Barbell Shrugged - 72- Dan Bailey: CrossFit, Being A Professional Athlete, and Steroids

Episode Date: July 22, 2013

Have you wondered what it's like to be a professional CrossFit athlete? Do you wonder what it would be like to compete at the CrossFit Games? To learn more about what it takes to consistently perform at the high level, the Barbell Shrugged crew traveled to CrossFit Mayhem in Cookeville, TN to interview the "beast of the Central East" Dan Bailey for this episode of the Barbell Shrugged podcast. You'll learn why CrossFit is a full-time job when you compete at the elite level. You'll also learn what Dan thinks about the use of steroids in CrossFit.

This week on Barbell Shrugged, we travel to CrossFit Mayhem and podcast with Dan Bailey. Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Mike Bledsoe here with Doug Larson and Chris Moore here in Cookville, Tennessee. We're at Mayhem, CrossFit Mayhem hanging out with Dan Bailey. Where am I? We're hanging out with Dan Bailey. What's going on everybody? We're going to be talking about

Dan's training and his excessive use of steroids and allegedly all those things. So stay tuned. You'll learn everything you need to know about strength and conditioning and drug use by the end of this podcast.

Absolutely. Yeah. For sure. Make sure that you go to... Click here. Click here. CTP will throw a link there. Click here. Or here. click here click here click here

or here and you can sign up for the Barbell Shrug newsletter and there we can let you know about all the stuff we're doing where we're traveling new seminars that are coming out and stuff like that you will be informed and you will be glad that you were

so that's just if you're on YouTube right those annotations the clickable links part, the things that I'm pointing to right now, that stuff only shows up on YouTube, I think. So if you're on barbershug.com or especially if you're on iTunes, there's nothing there. So you're not crazy.

Don't freak out. Don't start looking around your truck while you're driving. I don't see anything to click. Quit pressing your phone. It's only if you're on YouTube, on a regular computer. Yeah, so I kicked it off trying

to grab people's attention for sure yeah but we were we were just discussing we were asking you uh right before we got started is there anything you really want to talk about and you're like i don't know and it was like is there anything that bothers you you're like oh yeah there's this thing and there's that thing yeah steroids is definitely one of them you know you get the comments on youtube videos and all the and other places, Twitter, wherever. Oh, they have to be using, they have to be taking this and that. And it's just a complete load of bull crap. I would put the challenge out to anybody.

I'll take any kind of test you want me to take any time of the year, only you have to pay for it. And when I pass, you're going to donate $5,000 to a charity of my choosing. Right. So you better be confident. Let's see who's going to come to the table then. There's no way that I know of then, you know, because it's like, you know, there's no way that I know of the top guys that are in it that are doing it. They're just two stand up people to be doing something like that.

And we get tested at the games and all that. And kind of the caveat to that is as the CrossFit Games gets bigger and bigger, the pot size gets bigger and bigger, there's going to be more incentive for somebody to try to do that. We're not saying that nobody is doing it. We are saying that I'm not doing it. Just to make it clear for people who said, oh, you're saying there's no steroids in CrossFit now? Look, we're just saying ease up, steroid accusers. Yeah, so that irks me a little bit because, you know, you put in all that hard work and effort into whatever performance you can give, and somebody wants to chalk it up to steroids, and it's kind of just like a little jab into the gut because you know you put in all that hard work and effort into whatever performance

you can give and somebody wants to chalk it up to steroids and it's kind of just like a little jab into the gut you know yeah i think a lot of people they like to they like to point at athletes and say steroids because they it's almost like an excuse oh yeah absolutely for their inability to work hard and put in the time for recovery and nutrition and all the stuff it takes to be successful right they're not willing to do it so it's like they can go well that guy's on steroids easy excuse we should ask dan like a typical day in the life on a tough training day just so people can get an understanding oh yeah i don't i'm not prepared to do that i don't really want to do that actually right all that work is that successful yeah or maybe i'll

do it for one or two days and then you know i feel terrible and it's like i don't ever want to do that again or people might think that but yeah i'm the last guy to say i mean i'll tell people like if you think there's no one using steroids you're probably pretty naive oh absolutely um we have we have a good testing procedure to date considering where the sport's at i think but absolutely you could get away with it 100 it'd be totally easy right now to get away with it anybody with any limited knowledge in steroid use hgh blah blah i mean you'd have to have your the funding to do it for one but uh because there's no year-round testing of anybody i mean it would be totally easy but right um so again not saying that nobody does but saying that I know I don't.

I know Rich doesn't. Yeah, so if you start seeing people who are crushing Wads and posting the same things on YouTube, and then they do pretty well, I guess, on the open. You're like, man, this guy's going to totally beat Rich this year. And then it's like, oh, I got hurt. I can't compete. Got hurt, yeah, blew out an ACL.

And then there's 30 pounds lighter. Like, oh, okay, well, something's now fishy for sure. Not saying that you're doing it, but. You see that in the Olympics a lot, you know. Athletes are like, you know, the mysterious injury, you know. And, you know, well, they did some internal testing and, you know. Allegedly, Mike, come on. Tyson Gay, just recently.

He tested positive for I don't know what. They haven't said yet. Who is this? But Tyson Gay. America's best sprinter basically uh tested positive for something he's got to pull out of the world championships and you know he owned up to it basically said it's whatever it was it was my fault basically i you know i take well i take responsibility for what i put in my body and what other people are giving me

but they haven't said what it is yet i don't know whatever it is i got caught taking i'm sorry for taking that one thing right yeah i made that one mistake I'm sorry. I am surprised. He is a standup dude. I'll put that out there for sure. I mean, I don't know. I appreciate that. Like, yeah, you got me. I was cheating, man. Sorry. It's I can make a lot of money if I win. So I'm trying really hard to win. I'm surprised by like, uh, people get, uh, caught with the amphetamines type stuff. Yeah. Uh, you know, like, like when I was younger, I always thought about steroids, steroids, steroids. But it seems like the majority of people get caught

doing something illegal or, you know, just something that's on the banned list. It's an amphetamine or something like the 1,3-dimethylmethameth. Yeah, pseudoephedrine, all that stuff, even stuff that's in cold medicine, that kind of thing. Especially on the Olympic level, you can get busted for it. Yeah, you got to be careful. I know some athletes, you know, I. Especially on the Olympic level, you can get busted for it. Yeah, you've got to be careful. I know some athletes, you know, I had one athlete this past year,

she gets sick and she starts getting real nervous. She's like, well, the doctor gave me this medication. I need to report it to the CrossFit. I was like, sure, go ahead. She told me what it was. I was like, nothing about that is banned, but go ahead. Go ahead and cover your bases. Yeah, cover your bases for sure absolutely no reason not to because once that stigma gets on you like once that comes out no matter if you did it intentionally didn't do it you know the critics

are just gonna ride you yeah it's still a very sexy thing to point out in the media oh yeah cheater how dare you betray the children of this country, and the American Dream, and Uncle Sam, by daring to cheat at a game! How dare you! You son of a bitch! So that's probably one thing you get a lot with the whole steroid issue. I bet the other thing that you get is, well, I could probably do that too if I could work out four times a day and I never had to worry about anything. He probably has no worries in his life other than training, which probably totally isn't true at all. No that's the other thing we talked about just before we started I understand some people's perspective of

it and that you know the idea of being a like a pro CrossFit athlete or any kind of pro athlete and it is great like it's phenomenal I'm having the time of my life the past couple of months and just, you, you know, you only have so long that you can do this and young man's game, right? Yeah. So the world is calling, you know, the guys who are like, we'll get on, you know, and troll around on the internet and say, Oh, if I didn't have a family and I didn't have three kids and a, and a great job, you know, it'd be great to work out all day. I'm like, are you kidding me? People would love to have a family and kids that love them and a great job and a great job that you're gonna be able to retire one day it's like get off the internet if that's what you're gonna say it's just ridiculous it's absurd I mean sure no you're probably not as good as everybody else you don't

have as much time to train and that could be a reason that you're not at the crossfit games probably not but like come on like give me a break it's like yeah i mean you know you know what i'm saying so you finished school this past may i did so what's this month july so pay attention it's july i know what's happening now and i know what may is i know what that month is but i don't know what it is now months Months is crazy. Months is crazy. That's kind of an inside joke. What did you study? I'm curious, just for the sake of it.

I got my master's in fitness and wellness, I think is the term. Oh, yeah, yeah. Or strength and conditioning, basically. Well, now we're a round table of science. Oh, master's. Exercise science degrees. You don't have your master's. You're a loser.

That's true. That's true. No education, basically. I basically dropped out of school. Yeah, after your undergraduate. I was trying to get my master's and then this whole running a business thing popped up.

You've got the one job where you can brag about dropping out of school and it sounds really cool. I dropped out of school and opened a business. I'm an entrepreneur. I don't need your school. Everybody's like, okay, well, I guess you know what you're doing. Is that a long-term goal of yours, to open a CrossFit gym down the line? Probably at some point. I know that that's something I could do almost at any time.

I know how to do it. I know what I need to get. I've seen enough people do it. I worked for Rogue for long enough. It's just kind of, well, no, I know it's not easy. Maybe one day. If you've got a lot of experience in this industry. It'd be the natural choice. Right, yeah. And I love doing it.

Love coaching it. Yeah, if you're going to coach, you might as well open a CrossFit gym. Right. You'd be making things tough on yourself not to. Right. What is the state of the, I haven't had a thought about the general strength and conditioning industry in a while. How is the job scene and how is the climate just working at universities now? I haven't been in one since I left the University of Memphis.

Is this something you're entertaining potentially? Maybe would you ever coach on a collegiate level? Oh, absolutely. I'd definitely do that. It'd be a lot of fun. The one thing that's great about doing that, and again with clients that are coming, is you get to see progress with the people

that you're working with. And the same thing with any kind of teams you have. You get to see the progress that they go through, the four years that they're in the school, that they're there. So that makes it a lot of fun. When I was at Tech, yeah, I had a blast. I love the teams that I worked with. I love working with them.

I was very fortunate to be at a strength and conditioning facility that embraced CrossFit, or those kind of getting more work done over less time, basically. Was that the first school to implement CrossFit football type? I don't know. I couldn't say the first, but I know that. I can't name any others. Yeah, I couldn't name any others off the top of my head.

I know some places are slowly kind of building it in there. And then some places are totally like, forget that, you know, old school kind of people. That's a great facility out there, too. Oh, yeah. Tennessee Tech, right? I've seen pictures. I still need to go. Yeah, I think if one day

if I was going to ever re-submerge myself in that world, I think working out in a small university where you have that really trusting relationship with your management team

who's running the facility or whatever, then the coaches or the athletes who are just a young, hungry group of guys and you don't have maybe so many egos like you might get at University of Alabama or something, just to say, that would be maybe a really cool gig for sure.

Right. So you finished school a couple months ago. Yep. And you've been training full-time. Yep. What does full-time look like for the steroid guys out there? You know what? It's not as glamorous as you think.

Like, I do better when I have something else to do, I think. Okay. Just a little bit of something, you know? You think maybe like structure? Maybe a little more structure, yeah, for sure. But what it looks like is, you know, you just kind of wake up. I mean, you don't have to wake up real early or anything and make breakfast, go work out, you know, maybe do blogging or whatever you want breakfast, go work out, you know, uh, maybe do

blogging or whatever you want to do on your website, read something. And you're just kind of hanging out, waiting to work out again. So that can be fun for a while. It can also be pretty boring if you don't occupy your time with something else, you know? So you'd be better when weightlifting is like your time to unwind rather than like what you came here to do. It's like when it's not your main part of your day, I'd say yes and no. I'd say anybody can get burnout on anything. You just have to make sure that you're pacing yourself properly, even if you're doing it full time. I still take time to, you know, chill out. If there's some days where you just feel overwhelmed, like you've kind of had enough of it and I'll go to the lake, get some kind of exercise in that way, do something else other than slamming a barbell around the

room. You know, you're pretty good about taking time off when you feel like you need it. Yeah, definitely. Some people aren't. I compete better when I do that. I'm just actually coming off of two definitely easier days. I just did one workout today and was able to hit it real hard, clear head, went after it really good. I'm in a good

headspace, I guess, coming up to next week. Always an important thing. You don't feel like you have to do a double or triple every day or you're not getting better uh some days yeah i would say there's no definite yeses or no's to to any of those questions you know it's always a sometimes and a maybe in there just kind of depends well i like that intuitive style there's no like set thing that says you have to always crush these wives in order to have a shot at being really really good i mean at some point you have to understand what works for you.

It could be that always pushing is just sort of a foolish thing. Working hard all the time is not. You have to recover from what you're doing. Yeah. And you might be a phenomenal athlete who still just needs a little more recovery time. Do you plan waves of higher and lower volume? Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Usually it might go like maybe two weeks with a higher kind of kind of volume. And then a week where it's a little bit more down, you know, you kind of get to recover. Definitely with the strength stuff. The best thing I've found is three weeks on one week off or that week off. You're kind of doing a deload and sitting around 50, 60% of your weight and bench or squat or whatever you're doing. Are you using a pretty structured strength program? Yeah, we kind of, for the past year and a half, bounced around between our own kind of version of the 5-3-1 from Wendler. I definitely do some Louis Simmons stuff with dynamic effort days. And then some other stuff from Dan John and Pavel. I can't remember his last name, but they wrote a book called Easy Strength. Some kind of Russian shit. It's like Satsuki. Some big long name with like 85 syllables in a row or some shit.

But really, it's not that difficult. It doesn't have to be that complex. Being specific to what you're doing and overload, those are the two things you really need to look out for and recovering when you need to. My memory is so bad, Michael. Please forgive me. From 20 minutes ago, probably.

Right before we podcast with Rich, we had a conversation. It's fun just to remember that you want to think about your training system. You can't just go in without a plan. It's like this Dwight D. Eisenhower quote. He says, before battle, I find a plan to be pretty useless, but planning is essential. You know the parameters of what you'd like to do. You know what you're

going for. You know the range. You know what your target. You know what you're going to do in the coming weeks, maybe. But mostly you just need to have fun and train hard and have a good time. And that's, that's still equally as important as all this other stuff. Oh, absolutely. You can't be the guy who's sitting around going, do I have my 500 tab spreadsheet calculated just right so I can go in the gym and do exactly what I need to do. There's people who do that. I used to do that.

It's kind of silly. I have a tendency to do that. I'll be like. It seems really good at the time. It's like, I got to put together this perfect thing for me. I'll tell my athletes, you know, I'll write the program. It's like, you need to just believe in it and work hard. Don't question anything.

I'm sitting there with my program going, scratching my head. It's like, I show up 30 minutes late because I can't decide,'t decide what it was I was going to do that day. And it's like, wow, I probably should have just showed up and went hard instead of trying to figure out what was going to be the perfect thing for me now. Keep it constantly varied. Keep it intense. You'll learn these lessons in time, Mike. Eventually, I'll learn something about strength and conditioning. A lot about the time when you're no longer able to move a barbell effectively.

That's when it'll all make sense. I'll be the best coach ever. Yeah. Once I can't move anymore. Right. Sometimes that's how it works, man. So what's your biggest weakness you've been working on this year? Biggest weakness.

I think just longevity through the weekend. Yeah. Sprinter background. My longest time domain was, you know, 40 some seconds, 50 seconds. And then, you know, only doing that for one day or over two days. So kind of building up the ability to keep running at, you know, that 80% all weekend long and being able to keep up that, that kind of consistency.

That's what you see out of the guys who are always in the top 10, that they continue to be consistent all weekend long. They don't just have this great start and then dive bomb by the end of the weekend. You know, they kind of keep marching along and they're able to keep their output up pretty high. So what do you do for that? That's a great plan, but that's a hard thing to solve. Yeah. Doing more. Um, for me, it's been longer workouts. So, you know, 20 minutes plus of high rep stuff. So high rep barbell movements, getting into that 30, 40 rep range, pushups, pull-ups, all those kinds of things. Um, max sets I've actually found, I've gotten some programming from a couple of guys at CrossFit

endurance, Brian McKenzie and Cody Burkhart over the past two months as well. And, uh, one of the things that they've incorporated that have actually helped me out a lot is just max sets of stuff. So you're done with the workout or water strength or whatever it is, but now you're going to throw 155 or 165 on the bar, and you're going to max out front squats, however many you get until the bar rolls off. I like that. You're going to max out on chest-to-bar pull-ups as many as you get until you fall off, and you do that two times. It just kind of helps you know where your limitations are and kind of pushes you through. And when you get to that point in a workout where you're thinking, oh, my gosh, I've got to put this weight down.

It's like, well, no, I don't because I did 50 front squats at 155 in a row before I can handle 15. And that was after a while. Right. Is that a realistic number for you? No, I just threw that out there. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. I'm not going to tell you.

Do you have any workouts like that recently that you've done where you put on 115, 115 you did max reps and you got however many um i can't remember the last thing i did with that it was probably uh ring dips with like a 20 pound vest yeah and it was two max sets and i did as many as i could strict and then i'd start kipping and it was after i can't remember what workout i did but uh i think i finished the two sets the first set was like 29 then the second set was 30 something 29 strict and then the kipping on top of it uh 29 strict and kipping combined okay okay i've never felt more fat well i do there's something about reps they're just awesome like you know people say when you talk about assistance work a little bit rich and i and I struggle with finding the place for that, even in my own training, which I'm just going for strength.

I don't pilot anymore. But what's amazing is just taking a ball after a bench workout and just doing like, you know, putting 15-kilo plates on there. I'll do like 100 reps. I get up going, I just feel renewed. I got a huge pump. You know, I don't feel fat anymore. I feel huge.

But no, it's just the recovery aspect of it that make you feel good. It even somehow helps you bench more. I got a lot of anterior shoulder pain. I just want to start doing these easy sets of just lots of reps. A lot of that stuff started going away. For sure. Like at the end of some strength stuff, I'll throw in maybe just a Tabata session, Tabata bench with 95 pounds on or 135, and then slowly kind of decrease the weight through it or do the same thing with squats. And that just helps a ton. And the other

thing I was going to say that I surprisingly struggle with, like I'm a good runner, I'm a sprinter. I can handle myself and all those, but you throw running in a wad with weightlifting and oh man, it's hairy dude. It's so much different. Yeah. Like you, you know, you blow up your arms or your chest and you go to try to run. You like man i feel just terrible you think that has to do with like you know fiber type and stuff like that i don't know i probably i don't think there's a little bit i look at you and rich side by side you know at regionals you know and he may be doing i think i think we've actually talked about this before you know he may do 30 reps and he made he made him unbroken but you do like you'll do like 10 really fast yeah and then you drop it and you're like, ugh.

And then by the time he's, you know, catching up to wherever you went, you pick it up again and do 10 real fast and you're like, ugh. I don't know. I mean, you think with the running maybe you're burning a little too fast? Probably. You know, and Brian and Cody have both mentioned that and, you know, they've seen it and that's one of the things that we've worked on a little bit with laying down a hard mile, then coming in and front squatting 85% of your weight,

something like that. It's funny you say that about Rich. I criticized him the other day before the Hope workout. I'm like, you criticized Rich for me? I know, how dare I? We were talking about how we're going to go through the workout and this and that, and he's like, you know, I'm probably not going to go out that fast. I'm like, you know, how we're going to go through the workout and this, that, and he's like, you know,

I'm probably not going to go out that fast. I'm like, you never go fast. Like you're the most boring person to watch ever, but you just don't stop moving. It's so annoying. It'd be so great. Unfortunately,

Rich is a tremendously nice human being, but I wish he was like a dick. He's like, Hey, who's the fittest man in the world here? And he just flicks a toothpick right in your face. That's the fan. He's like, yeah, yeah.

I go too slow? I go too slow. All right. I'm still beating you. We're just great. Can we break real quick? Sure. Whatever you want to do.

Whatever you want to do. CTV's obviously bored. All right, guys. We're going to take a break real quick. When we come back, we'll talk more with Dan Bailey. Awesome. All right. We're back with Dan Bailey.

And we're going to discuss... Chris, go. Well, I was talking about just how nice his facility is. I wanted to point that out. I've never been in a place... There you go. Look at that. You thought you were going to stump him.

You're not going to stump me. I can bullshit with the best of them. I mean, this is the most monstrous, impressive rack setup. C2P's getting the zoomed in look. It's the monster rig. And it's like, how many units is this? It's one, two, three, four, five of them

bolted together. It's magnificent. If you can make this thing move with pull-ups or something, you're just a beast. Mike and I were saying there's probably no need to bolt this thing to the ground. Now, one inch bolts are pretty tough

to wiggle around. Yeah, the bolts that got the bars connected to the... As fat as I may be, I'm not shearing those bolts off anytime soon.

I'd do a lot of pull-ups to make that happen. And then a whole other room on the other side of this wall with a monster rack, a couple of west side racks, a west side reverse hyper. Intro classes,

a lot of our CrossFit kids stuff gets run out of there. Beautiful. And then, you know, if there's a time when people are training and that's open for Open Gym, people who pay for Open Gym, they can come in and lift in there. Nice. I like the Wattify setup too. You got the two TVs side by side and stand on keyboard. Yeah, they decked it

out. It's ridiculous. Oh, yeah. They just put two new TVs in the back room too. I know, I saw that. Pretty nice. Pretty impressive. It looks really cool. Great for football watching on that thing. That's really what it's for. If I had that, I would just look at this awesome setup I have for work and I'm on Reddit and I'm on YouTube.

I can have Facebook here and Twitter here and over there is YouTube. Yeah, I want like a big screen TV in my office so I can work better. Work better, absolutely. What I can do is I can airplane my laptop to the screen on the wall and then I'll get more done. That's a business expense for sure. Not a distraction at all.

No, never. So what did you do for RUG when you worked for them? I was basically just customer service. Well, it was a little bit of everything. everybody who works there's a little bit of everything okay you know they have multiple tasks it's changed a little bit since i've been there um the growth has been insane oh my gosh you got like 150 employees don't they warehouse yeah tons of employees uh so they're doing great and you know they deserve it the people who work there work their tails off.

I've never seen two owners of a company work more, I think, than the people who own that one. Yeah, they'll put in 14-hour days, no problem, and not think twice about it. I can't think of any other place where, like, I bought a Power Rack now. It'd be shipping. It's there. It'd be shipping today.

It is there, yeah. That's ridiculous. They have the process down pretty good. So, yeah, anybody who would call in and be like, hey, where's my order, or I want to buy this, today. It is there. Yeah. It's ridiculous. They have the process down pretty good. So yeah. Anybody who would call in and be like, Hey, where's my order? I want to buy this or, uh, have trouble with this or what do you think? Blah, blah, this and that. And I would answer these questions, answer emails. I'll spoil it a mile where I'm like, I bought a 5,000 pound piece of equipment. I want it tonight. Have it in my garage set up. I expect this thing to ship immediately.

There were those phone calls too, every now and then you just, I'm going to put you on hold for just one minute and just kind of put your head in your lap. Just breathe. Sir, we have to carve this out of big chunks of metal. It takes time to manufacture. I apologize, but you ordered it like an hour ago? Yeah. Oh, but you know what? Even if that request came in, almost every time you do everything you can to try to make it happen,

even if it annoys the crap out of you. Customer service is tricky. Oh, it is. Customer service is just a tricky thing in any business, I think. Because you're dealing with human beings and you have employees who are human beings. And then you have to,

as a business owner, you're like, I hope that interaction goes really well. You don't hope. You try to put some things in place so that it goes well. So it sounds like we could just as easily be describing talking with athletes and clients about why

it takes time to get some results because your body kind of has to change first and you just can't change now. I'm sorry, Mr. and Mrs. paying client, but it just can't do that much. I didn't study that part in school. The overnight results class. That's right. Where was that?

Well, they only offered it. It was a one-day class and you missed it. That's right, where was that? Well, they only offered it. It was a one day class and you missed it. That's right. I don't get that one. Oh yeah. Not even the steroid trolls on YouTube would get results that they took no matter what they won that amount of time.

It's a tricky business getting this done. Man, results is hard. Results is hard. Results is hard. So does Rogue sponsor you now that you're not working for them technically? Oh, yeah. Yeah. They've always taken good care of me. Do you have a home gym?

No. You know what would have been really funny if we would have done this podcast from my apartment? Because we probably wouldn't have been able to fit all of this equipment that lies before you. Oh, really? You're just living in a broom closet? Yeah, it's phenomenal. Like you're in New York City, but you're actually in Cookville, Tennessee. Right.

It gets the job done for me. There you go. Month to month around, it works. Well, dude, if I didn't have a little kid running around and a wife who demanded it, I would like to have just a little studio apartment that I could just have like a stretching thing in the middle, like a bench press thing. Yeah. I'd put a rack in my bedroom if I didn't have a wife. That would be what any man who trains a lot and likes to talk about it would do for their living. They're your tool, Terry and Hubble. There's no way I'd have a house right now if I wasn't married. That's for sure. We're talking about that earlier. I just bought a house two

days ago and there's no way I would have done that if I wasn't getting married here in a couple weeks. Women complicate things. I'm sorry, ladies, but you do. You make these demands. Complicate or change things. There's no telling you to be patient. Maybe you should change that choice of word. I don't know.

It's about to complicate now that he said that. It's about to get complicated. Jamie won't listen to this. That's a big plus. The big plus is the wife's don't listen. We can say whatever we want on here. I know. It's your area at event. They don't want to hear what I have to say about anything.

That's right. You didn't go to college. He went to college. He just didn't have a big fancy graduate. That's the most important thing. Got to have more letters in the name.

That's unfortunate. It is real unfortunate about that. For some things, you have to have more letters in the name you know what in some that's unfortunate it is real unfortunate about that because for some things you have to have those little letters no matter what it is the bullcrap that you have to sit through if you don't have those little letters you can't get anywhere but another stuff that's not totally true yeah that's true man i know crossfit coaches that could could train people for days and get great results i know phds that couldn't train anybody. No, there's been some guys who have come in here and asked me about master's programs and getting your master's in ex-phys and all that. I'm like, you know what?

Take a semester and go to school. Do that thing for master's. You know what? Then take maybe a semester off. Go get every CrossFit certification you can. Like go hang out with some level one trainers. Talk to them. That's what happens.

Get people who have been there and have been doing it for a while and watch how they do it just sit watch take notes like you're going to learn more doing that than you are reading a book even though reading a book is good like it's it's good and you need to do that and those things but you know go go be with the people who have done the yeah you know the deed if you compare getting all your crossfit certs like even if you got like all of them still it's not anywhere near as expensive as going to college for a couple of years. No. Like it's expensive. Yeah.

That is a very good point. People are like, that CrossFit level one certification is so expensive. Well, dude, I mean, how much does school cost? I mean,

there are people who sink $100,000 into school and go out and get a job making $20,000 a year. I mean, that's a far worse investment.

Right. Right. Right. I don't know. I mean, this might be a little off topic but like what i think i think formal education university style is going if it doesn't go away it's going to change really big really soon and sometimes when people come to me you know i think there's still some universities universities offering really good educations

out there but um i've learned most of what I know about training and business and everything since then. There are tons of good certifications out there for training. They go way into the weeds on physiology and stuff like that, way more than I did in school. Or maybe they did go into it in school, but it didn't really connect with me. Maybe because I wasn't paying for all of it myself and so on and so forth. But when you're coming out of pocket yourself

and you're paying a company and you're going to trust that they're going to do a good job of presenting good information and all that kind of stuff, I think that there's just, on the business side of things too, like if you're a CrossFit gym owner, there are so many good resources out there that you would never get out of business school.

If you come out of like, get a bachelor's or even a master's in business and then you try to go open a CrossFit gym, guess what? You're not going to know how to do anything. You have to learn all that stuff over again. It would behoove you more to just go to a box and say, hey, can I shadow you guys

and talk to you for a week? Like that's the best thing out there. Then you would find the box that's been around the longest in your, in your town. Right. And try to intern there. That's probably the best. Cause those are going to be the most experienced guys and be able to pass on the best knowledge. Right.

I've come to see school. It's only, it's the thing you do for like, if it's college, it's four years of earning the right to be in a position to then start your journey. That's really the way I see it. It's like you do all this work and you prove to me that you deserve a shot to now start the real work. You've proved that you can do good work. Good. Now let's start learning things. That's the way I see it.

That's where your real education starts. When I got out of my bachelor's in physical education and I did student teaching, you know, you did, you have to do the whole bit to get your license in Ohio, but I learned more. And this isn't to discredit the program or anything because I, you know, it was a great program. The programs are good. They taught me a ton, you know, but in my first year of teaching middle school, physical education, I mean, middle schoolers. Wow. Okay uh I learned more more in that yeah

I learned more in a spring semester of that than I did in four years of school you know talking about steroids what didn't work yeah you have all these little men running around who are out of their mind on anabolic agents because it's their body is flooding itself pretty much huge amounts of naturally occurring steroids and hormones they have they're just little They have no idea what life is about, and they don't care. They're just mad, and they're going to just punch it, and they're going to just slam Red Bulls

and run around the gymnasium, and you're going to teach them. Yeah, absolutely. Talk about the hardest client. If you could teach that little kid to shut up for five minutes and just listen. One of the most fun things to do of the day, well, number one,

I'd wake up and I'd have to say, just don't get mad at 90% of what's going to happen today. You just can't. You just can't get mad. You just got to roll with it and have fun. Remember that you two were an idiot in middle school. We all were. And then I would sit sometimes in the bleachers when I'm getting ready for just for class to start for the bell to ring. And they had these specific spots they had to sit on the floor.

And, you know, a couple of days I just sit and I wait after the bell ring. I just want to sit on the floor and you know what a couple days i just sit and i wait after the bowing i just want to sit and watch them just watch what a middle schooler does when they're by themselves just sitting there or just standing there i mean twirling around in circles playing with their hair like just the most bizarre things you've ever seen like what is going on in your head right now where are you like what you know what planet are you on it's i mean i can say that i guess because we've all been there. I'm sure if there were cameras in my house and people could watch me find myself in my house, they'd be like, that dude's weird.

They've done those studies where adults will try to mimic like a five-year-old. Just do exactly what he does. Whatever position he puts his body in, if he's running around with his hands in the air, you run around with your hands in the air and just try to do what he does for two hours. And the adults come back just like totally exhausted. They cannot keep up at all. Even if they're running the same distance. Like if a five-year-old runs 30 feet, that's a long ways for a five-year-old.

But they do it so fast. Yeah. And you probably don't have to run, but, you know, 20% as fast as they do, like as far as your max speed goes to keep up with them. But still, like after two hours, you're just wiped. I want to do that now. Five-year-olds? Yeah, I made up that number but yeah just like little kids go try to keep a little kid and just do whatever he does even just a baby just sitting on their back like

baby will just sit on the back with their head up in the air like like they're doing like a half crunch and they'll just like hang out there yeah it's like looking around your abs will be burning you'll be dying a daily look totally fine i bet i bet that'd be like a lesson of being present in the moment too like like just just having fun not not worrying about other stuff going on. That's a really good point though. They're not, they're not worried about like, you know, what they have to do tomorrow or what happened yesterday. They probably just appreciating what they got going on right now. Worried about the next five seconds. Yeah. That's a good part about hanging around with kids that they have really awesome characteristics, like noticing the details, being carefree,

being completely present. I mean, geez, I mean, look noticing the details, being carefree, being completely present. I mean, geez, I mean, look back when you were in elementary school. Like, you just thought about this class, this moment right now. And you were happy and carefree most of the time. Well, if I was in class, I was going, just staring at the clock. I wasn't very present, I don't think. You were going, when I get this degree done, I got to pay off this debt. When I get the debt paid off, well, hopefully I can get a good job.

But if I don't get a good job, what then? That's what's going through the college students' head. That's miserable. It's like the opposite. I don't think I thought about any of that. Well, you just go, I'll figure it out. No big deal. Yeah, I was just figuring good things would happen.

And they have. That's a good attitude to have. And they have, Michael. But you guys kind of scared the shit out of me because I've got a little boy going to be two here in the next two months and he's already exhausting me. He's got so much energy. Now he'll just do things like he'll just look at me and he'll smile. Hi.

And you're like, oh, what a nice moment. And he'll just grab his giant Buzz Lightyear toy and just hit you right in the temple with it. Pow! I'm like, Jesus, what did I do? He just laughs at it. The kids are amazing, man. It's a good time. Dan, do you have any big plans for after the games?

I'm going to hang out, and I only bought a one-way ticket right now, so I'm not sure what the plan is. Sweet. I do have, I have a really good friend who lives up in Fresno, California. I know I want to go up and see him. And I know that I think Rich and some other people were talking about hanging out for a day or two after. We'll probably hang out, relax, do whatever, hopefully

surf a little and do something like that. You surfed before? I've surfed twice and it's been interesting both times. I'm not very good at it. I can get up on the board though. That's good. It seems like surfing and snowboarding is some of those humbling sports where you're like, I'm pretty athletic and then you go try and for the first couple hours you look like a mess. It's terrible. I. It seems like surfing and snowboarding is some of those humbling sports where you're like, I'm pretty athletic.

And then you go try. And for the first couple hours, you look, you look like a mess. Oh, it's terrible. Well, I think they're kind of like weightlifting. Like when you see it, you're like, what's the big deal? I think I can do that. It doesn't seem hard, right? I mean, he says, if I do a snatch, it's like, well, that seems easy.

And you go, when you try to lift it like that. But I know surfing is like that. Like I challenged Paul Gomez to help me. I thought we get out there out there to get up on the board. He said he can do it. He looked at my fat ass and said, you can definitely get on the board. I'm like, you really think that? I trust your expertise. I'm so top heavy.

All right, guys. Let's wrap this up. I'm going to let Doug go first. I'm plugging stuff. That way Dan can think about what it is he's supposed to promote and maybe mention some sponsors. Go ahead, Doug. All right. We got the next six-month muscle gain challenge coming up here in just a couple of weeks. I think registration opens early September.

So come up here in a couple of weeks. If you want to check out what that's all about, you can go to muscle.barbellshrug.com and kind of read through some of the past testimonials from the guys, see all the progress they've had. We've had a lot of guys hit some big PRs on their snatch, their clean jerk, their front squat. They're putting on 10, 15, 20 pounds. And they're coming out of that program with some amazing results, really. For some guys that have had trouble putting on muscle for years or never, that never thought they'd even be able to put on muscle. They're really doing very well in the current program.

So if you want to put on some weight and get better weightlifting specifically, then go to muscle.barbellstrug.com. You can check out that program. Beautiful. What do you got? Sponsors. All right, Dan. Sponsors. I don't do that cheesy stuff.

I think you mentioned a blog or something at some point, too. That's not up and running yet, so it will be. Maybe the next time we talk, it'll be rolling after the game. Who's not up and running yet. It will be. Maybe the next time we talk it'll be rolling after the game. Who are your sponsors? Rogue Fitness. Rogue? Yeah, they've always taken care of me.

They've got the best equipment in the biz. Everybody knows that. It's indisputable. Cool. Thank you guys for coming out and Mayhem for letting us use the facility. Yeah. Beautiful place.

Beautiful company in Rogue. Is it my turn? Go. Can I plug myself? Plug it. Yeah, so if you want to learn awesome things and really expand your awareness,

man, about training and life in general, go to barbellbeater.com. That's my blog. You'll see a little link to the store there if you want to support what I'm up to. You can buy an awesome, pristine signed copy of the book I wrote, Progress, and your whole life will come together and everything will be perfect. I promise you. That, as I say, I'll give you a free coupon for one hug redeemable whenever I see you out in the wild.

That's a promise. All right, guys, make sure to click this link and sign up for the Barbell Shrug newsletter. If you're on YouTube. It's between our hands, actually. All right. See you next time. Thanks, Dan. Cheers. Thanks, Dan.