Barbell Shrugged - A Mathematical Equation For Chasing Your Dreams w/ Logan Gelbrich — Barbell Shrugged #384

Starting point is 00:00:00 It's giveaway time. Shrugged fam, Logan Gelbrich is on the show this week. We are talking to him about all things personal, professional, and coaching development. His brand new book, Going Right, a logical justification for pursuing your dreams. You can get three free copies today. We're giving away three copies. Just head over to Instagram at Shrug Collective and tag some friends, like the post. We're going to be picking three winners at the end of the week. That's Friday. So Amazon and you're going to type in going right. A logical justification for pursuing your dreams. And if this conversation with Logan doesn't inspire you, I don't know what will. Because Logan's the man. And I have wanted to talk to him for many, many years.

Starting point is 00:00:59 He's one of the guys that kind of made it through the CrossFit scene. Opened a gym about the same time I did in 2010, and we just grew up in the same system of fitness. I've loved what he's done over at Deuce, and it's just been very, very cool to be able to connect with him later in life here. Through Shrugged and through his book, I can't wait to read it. I've got a trip to NorCal coming up next week, and I'm definitely going to be checking it out. So get over to the Instagram page at Shrugged Collective,

Starting point is 00:01:31 and you can make sure to tag your friends, and you're going to have a chance to win three copies today. It's going to be awesome. I want to thank our sponsors over at Organifi. Every week, I'm telling you to go to Organifi, not because I just want to talk about Organifi, because you really should. I have a whole stack of this stuff. The green drink goes down twice a day. The coconut milk or the almond milk, two. Sometimes I overdose. Sometimes I go two and a half scoops. It really depends upon how I'm feeling. But if you head over to

Starting point is 00:02:05 Organifi.com forward slash shrugged and use the coupon code shrugged, you're going to save 20% on all the greens, the reds, the golds. They even got some different new flavors. There's like a chocolate gold, which I haven't gotten into yet, but super stoked to try it out. Love Organifi. Get over to Organifi.com forward slash shrugged and save 20%. Also want to thank Juve. Get over to J-O-O-V-V and use the coupon code shrugged. You're going to get some free swag. These are the guys that have the red lights. Red lights have been proven to increase your skin health, fat loss, muscle recovery, increased testosterone. We all want more of that. That makes you stronger. Joint pain, some thyroid function, all the restorative

Starting point is 00:02:54 benefits to the red light. It is on the Bledsoe show from two weeks ago. We had the owners on and he's a massive fan. I'm a big fan. I think that you should get in there and try it out. Skin health, fat loss, muscle recovery, testosterone, less joint pain. Of course you want that. J-O-O-V-V.com. Use the coupon code SHRUG.

Starting point is 00:03:19 We got some free swag over there. Finally, make sure you are going to thegranitegames.com. They've got a Speaker Summit coming up this Friday. I'll be speaking. Shrugged is sponsoring an entire day of shows or speakers. The Speaker Summit's got tons of cool people. OPT, CJ Martin, DocGenFit, Jason Kalipa, yours truly, Anders Varner. I'm going to be speaking on some coaching development. So if you are a specifically part-time coaches that are

Starting point is 00:03:53 looking to make coaching a full-time career, if you're kind of doing the half in the corporate world, half in the coaching world, coaching is your real passion. got a fun talk about 20 minutes and then we're doing a 40 ish minute q a at the end so um get over to the granite games.com and sign up for the speaker summit i'm gonna be there it's gonna be awesome logan gelbrick make sure you get over to the shrug collective instagram page to win we're giving away three free copies of the book going right and let's get into it enjoy the show ready to rock yeah welcome to Marble Shrugged I'm Anders Varner hanging out with Doug Larsen Jim Wietersom Logan Gelbrek in the house we're at the FitAid booth at

Starting point is 00:04:36 Wadapalooza I got a FitAid t-shirt smash it's a focus aid adult soda I love you there's like methamphetamine in a can. All the energy's in there. It's going to be the most excitement. Did you get approval for that from the rest of the team here? Because I don't think you need any more. No more? Can you drive? You can drive on Focus Aid. That probably makes it better.

Starting point is 00:04:57 And then you'll crash at about hour two. I kind of like the alternative. I used to do like a big, like two, remember the one liter Mountain Dews in college? I would drive a KU bag. Wow. I'd get that in a monster bag of Cool Ranch Doritos, and that's what did it. Mountain Dew?

Starting point is 00:05:10 Yeah. Jesus, really? Who invented Mountain Dew? I was a college thrower. We just got chubby and threw far. I was going to say, were you a lot softer back then? Oh, honey, I would smile, and my eyes would shut because my cheeks were chubby. I used to drink Mountain Dew at least one a day.

Starting point is 00:05:26 And now when I see somebody or like a Code Red, and I'm like, do you know what you're doing? Do you know what you're putting into your body? Do you know what's hot right now? No, it's the bang. I heard. Bang energy. Cotton candy.

Starting point is 00:05:38 Yeah, Spencer Tyler, he's like, he's Highland Games like champ record holder. He brought all this bang to my house. He was throwing it at Estes Parker to go, what is this, like a juice box? I don't understand. He was like, you don't know bang? Well, all the people that work out for more than three hours a day at my gym drink bang. So I know that's not for me. So Logan and I are out on the bang.

Starting point is 00:05:57 I'm not on bang. I'm a hard no on bang. Well, I was literally, though, I will say I had strep throat and Bruno Mars was in town, so I had to go. And I did like a Red Bull, like instead of Red Bull vodka, I did bang and vodka. This is the second time Bruno Mars has come out of your mouth today. Yeah, I will say I had strep throat and Bruno Mars was in town, so I had to go. And I did like a Red Bull, like instead of Red Bull vodka, I did bang and vodka. This is the second time Bruno Mars has come out of your mouth today. Yeah, I like it. Big fan.

Starting point is 00:06:10 Big fan. She's like, I had to go. 14 karat, man. As a rule. Everything's great. Logan, tell me all the things going on in your life. I want to hear, let's go with the very brief overview for people that, for some reason, live under rock and don't know who you are.

Starting point is 00:06:24 A little bit of the history. Baseball into the CrossFit space. Deuce Gym. Yeah. Accidental fitness leadership by way of real sports. And, yeah, just trying to help regular real sports. I like him already. Don't have to get me started.

Starting point is 00:06:42 Yeah, just trying to coach people up. And there's an evolution there. It starts with helping regular people with general goals get better. And we thought that doing that like an athlete would is a great way to do it. And then now, not only do we do that, I spent a great deal of my time developing coaches and leadership. And that started with selfish reasons so that we could grow a gym that got better with age rather than worse, which is usually what happens.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Yeah. When the charismatic gal or guy that started it runs his course. I know that story. Yeah. Once you go on vacation or something, then you hire someone else. It's not you, and everybody's bummed, and then it's just. Yeah. I feel like your gym has one of the strongest cultures of any of the gyms

Starting point is 00:07:24 I've ever been to. Ag yeah. I feel like your gym has one of the strongest cultures of any of the gyms I've ever been to. I agree. I appreciate that. Yeah, I think the thing with culture is a lot of people believe it's magic. You know, like, oh, man, I wish we could just replicate this. It's just the stars aligned. And we're doing things on purpose. You know, of course, there's a lot of stuff outside of our control,

Starting point is 00:07:41 but I think if you understand culture, you can build it on purpose. And it doesn't have to come and go. It doesn't have to be this sort of airy-fairy magical thing that people, yeah, we all experience it. You're on a sports team at some point, or you have a great group at school or something, and you're like, man, that culture was great, and it kind of came and went. But isn't it built on the pillars of leadership?

Starting point is 00:08:03 So you talk specifically about how you're leading leaders like you're working with coaches and that comes from the top i don't care who you are look at any successful team i mean selfishly he's a chicago kid phil jackson hello it comes from your leadership and those are your pillars and that and you attract that people because good finds great and i think that's what happens at deuce all the time it's like yes uh it has to come from top, which is a challenge for people that I deal with who are trying to develop this in their own organization. But the sort of other side of it is culture is essentially leadership of the collective, right? So it has to start at the top. But what it looks like in real life is leadership through the ranks.

Starting point is 00:08:44 Agree. Yeah, well said. It's a flatter organization at that point because if it is just a top-down deal, that's a pretty fragile way to build it. I think an even more impressive piece about what you guys have done at Deuce is your gym is filled with gigantic personalities. They're not like average people.

Starting point is 00:09:04 They moved to Venice specifically to be gigantic personalities personalities like they're not like average people like they move to venice specifically to be gigantic personalities and a place to be found by somebody and you've managed to level that with this is our culture that you all must adhere to when you step inside the gates yeah i think the ego thing uh fitness is ripe for that, right? The ego thing. So that can run rampant, and that can be problematic. But if you can harness it with essentially what we're looking at is trust and willingness. There needs to be a filter to develop that, and we have that.

Starting point is 00:09:38 And once you set that tone, you get this beautiful thing where everybody is getting exactly what they wanted from that experience. I think when cultures go bad, it's this weird environment. And I talk about this a lot. Have you ever been to, like, a shitty dinner party? What does that look like? It's a bunch of acquaintances. You come to this table, and you're like, God, I hope this is fun.

Starting point is 00:09:55 We talk about nothing. Two hours. And everyone at the table wants the same thing. And they're literally talking about that in their head. And then what happens is it's shitty. and then they leave and they drive home, and in the car they're like, God, I wish that was just more fun. So how do you get 100% of people in agreement and a failure to manifest that thing? And so you need to, like, speak and make real what the sort of standards are,

Starting point is 00:10:21 the culture, to create that trust and willingness to build it. Yeah, but don't you kind of like those bad dinner parties? Because people get weeded out of my life quick. Yeah, never go to that one again. You're not coming back, or I'm not. Yeah, it's great intel. Totally. Let me know.

Starting point is 00:10:37 Except if they're all shitty, then, like, when do you have the good one, you know? We're doing it right now. We're doing it while we are. Logan, you're at that dinner table right now, bro. We are. one thing that is super interesting to me though about your career is i i feel like and this is going to go way back i feel like in listening to podcasts you've done or just the way that you present yourself and and when you were very young i say very young in comparison to now half your life ago um making a a very conscious decision that baseball was going to be the sport that you played and wanted to go play in the big leagues.

Starting point is 00:11:11 Do you think about those moments very early on? Because I think I remember you saying the very conscious decision in high school of I want to go play in the big leagues, and here's the process to get there. I don't think many people at that age are processing information like that. Well, even younger, I mean, I'm not very athletic, so I had to, like, do everything that I could to make that happen. And so, I mean, I was saying that to anybody who would listen at, like, age 7, 8, you know? And to have that focus is, like you're saying, bizarre.

Starting point is 00:11:42 I mean, you're referencing high school. I mean, I was even younger than that. And I feel fortunate for whatever that focus is, like you're saying, bizarre. You're referencing high school. I mean, I was even younger than that. And I feel fortunate for whatever that focus was. But I think what you realize, all of us realize at some point, is the thing that you choose is just an environment to sort of understand a feedback loop, develop yourself. I mean, throw out baseball. It could be throwing.

Starting point is 00:12:03 It could be, I mean, we're all here at this CrossFit thing. People are learning about themselves and developing themselves because someone made some rules about a workout, and they're starting a clock. And it doesn't really matter what the thing is. But you have to go through the specific thing to get to that general conversation. You know, it's funny. I literally had this talk with my father, and he used to be a principal,

Starting point is 00:12:21 and he said the quote he had up in his office, to not make a decision is your decision. And it kind of is interesting that, like, you chose at seven years old, that's the direction you're going. To not choose anything is the choice to not go anywhere. Totally. Using that line of thinking. Totally.

Starting point is 00:12:40 So in a way, you created that environment early, and anybody can create that environment if they're willing to have the balls to make a choice of or be vocal about like i want to do that i'm going to do that yeah you know and that's where you you get and this sort of gets into things that like we're talking about in the book is like uh you you have to go down that type of rigorous road to extract the general sort of benefits of that. Like what I'm saying right now is, thank God I devoted my whole life, like 20 years at the sport of baseball, to learn things that have nothing to do with baseball. You know what I'm saying? Right.

Starting point is 00:13:15 Totally. But me saying that doesn't negate the process of going through those steps to come out on the other side, right? And so knowing is not enough. You have to, to experience it. You know, you can't replace the process of,

Starting point is 00:13:29 of going through the thing. It is actually interesting. I love when people are like, Oh, well you just get to go like work out. You're like, no. Well,

Starting point is 00:13:35 if you really want to do it for the rest of your life and get paid to do it, you're going to have to go through these steps of like being able to focus your attention on the things that are going to have to go through these steps of like being able to focus your attention on the things that are going to make you successful and actually surround yourself with the people that are good at doing it and and learn those lessons and be in those conversations and the ability to surround yourself with people that are successful becomes a skill oh yeah and here's the thing we don't really understand success and failure very well. We don't understand risk very well. And I think it's mainly around how we experience time.

Starting point is 00:14:10 So when you see something you want to do, like you can walk around this environment and see someone competing in, like, the elite thing. What you're seeing as a result, how they experienced this moment was linearly. They were 10, and then they were 20, and they put in this work, and it sucked, and it was hard, and they were 10 and then they were 20 and they put in this work and it sucked and it was hard and they were poor and they were struck right and so when we see that we we can't understand in reverse that process and so what we do this is human nature at this point is we really uh upplay our failures because we remember them really well. Oh, yeah. We experience them in line, and we downplay other people's failures. We upplay their successes because that's what we see. There's a massive winner's circle bias there.

Starting point is 00:14:53 Yeah. That looks awesome. I want to do that. You can't watch the movie in reverse. Well, and this is what I'm seeing a lot, whether you look at an event like this or I see people that have like a, I've got to lose 20 pounds, or like a small right in front of them goal. The difference between all the intel and all the finish lines are to me, it's this personal testimony. They don't believe they're going to make it. There's

Starting point is 00:15:13 this practice of survival. I'm going to get through it. I'm going to try hard and I ain't die. So whatever that is, if it's a workout or it's a hard conversation with a loved one, whatever it becomes, we're not risking that enough to practice it to know and by the way even if it doesn't go well i have the pride by the way when the greatest motivational factors like tools i've ever used pride of i tried i did you kind of forget that you failed you don't care because you actually went for it how many people here are not going to get first place everybody but one you know it's so funny you say that yourself on making the attempt yes i. I showed up. That saying of, like, you're the average of the five people around you.

Starting point is 00:15:50 And when I start to, like, think about the five closest people to me, like, the pedigree isn't so much, like, been to the CrossFit Games, won this championship. It's, like, slept in the gym for two years. Oh, yeah. Borderline homeless, but someone gave me a couch. Like, the struggles are not out there. That was, like, a part of the thing they were doing,

Starting point is 00:16:11 but they're persevering in life so much deeper and dealing with so much survival strategies because they love this thing so much and they want to be good at it, and then all of a sudden it just happens. Yeah, but that's also why they're so convicted when they're moving. It is so much more than the workout. That's like the easy part. That's like the party.

Starting point is 00:16:30 That's the thing they're working for so they can go play the game. All that said, do you have a struggle story for us? Like when you were just getting started, you didn't have any success yet. You didn't know what success was going to look like for you. Where were you? Maybe not in a dark time, but just the time before you were the person that i view you as now well yes and that's totally it right is uh my version of this story is much different than whatever it is that you view me as right you know like you're seeing a result you i'm like guy on

Starting point is 00:17:00 the podcast that's like some kind of positive result uh what people i think in a position like mine need to do more is share like the whole yeah truth to the audience because there's a bunch of follower type people who look at this conversation as like yeah four successes and uh what they don't understand i emptied my bank account four times in the last two years for things that I believe in. You know what I mean? That's like a real. Yeah. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:30 You're taking a risk. You're writing checks that you don't know if they'll catch. But people can experience that. And this is what I'm trying to say when we don't understand risk and we don't understand success and failure because of how time works. An example I use all the time is Nike, right? So if you know the story of Nike, Shoe Dog is a great way to sort of get the inside scoop on that. It's on my list.

Starting point is 00:17:53 I haven't read it yet. So check out the dynamics of this. You read the book and you're like, wow, you're learning about all these, like, failures and these, like, struggles. But I can't erase the fact that you already know that like how the story ends this is a billion dollar monolith so it's like uh you know you take it with a grain of salt that this thing is hanging by a thread throughout the process just because yeah okay but how would you experience a startup if you were behind the helm of it?

Starting point is 00:18:26 You wouldn't recognize that because you don't get the fortune of knowing how the story will end. Yeah. If you read about Nike, there are, you know, John McEnroe is wearing the thing. The Olympic podium is covered in swooshes. Every consumer would look at that and say, that is a made company. They did it. Yeah. That's a success.

Starting point is 00:18:46 And Phil Knight, until they went public and got the IPO and the guy tapped him on the shoulder and said, oh, by the way, you're worth $250 million, up until that moment, the whole thing was a complete shit show toss of the coin. Yeah. And so we like to tell the story in reverse. The other one I say all the time is like Michael Jordan.

Starting point is 00:19:04 We love to say Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team. Did you know? You should hang in there. I can't forget that it's MJ, dude. We don't go home with the backpack and cry in our room not knowing if we're ever going to play again. Yeah, but isn't that the whole – go ahead, Andrew. I was going to say, I learned that lesson so well owning a gym because people walk into your gym and they're like, look at all this equipment. You're like, you know how much that fucking barbell costs?

Starting point is 00:19:29 Totally. Who bought it? Totally. Do you know why I had to buy those wall balls over there? Because those ones shit the bed, and that was another couple thousand dollars, and no one even noticed. Totally. And nobody thinks about the story that goes into why each piece of equipment

Starting point is 00:19:42 or why did you put the platforms over there? Well, I got evicted because they were near the back wall where the guy the landlord hated me but let's hold on hold the phone hold on i'm not disagreeing but the whole point is gosh even mj even he had every choice opportunity to quit to just stay stay there. And he chose not to. And there's as many shoe dog stories there are. There's so many more of those stories that were not told because they didn't make it. Shit didn't work out. I think our industry is so rad because how many people are great personal trainers when they're 25?

Starting point is 00:20:22 Well, it's a lot easier to be a great personal trainer if you can make it through the next 10, 15 years. How many 35-year-olds are hanging out? Significantly fewer. How many 36-year-olds? 36. One right here. You're even more in the golden age.

Starting point is 00:20:35 Oh, fuck you. Oh, my God. I've got three months. I'll be on your level soon. 36. Yeah, I'm Swedish, so I look 26. You're going to have trouble. That's so weird.

Starting point is 00:20:50 No, but it is the time. I think the difference is the care, is the personal responsibility. Listen, we interviewed Steffi Cohen earlier. She makes it a personal responsibility not just to regurgitate, but look at what she's been learning, what she got through grad school, saying, wow, I have a back injury. What can I learn? And she doesn't mind being wrong. She just wants to seek

Starting point is 00:21:08 more and be able to take the information and help others. So she's taking a personal responsibility on that. And I think that's the difference. It's more than just, I want to make $250 million. I think it was more, I want to do this right because people need a great shoe. Totally. And I want to provide that to the world and whatever that is for each person, what you're doing with leadership and coaches, that's one of your things right now. Right? And the only chance to build something that will grow forever is to build something that's interested in being wrong.

Starting point is 00:21:37 Like what you just said about Stephanie Cohen is like, you know, we are all going to build a fence around our potential if we are seeking confirmation. Right. Well said. You know, the best possible case scenario, if you're receiving information that is confirming what you believe about yourself to be true, is that you're the exact same person. And that is stagnation. And so if you don't build in these strategies to seek what we call disconfirming information,

Starting point is 00:22:11 you're building a coffin for yourself. And you mentioned the trainer at 25 years old. Most surgeons in their fifth year out are better than 20 years in the game. Most trainers, their first year out, are as good as they'll ever be because if they're not actively seeking how they might be wrong about that, not actively seeking development, there's a stagnation thing. I'd agree with that.

Starting point is 00:22:38 And the problem is the human nature of the emotional component is it doesn't feel very good to seek that kind of information. So we're set up to avoid the thing that we need the most. If someone has that mindset, number one, if you're running a gym and you're hiring coaches, you're probably not going to hire someone that has that mindset. But say you did. You have someone who thinks they already know it all.

Starting point is 00:23:00 They're not open to new information. Is it possible in your mind to get somebody to flip the switch and realize they don't know it all? How do you do that? Well, absolutely. I mean, I'm as far on the edge of the spectrum of, like, nurture from nature. I believe that everything is a skill and it can be taught, whether that's even true to the level that I believe.

Starting point is 00:23:20 But through education, if I can tell you, which I can, in a black-and utilitarian type way, that you have a mechanical advantage to seeking disconfirming information, then it's your choice. You can feel good and avoid negative criticism or feedback. But what I just told you is there is less value inherently in that for you. So at that point point you're just choosing performance over not performance in my opinion and and and when you when you make it sort

Starting point is 00:23:51 of black and white in that way uh of course you can still choose people do it all the time they can choose to self-preserve preserve themselves and avoid the thing that's uncomfortable um but it takes education and calling it out you know i think most people just want a safe space yep for the truth i mean i could ask you guys all right now if we were all in sort of some sort of relationship friendship whatever the case may be i said well you got are you guys interested in the truth being shared at this table everyone went down their head of course yeah okay well here's the thing we're all human beings and the there's parts of the truth that feel good and there's parts that

Starting point is 00:24:25 don't feel good you could tell me plenty of things that are that are need improvement in my public speaking game my coaching game or whatever but it would feel a lot better if you guys are like man you're killing it down there at deuce gym let me tell you what yeah right how am i going to walk away from this table better is finding out something that challenges my my frame right that's that's growth but isn't that part of that survival conversation? I have to take that hit and know that you say it with respect and that the only one that can shift, that the only one that can be responsible for my experience

Starting point is 00:24:54 and my output is Jen. I can't blame the guy. You know, it was loud in here. The system was off. People weren't engaged. There was too much happening. It's really easy to look outside yourself and say, you know what Logan said, I kind of get it it but it really wasn't my fault i think the greater

Starting point is 00:25:07 practice is taking ownership saying okay i see it and i do want more and wherever i will tell you speaking personally where i feel the greatest resistance in my life and the great like no man sooner or later i'm ripe for growth and i gotta fucking lean in there sooner or later life is going to let you know that you didn't do the work. Hopefully. But will they? The survival piece forces at the beginning of your career or in your coaching piece, that survival piece and getting through to be able to actually making it or getting to a creative space, as kind of Bledsoe talks about,

Starting point is 00:25:41 of being able to create something that people are drawn to versus just surviving in the moment and living in the gym. Those pieces, because life is forcing that, makes it a lot easier later in your life or later in your career when someone walks up to you and is like, hey, you need to get better at public speaking. You go, shit, you're right. Now you're looking for the skills because you've been through that. Not everybody, though.

Starting point is 00:26:04 Well, no, definitely not everybody. But I think think that there's a it's not in vogue yeah it's weird because i think the the better the more woo you get into with your own personal growth i'm an expert at talking myself through why my life is the way it is i'm making excuses and seeing things in a way that totally proves me right hi good to see you oh sorry i'm waving um so like that proves me right improves my story right so oh sorry i'm waving um so right that proves me right improves my story right so the trickier part is being able to let go of that and i don't i think a lot of people don't make it out alive yeah i really like because you won't know and by the way the only thing you'll start to feel is unfulfilled and a little disconnected i can wave all these

Starting point is 00:26:40 shiny things over here look at me i'm doing tv again look at my cool thing on instagram look i'm showing this now look i'm showing my butt now. I can make it all shiny and distracting. The only one that's miserable is me. And then, by the way, what starts happening, I'm coping. I'm going to stay really busy. I'm going to drink a little bit more. Maybe I'm going to date a couple guys. You can box

Starting point is 00:26:57 yourself in, and you don't even know you're doing it. It works until it doesn't. And here's an example that probably a lot of people that are listening can understand. Because when we have results, like you have positive results, you can be tricked into thinking that you're doing something right. Yeah. Because you're not interested in looking at the process.

Starting point is 00:27:13 You're not seeking disconfirming information. So check out the first, I don't know, 5,000, 8,000 affiliates in the world. They didn't look. Anders is raising his hand. Almost none of them, well, there's a winner circle bias. The ones that are still there maybe are. But almost none of them are looking at their processes because they're winning.

Starting point is 00:27:36 If you're the first big gym in a big city, you're like, dude, I'm killing it. I'm the man. This is actually happening in Europe, actually. The level two, you guys know through CrossFit, the Level 2 is the first seminar they offer where you get feedback. This is a phenomenon that's happening where these people, if you go to their city, they are the mayor.

Starting point is 00:27:55 I got 400 people that tell me I'm awesome. They got abs. I changed their life. What do you have to say about my coaching? I'm killing it. And they've never received feedback ever because they're winning. And now you have the conversation is shifting. Oh, we need to do this different and that different because of saturation.

Starting point is 00:28:11 And I don't know what's happening to my business. You've never once looked at your processes. You've never been interested in the fact that you might be suboptimal in one area or have weaknesses here. And we hope, like you you just said that life will teach us the lesson. Yeah. Right? And if you get slapped over the wrist with that type of change and

Starting point is 00:28:32 result, now you're interested in your processes. Now you're interested in what you might be doing poorly around your thing and it's too late at that point. You've lost your thing. You're going to get slapped by competition is what's going to happen. Like once you're not the big dog anymore, you're not the only game in town, and there's other people down the street,

Starting point is 00:28:47 that's when you're going to have to be reflective and either make a change or you're going to be out. And those are intentional processes you can make. In our language at the gym, we are so highly interested in how we might be wrong about something. We will debate and force to see how we might be wrong or misaligned. Especially for you because how many gyms are, like, within 10 feet of you? There's, I don't know, eight affiliates in a mile.

Starting point is 00:29:13 Yeah. But I don't even think about that. We're in competition with nobody. I don't feel any of that. You said the key word. I was thinking, God, how can Logan do this without being too self-critical? Because there's a point where you have to celebrate and have camaraderie and be excited about what you're doing and you said be interested i was like oh

Starting point is 00:29:27 that's it you're curious you guys are curious in that gym and you throw things off each other and i think perhaps that's a great starting point for any business owner or person that really wants to create a culture it could be co-workers at a pt clinic to teachers right it's like you be curious about the environment and the system and that's how you stay on it. And it comes back to truth. Like we just said earlier, all of us here are interested in truth. There's no one that would argue with that. Now, it gets harder when the truth is painful or uncomfortable. But if you create a space where it's sexy to share negative feedback, the other side of the truth,

Starting point is 00:30:01 then you just open up that opportunity, right? It's going back to the dinner party. We're just, hey, let's be in agreement. We're all here to have a good time. Yeah. Once you make that space, then you just open up that opportunity right it's going back to the dinner party we're just hey let's be in agreement we're all here to have a good time yeah once you make that space then you can then you can do the thing and i get a lot of like my shadow of my work is i'm the negative feedback guy so i'm the asshole right like wait so you're saying that like my gym culture would be better if we just never gave each other compliments and we're we're we're uh giving negative feedback is our only conversation it's like no no what i'm saying is that we are sort of as humans genetically predisposed to leaning too heavily on the good stuff oh you look great today you know

Starting point is 00:30:35 what you're funny god you're right if we're weighted heavily in that way we need to round out the other part to have the truth which is the best possible way to make the best decisions one of the things that i actually learned and listening to you is the idea of being able to hold two kind of opposing thoughts in your brain. Like, yes, you can be a great coach, but you also need to understand that you need to get better at the way you communicate with X athlete or the way that you go about it. It doesn't mean good and bad. It means good and also we can get better.

Starting point is 00:31:09 Yes, and. You know, that's a developmental thing in an academic sense is where we're stealing that is, I mean, anyone who's listening, check your own language. Anytime you are in a situation saying either or of anything. Yeah. Look closer. And then the next better, more complex iteration of you would be able to say yes and, and be able to hold opposing truth at the same time. And very few people can do that.

Starting point is 00:31:35 But you are just a bigger container, more capable for more if you can. Right and wrong sounds so much easier. Oh, yeah. Tell me the rules of the diet so I can follow it, and then if I fuck it up, it's not my fault. Yeah, I think as humans we just like to categorize or find ways to systematically separate and find a tier system of good or bad right or wrong um but i i think it's because we want to self-identify we want i think more than ever we're disconnected and we get to do cool things like events like this and podcasts but people do really feel separate so they're trying

Starting point is 00:32:03 to find themselves somewhere and worst of all they're assigning a specific meaning to what that could mean about them or say about them which could maybe separate me from someone and that's i think it's all underlying subconscious like shit well it makes life easier what we don't like is uncertainty it's it's very difficult for me to say it's gray you're like i don't really like that and i'm still responsible like if you can tell me the rules and it's it's finite we like that because it feels like it's tangible and we can understand it but unfortunately that's not how this goes you know this is all gray but when do you think that clicked in your head when did you get good in gray uh i think it's anytime you you transcend something people get stuck in their thing so maybe right now you're

Starting point is 00:32:54 listening it's crossfit like you can't see outside this this box and the language we use about development is how development works either on a cellular level or a conscious level, is that we transcend and include previous stages. So if you are CrossFit, and the boundaries of CrossFit are the boundaries of you, this is a very common stage three is what it's called, like socialized. I used to be baseball. That would describe what I wear, what bars I go to. That's the confines of my development. Pretty uncompelling.

Starting point is 00:33:32 You can, if you do the work, transcend that to see more. And I included I'm still a former baseball player. But that's not the limit of who I am. Yeah. And so it's when you transcend any current stage is when you, the language to use is when you have it rather than it has you. Right? Whose model are you following there with the stages? So the stage three reference was a Keegan reference.

Starting point is 00:33:57 So Robert Keegan, who's an adult development psychologist from the Harvard camp. And so statistically most people in his model would be stage three is socialized. So if you tell me you're a Republican, I could tell you what you dress like, what you think is true. Sure, you could qualify as well. Oh, of course, yeah. And then if we're open to it, you can transcend that stage and move to this self-authoring stage where you hold the pen and you decide, well, there's some Republican-ish things I like, but not all of them.

Starting point is 00:34:30 And then you transcend that and include the things that fit your self-authoring story. And that's a very helpful stage because you're more capable. You are in designing your own code and charter for life. And those are the people that most followers are following. The problem, there's limits to this stage that very few people have. The problem is that's where we're quite dogmatic

Starting point is 00:34:53 because you begin to filter the information that you send in the world and that you receive in the world. I have my own beliefs. It's called the Logan Method. You have to put a name to it. Guess what? Articles I don't reshare on Facebook. It's the ones that make the Logan Method. You have to put a name to it. And guess what? Articles I don't reshare on Facebook. It's the ones that make the Logan Method look stupid.

Starting point is 00:35:11 And you start to filter your truth. Right. Very few, almost no one transcends to this final stage, which is this self-transforming mind where you can see that you are down there with this little biased opinion. You can look at your lens amongst other lenses. And that's a level of awareness that is scary because we don't have these lines anymore. Your beliefs are not given to you by someone else.

Starting point is 00:35:39 You cannot live in a followership role. I used to be online arguing with Mike Boyle about why CrossFit people weren't idiots. And we actually interviewed him a month ago or whatever. And we're like sitting in the room and I was like, dude, you've stolen many hours from me. He's like, the thing is,

Starting point is 00:35:57 I know what stage you're at in this game. And he's like, and now you're at the next stage. But he's like, you don't understand. I'm 40 years into this. I've done it all. I now you're at the next stage. But he's like, you don't understand. I'm 40 years into this. I've done it all. I've been through all the stages. Now I sit back and drink a beer and I'll argue with you online because you just don't know.

Starting point is 00:36:12 You haven't really progressed as far as I have and seen the number of things and the number of athletes. And you're like, yes, sir. And you're so smart. And you're an infant. Of course you love CrossFit. You're 28. Like, why wouldn't you?

Starting point is 00:36:25 Wait until you get hurt. Totally. Let's go back to the framework, the language I mentioned before. Is it triple extension or a catapult method? What's true? Yes and. It hasn't been on the show in years. There's just methods inside of a bigger system.

Starting point is 00:36:39 One thing that you guys had at your gym. Ibar Lobar. What's the truth? Yes and. I was so stoked on because it hit right at the moment. I feel like you, there's like a, especially in the SoCal scene, the people that we followed and watched and all the things. And then there was a large group of people that were in it in the early days. And then now there's like a much smaller group of people that have actually progressed out of that

Starting point is 00:37:02 and continued to develop their career and continued to be leaders in the scene. And one of the things that you guys did at Deuce was held like a debate on, is CrossFit really the best GPP thing that we can teach at this gym? Being a CrossFit affiliate and at least presenting the idea of what's the right way to go about this I mean I just said that there's a bunch of affiliates who are being misled in their

Starting point is 00:37:31 processes because they're having success so what we talk about all the time is our biggest problem is we're successful you got a bunch of people telling you every single day on Instagram that you're cool yeah this is me talking to my staff yeah that we're killing it the moment you believe that you are done growing. So we need to build in processes to seek this information. And one of the ways that you're mentioning is inside of coaches prep, which is how we develop our leadership, is we just flipped a coin, made two teams, and they had two weeks to prepare an academic level argument for or against CrossFit.

Starting point is 00:38:04 Oh, this is great. These are people who are making a living doing this. I mean, our coaches don't have five jobs or whatever. This is their profession. You've got to present a compelling argument against the thing that you make your money doing. And now that leaves us in a space that all of our methods and all of our processes are the best so far. And if you believe that they're the best so far, then they're up for grabs.

Starting point is 00:38:32 We're interested in a better way. And so if you can argue against your thing, you're vegan, you should read all the non-vegan books. And what happens is you either reinforce your truth or you change it. And your little dogma needs to be the best you have so far, or you are going to stay small. Yeah. What was kind of the direction you guys took out of that? I mean, we sort of just threw gas on the fire, right?

Starting point is 00:38:59 I mean, it's all the classic arguments. So one of the things that comes up is variance is really compelling to drive adaptation and then so I immediately come back with Sue, you tell me that Jeff goes to a CrossFit affiliate at age 18 and he spends four years doing the workout of the day three, four days a week.

Starting point is 00:39:18 We take that guy at the end of four years and bring him in this room or we take the same guy and we put him at LSU in the football strength and conditioning situation, and he's doing 11 exercises. He's doing a power clean, a squat. He's pushing a sled, and he's sprinting. And we take him after four years.

Starting point is 00:39:37 Who's going to be the more compelling athlete? I bet that dude on the first day could do as many bar muscle-ups as you need. Yeah. Right? Because he can express power. He hasn't done the skill. He hasn't walked on his hands at all. So what's that all about?

Starting point is 00:39:49 I mean, the first day I started CrossFit, I was like the best person in my gym. I had nothing to do with CrossFit. Yep. Right? I already said this before, but CrossFit is a cleaning of tissue paper. They didn't invent any of those skills. I think the only thing that I never saw before was a wall ball. So what you did as a professional athlete that was already worked in from the Olympic lifting to what you're doing But it was focused for your sport as a hammer thrower in college. I wasn't allowed coach wouldn't even let me go on a jog

Starting point is 00:40:16 He's like no no no no no your short yet short twitch fast fast fast. You're strong as shit We don't do anything that works any other fiber that doesn't make you throw far for sure so that was it so that's also why i could do any kind of barbell work but two burpees and i was like a beached whale i was you know so it's just different because crossfit takes these amazing skill sets and puts it into a digestible group class but it's still not a sport so it's like uh what you what you end up at is that CrossFit is a very open opportunity methodology. And then how you practice it in your little dojo, there's a lot of ways to do that. People say, there's no rotation in CrossFit. It isn't my version of CrossFit.

Starting point is 00:41:00 And so you can create the product that you want, essentially. So actually at this point, now you've said all that, how do you define CrossFit? I use their definition. And I use their definition because it's the most open source thing. Inside of functional movements executed at a high intensity, constantly varied functional movements executed at a high intensity, there's room for everything. I agree.

Starting point is 00:41:27 Yeah. But I think the issue is where it's gotten diluted, franchise over franchise over franchise. I mean, I got my level one and I looked at the room of people and over half didn't look like they even go on walks. Yeah. So you're like, who's coaching? Who's telling that message?

Starting point is 00:41:42 Who's sharing that definition? And I think that's where part of the edge I have in my voice as I talk about it is I'm like, it's not what it was packaged as or built for initially. Well, if you have a total of 500 affiliates around the world. 13,000. No, I know. But at the beginning when people were driving to each other's gyms and whatever it is, message was very tight because it was very very intense and it was sacred filled with the people that were 25 years old that were ready to get after it and it was all competition fueling it but now you've got 13,000 everyone's going to fight their way to the middle it's just like every social structure this just

Starting point is 00:42:19 happens to look like gyms so everyone's fighting their way to the middle except places like Deuce that are actually challenging the definition and the status quo and saying, maybe we aren't doing it the right way. And that's probably one of the biggest messages that hopefully we can get out is like always be trying to push the knowledge and information

Starting point is 00:42:40 so you're learning something new. It might not be right, but if you can build the trust with your clients to say, hey, we have this structure, we know it works, but it's not perfect, if you trust us, we're going to filter this thing out and make it better so that your experience is as good as we can possibly make it. Well, you know, the other thing, I feel like now I'm going to go back on my words because not every gym has to be this high-performance CrossFit gym.

Starting point is 00:43:06 Maybe their identity is like we get people moving again. We're proud of the fact that you get a little stronger and a little leaner, and you can do life a little bit better through our gym. So it doesn't have to be that. Produce your identity is beyond that. It's different. You have a different set of programming and ideals. So isn't that kind of the beauty of CrossFit that you get to take these physical skills and these variances

Starting point is 00:43:26 and say we can take ownership of it and have our own identity around it. So that's where I feel like I'm incorrect. That's why I think you have such a special skill set. It's like you go to the Biggest Loser and you're dealing with people that if you come from regionals, performance background, playing professional sports

Starting point is 00:43:41 and then all of a sudden now you're in the general pop but not even in the middle. You're at the very bottom. That's a wild conversation shift from how do I go snatch, whatever it is. I don't even know what's cool anymore. That's where I'm at. I don't know what the cool kids are doing. I think snatching period is cool.

Starting point is 00:44:01 My mother is 70, and she's like desperate to learn a snatch, and her coach is like, you're not going to learn it. Yeah. There's no reason. My mom, you know, there's no reason for it. She deadlifts more than me, but, like, that's fun, you know. So it's one of those things. I don't know.

Starting point is 00:44:15 Do you think your 70-year-old grandma deadlifts more than you? My mother is 70, and she deadlifts more than me. Because she hurt her back. Oh, my God. If we didn't have a guest with us right now. Oh, he'd be coming over the top. There's absolutely no way to like you. That is amazing.

Starting point is 00:44:37 We're going to pull that clip out for the salsa meeting. There's no way to like you. There's just no way to do it. When you bring this stuff into your own training, though, how has that kind of changed and shifted over the years? Like the CrossFit yes or no kind of thing? Well, no, just general like you have control over your own thing versus programming for the masses at Deuce.

Starting point is 00:44:57 Well, I believe it can be done in an inclusive manner. So here's where people, I think, get off the trail a bit. Movement selection is a hot topic, right? Like your mom shouldn't be snatching is what we're saying. Yep. We need to remember that movement selection and the prescription is in the program, not for the sake of the movement.

Starting point is 00:45:20 This is what we're forgetting in CrossFit because it's becoming a sport, and we're doing it for the sake of it. That is written there with an intended stimulus in mind. I want your mom to express power. And there's a great way to do it with this thing called a snatch. Well, if she can't meet the criteria for that thing, let's do something so her mom can express some power.

Starting point is 00:45:38 Exactly. Right? And so the job of the coach, one of the jobs of a coach, is to be the liaison, the in-between, between the author's intended stimulus, who penned this workout, and whoever is in front of you. And if we forget that, then we're just slanging choreography that's called CrossFit, right?

Starting point is 00:46:00 It's got to look like it. You know, the snatches and wall balls and lots of chalk, and then that looks like CrossFit, therefore we're doing it. There's a stimulus that we're trying to. But there's no quality control on that. I mean, I've got to tell you what. I've traveled a lot lately. I'll drop into gyms, and if I do one more game to warm up,

Starting point is 00:46:19 I'm going to fucking lose it. I literally. You don't want to catch the PVC pipe? I had a partner. I had a partner. I had to touch the wall, run. I ran between his legs, stood up, ran back. I go, we have snatches on the menu today.

Starting point is 00:46:34 Please, can I do something that's going to be... It angers me because I thought, well, if you don't know how, I'm not angry at you, but don't be coaching. By the way, owners don't hire coaches that don't know what they're doing. Well, it's just fitness entertainment at that point. Wait, it's really important, though,

Starting point is 00:46:50 and your coaching process is really challenging to even become a coach at Deuce. But that's why I would drive an hour for Deuce Gym, period. I literally drove 45 minutes for my dog for a vet that I like. I'll go anywhere for the best, but I also know the difference, and that's where I get angered because it's my job as a fit pro to point people in the right direction and keep them safe, and people don't know the difference like I do, so they're going to walk

Starting point is 00:47:12 into a gym and be really excited about CrossFit, but not know that it's not okay. Interesting one, though. What if that's right for them? What if they want to play the game? What do you mean? The person? This is the thing. There's always something right for somebody, right? No, I love that that but the coach needs to be responsible so no matter who walks into the gym they're they're going to take care of that person that body that's it yeah here's

Starting point is 00:47:33 here's here's the thing every single thing on the show i'll duke it out with you all day i got veins coming out of my neck right now i've always wanted to make this video every Every single trainer, CrossFit or not, on the planet, if you put a camera in front of their face and you say, what do you think? What's most important, form or intensity? Or like form or weight? And they'd be like, form, form, form, form. And then you travel the world and you go to these gyms,

Starting point is 00:47:56 and what do you see? Terrible form. Not that, right? Yep. And this is the problem because we, you know, in the summit we split the conversation. There are technical challenges and there are adaptive challenges. All those people who are blowing it when you travel the world and you're seeing these things have all the information.

Starting point is 00:48:15 Or they have a lot of information, not all of it. They've gone to the search, they've done the thing, whatever. So in their mind, they don't think that they're blowing it. Oh, yeah. They need to evolve to be a different, more capable person. And because they have information, they believe that they are. Have you ever met the bad CrossFit coach that everyone talks about? That guy's talking about himself.

Starting point is 00:48:37 Yeah. I've never met the bad. If we could just get rid of all the bad coaches and the bad programs, we could totally fix CrossFit. Never met the bad one. Never seen the fix CrossFit. Never met the bad one. Never seen the bad program before. The incentives are all wrong, though. It's like you get status and recognition by going fast,

Starting point is 00:48:52 getting the good time, hitting the big numbers. You post the big weights on Instagram. It's not like gymnastics where you get status and recognition for doing things perfectly. It's hard to work against that at a population level. Yeah, but to me, that is up to the captain of that ship. If I'm a coach in that class, no, no, no. Anders, if you can't do that three

Starting point is 00:49:10 times touch and go, it's too heavy. And I will stop your workout and your time will be ruined because I will strip your bar. That's me. That's the standard I set when I coach. And people, as Logan said, I think year one, maybe year two, they're at their top of the game and then they get lazy, disengaged, bored.

Starting point is 00:49:27 That's where the games came in because the coaches are bored with warm-ups. I'm like, I don't care. If you don't like my warm-up, you did the same thing yesterday. Well, that's what it is today. Do something else. But it's my job to prepare you, and I think the coaches have to stand by their guns and really make sure they're doing it right.

Starting point is 00:49:41 What does it really look like when you're out traveling and dropping into places? I actually don't really know because we did murder, death, ambulances. Everyone is hurt. I don't see enough. Here's what I mostly see. I seen – Everybody just got like really sad. Party really died.

Starting point is 00:50:03 What I mostly see is an over-programming in the hour. So we don't have enough time to prep and to care. I'm either end of that spectrum. I love that we can have a good lift, and I love that we can do something to make us sweat. But I think that you have to program the entire gym like it's one person. I might have someone on a daily program, and this is what they have. This is the spectrum.

Starting point is 00:50:21 I have higher days, lower volume days. I have strength training. I have recovery. It's skill days, whatever it becomes. And if you show up on the one day that it's a skill day and you're pissed you didn't get a sweat on, hey, come on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays instead. Those are volume days, whatever it becomes.

Starting point is 00:50:32 But you cannot start to dictate and change that whiteboard depending on which friend of yours showed up that day. I think another thing I really like about Deuce and just the whole thing that you guys have going on is when you start to use different implements besides just barbell training all day every day as the main core thing like the fact that there's a bunch of strongman gear and sandbags yeah yeah eggs stuff super important just because it forces everyone to lower the intensity without them knowing it's different it's new they have to think and now all of a sudden you create a space where someone has to learn something every single day.

Starting point is 00:51:06 And it's like this is whether you're playing follow the leader or you're creating something for your people, right? So the pegboard goes up in the CrossFit games and then pegboards sell out. Everyone's got a pegboard. I still think there's a business play. Like someone's getting a cut of that. Castro's taking 10% of the pegboard. That dumbbell shit, I was like, all right.

Starting point is 00:51:27 So, yeah, it's like is your movement selection because someone else said that that's going to be cool? Now that matters. Right? Like I teach the CrossFit Tromance Seminar, right? And, look, anybody who comes around to those movements, I'm hyped that they're there. I don't get to, like, judge their thing.

Starting point is 00:51:41 But what does kind of irk me is when people raise their hand, they're like, so, because there's more and more strongman implements in the games, you think more people are going to come around to this seminar. And I'm like, yo, like, is that how you're judging what to include in your gym? Like what you saw in Carson or Madison? Like that's an insane place to start. Like is that really what we're doing? You saw a yoke in the games and now you're going to buy one? Because you saw, like, that has nothing to place to start. Like, is that really what we're doing? Yeah. You saw a yoke in the games, and now you're going to buy one?

Starting point is 00:52:06 Because you saw, like, that has nothing to do with you. Yeah. That has nothing to do with you. That's crazy stuff. You know? That's not part of your future. Well, I will say, though, I do like the idea of presenting certain implements, even if, like, I know Dynamax has some, like, 100-pound balls,

Starting point is 00:52:22 some bigger ones, that are kind of fun things. You get the brain training. You get coordination. You're like, let me figure out this problem on how to get this going. And I think there's fun. Like, to bring fun and play back into movement again, like killing yourself or your waistline. It's like that, to me, opens up a different category of your brain and your heart.

Starting point is 00:52:40 Oh, totally. And I like that part of what you do. And stimulus, you know. Yeah. I'll take a beginner mover who doesn't understand the neurological thing in a front squat, and they'll be the worst mover in the class with a barbell. They hold a sandbag, and now they're the best mover in class.

Starting point is 00:52:55 I'm just interested in that. Totally. That's very compelling to me as a coach, if I'm interested in this type of process. But if I'm just, like, choosing my movements and my implements based on what I see come out in the CrossFit Games, that's like a weird. But I don't think people have the education

Starting point is 00:53:11 or the experiential authority that you've built over time to make those kinds of decisions. Because it's not that they don't care. I actually think they don't know. And to risk looking like they don't know, I'm just going to have you do a front squat with a bar. We're actually at an age, though, where an entire group of people at this point have only been in CrossFit.

Starting point is 00:53:31 Like they started in CrossFit maybe when they were 18, and 10 years later now they're 28 and they're ready to open a gym, and they've only had that education. And if they haven't gone out to look for a functional strength coach, gone and listened to Greg Cook, or like actually tried to expand that knowledge, they've only stayed in the CrossFit Journal. So now you've got the same subject matter experts learning the same things, and it's all focused on that same piece.

Starting point is 00:53:57 You can say that about bodybuilders. You can say that about people that do Pilates or just yoga. We like to stick to what we like. Yeah. It's an interesting issue in how is someone going to get into the strongman, go to the strongman SME course, but to force them to come out of their comfort zone. Yeah. It's, once again, everyone's going to fight to the middle

Starting point is 00:54:18 unless you're forcing yourself to play at the edge of excellence. And the general tool. Write that down. No one wrote that down. Nobody wants to remember anything. I hope you dream about that one tonight. The general tool that avoids those issues is going back to just

Starting point is 00:54:35 the developmental one is how might I be wrong about this? If you continue to ask yourself that question, then you will be open to adaptation forever. But if you're literally just you're slanging gospel, you're building a fragile ship. When did all of this stuff bother you so

Starting point is 00:54:52 much that you had to start writing a book about it? Fuck, man. I wrote that book. He was nine. At seven, he was going to be a pro-business player. I hit my 10,000th ball. I was like, fuck this. I'm writing it down. He had it. He has little Etch-A-Sketch notes.

Starting point is 00:55:07 Yeah, man. I think I do a lot of things because I'm angry. That's a nice motivator. I wrote this book because I observed that most people in the real world really want to do something else, and they're scared, and they won't do it. And that's shitty. But what's worse is they'll look you straight in the face and they'll say, but I'm just being smarter about it.

Starting point is 00:55:30 And that is tragic. And so I wrote a book that objectively, mathematically, would not allow someone to do that. It will, in a non-emotional level, put together a mathematical advantage for you pursuing your peak expression, your passion, your dreams, whatever the case may be. And the problem with this dynamic is people go down that road often for emotional reasons. You have some dream, you're like, this feels good, I'm going to do this thing.

Starting point is 00:56:00 And we know that emotions don't last very long. It's not enough to sustain these types of efforts so somewhere down the road when it gets hard or you run into some social adversity or whatever the case may be you in your mind think that that is risky it's dangerous this is not socially supported this is for other people that aren't like me and so i'm going to do the safe thing which is a lie and what you do is you build a very fragile, non-compelling, lower-level expression of yourself. And you tell yourself that you're doing that because you're smarter,

Starting point is 00:56:32 you're more reasonable, you're taking the safer route. And if I could strip the emotion from that conversation and prove to you that you are understanding commitment on a level that you cannot learn any other way, that you are developing deep work, a large body of deep work towards mastery that you cannot in any other way, which therefore makes you more resilient to adversity that's coming your way, whether you like it or not.

Starting point is 00:56:57 And you have an opportunity to experience the peak expression of flow, maximum challenge, maximum preparation. Then you're building transferable skills that don't really matter, right? This is why I could do 20 years of baseball and fail and use all those things to be way better at everybody else at other stuff. There is no greater teacher to me that I've seen than movement. When you go through situations where you back off, where you push, what conversations in your head when things get hard.

Starting point is 00:57:25 To me, I only, I've said to you boys before, I'm a good trainer. I'm not the best trainer. I'm not the best exceptional programmer. I'm great with people because I use the gym, the movement, whatever skill it is from Pilates to CrossFit to Strongman to learn about the person because that's what they can learn about themselves. What else would you swear you couldn't do that you just did today? And now what else is going on out there in your life

Starting point is 00:57:49 that you maybe considered you couldn't do that you might think about now? It's just proof of concept that you can. And that's where you take the emotion out. I'm like, oh, put the emotion in. Feel it. Know it. Why is it scary and it wasn't so bad? Why not?

Starting point is 00:58:01 I've passed out doing squats before, front squats, and I was like, oh, that was crazy. And I got less scared about passing out when I lifted. It doesn't bother me. So it's one of those things I'm like, wow, I fucking get emotional about it. Feel anything. How do you get somebody, though, to actually figure out what the hell they like? Curiosity.

Starting point is 00:58:19 It's the only way to do it. You can't skip that step. Because here's the thing. If I just got around this table right here and I said, you guys know what we're going to do? We're going to commit the next 20 years of our life and work harder than we've ever worked. I have this great glass-blowing business we're going to do. We're going to make killer vases, man.

Starting point is 00:58:35 And you cannot commit to that. You can't force the widget. You cannot commit to that to the level that you would if you just nurtured the curiosity. Yeah. And by the way, for anybody listening, it's okay if you kind of like borrow somebody else's interest for a little bit i don't know what i want well what do i like logan what are you doing i'm going to jump in and

Starting point is 00:58:51 try it what do you do are you like surfing shit i hate the water i'm gonna borrow it and then try it and then you'll know but people are trying and i think that's the issue i think they just get stuck at that start line well there's there's fear and this goes back to the certainty uncertainty thing if you believe you have two choices and the one you really want is uncertain and then you have this other thing that feels certain that's fucking not yep that's the that's the trick though we believe that if we do this like safe bet that like life will be certain and like oh god thank god i'm okay that's not real like and that's this is what the book gets into if you play it safe and devote 30 years doing a job you kind of don't really care

Starting point is 00:59:32 about that is the most fragile existence possible because when that industry runs out or something happens or or or adversity strikes your life which it will you are a non-compelling motherfucker yeah because you avoided all risk. You didn't commit to anything. You didn't develop mastery in anything. You were a non-resilient. And so now you're on the other side. You're just trying to maintain being in the middle.

Starting point is 00:59:54 That's one thing that Jim Carrey said throughout his career. He tried to remind himself, or he did remind himself often, that it was possible to fail at the thing he didn't want to do. Totally. So you might as well do the thing you want to do. It's like a Pascal's Rager thing. Yeah. He said when you look at it that way, there's no choice.

Starting point is 01:00:09 Yeah, but Logan, you literally described like the last two years of my life. I'm like, oh, my God. I'm just going to like the golden egg is biggest loser. Just wait for that shit to come back. Great money. Tons of exposure. Don't have to work for any platform. Don't really have to have a message or work for what I want to say.

Starting point is 01:00:23 And when it's not come back i was like devastated and i've been forced now to like re not like it's not reinvent but it's show up work hard what do i really think what do i really feel because i can't rest and hide behind a tv show anymore well yeah how many people can i have your book and when you sign it for me yeah absolutely i mean how many people are listening to this thinking that they can't, they cannot possibly be, they cannot possibly accomplish the things you accomplished to get to your finish line. And what you realize in the last two years is like, whoa, I thought there was a finish line here.

Starting point is 01:00:57 I'm still in the game. I still got to progress. And I'm actually excited about it. And so, yeah. Finally getting excited. Well, it takes a while. You go through, like, some weird. Oh, it's got dark.

Starting point is 01:01:08 Kind of depression-y type things. That's a weird word to throw out there. I don't know. I'll take it. That's it. They got dark. They're days you don't want to get up, man. And it's probably very hard to talk to people about it because they're like,

Starting point is 01:01:20 no, you did it. What did I do? Did I miss it? That's an unconscious choice, though. I haven't been talking about it. And it's like, no, you did it. What did I do? That's an unconscious choice, though. I haven't been talking about it. And it's like, no, I need to because it's real and I need to let people know. So, A, I can be held accountable. And, B, I can start to receive support.

Starting point is 01:01:35 Like, okay, well, then what is it? And then that's where it starts to change. Yeah. And it's also very topical of what's going on in the world of just general health and wellness right now. Like, everything is pushing to mental health behavioral health oh god i mean even the strong new york event that we went to like the whole thing is centered around where mental health being a massive piece of this puzzle like and maybe it's just the progression of where we're all at but we all started this thing as in the physical like i want to get bigger stronger faster and then all

Starting point is 01:02:02 of a sudden it's like if i don't, that part's so easy now. That's hardwired. I have to go to the gym five to seven days a week and, like, check in and I'm going to go for a run because I like going for a run. And, like, I have to eat well. That's so simple now. But now it's, well, how do I feel about how I feel? Well, it's the happy pill.

Starting point is 01:02:22 Those big feelings that, yeah. I mean, the fitness industry to me now is a fraud what we're going through is providing all these opportunities of the gym memberships and this is the meal plan and you're doing all these things you check your boxes and I'm happy I'm gonna put I'm gonna post a quote on my Instagram and I'm doing all the things that on the surface make me happy but deep down I'm not so I don't want to tell people to stop working out but you can't just use that as your cope you've got to really look at where the real work is and yes work out but it can't be your solution for where your headspace is at and i hate that conversation too when someone walks up and they're like so logan um

Starting point is 01:02:52 what do i do to get in shape what what do i do to eat well okay better you're like oh man i don't know what do you like let's go do that well let's just go do that all the time and maybe we'll lift weights three times a week just a little bit because if you're a little stronger, a little faster, a little healthier, it's probably going to be a little bit better, whatever widget you want to go play. What do you like to do, though? What do you like to eat?

Starting point is 01:03:13 Well, if you like eating pasta, you might have to talk about it. But for the most part, you like eating steak, you like eating potatoes, just do it all the time. That question comes from someone who doesn't understand what the problem is because that person is asking a question that believes the solution That question comes from someone who doesn't understand what the problem is. Yeah. Because that person is asking a question that believes the solution is more information. Yeah. This is not a technical problem for that person.

Starting point is 01:03:32 Right? Like how many people in America know everything about Atkins or Paleo or Keto or whatever and still can't lose a 20 pounds? Yep. Is that because it's for a lack of information? Or is the problem an adaptive one? Meaning that it's not more information that's going to change that result you know these are these are the problems that hold us back the most and we think that we're going to solve them with more information and that is a uh an age-old problem right and these are the biggest challenges

Starting point is 01:04:00 we deal with from like you know there's a bunch of people who they can't start something they're too scared to start something. Or they start stuff and they can't finish it. If that was an issue for you and I brought up a stack of papers, studies, articles, hey, turns out if you finish stuff you start, you get more done. You want to read through all these? About 500 pages. You already know that.

Starting point is 01:04:19 Yeah. But you still can't do it. Like what is that? What is it is because if I actually really tried, it means I could actually fail. And so to give my full effort and to not make it, it's like it's crippling for people because what does it say about me and does that mean I'm going to fail everything else? And that's the thing. Actually, I love people on the hook that want to lose the weight or whatever.

Starting point is 01:04:39 If you can get your hands on someone that really thinks it's about the 20 pounds, oh, those are my favorites because their lives change. And the hands of the right coach in the right community, that's where it gets fun. And it's adaptive, right? They need to become a person that is more capable to solve that problem. It's not me telling you what the thing is. But that's where coaching comes in. I think it's okay.

Starting point is 01:05:03 Look at all the leaders that you're working with. I work with tons of female leaders, and, like, everybody's got stuff. Everybody has questions. Just ask for support. Just get a little help and start to move through it and get some information. I think just people – I don't know. It's like a pride thing. I don't know if it's a – I don't know the right question to ask.

Starting point is 01:05:22 I think a lot of it's an environment thing, and you were talking a lot about this with the people that came, that had crazy success on the show, and then they go home. I think breaking up with your environment is the hardest thing that everybody has to go and just get really comfortable doing. Like, there's so many people in your life that aren't serving this greater purpose that you want to do. And it's so hard to look and be like, hey, man, we've been friends for, like, 12 years.

Starting point is 01:05:51 But we're going in a different direction. And I can't bring you. Like, you could come, but it's not going to be your journey anymore. Like, now you're just following me. Like, I have to go here. I know, but I think it's not that. I think it's the people think it's a juggernaut of a switch that has to do this huge thing. And the analogy I give is actually the environmental changes can be very small. I look at, like, you take a hot shower, and you kind of wipe the mirror, and it refogs up,

Starting point is 01:06:14 and you can't really see that clearly, but you're really trying. You just crack the door slightly. You change the environment that much, a quarter inch, and that steam starts to dissipate, and it's not going to be a light switch. It's not going to be overnight. But it starts to move out, overnight but it starts to move out and you can start to clarify what you want to see and who you are so i feel like you don't have to move and break up and ditch somebody and just slightly change the environment and start to allow yourself to come to life again that's it i think i feel like it's really a series of small changes it's a series of dominoes like it

Starting point is 01:06:43 doesn't have to be the big thing all at once, but you might need more than one of those little tweaks. And you won't even know the second one until you're done with the first one. I think that's the thing. People think they've got to lay out the plan. It cannot be laid out. Start small. What's the next one?

Starting point is 01:06:55 Do the next right thing for you. One of the things that I think about all the time, it's like the hardest thing to understand, but if you've ever played sports, if you've ever been in business, if you've ever just finding momentum and creating just that get the ball rolling and it's so hard i mean the number of times where you kind of like face this uphill battle and you're like shit how am i gonna start this gym and get to the top i don't know let's just build like a little do a couple things right today do a couple things that make you feel better. Get the ball rolling because momentum is so hard.

Starting point is 01:07:26 And once you lose momentum, you start back at the bottom. Getting that ball rolling again is so hard. And that's where people, if they can't stay consistent, it's like, I was so good for four days, now I'm going to go smash some ice cream. Or I'm going to go whatever it is. It's like now it's a reward. And it's like, no, no, no, that's the momentum breaking. Like that's the thing you can't go to.

Starting point is 01:07:47 But is it breaking momentum or is it a nonlinear learning curve? So it's not going to be A to B straight line. You're going to go up and you might dip, but you're not going to dip as low as you started. You're going to go up again. Go read principles. I will. The loop.

Starting point is 01:08:01 It keeps going. Fall off. I just feel like I see this wave pattern. You're still going up, but if you don't go down, you can't go up. There's nothing to learn then. There's the texture. You've got to fail. But people have a very hard time recycling through that process.

Starting point is 01:08:15 Well, once people start to normalize that discomfort. If you can't create that system in your life, then that system is so easy for us to talk about because we go through it all the time. You're like, oh, man, falling off. Once you know and believe that that's actually the way it is supposed to be you become comfortable with it then when you trip and fall you're like oh everyone trips and falls now i gotta get back up and do it again if you think it's linear and like you're just gonna make more money and it gets stronger and whatever it's all just gonna get better all the time and then you have a little

Starting point is 01:08:39 dip or you plateau for a moment before you have the next rise then you're gonna be depressed you're gonna you're gonna be upset about it etc but if rise, then you're going to be depressed. You're going to be upset about it, et cetera. But if you know that you're supposed to go up and then stabilize and maybe even drop down, then learn the next thing that you need to learn to go back up, and that's actually how it works and you're okay with it, then now emotionally you don't get so distraught over the plateau or the bump. I've heard you talk a little bit about kind of the depression thing.

Starting point is 01:09:03 Is that something that's still working in your life? I'm on the upswing of this spiraling forward iteration. But, yeah, I mean, the last two years of my life have been the hardest years ever. And depression is real, you know. Had I not heard you talk about it, I would have never known. Because I would assume you've created so much rad shit in your life that it's like man of course yeah yeah and that's you know it's something that uh i think needs to be shared because it's the like we talked about before the whole truth you know i mean you could look at if you looked at my life and

Starting point is 01:09:41 figured that that's all positive and that's whatever maybe winning is in your in your mind and i didn't tell you the other part of it uh and you tried to go on your journey and you ran into some failure or some depression you might think for a moment that you're not on the track i'm like yo the track is both man yeah track is all dissatisfaction and failure in this direction you know and so uh yeah i'm neck deep in it you know but but but improving and doing better in my own way that just to to riff on the the principles thing you know that is having more vision like we have these these these problems of uh at up at adaptive change when we have things in our blind spots. Ray Dalio is a Robert Keegan guy.

Starting point is 01:10:28 My coach, Dr. Kara Miller, worked with Ray Dalio in that principles environment, and their system, their organization is built to see the things that are outside of their vision. It's set up to seek that disconfirming information. And we started the podcast here, and so I think it's important to kind of circle back, is that business of principles, all those principles in that company are there to get perfect information and to share negative feedback and to see what you can't see.

Starting point is 01:11:04 We were talking about, you know, you guys mentioned a lot of different things that get in people's way. The way Keegan does it and Ray Dalio talk about it is mechanisms to shine light in our blind spots. And what we don't know is that we all have hidden competing commitments. I am really wanting to lose 20 pounds. Someone who is a smoker and a doctor tells them if you smoke one more cigarette, you're going to lose your life, still can't do it often.

Starting point is 01:11:34 Yep, you're correct. Drinkers still can't do it often when their life is on the line. So what is that about? And these are these hidden competing commitments. I'm committed to quitting drinking. I'm committed to quitting drinking. I'm committed to losing weight. And what I don't realize, what's in my blind spot, is I also am committed to receiving love. And if my view of the world is that food equals love, no one would blame me for that. These eating

Starting point is 01:11:58 commitments are important. But if they're in your blind spot, you don't realize that there's no amount of information, no diet, no motivation, no emotion that's going to help you get over that. But once I tell you and expose to you this thing that's in your blind spot that you are, let's say in this example, equating food to love and that to deny food would be to deny love, you're literally built to never solve your problem. And so there are ways for us to expose this type of information and see perpetual growth. But if you're living in this surface level technical world of just more information that's going to solve your problems,

Starting point is 01:12:34 we're going to have the results that we continually don't have en masse. At some point we have to get rid of all of the information coming in. You consume more information than anybody I've ever been friends with ever in my life. It's like nine hours of learning going on through YouTube and podcasts with you every day. And e-books or audio books.

Starting point is 01:12:54 Do you ever get to a point where you're just like, maybe I'll just let this all sink in for a minute? Do you ever take a break in it? Yeah, I do. I've been trying to find more time for like just quiet time so to speak like when i've been driving lately especially especially now my kids are older like i've been trying to like just turn everything off and just make sure i'm focusing on them so i think i've had a lot more quiet time in the last couple years than i have than i had prior to that but um you know just just like we train because we enjoy it at this point it's like i'm not really worried about my my cholesterol levels and whatever else like i train because i enjoy it at this point it's like i'm not really worried about my my cholesterol

Starting point is 01:13:25 levels and whatever else like i train because i i think it's really fun i hang out my friends whatnot i'm the same way like with with learning i learn for fun like that is what i enjoy doing that's like one of my favorite things to do like the you know the process of mastery and learning more information but it just is really enjoyable to me so yeah i listen i consume a lot of information just because i like it yeah yeah but yeah but but to your point at this point with a lot of with fitness with business i don't know if it all the fitness information i consume i don't know how much better it really makes me it's very very it's marginal at best but i still enjoy listening to people's perspectives that's why i like like that's why i like doing the show so much it's like i like hearing how other people

Starting point is 01:14:01 think about it i'll take nuggets out here and there. When it comes to the fitness thing, listening to people talking about the fitness thing, I'm like, oh, that's the framework. But all the things are basically the same. There's maybe at the very end extreme, someone's a track coach or something, and it applies specifically to that, but we all

Starting point is 01:14:19 have the same thing. It's just I love seeing the framework because we're all just this accumulation of the experiences. Well, my experience is most of them come from strength conditioning really young and then an overwhelming majority of the information my brain is through this framework of CrossFit because that's 12 and very important years of my life and now I'm like I just want to see all the frameworks and how that model kind of fits in. Knowing that I don't have to stick to my own model, but seeing different people's framework, the lenses that they're viewing and their experiences and how they got there is like the coolest part of this.

Starting point is 01:14:58 You have to go speak on a panel right now. Yeah, I got to go. What are you talking about? Well, technically today is the workout, but tomorrow is the panel. Are you okay? Are you going to be able to work out today? No, I'm running a workout, but tomorrow's the panel. Are you okay? You gonna be able to work out today? No, I'm no no. I'm running a workout I got oh, yeah, you did some things We gotta stop I know Well, everybody like it's like I take care of myself

Starting point is 01:15:22 360 days a year and then I came to waterpalooza. Well, I tried like, oh, I take care of myself 360 days a year. And then I came to Waterpalooza. And I tried to be awesome again. Listen, ego is a tricky thing. Now I know why I stopped doing that shit. I'm like, it's a 95-pound bar. How bad can it be? I'll crush these kids. Real bad.

Starting point is 01:15:39 Yeah, no big deal. I'm just going to do just one workout. No big deal. Yeah. Right on. We're going to take a break. And we'll be back. Crush big deal. Yeah. Right on. We're going to take a break and we'll be back. Crush it on your talk.

Starting point is 01:15:47 Thank you. Friends, we've got two sponsors to talk about on today's show, Sunlighten Saunas. Get over to Sunlighten, S-U-N-L-I-G-H-T-E-N.com and make sure you mention the Shrugged Collective. You're going to get signed up for a call. That call is going to connect you to a infrared sauna specialist. And that person is going to give you the exact specs on a sauna designed for your household so that you can reap all of the benefits. Dr. Rhonda Patrick has been talking about the benefits of heat shock proteins, cardiovascular health, longevity, cell regeneration, so many things, so many benefits coming out of saunas and heat. These days, if you have been over to the XPT Life, I've been up to Laird's house twice now. He's training with the highest performers in the world from CrossFitters, professional basketball players, musicians, actors, everybody

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Starting point is 01:17:31 the oil in my car. And I built this on a solo with one other person, but I didn't need to hire anybody. Sunlighten.com. Make sure you mentioned Shrug Collective. Also want to thank bio optimizers. Get over to bio optimizers.com. I have been on the road nonstop in two things that helped me succeed with my health goals on the road. Make sure I'm getting digesting all the protein because gut health just is not at the top of every restaurant's list when I'm on the road. But the bio-optimizers, HCL and Masszymes, those two products just crush. Making sure you get all of the protein digested. As a human species, we do not have enough protease in our diets to actually be able to digest all the protein that we are consuming. So, Masszymes and HCL are those two products that are going to flood your gut with the

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Starting point is 01:19:05 And they also have some cool products that I took this week, the Gluten Guardian. Because Saturday night I had some pizza and that was delicious. And I didn't have any of the extra bubble gut from eating all that cheese and all of the bread that's in pizza. So some really good products for health and just gut health. So biooptimizers.com forward slash shrugged. You're going to save 20% on all products. And back to Mr. Logan Gelbrich. All right. It's a bummer that you and Jen got in a fight on the break. I know. She bailed. Well, she called me ugly, told me I looked old. I Had to handle her. That back problem is three times worse now. She said you're impossible to like or something like that.

Starting point is 01:19:48 And then two minutes later she said, I'll drive an hour out of my way to go to Logan's gym. I was like, woo, we've got a discrepancy here. See, that's what the show needs. We need a real heel. More violence. Yeah, we need a heel. More violence.

Starting point is 01:20:00 Definitely more violence. Everything goes better when there's a heel. That's why we brought Alex. Alex is here. He's going to shake it up. Back in the house. Definitely more violence. Everything goes better when there's a heel. That's why we brought Alex. Alex is here. He's going to shake it up. Back in the house. Oh, man. Welcome back to the show, dude.

Starting point is 01:20:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you for having me. It's been a summer we've been hanging out. Yeah, yeah. It's been a while. What was that? Fitness Business Summit. Yeah, that was back in San Diego.

Starting point is 01:20:15 Do you know Logan? We've met before. Yeah, we've met before. Yeah. Well, the first half of the show, when Jen was here, we were just rapping about some professional development, what's the right way to do all the fitnesses. Yeah. And, man, this is what's cool right way to do all the fitnesses. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:20:25 And, man, this is what's cool about coming to these events. We just pick people up. Yo, dude, what are you doing with Carl Pally right now? Man, we have been swerving back and forth on doing more and more together. You know, he has his Freestyle Insider, which is similar but different than the Summit. So, I mean, essentially we're sort of life push partners. Other than that, there's not much formal other than we work on the

Starting point is 01:20:51 Strike Movement Project together. We've been threatening to put something more formal together. But, yeah, we're kind of, we're buds and we're sort of trying to move the needle for each other, you know. So it's more of a soundboard deal. He's one of the guys that's been on the journey. Oh, yeah. His career has been very fun to watch.

Starting point is 01:21:11 Anytime someone does the I'm leaving San Francisco CrossFit because I have to go do it on my own and figure out why, if my name matters and make that important, that's like the coolest step because you have to go out into the abyss, find out if you've really been building all the trust that you think you have. I mean, if you look at his arc or line in his life, he's not interested in the confines of himself. You know what I mean?

Starting point is 01:21:41 It's what we were talking about earlier as well, whether it's baseball or throwing with Jen or weightlifting, any of these things, it takes being down in pursuit of the specific to come out on the other end with something general to offer. And how awkward would it be for him to break the mold on gymnastics if he wasn't a national champion in Spain? You know what I mean? You don't get to be like a poser follower and be like,

Starting point is 01:22:09 that dog must whack. You have to master it to then own it and then move on and say yes and this other thing. And he's done that with movement. And I think a lot of people, dare I be judgy and say like, people who are sort of thinking on a lower level level want him to be the muscle-up guy. He's like, we could talk about muscle-ups if you want, but, like, here's what I have to offer you, you know.

Starting point is 01:22:35 And we all realize this at some point, you know. The athlete becomes coach, and then coach realizes that it's not about the cleaning jerks anymore. And it's just beautiful to see. Really inspiring to me. We spend so much time, I think it's just like trying to get good at muscle-ups because muscle-ups is the thing, and then you get so bored of that. But you still love the movement piece. He really loves the movement piece. I think that's something that comes through very clear with him of just he really enjoys the coaching and like thinking his way

Starting point is 01:23:07 through this problem that he will always have of trying to figure it out. Well where we really really connect is one of the things that he's the king of which is skill transfer. I mean he's having the skill transfer conversation as high of a level as I believe is happening in movement. And that's really compelling to me because at the end of the day, if life, if anything that we're doing is just about what's right in front of us, then it just feels pretty diminished and limited. But if we can see what's the same about gymnastics and weightlifting, what's the same about pursuing excellence in a sport

Starting point is 01:23:42 and then pursuing excellence in a business sector and then pursuing excellence in self you know and if we start to pull out like principles in those arenas then we can communicate across all borders you know yeah and he smashes borders as good as anybody in my opinion yeah the the hold the standard thing yeah um the summit that you have created and i guess just creating that and making that the tagline and then actually turning it into a seminar product type thing. And now it's its own kind of brand on the side. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:17 How has, I don't want to say growing out of Deuce, but almost creating a larger vision than just the brick and mortar. Just some of the exciting things about that and some of the struggles of creating this non-finite brick and mortar, like, come here, do this, but now I'm trying to teach you how to think about everything you're doing. Yeah, it's exactly that, skill transfer. So the vision behind what Hold the Standard means is a model or a system that's in play well outside of fitness,

Starting point is 01:24:54 well outside of deuce. It's the process that we do everywhere from creativity to design. If you attempt something, if you're an artist or a designer if you attempt to create something you have a vision in your mind as to what that is in our language that's the standard that's the vision Anders Ericsson would call it the the mental representation okay that's the the target and then what we do is start throwing darts at it you make an attempt all right you make an attempt on a barbell.

Starting point is 01:25:25 You make an attempt at a sketch. You make an attempt at whatever it is that you're doing. And what, unfortunately, you realize is you fall short of that thing. The best people in the world at whatever it is that they do just operate really close to this standard or this mental representation. But there is still some space, and it's the people who are sort of hungry to hold the standard, which is to essentially own the space

Starting point is 01:25:49 between where you are and where you're trying to go. The people who are hungry about that then use this sort of dissatisfaction or this distance between where they are and where they're trying to go as information. And that's how the sort of model ropes in our hunger for disconfirming information i feel like holding the standard really is the only path to fulfillment it's the only way if you

Starting point is 01:26:11 compromise if you say ah it's good enough on things that are truly important to you and you don't hold the standard you don't go all the way or fight as hard as you possibly can to have this thing that you're shooting for whether it's in fitness or relationships or family or whatever it is, you won't reach true fulfillment. You'll always say, ah, fuck it. I wish I would have stuck it out. I wish I would have tried harder. I wish I would have, like, actually gone after what I want,

Starting point is 01:26:34 pursuing your dreams or whatever it is. Totally. And, you know, here's where people from a distance can misunderstand what I'm saying, which is that hold the standard, which is like we do it excellent or not, misses the point. Because what I just said is every single person, from Michael Jordan to Picasso to, you know,

Starting point is 01:26:56 Matt Fraser or whatever, they're living in some sort of dissatisfaction. They're missing the mark. Yeah. Because we live in an uncertain world. There's a certain number of elements that are outside of our control. We can never just hit slam dunks all the time, right? And so holding the standard is less about the results,

Starting point is 01:27:15 and it's actually describing a process. It's being vulnerable to show up, fail, try your best, as if perfection is possible, attempt again. Yeah. Learn from that. And you can go as far as you want on this. You know, I read the – I'm not a very religious person. I read the Bible cover to cover. And if I was to just give my opinion on, like, religion shows up this way a lot too.

Starting point is 01:27:38 Essentially, it is try to live in perfection, whether it's Jesus or Buddha, whomever the thing is, As if that's possible, fail. Humble yourself, come back, and do it again. Yeah. All right? What is weightlifting? What is fitness? Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:54 What is entrepreneurship? All right? And as long as you understand that dynamic of, oh, you want results? Guess how you get results? Commitment to the process. And I think it's really important to understand that that's always a moving line. Like that standard is always progressing out of your reach instead of becoming very comfortable and complacent.

Starting point is 01:28:12 You're like, oh, I have a cool gym. Let's stop right here. It's like, no, now we have to push the bar. How do we make it better? And it's constantly moving that line further and further away from your comfort zone. How do you cultivate that mindset to fail? Because a lot of people will be like, well, I failed. I should quit.

Starting point is 01:28:31 How do you cultivate that mindset to keep going despite failing? I think it's just bringing awareness to what's true. And I think we sort of touched on it for a second earlier, which is that we don't really understand what success is a lot of us think that it is hitting that target and what we don't realize is that all the people you look up to are missing their targets you know so when you call it out for what it is then it's just a choice right you have a you have a choice you you miss the mark well guess what everybody's missing the mark selfishly it seems like you should use that information you just got

Starting point is 01:29:05 to make an adjustment, do something to close the gap, essentially. I mean, I would even argue, is there even a mark, right? Because as soon as you think you hit the mark, there's another mark. It's like over the wall. And that's what he said. And we make these marks up. Everything is made up, right? And it keeps moving.

Starting point is 01:29:23 The mental representation model where we're talking about with like you know holding the standard uh comes down to two uh the people who operate at the highest level have the best view of what the target is you know in a deliberate practice environment this is using the same model that i just talked about as a way to develop mastery in anything, involves having this stretch goal. And it must be a stretch goal. This is why you're saying that the target moves. Because if it's a slam dunk, then there's no more development there.

Starting point is 01:29:56 Okay, so Sean White, he's on a halfpipe. Sean White not only is the best in the world on a halfpipe on a snowboard, but in his mind, I would argue, he probably has the clearest picture in his mind of a 540 whatever the fuck it's called. Yeah. In his mind. Yeah. That was always my favorite one, the McTwist. Sorry if I just made that so shallow in the middle of your big point.

Starting point is 01:30:23 Shout out Sal Mascala. McDonald's paid big money to get that game. Every time he's on something you do, I'm like, I remember that dude rolling by on a snowmobile when I was in Vermont. I was like, dude, that's Sal Masekela. I was like 13. This is so rad. So, you know, in a design setting, this is your taste.

Starting point is 01:30:46 You know, if you have whack taste, guess what? You're going to make whack clothes, man. Yeah. You know, so people who are pursuing this vision in their mind, you have a really clear understanding of what a beautiful snatch looks like. A beginner who comes in the room, they don't see it as clearly as you do, so they don't even have a chance to replicate something they can't yet see in their mind right and so our journey is moving down the standard is moving

Starting point is 01:31:11 further and further down the road and the ability to see almost everything that you're doing in slow motion i think is a skill that just you have to work on over time of like olympic weightlifting so easy as an example like you don't even have to really see the person lift the weight when their setup sucks. You can just leave it there and go take a break. You don't have to do that. I don't need to see the rest of the disaster that's about to happen. But in business, it's the same thing. Like, oh, no, we've got a bad person running the front desk.

Starting point is 01:31:42 I don't want to fire because this is going to be really uncomfortable. But, man, if we don't do it quickly. Like, you can see the little pieces because you've been through so many. You can see the holes so quickly once you practice or have enough time and you're able to practice all of these things. And so, like, with enough awareness, you can then connect the dots and realize, well, what's the system at play here? What's the mechanism?

Starting point is 01:32:07 And the Summit is just that. It began as a thing where a bunch of people just wanted to copy the way we run our gym. These are technical issues. Everyone that comes to the Summit gets a hard drive and all of our systems, and you can just copy it tomorrow. But what we know is that those are technical bits of information and what i'm telling you is that your problems are adaptive ones and so essentially it's a weekend uh seminar for leaders whether you're in the fitness space or not entrepreneurs to use principles that we just so happen to reference as a case study, Deuce Gym,

Starting point is 01:32:46 to build something that will transcend yourself. To build something that will be a perpetual growth machine rather than something that is fragile or small or non-compelling. Yeah. You hired a coach to help with a lot of these things for you. Yeah. What's a little bit of that process? Because there's very few people, especially that have had any level of success,

Starting point is 01:33:10 where they think they're like, oh, I know what I'm doing, to go out and hire a very high-level coach, thinker, developmental coach. Yeah. I wish I knew her real name. Dr. Kara Miller. Welcome to 2019. Doug's met her. She's down in San Diego. Yeah, her husband does jiu-jitsu with me. Dr. Care Miller. Welcome to 2019. Doug's met her. She's down in San Diego.

Starting point is 01:33:26 Yeah, her husband does jiu-jitsu with me. Oh, shit. Now she's right down the street? Yeah, she's great. Yeah, yeah. So the assumption needs to be that everything that I have is not inside of my own brain. You know, like that's the definition of curiosity. Like curiosity is the assumption that there's something out there for you more,

Starting point is 01:33:50 you know, and so we need to seek things that are going to challenge us. And, you know, she came into my life as a professor at the University of San Diego. And sort of a long story, but long story short, as a baseball player, I wasn't able to take the final capstone course of the leadership school. I was a leadership studies minor. They had a pretty progressive leadership school on campus. And my senior year as a baseball player, I was going to miss all of the classes. And I was not going to come back for a fifth year to, like, finish out this program.

Starting point is 01:34:22 So I went to her desk and said, hey, here's my deal. I'm playing baseball here, and that's the only reason why I can't make the class. Can you make it harder? for a fifth year to, like, finish out this program. So I went to her desk and said, hey, here's my deal, you know, playing baseball here, and that's the only reason why I can't make the class. Can you make it harder, independent study, whatever you got, can we do it? And she went to bat for me and allowed me to do an independent study with her one-on-one, this gnarly course. And it really challenged me and moved the needle. We've been friends ever since, and she is my coach.

Starting point is 01:34:47 You know, my coach isn't, you know, internet programming or whatever. It's a different type of coaching. And it's interesting. It is exactly what we're talking about, where she's not valuable to me because she gives me information. She's valuable to me because she forces adaptation in me. One thing in my opinion that oftentimes people don't realize before they end up in a leadership position is that as a leader

Starting point is 01:35:17 you may have to make a lot of decisions and depending on the amount of people that you're making decisions for it's likely that not everyone's going to be thrilled with your decisions every time. So if you make a change at the gym and you have hundreds of members, some people are going to like it and some people aren't going to like it. Inevitably, conflict arises, and a big part about being a leader is dealing with conflict effectively. How do you deal with conflict with your coaches, with your athletes, with family, just across the board what

Starting point is 01:35:45 has worked and what hasn't worked for you so it begins on a cultural level which is we began talking about like hey you guys have a great culture at the gym and it's like what is that and and what's behind the curtain if it's not obvious is part of that culture is a willingness to seek the the truth and so if everything is sort of radically transparent in the organization, then we can do a lot that ruffles feathers or not because there is a sort of ubiquitous knowledge that we are seeking best possible outcomes.

Starting point is 01:36:18 You know what I mean? And so if you start from that place, everybody's sort of in agreement with that pursuit. And so we live in a space where we're hungry to be wrong we're hungry to develop and so there's a high level of trust in the system there uh we make it really difficult to get in we do a great job of educating and so the people that are inside of that system are living in a headspace where they're highly willing to be there there's high levels of mutual trust.

Starting point is 01:36:47 And that just sort of sets the stage for, it's like a lubricant for a lot of that conflict stuff. Conflict gets really bad when it's opaque. You know what I mean? When you're talking to six people about your feelings about me, but you can't talk to me about it. Then that conflict has like, it's a powder keg type of thing thing but if something comes up and you're like yo man that was that was messed up i'm not really into how you did this programming thing or how you dealt with the

Starting point is 01:37:13 situation or whatever the case may be it's all minimal at that point you know and you know we say it all the time most everything just gets solved really easily with communication if you build in structures that make communication more easy, then it's just not there as much. What do those structures look like? So in a general, less formal sense, we do as good of a job as I've seen in making negative feedback sexy because there's a utilitarian advantage to that.

Starting point is 01:37:44 So if we're all in agreement and we've all been coached up and we're here in the sort of charter of this organization that we're going to look for disconfirming information, then we're immediately starting in a place where I'm literally expecting and demanding of you to tell me how I can be better and vice versa. We're starting with a place that works really well. The more formal ways that that shows up is you know a example i'll come up with right now is like in our meeting there's a certain section in our meeting called spotlight it's where we literally

Starting point is 01:38:14 like pick something in the organization that we do and believe in and we try to argue against it how do we make this wrong why do we why do we pay ourselves like this? Yeah. Right? And so it opens up opportunities for feedback. Our programming is just a bloodbath of disagreement and cross-checking. And the culture supports instances where we are literally sitting down to disagree and find out how we can get to a better outcome. And if it's not built in we know that we won't do it because we're human beings and it's just way easier to not do those conversations you built you said a word earlier fragility and in a system like that being fragile

Starting point is 01:38:56 does not work if you aren't confident enough or open enough in what you're doing, and someone walks in and constructive criticism is not accepted or the desire to get better and having someone critique what you're doing, you're not going to make it in that culture. You're not going to make it in that culture, and that culture is built on fragile principles. Like, how anti-fragility works is it increases,

Starting point is 01:39:28 it gets better with adversity. So if we can all agree that each of us individually and your organizations and my organization is going to experience adversity, if we can all agree that's going to happen, then it seems very black and white that you'd want

Starting point is 01:39:44 to build an organization that would improve through adversity. I mean, the human body works this way. If I do shit to you that doesn't kill you, it makes you stronger. That's the tongue-in-cheek thing. We adapt. Right? Well, if you build a system that is resistant to negative input or adversity, then you're literally building a system that is fragile to that.

Starting point is 01:40:06 Almost anti-growth at that point. Absolutely. And we talked earlier about, let's just keep it in the gym conversation, there are a lot of gyms that have results that are good enough or compelling enough to not really look into the systems, to not really be interested in where they may be fragile yeah then someone opens up down the road and smashes you and you're like well what just happened i know about some of those you know about that yeah well i mean we were the first gym in

Starting point is 01:40:35 town and we didn't have a single competitor we had a crossfit non-crossfit gym down the street and uh we actually it was a really, really competitive environment, which made us all be very, very good. And then two additional gyms entered into the mix, and it was like the other, gym one and gym two were equally growing at the same kind of rate and equally dealing with the same problems, and we were very very in just we knew each other very well even though we were separate and then all of a sudden there was four

Starting point is 01:41:11 gyms in town and it was like oh fuck like we were built to handle one competitor yeah we weren't built to handle four and when that thing happened then i had to walk into all of our employees that have been doing this system that we had built for four years and be like hey guys i had to walk into all of our employees that have been doing this system that we had built for four years and be like hey guys i want to let you know we're fucked like we were built to handle a competitor your work ethic and your everything that you're doing right now was phenomenal when we only had to fight that guy now we have to fight four people and we've got to go back to zero and rebuild you as coaches and actually make this thing roll the way it needs to roll when there's now four people we're like there's just how many people love functional fitness in a town of 40,000 people and now it's very important that

Starting point is 01:41:59 everything we do is as perfect as we can get every single minute of the day and it became became like a very, very hard conversation because you start going to people that have been working for you for four or five years. And they're like, hey, we have to get a lot better. And they're like, well, I've been doing this and it's been great and you've been paying me well. And I'm good. Like, yeah, I'm not saying you're bad. I'm saying we have to get a lot better now because fighting that guy was easy. There was enough people. We all grew together.

Starting point is 01:42:28 It was great. Now there's four of them. And now it's really, really important that we all are putting in that extra 10% or whatever it is, percent, to ensure that every class is as high of a standard as possible. And then it's almost like it feels too late. Yeah, it really does. It really starts to, because you realize how far you have to go. You know, we know if we pay attention,

Starting point is 01:42:51 we know that the best in the world at whatever it is that they do are people that master the process. They control and master as much of what is inside their control. Because when you're doing hard shit, there's a lot of stuff outside your control. You can't control it. If a fifth gym opens up, you can't control that. You can't control if six of your people move to Connecticut in one month

Starting point is 01:43:10 or whatever the case may be. There's so much outside of your control. So if you're not living in the space where we are going to be in complete, absolute ownership of our part of the process, then you're operating in this margin underneath that standard, sort of as we say, that many times you can't afford. You can't overcome.

Starting point is 01:43:35 An example I talk about in sports a lot is I don't really know anything about basketball, but I've seen enough basketball to know that if we watch an NBA game right now and we saw someone at the free throw line, we would see some habits. Athletes at a high level have routines. Baseball, they're like weird, and they're out of control. Too much time on their hands. Okay, so what would we see if an NBA player was at the free throw line? We would see the same behavior every single time. Remember, it's like a little spin of the ball once, spin of the ball twice,

Starting point is 01:44:03 dribble once, breath, sit. They're doing this every single time. And what are they trying to do? They're trying to bring control and familiarity to something that is generally outside of their control, right, how to score more points in this basketball game. And they will do that every single time to maximize the part of the situation that's inside of their control okay well if we take that same athlete outside of a free throw situation and he's running down the court and

Starting point is 01:44:31 he's going to pull up for a three-pointer does he do his routine does he do the the two spins but why not if he could he totally would yeah to maximize the chances of that shot. But he can't. Why? Because it's no longer in his control. That process doesn't work because he's got a guy guarding him. Yeah. Right? And so if you look everywhere in performance,

Starting point is 01:44:53 the people who are pure savages will control. If you allow one inch of control, I will take it and master that thing. Right? And gyms all the time are leaking performance. Organizations are leaking performance because there are things that are well within their control that they're just not owning. They're not mastering. And they're not really understanding that when it comes to results that are outside of your control, if you're not taking that, you're literally leaving performance or money on the table.

Starting point is 01:45:21 Yeah. I think it's also really obvious when you walk into places that take the time, they have the systems, they know how to talk to people. Like we walked into Bergeron's gym in Natick. What's the name of it? CrossFit New England. And within like 30 seconds of being there, three coaches walked over. They all walked us through like the exact same, hey, are you dropping in?

Starting point is 01:45:44 Oh, you're here for the show Okay, then Heather Bergeron comes over and she goes through the exact thing and Ben is in his office Do wherever he's at and it was like oh This is I see why you're this is and the very first person that talks to us is the intern then the head coach Then Heather comes over then ben shows up and it's like when you see it it's so obvious but it's it's the coaches that don't know or the gym owners that don't know that that stuff is so important they have the blind spot that they can't get there yeah do these systems come about like organ, or is there pure intention from the start, like that's what we're going to do?

Starting point is 01:46:27 So everything that we do is the best so far. And so in the beginning, if you don't know shit about anything, you do what we said earlier. You steal it or borrow it from someone else who knows what they're doing. But what we know is that there are tons of technical things that are not the answer. So people think when they come to the summit that I'm just going to tell them, you get MindBody instead of Zen Planner. That's not the reason why your gym isn't working. These are technical.

Starting point is 01:47:01 There's too many millionaires who are using the opposite program that we are. It comes down to what are these bigger universal principles? And speaking of Ray Dalio, we reference the systems that Bridgewater uses for communication. We don't use those ones. They have a dot system where every single interaction is evaluated. So like right now you could be evaluating my communication with you and my level of energy and my eye contact or lack thereof or whatever for constant feedback.

Starting point is 01:47:35 Now we're not going to build an app at Deuce Gym to share this feedback in this particular way, but what's the principle there? The principle there is that we need constant information that is the truth not just the compliments and how well you're doing but the full truth how we can get better etc and so we're always evolving and and a mistake would be this is a mistake that we talk about a lot in uh the summit the mistake would be that if you just took our processes and our systems that that you would just be dialed in. That's a great place to start, but you would have to find out how this is going to work for you.

Starting point is 01:48:13 You'd have to understand the principle behind it. And it takes practice. If I give you the system, the best system for how to get a barbell overhead from the floor, I could write down step-by-step how to do a snatch technically correct, but it's still going to take you a long time to get that thing down where it looks like you know how to snatch. Totally. I think the best little analogy that I've heard is that you can give somebody a farm

Starting point is 01:48:37 and the handbook to run a farm, but that doesn't mean they can grow food. Totally. They've got to put in the work. Yeah. Yields. So what's the book look like? So the book is about decision-making, and that's coming out. Well, actually, if you're listening to this, there's a link for you to preorder it.

Starting point is 01:48:56 But, yeah, this thing transcends fitness. It's simply about decision-making, and it is going to show you that your biggest decisions in your life. Yeah, I'm interested. You talk about the mathematical equation to having to chase this North Star, finding purpose and chasing it. How in the world do you sell that to somebody and actually create a mathematical equation taking in someone's salary

Starting point is 01:49:27 and the benefits and the vacation package and all of the things that you're trading, for lack of a better word, your soul for? How do we mathematically get past? That's a big number when we start to add that up that someone's offering you to kind of sit at the desk and not be your your authentic self so we just look at what happens when you when you concede that pursuit yeah right it doesn't really matter what it is that you concede your best self for it's just an environment where i sort of prove to you that you can't understand these things at a level that you could when pursuing your best self and it works uh linearly and it this book has taken my every ounce of what i have to to finish

Starting point is 01:50:13 and it's something that i think is critically important because uh if we're gonna pretend that there's something more important than what it is you're to do with your time here on this earth there's so many people that are distracting themselves from pursuing their best self with something like laundry or like paying the bill you know are we really going to live and die and not really ask ourselves like what am i here to do yeah and what we found is that what happens when you nurture curiosity you you find things that you can commit to and there's a a utility in in high level commitment it sets the stage for these long pursuits is there anything compelling or remarkable in this life that you can get instantly right especially with what you want to become or what you want to evolve to the iteration of you that

Starting point is 01:51:03 you want to meet one day is a long road yeah and so we need to find these environments that we can commit to to develop a large body of deep work and and we know that like not all practice is the same and when you're involved in something that you believe you're on this planet to do that is in the direction of your peak expression, then we have a chance to work more deeply. One minute of just passive work in that job that's giving you a sweet, like, vacation package cannot be matched by the level of work that I know when I was going for this pursuit in baseball or that I know in building a business or two.

Starting point is 01:51:43 And so it's an environment that is inherently more rich in growth than another environment. Yeah. I always think about it of like the conversation, and I've had this conversation with people that have kind of this corporate structure to their life. And the conversation that always happens is there's, if I stay here and they give me my check then I'll be able to go do the thing I love well what if you were only doing the thing you loved then what would you go do like you're already doing it you just do it all the time you get better at it the money becomes the

Starting point is 01:52:18 secondary piece because you don't like that will that will come if you get good enough at what you do but it changes the entire construct and lens in which you view the world instead of I have to be miserable here in order to go do the thing I love. Now you're just doing it. This is just what you do is get better at the thing you like to do. These people must be really good because I don't really know who can create immense value for themselves or their community when they're doing something part-time.

Starting point is 01:52:45 You know what I mean? Like, oh, I'm going to do this job to support this other thing that I'm going to do at 30%. Yeah. What is that about, right? In your opinion, what is the most kind of graceful way to leave the thing you're doing for the thing that you feel you should be doing? And or, you know, have you had coaches that have taken this the opposite direction

Starting point is 01:53:08 where we're kind of presuming with this conversation that we're telling people to leave their job as an accountant to go have a career in the fitness world where they're more passionate about fitness than they are accounting, but has it happened the opposite for you where a coach came to you and they're like, hey, man, this isn't for me. I want to go be an actor. I've got to get out of here. Yeah, I've had coaches go be firefighters and go on to other things.

Starting point is 01:53:29 But the mistake is, I believe, starting with the assumption that this is an accuracy test. I mean, this is a reason why a lot of people don't make a transition in their life is because they fear, man, if I put 20 years into doing something and then I get there and I kind of have a change of heart, then did I just waste 20 years? And what I'm saying is it's not about that. It's not about any of this stuff. You're going to talk about in terms of like on a cosmic level human evolution.

Starting point is 01:54:01 We've been evolving for millions of years, and you're telling me that you're on this planet to play a game where people chase around a leather ball on a grass field like that's all made up this is all fucking made up yeah we're just looking for environments that are going to pull out of you the development that we all need and so um in terms of like transitioning yeah the book's not there to get you to quit your job and jump to something else. The eloquent way to do it is a responsible way. I mean, full transparency, when I was developing the business plan and the vision for what is now the Deuce Gyms is, like, I was making money teaching baseball because that's the expertise

Starting point is 01:54:46 and the most money per hour I could make to create time to do it. I mean, use the thing. Use corporate America to fund. Be smart. Corporate America funds all kinds of entrepreneurs to get some momentum going in their lives. But one thing I think about all the time in this conversation is i am surrounded my bubble is people that get this even people that are in the corporate world that are

Starting point is 01:55:11 doing their thing and doing it like they're still trying to be very good at what they do like they're chasing after being great at what they do are there people that should just go do that meaningless job and chase the six weeks of vacation? I sometimes wonder, if you take all the people, a lot of them probably should fit into that thing and stay there. Here's the thing. I'm not qualified to answer that for anybody else except for myself. And so deep down, every single person who's listening to this is the only person that will really know that for themselves. And all I know is that when you're in an environment that's going to demand the most of you,

Starting point is 01:55:57 you will contribute the most for yourself and for your community. And there are just major disparities between what you can be for yourself and the world if you're in the right environment yeah you know in the book i i make reference to uh you know dave grohl right if you look at what he's done the value that he's created i mean do you know a little bit about his story i know i don't know who's he was like the drummer of nirvana went through all that but he was like he was kind of But he was like the guy that put Nirvana together, right? So he was the drummer for Nirvana.

Starting point is 01:56:31 Nirvana had several drummers, but he was the drummer for the longest period of time up until their rise into the thing and when Kurt Cobain passed away. So he's a perfect example because if you look at music, people will be like, yeah, Chase Your Jeans, I get it, but the music industry is like a one-in-a-million crapshoot. He got lucky. Well, no, he didn't get lucky because, yes, he got that gig as the drummer for the greatest rock band of his generation by practicing on his bedsheets in his room

Starting point is 01:57:02 until the condensation on the windows changed the atmosphere, and he's going for it, developing a level of mastery in a thing that he was able to dump so much time and energy into that he could not dump that level of focused energy into anything else. So he gets this gig for Nirvana. Kurt Cobain passes away, and what does he do? Part of his coping in this process is he goes into his studio and lays down the drums for an entire album, and then he goes into the studio and lays down the bass for an entire album, and then the guitar for an entire album,

Starting point is 01:57:41 and the lyrics for an entire album of what becomes foo fighters so that is a level of value and mastery that is undeniable uh in and of himself now the beautiful thing about this example is can you imagine the number of safer, more socially reinforced life paths for Dave Grohl? Working at the bank, working at the thing, being a teacher, even jobs with positive connotations. Being a teacher, being a doctor, whatever. Could he contribute and provide as much value as he did for himself and his community doing anything else?

Starting point is 01:58:29 Where does the clock start and end on that? When does he check out of being a musician? Yeah. And that, to me, is compelling. And there's so many people making a baseless argument that they're safer, smarter, more reasonable by not being interested in their own development and doing something that has been, I don't know, socially handed down to them. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:58:51 You know? Like, really, you're born on this earth to be a regional sales manager for a company that was made up by some dude, right? And they can be the regional sales manager as long as they're objectively viewing their life. Absolutely. And saying, I would like to be better at that. Like, it's not so much the construct of corporate America or you have to go be an entrepreneur.

Starting point is 01:59:13 That might not be for everybody. But you should objectively view all of the things that you're doing in your life and try to think about how to just get a little bit better at them. And if that makes you a better regional sales manager, well, fucking become the national one. And that really is kind of the point of pushing the conversation forward of this mastery idea and holding the standard in the book. Yeah. It's a question that we have to step up to every single day. It's one million, one billion decisions over and over and over again.

Starting point is 01:59:46 That's what we were just talking about with Jen. The book also couldn't be written from a finish line. You would expect, it's like, yeah, so who the fuck are you to write this book? What do you do? It's like, no, I'm in it. I feel like any time I've put together anything, a product like that, or you just sit down, it's like, I always talk, this show is me thinking out loud with people

Starting point is 02:00:07 and then reading is just passively learning how to write and then writing is the only way that i actually make complete thoughts totally and i have to sit down and here's the beginning here's the problem this is what i'm trying to solve here's all the things i did to it up and here's kind of on the back end sort of a successful model that someone could follow yep um so wait what what's the crossover between the summit and the book are they they mostly the same or radically different the crossover is just that i wrote one and i talk at another one you know the the the conceptual crossover is this pursuit of mastery but they're completely different and you know the the conceptual crossover is this pursuit of mastery, but they're completely different.

Starting point is 02:00:46 You know, the book literally has no connection to fitness. It's sort of a ubiquitous decision-making model for all people, regardless of what that application is. It's not me talking you into quitting your corporate job. It's not me talking you into squatting more. It's simply a framework to put you in the ripest environment for your own development. On that level, the summit is specifically about development in an entrepreneurial sense. And so there are principles there that kind of cross over. But, yeah, one is not the other.

Starting point is 02:01:18 Gotcha. Yeah. Sick, man. Yeah, I can't wait to share it with y'all. Yeah, it's been a radical two hours. Yeah, it's been... Where can people find you and all the things? This place is insane.

Starting point is 02:01:29 Right? This is my first Wadapalooza. What an adventure. You can find me on the internet. HoldTheStandard.com All of the things. Yeah, HoldTheStandard.com is a new good place. And then at Functional Coach.

Starting point is 02:01:42 You know what people should do? Screw going to the internet. Why don't you just move to Venice for two years of your life? Do it. That will fucking change your life. You can't be in that place without coming out a little bit more personally developed, we call it. Shout out to Melanie Lim.

Starting point is 02:01:57 Just moved out from Singapore. Nice. To work with us. Yeah. You're going to show up. You're going to learn how to smoke weed. You might even do some mushrooms. You're going to be talking. You're going to learn how to smoke weeds. You might even do some mushrooms. You're going to be talking about how I'm getting better at all the things.

Starting point is 02:02:09 You do some yoga, carry some kegs. Everything's going to happen. Two years of your life. Just go to Venice. Find out a little bit of what's possible. You just fucking said I'm leaving the Matrix. I'm out. I'm out.

Starting point is 02:02:21 Go to Venice. Hang out at Venice. So you get to Venice Beach and then you're like, ah, I'm going to go somewhere else. It out at Venice. So you get to Venice Beach, and then you're like, ah, I'm going to go somewhere else. It's a boardwalk. It's a barrier. Once you get past the boardwalk, it gets normal. I have, for the last decade,

Starting point is 02:02:35 any time someone new comes to visit me in San Diego, and I'm like, you went too far south. We're going to Venice. You need to know this still exists. That's right. You need to know that Venice Beach is still a thing, and people are just out there choosing to be homeless. And there's a little green guy that's going to come float by you

Starting point is 02:02:53 and ask you if you want weed. You have to say no. Totally. You are going to have to say no, but it's possible. It's right there. Everything happens. If you got anything out of the show, that's the takeaway. Tell that guy no.

Starting point is 02:03:06 Yeah. Try and say no to that guy. He's going to change your world. Man, I've never seen everything like this. Of course you haven't. That's why people go to Venice. That's right. Alex Macklin, talk to me about it.

Starting point is 02:03:17 Wait, you did websites? Did you do socials? Yeah, at Functional Coach. Functional Coach. Hold the standard. Hold the standard. There you go. Holdthestandard.com. Alex. You can find me on Instagram at AlexQMacklin

Starting point is 02:03:29 and then AlexMacklin.com for nutrition coaching. You can search my posts at BasicAFNutrition on Instagram. Yeah. Alex is killing the Instagram game, taking a page out of Laurie King's book, who's standing here as a fucking Instagram celebrity. We can't go anywhere without Laurie King getting hounded by people here at Wadapalooza.

Starting point is 02:03:48 But, yeah, Alex is killing the nutrition game. So if you want an nutrition coach, hit him up. I was just about to ask the person not on the microphone about her Instagram game. Look at her over there making her eyes all fucking pretty. Oh, dang. What is going on? Are you Photoshopping on your phone?

Starting point is 02:03:59 You Photoshop your shit? I didn't know that. Do you have a way to make a knee look good? Don't tell the people. It's a secret. There's an app for that. There's an app for that. There's an app for all the things. Totally.

Starting point is 02:04:08 You can find me on Instagram at Douglas E. Larson. I also have my own site, DouglasELarsonFitness.com. We've got Barbell Shrug every Wednesday. I'm on a break from Technique Wild. We're not doing those right now, but we've got Barbell Shrug on Saturdays on occasion. Depending on when the show drops, there might be shows on Saturday. Who knows? It's optional.

Starting point is 02:04:22 We've set the standard really high. There it is. And we hold it sometime. We've set the standard really high. There it is. And we hold it sometime. We learn. Most of the time. Most of the time. That's the Barber Shrug. Sometimes we just get too damn busy.

Starting point is 02:04:30 Hold the standard most of the time. Two shows a week is a lot. If it's convenient. Especially when we're putting six out a week already. You can find me. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. Shrug Collective, at Shrug Collective. Get into iTunes.

Starting point is 02:04:41 Like, subscribe, YouTube. A bunch of cool stuff going up on there these days. And we will see you next week. Boom. That is a rap team. Logan Gelbrich. What a guy. Loved hanging out with him.

Starting point is 02:04:52 Jen Widerstrom, Alex Macklin, Doug Larson. What a crew that we get to put together and hang out with on a daily basis. Want to thank everybody. Again, I'm never going to stop. I appreciate the hell out of you. Thank you for tuning in. Thank you for being a part of this show. We are headed to NorCal.

Starting point is 02:05:08 We've got some killer shows scheduled with Marcus Philly, Jason Kalipa. We're going to be kicking it at FitAid. I'm hoping to land a couple more big names that I can't fully announce yet. But we've got some good stuff planned coming up. And a trip to Boston and New York last week was just so ripe. Hanging out at Solace New York with Kenny Santucci and some killer guests. So thank you for all the things. Make sure you follow me at Anders Varnerk. Hit me with the DMs.

Starting point is 02:05:38 Send me all the questions, anything you want. I might just answer your question on the beginning of the show. I want to thank our sponsors again over at BioOptimizers. BioOptimizers.com forward slash shrug saving 20% Sunlight and Saunas. Make sure you mention the Shrugged Collective when you head over to Sunlight.com. And we'll see you guys next week.

Barbell Shrugged - A Mathematical Equation For Chasing Your Dreams w/ Logan Gelbrich — Barbell Shrugged #384

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