympian in judo. Was that for,

um, for what country? For Egypt in like 1964. I think in 1968 as well, but there was a political boycott or something. I think that was one of the wartime years. And so he didn't compete then and he came over here. And that was pretty much the end of his athletic career, super early. So he was a young Olympian. Yeah. 16 and then 20, I think, which I, you know, I think in a combat sport, especially in like nowadays, that would probably be impossible, especially if it was like in the U S but you know, in a combat sport that's, you know, wasn't super popular back in the day in Egypt, I think it was a more attainable feat. It's not that it's not impressive, but I just think it would just not be possible.

Although I wouldn't have thought Mal O'Brien or Emma Carey would be able to do what they do at that age in CrossFit either. So maybe I'm just wrong. Oh, damn. I want to talk about your dad and his influence on you, but I want to talk about something else I saw too. Because this evening I'm going to interview Gabriela Magala. And she said something in an interview she did with, God, I can't even say the guy's name.

He's a European guy. He has a podcast. His first name is W-Y-K-S. I can't even say the guy's name. He's a European guy. He has a podcast. His, his, his first name is W Y K S. I got to talk to him. I don't know how to pronounce that. Weeks, I guess, but dude, you can't have three consonants. No, no, he has no vowels. Yeah, no vowels.

W Y K S. You can't have four consonants. I think they say in some time, right? A E I O U and sometimes Y. Yeah, but it's not, it's it's not yeah it's a fake one little kids us adults don't believe why is about and um and and i i guess his saving grace is that he's soft-spoken and handsome but uh but the name is we got to work on we got to give him like john or something yeah but anyway he was interviewing max um he was no i'm anyway, he was interviewing Max. No, I'm interviewing Max. He was interviewing Gabriela Magala, and I'm going to interview her today.

And he asked her a question that he said to her. God, I'm going to screw it up. But basically he asked her something like, hey, what's harder? Is there a difference between participating as a teen versus as a pro in the CrossFit Games. And she took that and brought up a subject that I'd never heard before. And I felt this subject in my head before, but I've never articulated it. But it's fascinating, I think. She basically said the year that she went from teen to the adult class,

she was thinking about quitting. Because at that point point she had this rude awakening of how fucking good these girls really are yeah and i think about that even for the top girls in the world that they would almost always want to quit because i think tia i think tia is i don't want to say t is better than matt think she is. The gap between her and the rest of the field is wider than where Matt is. Yeah, and I don't even want to – probably, yeah. And I don't want to rule out that she's better than Matt, but she is a problem. She is a fucking problem.

She is – that should be the name of her company, The Problem. I mean, she is a problem. For other people. uh mentally physically every part of her is just a fucking nightmare if you have to compete against her i would have to assume yeah and um but but tell me about is so what what inspired this is what you were saying about being young and your dad being in judo and in the in the evolution of the sport and coming from a small country in a big country have you had any teams who tried to become adults and how competitors and how huge is that gap because i what she was saying what miguela what's her name gabriella miguela was saying seems very very true yeah so do you agree or disagree

no no i agree completely alexis raptus works with one of my clients or one of my coaches adam rogers she took six this year at west coast classics so she was one spot out for missing or making the games she's 22 i think and she took second in the teen division 17 and 18 a couple years ago. So four or five years of continued coaching development to bridge that gap in terms of where the performance was in teen versus just the main open field. Which is why I think it's not a seamless transition, right? Angelo DeSicco did the same thing. He missed out at the MAAC.

And I think he had won the games in the team division before. I think. I'm not sure. And what would you say if you had one of those team athletes who is,

let's say you're dominating the team division and all of a sudden you can't even break the top 50 in the world when you go to adult? What would I say to them? Yeah,

like, do you say, hey, you're not good enough or? Yeah. Like what is it? Do you say, Hey, it's tight. You're not good enough. Or do you say, Hey man, this is totally normal. It's not seamless. Yeah. I mean, I would say the latter, you know, give them, I think every season I kind of have a debrief with an athlete in a re-goal setting process. You still enjoying doing this? You know, do you still want to keep going? You know, where are you relative to your goal? Where's your progress been this year? What are you dealing with?

So I think that conversation, when you turn from 18 or 17 to 18, whenever you age out of the division, that's when I would probably be talking to that athlete and you having a discussion and being like, look, you know, it's going to be a while. You're going to have to really love this because it's also hard in this sport because there's no, I mean, I guess you could go compete in like intermediate RX divisions of these competitions out there, but there's not really like a developmental league. It's kind of just like a season, but where the best of the best get weeded out and everybody else doesn't really even get an opportunity to develop those skills of like in-person competitions event in this month,

then two months later and another event. And then two months later in a big event, that's harder. And I think those skills, if you can be competing, can get cultivated while the physical capacity slowly develops up, but that infrastructure is just not there yet. Are there other sports where it's not seamless? I'm thinking like in football, it's pretty seamless, right? You finish college football and then you go to the NFL. Are there college players? I don't know sports that well.

But are there college players who leave the college ranks and enter the NFL as good athletes, as starters? Yeah, it happens. It's generally very, very rare. I mean, LeBron James, I think think went into the league at 17 or 18 at kobe so i but those you're talking about like one in a billion type people so it's like is infrastructure set up to handle the best of the best sure everyone is because they're just going to be good wherever they go but if the sporting infrastructure is about like the breadth of the field i would say that other sports especially

if there's collegiate sports like maybe if crossfit was a college sport and then you had like you know the teen division and then the collegiate division and then the open division uh you would have something that's similar that there's a little bit more of a step gap to get there to get there right because the collegiate division you go into college when you're 18, and you might leave when you're 22. And it's not like that in CrossFit. What's the oldest team? It goes from 17, and then you're just thrown in the pile with these savages. Yeah. And the other thing too about that age is when you develop matters a lot. I know some people that I wrestled with in high school that were, let's say, 125-pound wrestlers that were very boyish at 18 years old.

And then I ran into them six, seven years later after college, after eating more, after probably hitting puberty a couple years later, and they're just fully formed. And you're like, all right, well, you were screwed in high school athletics purely because your biology kicked in a little bit later. So in CrossFit, it would probably be the same thing. There might be some people that haven't even gotten through their full puberty that are definitely not going to be strong enough. So I do think, you know, cause I think females mature physically earlier than males when it comes to puberty. So it might be more likely that we'll see younger female athletes than male athletes.

It seems- Like Mal O'Brien and Emma Carey? Yeah. Okay. That makes total sense. And I think you just shed light on me on what, I always thought, you know how baseball has that league that's below the pros? I don't know what it's called. Yeah. It's a triple A's or something like that. Yeah. I always thought that was stupid. Like, screw those those guys just but now all of a sudden it makes sense yeah yeah i mean i think it's necessary if you really want to put on a good show especially in a team sport because you

need you know 20 something people on the field if you want them all to be as good as they possibly can not every one of them is going to be the all-stars aligned for them to be great. There's going to be people that, even little things, you got injured when you were young, and it took you out of three years of youth sports. Your motor speed learning and all that stuff is taken out. Our infrastructure, I think, for physical health and sports and all that stuff, I don't think is really invested in as heavily as maybe some other infrastructure. Even like in investment banking, you go to university and then you go in and you do an internship program for two years where you learn how to operate. And there's this

step-by-step ways of developing yourself. And sports is kind of just like gladiator. Get in there. If you get burned out, you're not good enough for it get the fuck out next person in right just i picked this body yeah yeah but think about then why and tell your friends about how great you used to be yeah and think about how many people now had bad experiences in their high school because of the way sport infrastructure was set up who then never want to do physical things because they have this basically like minor PTSD from all of those experiences being negative socially for them. Whereas if we had a different way to educate and cultivate sport talent, I don't know what it would look like, but

definitely different than it is now. Are you going to have kids, Max? I don't think so. That's another one of those things. When I was really young, I always wanted to adopt children. I had these ambitions of trying to build something and trying to do something with my life. And I watched a lot of people have kids, and you just realize how much of an investment it is. You've got to really be there if you want to be a good parent. You've got to be present. You've got to do things.

And each one of those time hours is taken away. And I always thought that if I am lucky enough to live until I'm old, I can do it then or have kids when I'm old. You know, I've seen plenty of older men have kids. So it's just not on my short-term horizon. Right. And I didn't have my first kid until I was 39. Yeah. Yeah. Which is, I feel like growing up in New York, that was pretty common. I feel like a lot of guys kind of had themselves established financially, you know, in their homes. Like, they did all of that stuff first before they wanted to kind of have kids and go down that route. So, I don't know. And you're 35?

Yeah. Does your wife do CrossFit? She trains with one of my coaches. I wouldn't know. And you're 35? Yeah. Does your wife do CrossFit? She trains with one of my coaches. I wouldn't call it, I mean, maybe a little bit CrossFit. It's just like strength and conditioning. And is she friends with Travis's wife? Friendly. They know each other.

But they don't hang out a lot. No. The reason why I ask is um that's what triggered it for my wife being around a bunch of women who were breastfeed like we never thought we would have kids either and then well she previously had kids oh okay so i think that would potentially change that what you're talking about there okay okay so she's already had she had the experience yeah okay gotcha because that's what that's what, that's what, man, man, Travis's wife just knocking out babies. Yeah.

Just start knocking out babies. So, so your dad, so your dad comes to the country, um, meets, meets your mom. They eventually have you. And what is, how does your dad raise you? Does he put you in sports? Did you, do you know, were you an athletic kid? Yeah. I, I, I think I was like a little combination.

I think I was more academic. Like I was sent to math camp when I was a little kid. My brother and sister, my brother and sister were more naturally. Those words don't even go together. Math camp. How about fuck you, mom and dad? Yeah. I'd just say math prison.

Yeah, pretty much was. It was very interesting because it's also like a big fish in a small pond thing. So you go there thinking you're a smart kid and you go to John Hopkins and you see seven-year-old kids who have already graduated from college level math courses and then you feel stupid. So it was like being the dumbest person at the smart camp. But it's a good place to be. So I think I was naturally more intellectual and cerebral. My brother and sister were five and six years older than me. And my sister went to Boston College on a volleyball scholarship, and my brother went to Russell in college. Wow.

So they were kind of my role models. And they were also fitness models. And I kind of got like chubby as a little kid and I was a little bit more nerdy. And at some point things just kind of started clicking physically more. So I think I just, I don't know, came into my own and started doing well in soccer and football. Combat sports was probably the thing I was most gifted at in wrestling. But yeah, my dad kind of forced athletics on us when we were young. And it was like training, like in the gym, bench pressing, doing sprints until I was crying, throwing up. So it was like the hard route of developing physical education. In hindsight, there's a lot of things I'm definitely grateful for in that process. But I think I had my own issues with regards to that because I

didn't really know how to make training fun. I didn't know that there could be a play aspect to sport and that it wasn't all about outcome. And that kind of governed, I think, a lot of the way that I coached over the years. You kind of come into maturity over time and the experience allows you to look back and be like, Oh, why do I do this? Why do I care about this? What does it matter if they win or if they lose? And asking those questions of myself, I think helped me cultivate the philosophies. So, so, um, wrestling was your primary sport in high school. Yeah. I wrestled and I played football. I went to Lehigh university. I took third in New York state as a wrestler and went to Lehigh because

they had football and wrestling and went played my first season as a middle linebacker with Lehigh and then went into the wrestling room for like two or three weeks. And I was just like, I was burnt out. I'd already broke my ankle, had knee surgery, broke my wrist, had multiple concussions, had a labral reconstruction. I hated cutting weight because I wrestled at 197 in college, but played football at 240. I think I was just a horny young kid and wanted to go do horny young kid things and be with the girls. So, um, all that stuff, I think just influenced me to be like, all right, I'm not going to be an athlete anymore. I'm just going to dedicate myself to academics. Oh, I thought you were going to say to being a

horny young boy. Yeah. Yeah. That too. I, that wasn't a full commitment. That was just like half commitment. Um, what, how tall are you? Five 11. Man. One 97 is that that's a, that's a tough class to wrestle in. Right. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I, I've, it was just, I was naturally adept at it. It's always kind of called me back to like, after I graduated from high school or from

college, I kind of got the itch to go back to it. Cause I'd always had such success at so quickly. And so that I went to grapple with American top team and like got pressured into doing grappling tournaments and try to be a pro fighter. And it's very weird when you inherently are not violent, but you're good at a sport that is violence. Because once you get to the top level, a lot of it really is grit. Are you willing to break this person's face that's standing in front of you? That's a hard decision to make when it's just for money or it's just for pride or whatever the hell governs young people. And I just realized that there was a huge difference between me and those people. And some of it might've just been hunger. Like they came from harder places and they needed it more. And I had a more academic mind and was

like, well, I could earn more doing something that's safer for me and not screw my brain up and destroy my joints. So, but there's always this kind of go back to it thing. Like I always like, you know, find a jujitsu school and go back to it thing like i always like you know find a jiu-jitsu school and go and just roll around and then realize like i don't have time to do this and go back to crossfit but and it might be in my dna to have some sort of uh i don't know combat in my life yeah um and and how are you practicing uh jiu-jitsu or wrestling or grappling now? I was with a gym here until the Open started. And once the Open started, I was like, I can't drive 30 minutes out there, come back, do the session, come back. The classes were late at night. So I just kind of had to prioritize away from it and just move. So maybe I'll do it again or maybe never again. I'm not really sure. I always kind of practice the motions that I learned from that to make sure my body can do it. But at this

point, it's not really about the combat anymore. It's about the movement and the connection and meeting people and learning new skills. And so it's different now as an older dude, not that I'm super old, but it's definitely not like when I was 21 and was like, I want to fucking kill people. Do wrestlers have more grit than football players? Does it require more grit? I think it's position dependent. I think there are some very, very successful offensive linemen in football that are super gritty and will like you know fight at the line but i think on an average wrestling is probably the toughest sport

in terms of just intensity and pain and discomfort that's required to be good at it it's a trip that you come from combat sports where basically the the sport is dependent on someone trying to stop you from what you want to do and now you're in in most sports are like that right but now you're in this one sport it's a trip it's um there's no one trying to stop you yeah you just go it's well it's just you yeah yeah it's just i mean i mean i mean especially the body weight stuff right especially the the the running and the in the air squats and you don't even have to deal with with weight in the pull-ups it's just you and and how and you're basically just battling

yourself right yeah yeah i think uh well i am battling myself right yeah well i was gonna say I am battling myself when I'm in those positions, but I think it's because I have the psychology of somebody who was raised in combat, whereas I think the most successful CrossFit athletes or people at CrossFit are more race mentality people. How do you efficiently get through this work while using as little energy as possible and moving as fast as possible? So I don't think that my experience or probably your experience is the same as what we see the best of the best doing. And you can't just replicate it. You know, I, I, I am alongside Travis and Noah and Sandra for so many of their training sessions. And in spite of observing that and talking to them and watching how they tackle it, I

can't do those same things. You know, it's not just like you just automatically think that way. I think you're given a subset of skills mentally and physically. And some people are wired to do somethings and some people are wired to do other things. And some people like CrossFitters are very wired to do everything, but nothing at like the peak level. And yet they try. Yeah. Well, they push the, their peak in each thing, but I mean, I think all of them would, you know, actually, yeah, they would try. They probably would try to think they could beat a hundred meter sprinter until they're mature.

And then they know. Um, oh, that's interesting. Until they're mature. Um, how did you stumble upon, upon CrossFit? Fight conditioning. And someone at American top team was doing it or something. Yeah. So Charles McCarthy ran the school in Boca

and I did most of my training there. I went down to their Coconut Creek, like their main location a handful of times, but I was doing most of my training there and the owner of CrossFit Delray Beach, my friend Dave Hochberg came into the gym and he was just talking to Charles. I was like, hey, this guy's,

you should take him to your gym and like show him this CrossFit stuff. And I went to the gym and he was just talking to Charles. I was like, Hey, this guy's, you should take him to your gym and like show him this CrossFit stuff. And I went to the gym, they set up fight gone bad. They had the board up there and the best score on the gym in the gym was like 280 something. And they put 95 pounds on and they were like, if you can get like over 300, you are a badass. like over 300, you are a badass. And so like, I was like, okay. And of course I like exploded, like every CrossFitter probably for their first time, like one round, five minutes, like, okay. Then the, the one minute break and the last 11 minutes of that workout was just like the most torturous experience I could ever explain. I think I got 297 and was so pissed off at myself that I went out into their back and I strapped a tire around myself and started doing tire sprints in the back of their gym because I was like, that was just the kind of kid I was. Like I was just in a competitive,

angry headspace all the time. Uh, so that was my first introduction to CrossFit. And then I think the competitive bug moved from combat to that because there was no contact. It was not like you getting kicked in your head type thing. It was just train. But you still beat the best score at the gym? I believe so. Dom Papil was my training partner back then who was another regional athlete. So if he ever listens to this, he's the only person that could probably confirm that.

Otherwise, somebody might call me out. You didn't win. You took second. And when did you do your second workout? I think the next day. Well, I don't actually remember how many times I went originally. I don't actually remember how many times I went originally. I know in the, in the course of the first like month I would go whenever my body had healed

from the last time I did it. Cause I was so sore. And I remember I did Annie or not Annie, Angie, the one with a hundred pull-ups, a hundred pushups. That's Angie, right?

I don't know. Okay. Well, I did that one. Yeah, I did that one. I did Fran. Uh, I did that one. Yeah, I did that one. I did Fran. I did 30 muscle-ups for time. Like, I just started testing out all of these things. And then after like a month or two, Dave told me that he was like, hey, there's competitions for this. Like, you'd be pretty good. There's this guy, Jason Kalipa, who's kind of built like you. He won in 2008. Here's some videos of shit that he did so i started doing those things and you know i had like a moderate level regional athlete success that'd be the best way to describe it

so like success inside the gym and like the local community but at the highest level i was just too big and those guys were just too good so and when to coaching when did you make the jump from crossfit to um opt or i think it's called opex now right yes so i in 2010 i started sorry so what year did you what year was your first crossfit workout sorry i think it was 08 08 or 09 and then i went to the games in 2010 as part of a team and then 2011 i did regionals sometime in that i think it was between 2010 and 2011 i hired james because i was just looking around i'm like all right these people are are training in this way I, this is what the competition is. And like within a couple months I had already snatched like two 85 or something like that. And I was already super strong and super good at all the like things. A lot of the people that were good were working on, but I was really bad at

the body weight based conditioning. And James's name kept popping up as somebody who knew endurance sports and how to develop muscle endurance. So I hired him as a coach for probably like eight months leading into regionals, did regionals. He came out to the gym. Was he living in Canada at the time? Yes. Yeah. Okay.

So he lived in Canada. And then after that regionals, he came out, did a seminar. We had a pretty good vibe, and then he hired me to be the GM of OPT when they moved from Canada to Scottsdale. So I was there from like 2011 to 2013, like a two-year period out there. So you must have really impressed him. I guess, yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I mean, anyone can say what they want about James, uh,

from, from, from the outside and a little bit that I know him, the guy's not cutting any corners and it, and, uh, and he's, he's thinking about stuff and, um, I could see why the two of you would cross paths and hit it off. You guys are both thinking about shit, right? Yeah. Yeah. We had a good time doing research there.

Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. I was just saying we had a good time doing research there. We would read books, combat about them. We were kind of like training partners, too, every once in a while. He was like on the decline of his physical performance curve. Cause he was, you know, approaching 40 and I was, I'd stopped competing, but I was still like just younger.

And so we would like come up with workouts that we could compete in that were a little bit of conditioning and a little bit of weights that weren't super heavy. So it was a good vibe for a couple of years. Um, and then it just wasn't, and it was time to do my own thing. And how much of your growth before you went to, before you went to OPT, did you do, had you done your L1? Yeah, I did my L1 in 09, which was the first one that they did the testing in. It was in Brooklyn. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah, I think I did that. I did CrossFit football. I read almost every journal.

I don't want to say this in terms of it's in a derogatory way, but there just wasn't enough for me. I was like, I'm more curious. I want to know where these methods came from, how they were laid out, where, like what scientific research is being done right there. Like, uh, where did, where did Glassman source his research? What were the protocols used in those research? Where is this thing going? And I think James at the time, I didn't really know a lot about the, the drama that had existed between him and the HQ group, but, um, or I didn't know much about it because it was prior to when I had went there for employment. But James at the time was asking those questions,

the same questions. And so it was a opportunity to find somebody that was like invested in it the same way, trying to figure it out in a similar way, like through analytical processes. So I think we vibed on that front and that was kind of where our work was for that two-year period of time. And did you feel like you got answers to questions? You got a deeper understanding, got answers to questions in those two years or even to the present moment? Do you feel like you've gotten answers? I think that your questions just evolve as you get older, but you don't really ever get answers because especially when it comes to sport development, because it's just, it's just so unique. Everybody's a little different. Every it's in CrossFit, every test is different. Every year is different. Every season is different.

So, uh, this is only the illusion of answers. People are projecting answers, but they don't really have them. The answer they might have is that they have the most physically talented person as part of their culture or the best athlete as part of their culture. But I don't think it's going to ever be a universal answer. I think it's just going to be a process that we're each refining for ourselves over time. Okay. So I like that. My takeaway from that is that whether what you're saying is true or not true is that you're open. I think so. Open-minded. Yeah. Either you're not satisfied or maybe even a more gentle way of saying it, or maybe even more truthful, is that you're open. There's no point in hunkering down and defending something that could just constantly be evolving.

Yeah, I mean... It sounds like Japanese feet binding. Well, shit, you don't even have to say Japanese feet binding. It's happening in the United States. Isn't that funny? People are binding their feet in the U.S.? If you're wearing shoes, you are. My kid's toes don't look you are my kid's toes.

My kid's toes don't look like the other kid's toes. Isn't it funny? They teach you that shit. You're like, you're in the fifth grade and they're teaching you about Japanese foot binding, how horrible it is. And now flash forward and I'm 49.

I'm like, wait a second. We do that shit in the United States. Yeah. I didn't really even think about that. I wear barefoot shoes and walk around barefoot all the time. Uh, and the only way to go,

I get made fun of all the time people call me my jesus sandals and they should flat shoes yeah yeah it's good totally legit doesn't mean it's wrong yeah i mean it's wrong yeah it's just not fashionable yeah and there's there's lots of great attributes you could have that other people will make fun of. That's true. So you leave. Is that a hard transition? Is it hard to leave? Is it hard to leave OPT? No, I mean, I was ready.

I think we had some moral conflicts and business conflicts and just things that we wanted to do differently. I think inherently. Were you the number two guy there when you say the GM? Yeah. I mean, I, it was pretty, it was a pretty small operation at that time. It was basically just me, James, and we had Natalie as an admin person and then his wife kind of Leanne running the business. So it was, there really wasn't any other option, but to be the number two guy, but I did almost all the programming research helped upgrade. The courses was super instrumental and not like, I mean, I haven't talked to him in eight or nine years,

so I don't really know what's going on with their current infrastructure. And if they're even using the material or the methods that we talked about back then, but, um, then, it was just basically us. Gotcha. That's really cool. You were at the ground level of the building of his, I don't know what he calls it, but what is now OPEX. Yeah.

Which I think everyone, and it's still around and strong, right? I believe so. I'm not really sure. I don't, I mean, I hear a lot of people that I, and I know we have like athletes that are OPEC certified coaches. So I think they still have their certification system running.

I'm not sure. And, and I see, I should, I said, I see, but, and I see in the past when,

in the, when the regionals I've been to, or I see his brother's name being thrown around quite a bit and people really like him. And I enjoyed him. I enjoyed James's company a lot and I enjoyed Michael's company a lot. Yeah, me too. I think, sorry, go ahead. Finish. No, no, you go ahead. I keep in touch with him a little bit more, much more so than James. Yeah.

He, he bought OPT, the Canada based business from James and basically started his own coaching business. And then OPEX became the separate one down here. Oh, shit. I didn't know that. So OPT still exists also? Yeah. Oh, shit.

I didn't know that. And my relationship with people, especially former athletes, is really weird because I see them. I interact with them in these – similar to probably how you interact with them you see them at these really vulnerable deep points and you meet them at these deep points and it's really hard once you bond with someone on that level to um to lose that bond yeah you just like i mean i mean how many times it would take seismic, probably there's no separation, no matter what happens between you and Travis Mayer for the rest of your life. You may never talk to him, but there's no separation. You guys have, you've, you've been into those really deep places enough.

Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, it's just so much, yeah. Conflict resolution and like, you know, the thoughts of quitting and all, like all of this stuff and also us getting better together. Like we, in order to cultivate that process, we both had to get better, but better at communicating better at understanding the other's perspective. And yeah, so I agree with you.

I think it is a, it's a sacred relationship. It's like a Tao, I think is like the Polynesian term for brotherhood. And it's like one of the literary tropes of, uh, forms of love. Like you have the intimate one that you'd have with your wife and then you have another one that you'd have with people that you go to war with or that you work with. And I think that in a modern society, sports is kind of the closest thing that we would have to that or actual war in the army. But I can't speak to that.

You know, what's interesting i want to go back to where what happened after you left um opt but something fascinating about this sport right now because of where it is in its age is you have people like you who grew with the athletes you have people like matt o'keefe who grew the athletes. It's like – and those are just two examples, but there's tons of them like that out there. That this thing grew – so if you become a – my point is if you become a professional football player and you get an agent, your agent's been around for 30 years, right? Yeah. Or 20 years. Or maybe he's a new agent, but he was still an understudy for 20 years.

And your coach has coached everyone under the sun and been doing it for 50 years or he was a protege and it's not like that where we're at in the stage in the sport everyone is defining it as we go along everyone has like if you want to push forward and i guess you're a good example of this you have to be willing to take a step forward into the dark you could probably become an amazing n NFL football coach by just mimicking what other people have done. You kind of can't do that in CrossFit. You kind of have to be like, okay, I can't see in this room, but I'm going to walk in there. Yeah, for sure. I mean, it's been super stressful and anxiety provoking and I'm naturally, I think,

or maybe not naturally, but as a result of my nature and nurture environment was very worrisome and anxious as a person. And I, in the early days of CrossFit, I used to hate that. I'm like, why can't we have a regimented structure of what it means to be a good CrossFit athlete? What is fitness? We have a definition. Why don't we have the same thing for athletes? Like, here's the season. Here's how it rolls. Here's how we're testing. Here's why we're testing it. for athletes, like here's the season, here's how it rolls. Here's how we're testing. Here's why we're testing it. I hated it. I hated the chaos. I hated the random throwing shit in, but now I kind of actually enjoy it. I'm like, all right, well, fuck it. I'm going to be better at dealing with this chaos and other people like let's get into it. Uh, so it, it definitely has evolved

and shaped, but I do still coach people in other sports and I have to think differently about their preparation versus a CrossFit athlete. It's just very different. Some people might not still be doing that. They might just be solely like, I'm a CrossFit games coach. I've always thought of myself more as a physical performance coach for athletes and just CrossFit became like my niche because I've spent so much time doing it and coach a lot of the best people that do do it. Yeah. That's a great point. Um, so when you leave OPT, then where do you go and do you have your girlfriend at that time? No, you, and you do. So, yeah, but we were distanced for a long time cause she had previously had children, right? So

she was raising her children and I was moving i went from i went from new york to pennsylvania after college went up to ohio went to florida went to scottsdale and that's where i was at opt then moving and were you doing training jobs that whole time you were basically just jumping from crossfit job to crossfit job kind of so i started in finance and went to school for finance and accounting and went and worked at goldman Sachs and UBS and kind of went the whole financial route. And I just hated it. And I was like, in spite of the fact that I probably make a thousand times more money in this world, I just don't think I can commit my life to it. I like to train too much. I like to help people. I like sports. And I'm just getting more and more disconnected from it as I invest more in this.

So when I moved to suit, you would wear a suit. Oh, fuck. And yeah, and sweat my ass off. I sweat wearing t-shirts. Yeah, hated it. Anyway, so I went to Florida and I was mentoring under my friend's father, who was a very, very successful entrepreneur. And he was trying to teach us how to

set up a business. And I was just basically taking all the money I earned, going and training MMA, training CrossFit. Then I started doing personal training in the CrossFit gym. Then I set up a one-on-one coaching in the CrossFit box. So at CrossFit Delray Beach, there were members that wanted to get better at lifting. So I started teaching lifting seminars and just kind of went that route. And that was the start of it. Then OPT was in Scottsdale. So it was really only Florida and on that I was doing training stuff. Went to OPT, left OPT, went to Excel Fitness, which is actually where the Buttery Bros now,

I think, are headquartered. There's a gym called C2X CrossFit inside of there. And their previous owner had hired me. The Buttery Bros are headquartered somewhere? Or like not headquartered. They live in Utah and work out at that gym. So I call that their headquarters. But I think that's where they train.

Or one of them. Okay, okay, okay. Sorry. Miscommunication. I liked liked it i got me all got me all excited i was no no no no big old tub of butter and marzen and heber and go on yeah they already got the truck they already got the truck all they need is just a vat of butter a building just like a big tub like a big hot tub of butter yeah yeah so i i went there on a consultant agreement.

Although I don't think that that's what buttery bros is referring to, like that kind of butter. I don't think so either. Have you? Anyway, there's a great joke there, but go on, go on. I've already used it a few times and I love Mars and the Heber, so I shouldn't drive it into the, drive it into the ground. Okay. The, um, so I went there on a consulting agreement and then simultaneously was setting up training think tank because a lot of my athletes from OPT were like continuing to work with me or they, I was on barbell shrug. So I was still getting inquiries of people wanting me to coach them in the CrossFit realm.

So I said you were regular on that podcast too. So I said you were a regular on that podcast too. I went on there twice. Okay. One time when I worked for OPT and then one time right after I had left. And the one that I went to after I had left, people were just inquiring after that very difficult problems that you're trying to solve, like, you know, whatever it is, global warming or, you know, economic policy or whatever it is. And you just get a bunch of people in to think about and come up with decisions as to how to move forward around that problem. And I wanted to create that same concept around training. And it was to improve the health of society, improve athlete, just like the investment that we put in athletics themselves. Because for me, it was a catalyst for growth and self-awareness and understanding my body and working through mental health issues. All of that stuff

was so valuable to me. And I felt like it could have been done better if done at an earlier age and done with a little bit more mindfulness and intellect. So I wanted to create this platform to professionalize that whole system of being a coach. Because I was always made fun of. People would tell me that I was throwing away my mind by going into training people and I should spend my time in finance making money and retiring early. I'm like, yeah, but then I'm not doing what I love to do. So why is it that we are essentially creating a societal structure that is stopping people from doing things that could benefit from society and not compensating them well? So I wanted to try to figure out how to fix that, which is where training did come. Was your dad one of those people, Max?

For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There was a lot of internal conflict in my house that I decided to go this route. Because it's challenging. I mean, you look at it, you're like, how do you really set up an infrastructure coaching or personal training that can equate to making $10 million a year as an investment banker? There's this huge gap in terms of how hard it is. I mean, Greg Glassman might be somebody that has done it.

Or if you look at some of the supplement companies, there are people in the space. But generally, when you look into it, it's not coaching itself that's creating the wealth. It's a visibility as a coach or as a public speaker that's then leveraged into certifications or book deals or all this other shit. And it's hard to become famous on that front. Maybe the culture is shifting. Financially filthy rich. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. And your dad's basically just your typical immigrant. By that, I mean come to America, work your fucking ass off, have kids, and push your offspring forward and hope that they do the same thing. How do I know that? Because I come from immigrants too and they these fuckers will grind and then they want you to grind too but they don't realize that hey you can still be happy and grind also but but don't go on yeah yeah and aren't immigrants great i mean i mean yeah for sure i mean it's built a lot of the country yeah it's the horsepower of this of this great nation okay go on so yeah where was i but so i went to yeah

so i was building training think tank working at excel fitness and then that contract expired in utah and then that was 2016 and i moved or 2015 and i moved here travis was my best crossfit athlete i think at the time i was coaching like 65 to 70 athletes. And we had probably somewhere around a hundred in the network with our other coaches. And I just came here and it's been just a constant, a constant build from there. More coaches, more infrastructure. Was Travis a games athlete when you, when you started working with him? Nope. 2012, we started working together and he came on board. I did some testing and I was like, Hey, you got these three things. This is the basis overhead position is snatch. Like a couple of things that he just wasn't good

at. I'm like, I really don't see a reason that you can't make the games. If you fix these in the next couple of months, we started working together. He was 21 and he was like full of fire. Like he was just like a fighter by nature and had no fear. He's obviously different now, I think with four kids and as a mature, more mature athlete, but there was aspects of him in his youth that were just awesome. And he adapted so fast, like he got better so fast at everything and then made the games that first year we worked together in 2013. And then that kind of just started the journey. That's good to hear you say that because I just don't see, um, this is not negative at all. I don't see that in him at all. It's a fire. Interesting. Yeah. I just don't like, and I, and I don't know him very well,

but right when I'm talking to him, it's always go lucky and it's like but that's awesome to see that so he is i mean and i imagine you have to have the fire um yeah or else you don't go you don't go to the games like he does yeah i mean i think that the yeah the fire is probably necessary in most athletes with that type of strength and energy expression. It's just like, when does it come out? How does it get utilized? What does it turn into as you become an adult? Because I think as you become more mature, you're not wasting that energy. You're not having explosive outbursts because you realize that it's energy management. Like this is an endurance sport. So if you're blowing up and screaming and doing all this shit, is that taking 15 pounds off your back squats? Like,

so you almost have to have to change as you get better and older. Right. I'm looking through all the questions here. It was actually funny when I was last night, when I was doing doing this uh i was making all these notes i spent like i don't know some time two to three minutes preparing for these podcasts that's not true by the way a lot longer than that i was actually thinking i wonder if i should just fuck with max and do a podcast where we don't even talk and i just like go through bullet point questions i would yeah i was wondering what you're gonna do i think your

social media thing said comedian i'm like he's gonna fuck with me or is he gonna ask serious questions or where is this gonna go but again into the fire yeah into the unknown the the truth is and for anyone who's listening who eventually can come like come on the show i never know where it's gonna go basically i write down all these notes but it's really just a crutch. The conversation, I just want to, I want to talk to people and learn stuff that I want to know about them. Like, so, and, and so, and, and I, and I feel like, um, as I, as I studied you, well, every person you start kind of glomming on and focusing on the, on the things that you, um, have in common. Yeah. So. So like when I was talking to Elijah Muhammad,

I thought it was fascinating that his name was Elijah Muhammad because I used to really be curious about the nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. And then I found out his dad was a pastor, and my dad went to seminary school. So when you start hearing that, so when I find out your dad's an Egyptian immigrant, well, my dad's an Armenian immigrant, right?

And my dad speaks Arabic. And so like I know that like, you know, I think Arabic may have even been my dad's first language. I'm not sure, even though we're Armenian, you know, he came from Lebanon and that's the language there. So I should actually ask my dad that. I wonder if Arabic was his first language. You probably learned all that.

Those people are so fucking smart over there. We have no clue. They probably learned. My dad speaks like Russian, French, Armenian, English, Arabic. They speak like eight languages yeah it's nuts it's absolutely nothing it's like nothing to them yeah are are you training these days it sounds like you are yeah i mean i think it's it's a ball train with those guys too right uh i don't know if i'd call it that every once in a while like i'll do when we go and do field work, I'll do like the warmup, the sprint, the change of direction. I'll do one interval and

then I'll run the session. I, when they do open water swimming, I'll do like half the volume. Right. I sometimes do our throw downs, which is like a weekly series that we have to do, but it, it, it evolves. Like originally I was thinking that I would try to compete in the Masters this year. Then I got COVID in August, and it just really impacted my desire to want to breathe hard. I still like training. I still like lifting and doing gymnastics, but I had a really hard time getting my breathing back. And by the time the Open came around, I was like, I'm just going to focus full-time coach

this year and have fun with my training so now it's a little bit of everything slackline swimming saunas training do that do you guys have a sauna at the gym no not not now but hopefully in the build-out plans we're we've been looking about where we could build a new headquarters that's what i was talking about with travis is trying to create a more cohesive infrastructure of our gyms so we could build a new headquarters. And that's what I was talking about with Travis is trying to create a more cohesive infrastructure of our gyms. So we could do that. Um, when,

when did you have COVID? When did you get SARS? August. Like, Oh, actually it was stage one. Yeah. Stage one of the games last year,

the online thing. I ended up going back and visiting my parents, getting it, and then not being able to come back for the actual stage one of the games. And who did you get it from? Not sure. And did your parents get it? Yeah. Well, I mean, I was with them, so they definitely got it. My mom lost her sense of smell and quarantined for 14 days. My dad didn't get sick and got tested and didn't get it. So I'm not really entirely sure. He must've got it. It's the most deadly widespread virus on the history of the planet. He definitely

had it. He definitely had it. And, and so, and so you got it and then, um, so then you came home and, and, um, how, what were the, uh – did you give it to your wife, your girlfriend, your chick? It was our – I had left. Oh, so you stayed there. I got it in transit. Yeah, I stayed there. I did my quarantine there. Okay, and then how bad was it?

was it? It was a very strange sickness for me because the actual sickness was just like a really bad flu, maybe a day or two, but the fatigue lasted for a lot longer, maybe like 10 days. Then I started getting my feet back underneath me and I felt normal. The only thing I couldn't do was breathe hard in training. I don't know if it was psychological or physiological, but I felt like the second my heart rate got elevated, I felt like I was hyperventilating, you know, the feeling like of panic you might get if you were doing underwater breath holds or something like that. I would get that almost instantaneously. And I was just at a point where I was like, you know what? I'm just not going to do that. I can just do, I had access to so many other different types of training. I'm just going to feel good and not worry about stressing my body out. Cause it just went through that. So, so you would do that? Like some strict,

you would still work out some strict pull-ups, bench press pushups. Just yeah, for sure. Yeah. Might just do like some martial arts, positional stuff, single leg squats, rehab drills, swimming, Positional stuff, single leg squats, rehab drills, swimming, just mixing it up. Yeah. Stuff that would kill your average American, but for you is just chill. Yeah. Well, it's chilling. Chill relative to CrossFit.

CrossFit is- You needed to move. You needed to move to feel like Max Elhaj. Yeah. Well, yeah, I think I've either developed an addiction to exercise or for whatever reason is like a form of medication to me. If I don't move, I really struggle with anxiety, some depressive thoughts, my emotions go haywire. So part of like my mental health practice is exercising. And so when I remove that, it doesn't feel good. So I have to figure out, okay, well, what can I do? Is it manual labor? Is it, you know, moving things around? Is it going outside and getting on the slack line? Just something. Do you like doing podcasts? Yeah, I think so. I mean, I like hearing people's stories. It's different doing it on this side. Like when I do my own podcast, I get to... You went through this whole thing and I know the point of it is for you to be able to share my story or learn whatever it is about me. So I'm

on the answering side and I'm spilling myself out. I like in my podcast being in that role, being able to hear other people's stories and learn from them i think i generally like listening and learning from other people more than i like talking about myself but it's all good it's all part of the process that they give me anxiety oh i get anxiety too for sure but especially before they start but once i'm in it i feel a little bit better yeah i sat down in this chair and got up like five times before we started and it's so weird everything like i'm too cold i'm too hot but really i know it's like holy holy fuck i wish we would just get this thing fucking started because the first few seconds are just atrocious for me i'm fucking like crawling out of my skin yeah and i always think that it's going to be easier when i'm on one than when i'm like hosting one but it's actually not because i feel this crazy obligation to the person to be at my

i feel more obligation when i'm yeah i feel like i feel less obligation on my own podcast than when i go on someone else's i feel like like i don't want to shit the bed for them do you know what i mean yeah i hear you like i want i want to draw viewers for them and make it exciting. What were we just talking about before that? Because I wanted to – oh, COVID. So have you had the flu? You said it was like the flu, but have you ever had the flu? Yeah, multiple times.

Oh, you have. Okay. I feel like when you go to a doctor's office as a kid and they say you have the flu, I don't ever remember doing nasal swabs or any tests to confirm that it was actual influenza, but I, the guy just looked in your throat, right? With that little, yeah. Okay. So those caps on the thing and okay. So I think I had the flu, but I don't want any doctors to jump down my throat and say, like, do you have proof? I don't know, but something like that. Most of it's been like from food poisoning, but this one time that I'm pretty sure I had the flu or something, I was in so much physical pain. I can't even explain the pain. This was probably like, I don't know, three or four years ago that I basically, I was done.

I tapped. I slept on the floor that night. My wife put like 20. I told my wife, I'm like, there's no amount the floor that night my wife put like 20 i told my wife i'm like there's no amount too many blankets you can put on me yeah like i need to be a thousand degrees right now i'm shivering my teeth are chattering but when it was over it was like over it was like someone just like threw like 50 water balloons at me or like that's exactly what i mean that's exactly what happened to me this the fever broke

immediately i just broke into a full sweat and was like all right i'm better my head still hurt but whatever it was i could feel it break immediately that was my question about covid is so it's the kind of the same thing when you get past it it's like that it's like holy shit i'm gonna get up now and fucking go outside and water the plants i can't believe it yeah second ago my bones bones felt like they were gonna explode yeah yeah it was weird so i felt kind of weird that evening and i generally like will do especially in the summer if i'm training a lot i'll do a bunch of ice baths and i brought i went to the store i got i think i got like 20 pounds of ice or 30 pounds of ice. I went upstairs in their house, filled it up with water, put the ice in. I sat in and I got

like maybe 30 seconds in. And normally I do like somewhere between three and 10 minutes, depending on how cold it was. And I felt like I had zero tolerance to it. I'm like, something's wrong. Like, I don't know what the hell's going on. But I, instead of listening to that, I was like, well, fuck it. Go all the way down and force myself to shiver. And then crossfitter. Yeah. Like a dumb asshole. The same thing. Like I said, like a good crossfitter. Yeah. And then, uh, like 30 minutes later I was like, oh, it's coming. Whatever the fuck. I'm definitely not feeling good. Did you vomit? No.

Just had a fever, pains in my joints, aches. That was it. Wow. Okay. I always wondered that. I've been dying to ask someone who has it if it goes away exactly the same. And I just love hearing that that's if it goes away exactly the same that and i just love hearing that that that's how it goes away and then and then so so you've had it and so that's good like i think so but i

mean now this is still wondering about the whole vaccination process so you get vaccinated after getting the disease i still don't understand the medical side of that but yeah i mean i think it's good that i have it less fear of transmission from me or other people the i i look at it i i pay i spend probably 30 minutes to an hour every day reading something about it or t-cells or antibodies or i'm just trying to always educate myself on the subject, mostly because I have kids and I don't, I don't want to, I don't want to do the wrong thing for them. But from what I've, what I've looked at is, is that the people who had SARS originally, like 16 or 18 years ago, they are not, there's not a single case of them getting SARS-CoV-2

and the characteristics of SARS and SARS-CoV-2 that they're basically immune to it and that the characteristics between SARS and SARS-CoV-2 are 80%. They share 80% of the characteristics, whatever that means. I use the word characteristics because I don't know what I'm talking about. And that the variants of the current SARS-CoV-2 are only 0.3% different at max. are only 0.3% different at max. So once you get it and you have a healthy immune system, you're good to go. And from all the YouTube videos I've watched on T cells and NK cells and basically all the ways that we fight off sickness,

that you don't want to fuck with those things. And basically, if you get the vaccine, it will fuck with those things. If you eat sugar, it will fuck with those things. If you eat refined carbohydrates, it will fuck with those things. But basically, those things, once you get the vaccine, it will fuck with those things. If you eat sugar, it will fuck with those things. If you eat refined carbohydrates, it will fuck with those things. But basically those things, once you get the sickness, your body, and someone can correct me, it's your thalamus, your hyperthalamus, but it basically makes a record of every bacteria, virus, anything shitty that's been in your body and it's killed once. And then after that, it will, the second you get it again it will fucking go find it as long as you have a healthy system that's working yeah yeah it will go and just destroy it and basically your antibodies aren't even close to the first line of defense yeah so

that's why we see so many people who are asymptomatic and that's why especially for my kids i want them to get it right because Because I, I want them to like, now they can fight it off. No problem. And then they'll have 80 years of innate immunity to remember it. But, um, but I'm not, but it's no secret. I'm not a fan of injecting myself with something that's, um, been created by a medical community community that's the third leading cause of death in the United States with 250,000 deaths due to medical errors every year. And the fact that we're already in this health space and we take care of ourselves. So there's no secret there, kind of like what my bias is. But congratulations for fighting it and getting it. And I think that

as long as you take care of yourself. We'll see. I think now you're bulletproof. Yeah. Yeah. Two hours on the button. All right, man. Well, it was a good two hours.

Good. Did it fly by for you? Yeah, it was pretty quick. I haven't eaten yet today. So I started at the end. I was like, I'm getting kind of hungry. Do you have to pee? No, I haven't eaten yet today. So I started at the end. I was like, I'm getting kind of hungry, but. Do you have to pee?

No, I'm good. All right. Just do you?