Barbell Shrugged - 107- Thomas Cox of MealFit and Brian Mackenzie of CrossFit Endurance

Episode Date: March 12, 2014

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we interview Brian McKenzie of CrossFit Endurance and Thomas Cox of Mealfit. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Let's see if we can all hold our hands up at the same time. There we go. Amen. Praise dance. Three, two, one, go. Amen. Praise dance. Three, two, one, go. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged.

I'm Mike Bletzer here with Doug Larson. We have traveled to Cookville, Tennessee. We are hanging out at CrossFit Mayhem, a.k.a. Rich Froning's Gym. We're here with Brian McKenzie and Thomas Cox. What's up? We're going to be. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Brian McKenzie of CrossFit Endurance, Athlete Cell, 3Fuel, all that stuff.

We got Thomas Cox here representing Meal Fit. Yep. Oh, yeah. He was showing us that last night. I liked it a lot. It looked nice. What were we going to talk- Oh, yeah.

I was wanting to start it off with a story. So, we were just joking around about Thomas' accent. A lot of people listen to this podcast and they hear my accent. They go, Mike is country and southern. Oh, no, I would not think so. Which I don't mind that one bit. But Brian's been asking me the last day to say certain words, and he's laughing.

But if you go back to episode two we had rich on with uh with darren and one of one of other riches buddies who is just super country sounding and uh i think we laughed just the whole time it was great at him it was fantastic it's just some of the words he said it was just it was awesome so if y'all want to hear do not control it thomas just control it, Thomas. Just let it flow, bro. I can see you kind of getting tired. I'm not going to control it.

You're like, maybe I should just troll this. No, no. Just let it flow, bro. Just be normal. Just be yourself. I got Brian keeps asking you to say broil. Broil. Broil.

That's what Mike's wife says, too. Why is it funny? Yeah, my wife says a lot of words. Yeah. Different. We won't say wrong. She says them different. Say oil, and she's like, oh wife says, too. Why is it funny? Yeah, my wife says a lot of words. Yeah. Different. We won't say wrong. She says them different. Say oil, and she's like, oil.

Oil. Oil. Oil. We're like, no, oil. She's like, oil. Oil. Oil. She's from Texas.

Nine syllables. She also calls ponds tanks. I guess they call them tanks down in Texas. Ponds. A pond? A pond, a tank. Pond. Gotcha.

Body of water. Yes. I'd say pond. Okay. I would say pond. I'd say pond. Yes. Awesome.

Yeah. So, Thomas, we all know about Brian McKenzie. Everybody knows. We've all heard about his spiel. Whatever. I've only been, this is the third podcast. He's old news. Now.

Old news now. He's a veteran on the show now. Yeah. At this point. I'm actually, might become an addition, but. That's right. He's basically a co-host. He's replacing Chris Moore tonight.

That's right. Yeah, Thomas, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, where you came from? Originally from Birmingham, Alabama. Okay. Not an Alabama fan. Not an Auburn fan. This is all making more sense now. Clear that up. Yeah. Oh, Alabama. Okay, not an Alabama fan, not an Auburn fan. This is all making more sense now.

Not to be confused with lower Alabama. Not to be confused with lower Alabama. I'm from LA. So went to high school ball there, football. Dad was a coach there for 37 years. Played college football at UAB. Played quarterback.

Loved it. That's University of Alabama? University of Alabama, Birmingham. Birmingham, okay. seven years played college football at uab played quarterback loved it that's university alabama university alabama birmingham birmingham okay a lot of people get really upset about that so all right yeah moved to atlanta moved to atlanta coached high school football there for two years coached with my dad he coached in georgia for 10 years did that loved it football was what i was going to do i had a history degree so you really can't do anything with a history degree besides coach or teach teach history teach history yeah and that's boring and so i was going to coach i did that high school for two years and then got a call on a plane coming back from my honeymoon a friend of mine at nc state university called said hey this guy left

in the middle of the night literally just baltimore on them and said you want this job i said yeah so we came up there we take this job we're up there you're in two years north carolina nc state okay nc state university so we're coaching there it's unbelievable 50 000 people i mean my office in a 40 million dollar building it's unbelievable so we're there two years um not great we get fired i mean first college job in a year and a half two years into it we get fired so we get fired and get fired for what don't skip over that part that's probably that's probably the funniest part of the story no yeah you say we i did was it just you no no no everybody got fired you know how in college football the head coach gets fired everybody loses their job so we lost our job yeah so head coach got fired. Everybody loses their job. So we lost our job. Yeah. So head coach got fired.

We lose our job. The guy that I played for at UAB, Watson Brown, comes to Cookville, and I've never heard of Cookville hardly. He comes to Cookville because this is where he was born, coaches at Tennessee Tech, and so he offers me a job. So I come up here and I coach for the last six years, coached wide receivers, and then coached. I heard it was – I just can't get over this.

You called it Cookville. Cookville. Oh, that's Cookville. Yeah. You said Cookville the first time. Not Cookville. Sorry. Cookville.

Because I've been, you know, told to say it right many times. Cookville or Cookville. You can just run it all together. Cookville. Cookville. All right. Just making sure. Yeah.

And so I'm here at Tennessee Tech. Hated it the first six months I lived here. Hated it. Newly been married two years, no kids. This is small town USA. Year after we lived here, we just fell in love with the place. I mean, I don't know why. Just the people are great.

It's a small town. Fell in love with the place. Did the coaching thing for six years. Coached receivers, then offensive line. Played quarterback, but I coached offensive line. So it's kind of weird but it was great loved it yeah and then uh got out of it started working at church this past year absolutely loved it it go from working 95 hour weeks to 40 hour weeks and being able to raise my kids instead of my wife raising my kids by herself so it's been amazing and along that road uh started doing the

crossfit thing chip pew who introduced it to rich and pretty much everybody here in in cookville um that was at tennessee tech yeah he was a strength coach at tennessee tech and he he said hey we started doing this crossfit stuff and at the time i was running marathons and so i'd run four marathons yeah i know football player running marathons why would you want to do that i'm impressed you know brian's like that's that's just not smart says the guy running 193 i was down to 193 oh wow yeah thin i was 40 man you must have been yeah how tall are you like 195 well 215 down to 193 is a lot. I hear you. And so we did that and then started doing the CrossFit thing,

and it got me out of the marathon running. And then around the time we started really doing it, we hired Rich. And then we hired Rich, we started working out, and then – That's when Rich found CrossFit. Yes and no. He was in a class the year before I got going with CrossFit with Chip. So he kind of got into it a little bit before we did, or before I did, about probably six months. And then he went to the games in, what was that, 2010?

And when he finished second, and then two months after he got back we hired him. And he started working here in January. And then we started training and all that kind of stuff. And it's kind of been a whirlwind from there, especially for him. Hired him at Tech? At Tech. He was a strength coach at Tech for a year, year and a half.

You were a strength coach there too? No, I coached football. You just did the football. Yeah, but we worked at a small university. You work with the strength staff all the time. And so that's what we did. And it was a great place to work. Don't regret a day of it.

Just it was time for me to move on and find another career. So I love what I do now. It's great. And how did the meal fit come into play? This meal fit thing, I started working at the church. And this guy, and any time you lift weights, and you're not in a community where people lift weights all the time they think you know everything about everything when it's as far as lifting weights

and food and stuff like that and so one of the guys at the church said hey put together a workout for me well he played college baseball and so i knew he could move a little bit so i just did some basic stuff he's like great so he did it a couple weeks he's like you know what really don't me and my wife really don't know what to eat i was like he said will you put me together something to eat i was like yeah sure and so I just had a base of just stuff from just the CrossFit journal and just listening to people and reading so I had a basis of you know the rights and the wrongs and then I said okay so I did it and I said what about this what if I put together a list for when you just print this list out and you just go to grocery store and you get

this you don't even know what you're eating you should get this list and i'll give you some recipes surprise yeah exactly and so he said great and so i did it he said hey you could this is good i think people would want to do this i was like no way bro he's like yeah really he said get a facebook page i mean i wouldn't even on facebook i don't even have facebook how old are you what's that 33 33 and so he says he says do this and no Facebook. Yeah. And so he says, he says, do this. And I was like, all right. And so he told somebody and then somebody else told somebody and it's just, so it's tarted out being for busy people and it's morphed into big people losing weight, fit people getting stronger and getting better and faster at

workouts and things like that. So's been I mean it's helped a lot of people and so I'm I love doing it and I'm happy doing it and I'm helping people and so that's that's that's the main goal right there so that's similar to how you were saying three fuel got developed it was totally organic people were asking about it and then they were like you should sell this and you were like oh maybe I should yeah it was never the plan was because we had been helping develop uh a product with somebody with another company and it didn't work out and we did it just wasn't working the way that we wanted it to work and so when we split paths i was just like screw it we'll

just make our own stuff like we'll just do our you know we'll make a product that works and that's exactly what you know that's that's exactly how it rolled out. How'd you guys formulate the, kind of the ratio for that particular product? It was trial and error. It was, we knew that the coconut milk worked immediately. You know, medium chain fats are an immediately usable fuel source. I mean, it's obviously not as fast as you know putting carbs into your system but it's fairly it's a fairly fast process we knew that kicked in we knew that the protein helped but that in about two hours

between the two of them if you weren't you just couldn't keep up for too long. And so we knew we had to find something. And a guy reached out to me who's, we've been friends for a while. He's been in the supplement industry for a while. He is my current partner with Refuel. And he was like, hey, I got this carbohydrate that bodybuilders have been using for eons. And they would take it before bed and uh so they wouldn't have to wake up in the middle of night because they get catabolic and feed themselves so they just sleep through the night and i was like all right let me let me try it

because i know you're pretty anti-carb and that was my anti-carb days and uh so he tossed his carb at me and swung back literally he sent like what looked like a kilo of blow to my house. Yeah, this will give you a lot of energy. He's like, this is going to give you a lot of energy. So we had the carb, and it's an HDP waxy maze. It's not just a waxy maze. It's been treated with hydrochloric acid. And so it changed the molecular structure of the Waxymase and makes it, makes it act like a fiber instead of a

carbohydrate. So, well, it's both the carbohydrate and the fire, but it sits at like 36 on the glycemic index. So you're actually getting more of an insulin rise out of the way than you are out of the carb. And it takes about two, three hours for the carb to really kick in and the carb outperforms any carbohydrate out there at three hours so when that carb comes in every is when everything else is kind of slowing down and it's just an endless supply and so we were actually just playing around with the carbohydrate and the carbohydrate alone is a great fuel source which will probably end up selling just as its own but the the ratios we came up with were the ones that we felt not only fueled you but actually sped up recovery so we actually had the recovery protocols in place that allowed everything to happen

that that we wanted to rebound with so that was how it played out and the 20 gram 20 grams protein 20 grams of carbs um the 20 grams of protein is basically something that essentially you know from a biochemistry standpoint is if you've got 20 grams protein everybody every three hours you're pretty much taking care of you know your amino acids so so there is a myth that you can take in 60 grams of protein after a workout and it all work. Oh, it'll all work. Well, yeah. But it's not that it's going to break down. I mean, you'll convert a lot of that to glucose.

Correct. I've heard a lot of people, I think there's probably like some piece of research out there somewhere, said you can't digest more than like 20 or 30 grams of protein at a time. Right. And, uh, I haven't seen the actual piece of research on that. And you know, they might be talking about like chicken breasts. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, everything is going to break down differently and then you start combining it with different things. It's going to break down faster or slower. You start combining fat with anything and it starts breaking down slower uh so yeah and then every person is different i think everyone has to like conduct a case study on themselves

that's actually one thing i like about uh like tim ferris is he writes these books and he just talks about what worked for him he's not saying this works for everybody because i mean how many times i mean i've looked at supplements and I've tried them out when there's very little research on them and I see if they work for me or not, right now, whether they're dangerous or not, who knows, but only time will tell. Only time will tell. Like if I end up with like all sorts of weird growths, then we'll know why. Right. But you know, uh, I'm not taking anything illegal by the way. Disclaimer. This is all stuff you can get on very credible websites but uh incredible yeah in the united states no but uh you know everyone everyone reacts differently i

mean there's some people you give them you know a certain percent of the population doesn't react well with creatine like they're not going to see the same benefits as the rest of the population. You know, maybe 5% don't see, you know, the benefits to the same degree. Yeah. If you ever looked at like the individual plots on the graphs for all these studies that we all reference, it's like some people on creatine studies, for example, there's the, all the non-responders he was talking about. Some people might have gained or put on 25 pounds on their back squat in these studies. They're all plotted at the top. There's a bunch of people plotted in the middle.

And then there's a couple people that are plotted right along the bottom with zero performance gain at all. Right. So you might be one of those people. You might be not the norm. You might be way outside one or two standard deviations above the norm or below the norm. So that's to your point why you need to do some type of self-experimentation and really see if it's going to work for you because the average is a fake person. It's not a real person. Yeah.

And so, yeah, the other thing too is like certain products like creatine, even if you feel like you're a non-responder, maybe your back squat and bench don't go up, I would say still take it because it's so cheap and there's so many like mental benefits like it's the thing for you know it makes you more cognizant and things like that and it's good for people who have parkinson's like it can they've shown that like it can reduce your your uh chances of getting that if you have more creatine so a lot of these supplements it's good just to have them if they're cheap enough. Why not take vitamin E?

Why not take a multi? Yeah, try to get a high-quality one. When people start asking me, should I take this nitrous oxide, and it's $60 for 15 days worth, I'm like, I think you can spend your money better somewhere else. But there's definitely some supplements out there that have been tested by time. They're sitting around you may not get all the benefits but it'll we're going to respond differently it ultimately comes down to and this is the biggest thing you know even in our seminars the crossfit endurance at the end of the weekend i'm like look i'm not here to sell you

on anything go ahead please go ahead and go out and challenge this or test what it is we're doing here and figure out for yourself if this works out for you. You know, it's not about, Hey, this way or that way, you know, like, and you just brought up the multivitamin thing. And there were, there was not too long ago, there was a study that was put out that said multivitamins don't work. And we actually put a bunch of stuff out on our blog and three fuel about that. And then there was some guy on the Joe Rogan podcast that had come on and was talking about it. And another doctor came on Dr. Rhonda Patrick and was like, Hey, check this out. The study that was done on that was done on people who were dying of Alzheimer's and had

cardiovascular disease that were taking a multivitamin, meaning these were dying people that the multivitamin didn't work on. So now everybody's like multivitamins don't work. And they didn't not die. So multivitamins are worthless. Yeah, it did not keep them alive. Well, multivitamins don't cure cancer. We know that.

Yeah. The thing, too, with supplements, I'll say this. I heard a guy say this a long time ago part of the reason supplements work okay is you go out and you spend the money whether it be something cheap or something something expensive you spend the money and you know what you want that to work and so what are you gonna go do you're gonna go bust it wherever you may be you're gonna go work harder because you know what this stuff is gonna make me better so you're gonna go work harder this happened to me a lot when i remember cognitive dissonance true believer you believe and you you go to work you do because you think this is gonna make you

stronger because you're so you go work harder yeah you don't you don't want to waste it if you spend all that money you want to get everything you can out of it so you're gonna sleep better you're gonna eat better you're gonna train harder and then it's going to work. It's working. Even if it wasn't that, that caused the response. It caused the change in behavior that caused the response. Exactly. Yeah. I'm not going to name any like supplement companies, but there's a few out there that run like these challenges. Like, Oh, do this challenge for so many days. I'll leave the days out so no one can figure out what it is, but run this challenge for so many days and you lose all this weight and, and people get all these benefits and like,

they all point at the supplement. It's like, well, that supplement's not like, that's not the end all be all. Like you took your shit real serious. You did that diet. You got in the gym five, six days a week. I mean, I'm asked all the time, probably exactly like you guys are. Hey, what supplement should I take? And I mean, it's asked all the time, probably exactly like you guys are, hey, what supplement should I take? And, you know, I mean, it's my brother the other day. Hey, what do you think about creatine? Why do you want to take creatine? I don't know.

Why do I need to take creatine? And I'm like, well, when you figure out why you want to take creatine, why don't you start taking creatine? That's true about those challenges. We had a friend of ours is doing one of those challenges right well his wife is doing it they're doing it together and he looks at uh she says i've lost seven pounds in the first however many days he's like babe you're eating totally different yeah you're working out two more times a week than you were

it ain't the supplements how you like that for grammar it ain't the supplements you're working out two more times a week than you were. It ain't the supplements. How do you like that for grammar? It ain't the supplements. You're doing, you're eating better, you're working out more. Hello? Yeah, I just don't like the idea of like someone maybe ending the challenge and then just keep taking the supplements and then like just kind of reverting back to old habits outside of the supplements because I'll be willing to bet that's what happens a lot of times so but yeah when i was younger man i used to like i'd get a

paycheck i'd drop like 200 bones on like i'd go to gnc and load up stuff that was behind the glass with a key yes give me that i need this all that oh man it's got to be good it's locked up i hope it i hope it makes my eyes go bloodshot. It must be good. The only two things they lock up is supplements and guns. Dude, Mag 10, baby. Anyone take Mag 10 back in the day? Oh, man, that fired me up. Ultimate Orange.

Oh, yeah. Brought it back, didn't I? Dude, Ultimate Orange, man. They took it off the market for a while. My heart should have exploded. My heart should have exploded when I was like 17. I took so much of that stuff. Like every day.

I would wake up at like 6 a.m. I would go run like five miles, lift weights. I was crazy. Lift weights. You see what he did when he lift weights? Lift weights. I ran in bicep curls. Sometimes at the same time.

When Creatine first came out, they had this old ball coach at the school. My dad coached that and he calls it. He says, Hey, there's just new stuff out there. You need to take. Is that what he talks?

Just like this. And he said, he's dipping his mouth all the time. It's called creatinine. So for a year and a half, I called it creatinine so for a year and a half it's like the crack i called it creatinine i didn't know i just did what he called it what he said that's awesome but i'm not the bottom part of that that that rung on creatine so when i take that stuff oh yeah it works works well for you stronger and i do say this i get i gain weight I get bigger. Yeah, I do too. I respond very well to Crete.

Very well. If I cycle off for a while and then I come back to it, it's noticeable right away. No question. No doubt. Yeah. I feel like I'm like one of those non-responders. Really?

Yeah. I want to try like Kiefer had suggested as like a theory. He said try doing like 60 grams a day for a while the idea but the idea behind that is not actual like uh because creatine has been shown to be uh like a myostatin inhibitor which is like the all right so myostatin is the gene that uh basically it's the governor in your cells that keeps your, uh, from that. Yeah. From growing like too fast, I guess.

So if you go, just Google myostatin cow. Just right now. Google Wendy the whippet. Oh yeah. Yeah. It's a whippet that looks like a fucking bull. Oh yeah. That dog.

The dog. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Check it out.

Yeah. Just Google. It's like the bodybuilder dog. Yeah. Dude's got like veins popping out. It's like the bodybuilder dog. Yeah, dude's got like veins popping out. It's like this, just standing there. Feet the dog gritting and his kibbles and bits. Yeah, so like the theory that Kiefer has is potentially if you take up like 60 grams, like spread out throughout the entire day, you would inhibit that gene enough to get like better expression.

There was a rumor Bob Sapp was playing around with trying to get his myostatin gene. Oh yeah. I bet he was. Yeah. I mean, I was actually talking. I haven't even heard that name in years. He's been over in China,

he's been over like in China and Japan forever. And like, I think he, you know, the rumor was from people that I know that know him, he was like, I want to get this myostatin thing. He's already like 400 pounds. I know man. Bob he was like i want to get this mild statin thing he's

already like 400 pounds i know man bob's absolutely like a 400 pound kickboxer and he's the biggest human being on the planet he's got fur on his shoulders bob if you're listening i'm sorry don't beat me up no we all actually like you bob Bob. Yeah, Bob's a shit. Don't come to my house. Oh, man. But, yeah, I've been thinking about, like, that's such a pain in the ass to, like, dose that high. I've been thinking about doing it. Think about the amount of water you would have to drink.

I mean, you'd have to drink two gallons of water a day just to get this stuff. I mean, I'm already drinking over a gallon of water a day. I mean, you just go in there. There was a big push for people to try to figure out how to how to have an over-the-counter supplement that would that would stimulate that that inhibition of myostatin i remember uh i think was tim hendricks one of the guys that's like the well there's certain director of editor or something like that of uh of t nation he was like when he heard about myostatin inhibition he thought that was like gonna be the next big thing. This is going to take over. I remember reading about it when I was way younger and being like, oh, my God, this is the future.

They did a bunch of research on it to try to figure out how to do it. And it was like nothing but dead ends. And then I think they eventually just gave up on it. But people talk about it all the time, but no one seems to have done anything about it. Yeah. Not with human beings at least because they've done it with the cows. They've done it with a bunch of different animals. It's like the human research we've heard nothing about.

And obviously all of us being in different places at different times, we're all thinking about this. When are they coming out with the human trials? Yeah. I mean, I know a guy, I was talking to a guy just last week. He was saying, yeah, man, if they had it, I'd take it.

Like, no questions asked. I was like, phew. Because you don't know what the health risks are going to be associated with that. But I've heard the animals live just fine. Just fine. Cows are living just fine. That means. They just look like five times the cow they were.

I want to eat that cow. It probably doesn't have any fat in it. It probably doesn't taste any good. Oh, yeah. Has anyone heard about the KFC chickens that have multiple, not just two legs per side, but multiple legs per side? Is that real? What?

Is that real? I saw it on my Facebook feed today. I saw chickens that had two or more legs per side. Like that's why KFC. It's got to be true. You saw it on Facebook. I saw it on Facebook. It's got to be true.

It was on the internet. It exists. It's the gospel. Somebody snopes that. Snopes that and let us know. I saw a photo and was like, is this true? And nobody knows if it's true. I haven't looked it up.

I don't know. If you know if it's true, Twitter, send me a message. I want to see this. Wow. Especially if it is true. I haven't looked it up. I don't know. If you know if it's true, Twitter, send me a message. I want to see this. Wow. Especially if it is true, I really want to see it. Yeah. GMO chickens?

Yeah. Those dudes can't even walk. That's scary, dude. They can't even walk. Yeah. They just, their legs break because they can't keep up

with the... Dude, they don't have beaks. They don't have feathers. Yeah, beakless, featherless chickens. That way, with multiple legs. Less work, man. Yeah. I don't know, man. They don't have feathers. Yeah, beakless, featherless chickens. That way, less work, man. Yeah. I don't know, man.

It could be totally fake, and I wouldn't know. All right. We're going to take a break real quick. When we come back, we're going to solve the mystery of the spider chicken. And we're back. Yes, we're still in Cookville. We're still at CrossFit Mayhem. We're hanging out with Brian McKenzie and Thomas Cox.

And during the break, the topic of Ecuador came up. And then he got about two words in explaining. I said, no. Podcast. So you have no idea what I'm fixing to say. I have no idea what you're going to say. We could go be fixing to go rob a cartel down there. And you would be like, oh, let's take that out.

We'd definitely leave that in. I was going to say, dude, that's going to get a lot of hits. El Chapo. That sounds way more exciting. El Chapo. That's right. You know what? I have a chicken that lives in my front yard.

It just showed up about two weeks ago. Just two legs. It's only got two legs. It's got all its feathers. And we've been calling it El Polio. But I think we may be calling it El Chapo. I'm changing that name, dude. That sounds way hardcore oh yeah that chicken's hardcore dude it's like cold and wet outside and it's just hanging out wait just wait till i get you guys to hawaii

it's no dude the chickens are amazing dude the roosters run around that island like they own it just scooping up mean man they. They're everywhere and they literally are territorial with their women. So it's just like they're running around chasing other roosters around. You don't want to be chasing other chickens. I actually have a hat and I'll probably wear it this weekend. Brian, how do you know they're territorial?

Are you a chicken? Yeah, I'm a chicken fucker. I'm trying to keep it clean. So why are you going to Ecuadoruador okay back to the original question we're good at getting off topic we were going uh last week of august first week of september it's right around the first september we're going to ecuador we've got a girl that's in our church here from cookville and she's down there she's a she's a missionary she's working and running an orphanage a lot of orphans down there and so i did not know this ecuador is one of the i think the number one

producer of roses in the world oh wow yeah pretty cool so we're going down there we're going to spend a week to take six guys so if you don't bring roses home yeah you're in trouble mama's gonna be pissed so we're going down there and uh through our the church i work for and we're gonna build a greenhouse for the orphanage because that's the way they can either raise money you know make money through raise to doing um roses or just their crops and so this is about 11 000 feet though 10 between 10 11 000 feet the orphanage is and so we're gonna go down for a week take six guys and build a greenhouse for them so they can make money and raise their own food so brian's going with us i'm i nearly got a rich froning senior talked into going with us because he can build absolutely

anything unbelievable he's a just so happens that i've built a greenhouse before bingo so that's what we're doing it's gonna be awesome it's gonna be really good so ecuador is great i've been down there twice really yeah i've been down there twice great country great very good people they use the u.s dollar too they make it easy they have no currency even more of a reason to go yeah so pretty excited about it it's crossfit would you take more yeah it's all over you take more people yeah we probably need to cap it about 10 just simple because of space but yeah we could take some more what weekend is that so weekend we're gonna leave on a wednesday you're gonna have like a thousand people want to show up now exactly we're gonna leave going to leave on a Wednesday, the Wednesday before Labor Day.

So Wednesday before Labor Day going to go Wednesday through Tuesday after Labor Day. And if someone in the audience wants to go, where should they show up at? Ecuador.

Meet me there. Get yourself to Ecuador and you can go. We're going to Quito? What? That's the mountains. I think so. That's where it's like 9,000, 10,000 feet. Yes, I think so.

I forget the airport we're flying into. Yeah, I believe it's Quito. Yep. Sounds right. I've never been to Ecuador. You're going to have to tell me. It's by the equator. There's Guayaquil, which is the main city, and then Quito, which is another huge city,

but it's up in the mountains. Because, well, the airport's only an hour, hour and a half from where we're going so that may be it like the airport's only like an hour hour and a half in the village in the mountains so but yeah we're looking forward to it's gonna be awesome giving back you know i don't have as much as we do obviously so we're gonna go in there and buy the greenhouse and build it for him so So cool. Yep. It's going to be great. So you work for a church. Is that the same church that was involved in repoing a boat? Oh, yes.

Oh, yes. Mr. Larson throwing curve balls. What about here? We won't go into that whole story. What episode was that? Wait,

73. He's a savant. He did it again. Yeah, no. Rich told a story about reaping on a boat with him hey we're a full service church we did wow we did you've never heard that story no oh yeah they give you the 32nd version so uh lady at church lady at church calls and she says hey uh can you can you go get a we need a boat moved

it's like yeah sure great you know i've been working like six months and she's i was like where's the boat she said it's at my uh at my husband's mom's house we're getting a divorce i was like well is he gonna be there she's like no he's not gonna be there it'll be fine just just go get it and just bring it over here we'll come to find out he wanted to keep the boat and we couldn't get the boat latched on we were out there sweating and we're getting pretty nervous thank goodness the guy wasn't there we took it took it to her house said hey you're great good to see you thanks you know whatever she called me two weeks later she said he came and got the boat i was like i'm sorry i didn't go back and get the boat

but yeah it could have been potentially dangerous it could have been very potentially bad quick now i did not tell rich that that's exactly what we were doing but he was uh yeah he didn't even know i did not divulge everything found out afterwards what are we doing now we're getting a boat taking why are we taking over here because the husband wants to keep it and she doesn't want him to keep it okay great so we're repoing it yes yes so what you're saying is rich doesn't ask a lot of questions and he's easy to convince of he's learning he's learning to ask questions when i'm involved so it makes him a good cross where he's like i don't know i'll just do that yeah whatever yeah sure sounds good so brian who all do you have training for the games this year that you're helping out you got a big old list rich danielle haran uh brian diaz um there's carla um carla's out of

africa africa she's up in she's out of south africa she was in South Africa, but now she moved up. We've got, dude, there's actually a bunch more. I'm just not thinking about them right now. There's quite a few. It's on and off. And I'll work with kids all year. Like I've worked with Kinnick quite a few times. I've trained Kinnick for probably three years, two, three years. I still work with him on and off.

There's another kid that's with him who's getting pretty good. His name's Nick. Dark Horse. Yeah. Dark Horse. Nick Robles. He's got the coolest Twitter, Instagram, and lever. I don't even know his name.

Dark Shadow. Dark Shadow. That's a hard shadow. Dark Shadow. Real memorable, too. Yeah. He snagged Dark shadow yes yes no numbers afterwards uh i think it's dark underscore shadow it's good oh wow that's impressive it's pretty good yeah

he got he got in early and my twitter handle was my daughter's name that's real manly yeah you were i was like what's your twitter i was like i think i just met a little person with that name trying to put it all together yeah i'm kind of slow i'm very i'm fairly like limited with what i'll do and how much i'll do with people and which is why you know the purpose of athlete sales where it's like we've worked on programming for so long and i've you know there was a period where it was just like i could only handle like 10 athletes where i that was it and i just push people push athletes to other people. And then once we devised a program, a way to get coaches involved, to understand the program,

to be able to program. So we have it set up. So we have coaches that can put out the programming. I can oversee the programming. We can, you know, and we ultimately have like a kind of a hierarchical thing where it's like, you've got head coaches, head coaches, and then assistant coaches, then, you know, interns and, you you know everybody's got part of the process and the way it happens and that allows for a very streamlined system to where you can handle in excess of 100 athletes or so you know i think cj martin runs a very similar thing yeah wow very cool uh thomas i don't want to forget this it just popped in my head i was told not to forget to talk about this from Rich. Actually, he didn't say anything.

No, I'm just kidding. Thomas was like, oh, my God. He was talking about it earlier, and I was like, oh, yeah, I need to remember to ask Thomas about this. This is a competition you guys have coming up. Oh, yes. Now you're super relieved. You're like, oh, my God, what is he going to say?

What has he told him? Mustard. Yeah, mayhem for mustard seed. So this is really rich's biggest and biggest thing the first thing he's really done as far as like a a community how you get out there and do something very big obviously he goes and talks to schools and does those things but he's put his name on this thing so the mustard seed ranch is a ranch for kids that have either been beaten, parents are drug addicts, parents have left, all those different kinds of things. And so these kids are super neglected.

And there are two homes here in Cookville. But it's private. It's not state-run. Everything they get is from private donations, churches, just people, anything like that. And so what we're going to do is we're going to we're having a competition april 12th it's a three three person competition same-sex team so three guys or three girls now we're not limiting the number of of teams men or women so it's just a hundred we're going to cap it at 100 teams so um april 12th and what we're trying to do is we're trying to raise money to build a girls home they've got the land running out to yang out there they've

got 80 acres but they don't i mean it's hard to build a house for they've got the land running out to yang out there they've got 80 acres but they don't i mean it's hard to build a house for 15 or 20 girls and so we're trying to raise four hundred thousand dollars for the girls home and if we can i don't i think we could do it with the competition but if we can't we're just gonna probably make this an annual event and see how it goes this first year but it's uh it's be exciting. I mean, we're 100 teams. Rich's team is Rich, Matt Chan, and Ben Smith. So it's a pretty stout team. Does he know that makes people not want to sign up? Here's the thing about this.

No, there's actually a lot of teams. Yeah, I'm joking. I know. I'm not going to win. They realize they're not going to win, right? The thing is, if you think about it, if this is the only thing that you can really just enter

and go compete against Rich, that's a pretty cool thing. That's pretty cool. Yeah, it's pretty cool. So you get to compete right alongside him and that's, I mean,

that's a lot of things because everything else, besides the Open, everything else, you have to qualify for and all those different types of things. And so we're going to do that. So you can donate money

and feel demoralized on the same weekend. At the same time. Yeah. Yeah, it's an awesome thing so we can't make it to that can you donate online yes you can donate online go to just google eventbrite and mustard seed for mayhem or mayhem for mustard seed you can go there and you can donate anything you want and it's it's a great we've still we've got our title sponsors title sponsors is going to be two of riches uh sponsors uh reebok and then advocare and then also uh d also Dave Rowland, who's a guy here in town, does billboards and things like that.

He's one of the title sponsors. So it's going to be cool. It's going to be a great event. And the thing is we don't have a scale division simply because it's not going to be a three-day event. It's only a one-day event. Too many three-day events. Too many three-day events.

Let's just do one day, guys. One day. It's hard. Thank you, man. It is. It's three days. And so you come in on Saturday. We're going to compete all day Saturday and then go home. No scale division, but we're going to make this thing doable for people

that are not just super superior athletes. This is not go compete and beat Rich at all these. No, this is going to be traditional CrossFit stuff. We're having it at a, like an equestrian. No crazy surprises. Absolutely not. Not going to have to swim with sharks or anything like that. No, no swim with sharks, no dodging dogs on the side of the room.

I mean, nothing like that. No cow tipping, anything like that. If I went to a competition at Cookville and y'all had cow tipping, I wouldn't be shocked. I'd be like oh all right no but it's it's gonna be great it's gonna be really good we're gonna program it um it's gonna be hard i mean it's competition you know but it's not gonna be something so crazy that people can't do i mean we're gonna make it to where the masses can do the workout so yeah i've never competed

before you just do it it's so much fun especially fun team is the best way oh team is awesome team is awesome yeah when is that again april the 12th here in cookful it's here's a good good thing about it is it's two weeks after the open and there's no there are no regional dates so what you could do if you if you find out that you're you did make regionals you can bring your team you can take your three guys and your three girls oh yeah good practice good practice good practice and what you could what it does is and it's one day the volume's not going to blow you out not going to blow you it's just another training day it's like um i talked to tommy hackenbrook who you know they've they've won two years two years in a row and i was like you know what's and what's the secret you know hey there's no first thing is there is no secret but he said one of the things they do is they do they work together a lot on like competitions he says yeah we can't train together secret. But he said one of the things they do is they work together a lot on competitions.

He says, we can't train together every day. He said, but one of the things we'll do, we'll go to do a seal fit for a weekend. We'll go do a competition together for a weekend. And this is one of those opportunities. And here's the thing, too. If you don't make regionals, bring your team. It's another opportunity to compete as a team together. And if you're at a box and they've got –

You train all year to compete. And if you don't get to go to regionals at least you could do this yeah it's it is it's a lot of it's a lot it's gonna be a lot of fun it's at a great venue it's at a where they have rodeos at a like a horse equestrian center oh yeah big shocker huh so but no it's gonna be it's gonna be great we're looking forward to it very cool yeah well if i wanted to sign up where do i go go just google eventbrite mustard seed for mayhem there's no link off the crossfitmayhem.com you can go to crossfitmayhem.com and the link is on the side too there you go that'll be easier yeah eventbrite backslash yeah uh brian you're you were uh talking about a competition in hawaii yeah working on. Yeah. Tell us about that.

I want to go to that. So I got fairly kind of immersed into the Hawaiian scene the moment these guys started to really like see CrossFit and understand it. And so I got a little connected out there. And a lot of these guys are connected with people within hawaii and uh over on kawaii where a lot of the guys that i hang out are from um they have got their hands on about a thousand acres of land of hawaiian land um which you know if you've been to hawaii or you've ever seen pictures it's not exactly flat so uh there's uh you know jungle there's just about everything. So we're, we're going to put together a competition out there that we're, um, looking to make into not just like a CrossFit event. It's a, we'll, we'll be looking at like 24 hour events, like team

type stuff, like circumnavigating jungle area, things like that. Um, you know, then having scaled events, things like runs or even just CrossFit style events and then making it kind of like the idea here and this is still just very fresh but it is having it kind of like festival style we've got connections within the resorts out in Kauai it's on the south side to where we can you know get some fairly reasonable rates for people to come stay out there you're putting us up in like one of the big nice yeah don't worry we can you know get some fairly reasonable rates for people to come stay out there um you're putting us up in like one of the big nice yeah don't worry we got you guys covered we'll get you taken care of uh you know and and it you know michelle kinney was actually just out

there yeah yeah she was out there playing with my buddies out there and um you know they've got everything out there so um and i mean everything like from the boats to the ocean to the surfboards to the mountains to the hiking. The weather. Yeah, it's nonstop. Even though it is the wettest place on the planet. But. Yeah. Beautifully warm.

Yeah. Same temperature all year round. Eight degrees year round. Yeah, same temperature. It's awesome. You pack the same kind of clothes all year. Yeah. One of the things you mentioned is it doesn't get cold at night no so anything no it does not well they they tend to think it gets a

little cold but it doesn't drop below like 65 it's like when we were in miami and it was 60 degrees they're like i am so sorry i'm like i'm like man i'm in shorts and t-shirts loving it but so shirtless and flip-flops yeah i was walking around barefoot and everyone, they're wearing like parkas down there. I was like, man, my pool was frozen when I left Memphis. This was awesome. So that's going to be kind of like a combination adventure race slash CrossFit event. I think, yeah. You're talking about navigating the jungle.

Yeah, we've got, there's a lot of trail out there and mountains. We actually, I mean, we went out to, I wanted to go test the land the first time I was out there. I'm like, all right, what do you got? Let's go up there. There's actually zip lines that work across the mountains. But like we did a, I think it was a two and a half mile, three mile hike. And it literally took us three hours, like two and a half hours to do.

Yeah. Like it goes vertical elevation. It just goes vertical. And then you're in jungle and it's like, I goes vertical elevation. It just goes vertical. And then you're in jungle and it's like, I mean, and there's spiders out there like that and you're freaking out, but they're harmless garden spiders, but they're like this big and you're just going, what is that? I mean, you're just, it's different, man. It's so, you know, and, uh, you're just in like this beautiful place and you see the entire island.

Like you just get up there and you're just blown away at what you're looking at. Because there's, Kauai is actually like probably one of the last like within the islands of kind of like less untouched. There are a couple more that are untouched. In fact, Niha, which is you're not even allowed to go to unless you are of native Hawaiian descent. So at any rate, it's virtually untouched. I mean, there's very little that's populated on Kauai. Most of it is just pristine land everywhere. So it should put for a fairly entertaining weekend for people.

Yeah, figure out a way to incorporate surfing into the event somehow. Absolutely. There will be some water involved for sure. looking forward to that yeah because i will be there yeah it's like oh competition hawaii when roughly were you thinking about doing that gotta go for business the business experience right definitely business late august to probably october time it just depends on when we can all agree on it. I'm going out actually within the next two weeks. I'm going out there to go over the land, go over potential competition stuff and then

getting it all organized. I'm looking forward to that man. I've never been to Hawaii. We'll go surfing boys. I've been once but it was a little too touristy for me. I want to go. This is not the... I don't want to do the touristy thing. No. This ain't Honolulu

or Waikiki, bro. Kauai, that's where Dustin is, right? Yes. Dustin lives in a very remote place. Does he? Yeah. I mean, Kauai is the farthest place in the United States. That's awesome. Yeah. Sounds like a blast. Furthest, most remote place.

I want to go. Yeah. Let's wrap this up uh all right thomas we got we got meal fit i'm gonna let you promote anything you want right now i got must mustard seed mayhem for mustard seed man from mustard seeds we got mustard seeds and ketchup. Now, mealfit.co is what we've been doing for less than a year now. Not.com. Some guy in California owns it and if you own it,

holler at me. It's just trying to help people know what to eat and make it easy for people that are busy. Cannot recommend it enough. I'm one of the trial. He is. I am. We've got of the trial. He is. He is.

I am. I am. We've got two different plans. We've got a plan that for just everyday people it's a little easier than we've got a zone. Simplifies life like nobody's business.

Which one would you recommend I be on? The original. You saw me with my shirt off today. This dude needs to lose some weight. No, it's good.

It's good. Normally I ask people what their goals are but i'm gonna tell you this is what you need to do now we've got an original plan which is like for for the people like that's what we do we do the original plan we've got the hardcore crossfit athlete endurance athlete we've got a zone paleo planet zone measurements it's paleo food it's it's good it's i mean zone's hard i mean you gotta do the measuring i try to make the measuring easier for you but it's uh it's good i mean it's affordable it's good it's easy i i can help you i help answer the questions it's not just a plan i mean i i'm there to help consult you a little bit so it's it's it's pretty good yeah if i don't know the

answer i ask people meal plans yep meal plan recipe and then support grocery list and support right so comprehensive nutrition grocery whatever you need basically there yeah a lot of times people get like recipes but they don't have like you know they got it tells them they need so much of a certain ingredient but building out the grocery list it's tough i got it's laid out for you i mean this is to make life easier that's what it's for because everybody's too busy that's one of those common things that people get asked is hey can you give me a meal plan and i usually go no what people want and this is the thing that happens what people want they want hey tell me what to eat i hear that weekly just tell me just tell me what to eat and i'll do it instead of saying oh you need to eat less grains you need less sugar no no tell me what to eat and that's

that's what we do so it's good stuff very cool thanks yeah percentage of macronutrient doesn't help you if you have no idea what to do if you're already an expert that makes a lot of sense but if you're a beginner you don't know shit that doesn't that's not food people carbohydrate isn't a food an apple is food there's no doubt they were bitten a carbohydrate worst thing the worst thing the worst thing we've ever done as a society the worst thing is we've explained an obese person as a macronutrient we've called an obese person fat that's what we do it's the worst thing ever because what we're what we're doing is we're saying hey they're fat well what we need to be eating we need to be eating more fat in our diet. Well, it's like trying to sell, you know, a makeup to a girl and label it a makeup ugly. It's not going to happen. You need more ugly on your face.

Then you won't look so ugly. No, it doesn't make any sense. You and your analogies, man. Hey, buy this makeup. It's called ugly. Oh yeah, sure. I'll take two. No, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. You're sitting there saying, hey, you need to eat more fat. Hey, buy this makeup. It's called ugly. Oh, yeah, sure. I'll take two. No, it's the same thing. It's the same thing. You're sitting there saying, hey, you need to eat more fat. Well, if I eat more fat, I'm going to be fat. So we should just start calling fat lean. Lean. Here, have some lean.

Here it is. It's for you right here. That's good. So that's the biggest mistake we've made. That's the biggest mistake we've made is using the word fat. It's a macronutrient. It's like, hey, you're a protein. Oh, yeah, I'm a protein.

Yeah, I'm a protein. See these proteins right here? Oh, yeah. Make them bounce. So, no, it's a mind shift, you know, trying to make people think in a different way. And it's hard because we've been told that you need 11 servings of grains a day holy moly 11 a day you know is that real well that'll kill you pyramid well we're told that for how many years we're starting the 40s or 50s i think with mcgovern school yeah i think

when mcgovern report came out that was when the new food pyramid started which was in the 80s but but we've long time yeah long long time so it's just to kind of get people to think in a different way and it's not a diet mealfit.co is not a diet it is a way to live i mean this is stuff you can eat the rest of your life you're not going to do it for amen six weeks amen bless god hands up you're not gonna do it i love that boy yeah it's just it's just the way it lives got BMAC on a diet yeah alright Brian what about yourself

you got anything from that real quick nah I'm good boys good we talked about it man if you wanna yeah if you wanna see BMAC stuff

go to the last episode yeah just go to the last episode it's there at the end you know what episode number that's gonna be let's go Savant let's go Savant

82 was your original, right? He's like, we haven't produced it yet. It doesn't have a number. That one could get lost. Whatever this number is, minus one. You can find me at CrossFit Endurance or 3Fuel with a 3 instead of an E or AthleteSell.com, Aller.com. Excellent. Not.co. Hey, why not 3Fuel with an E? Is it not out there? Like an oil company owns it.

We're trying to get it. Gotcha. We may not get that from the oil company. Price is pretty high probably. We're working on it. We're working on it. But the three is going to become synonymous

with everything we do though. So I mean everything because we have a whole list of product lines that are about to drop which the three will be attached to all of that stuff.

Sweet. So it's 3FU3L. You got it Doug. Whoa. For all the people that didn't figure it out I just figured it out for you. I had no idea.

I was lost but I'm easy to confuse. It's good stuff. All right, guys. Make sure to go to barbellstrug.com, sign up for the newsletter, and we'll inform you of all the cool stuff that's going on, new podcast, things you think you would not need to know. That's what you'll get sent.

Whoa. You don't even know what you don't know. So what you're going to need to do is you're going to need to rewind that and listen to that again and write it down to understand what he just said. All right, guys. Thanks for having us out and podcasting with us. Thanks for coming out, boys. Appreciate it.

See you, fellas.