Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — Building Fitness Businesses w/ Michael Cazayoux  — 328

Episode Date: August 8, 2018

Michael Cazayoux is co-founder of Brute Strength, and host of Brute Strength Podcast.  At the age of 17, Michael moved from a small town in Louisiana to Utah for drug rehabilitation. It was that experience that led him to fall in love with CrossFit and helping others through coaching and mentoring. Prior to coaching multiple CrossFit Game athletes, Michael competed and became a back-to-back Affiliate World Cup Champion in 2012 and 2013 with his team “Hackspack.”   Michael was recently featured on The Strong Coach  — Being the Steward of Your Client’s Dreams w/ Michael Cazayoux — 6, and on The Bledsoe Show w/ Adee and Michael Cazayoux: Being Courageous in Relationships #83. He is also married to Adee Zukier Cazayoux, who was recently featured on Barbell Shrugged  — Nutrition for CrossFit Athletes w/ Adee Zukier Cazayoux  — 327 and on The Strong Coach — Coaching Culture w/ Adee Cazayoux — 3.   In this episode, we get into Michael’s life journey, from drug addiction to the CrossFit Games, as well as how he  built Brute Strength, the future of Working Against Gravity (@workingagainstgravity), keys to success in building a fitness business, the path to success starts with personal development, and much more.   Enjoy!   – Doug and Anders Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_cazayoux ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.omaxcbd.com/shrugged to save 50%50 off a one-month supply of Stress Remedy, plus free shipping and that 60-day money-back guarantee @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Sharks family, such an awesome weekend hanging out in Madison, Wisconsin, the CrossFit Games. I want to give a very, very, very special shout out to Aaron, Orion, Lorelei. You guys made the FitAid fan experience so awesome. We shot multiple shows in the back. You guys are so awesome. It's the first time I was able to actually meet and hang out with everybody from FitAid and just such a top-notch company, top-notch people. FitAid party was just perfect.

It was awesome. Awesome end to an amazing week. I loved being in Madison. Our hosts, Barrett and Sam, you guys are phenomenal. Make sure if you are in Madison next year for the CrossFit Games or for any other reason, make sure you go to CrossFit Big Dane. They just expanded into a new 15,000 square foot facility. And they've got open gym classes running all day.

Awesome coaching. foot facility and they've got open gym classes running all day awesome coaching and to be able to hang out with the owners all weekend and just see how much they care about the people that are in their gym how much time they're putting into the staff coaching development the systems and just people doing it the right way I got asked multiple times this weekend just how LA compared to Madison. And all I can say is that 10 out of 10 times I would prefer the CrossFit Games to be in Madison. There's something about LA, just another big event going on. And nobody really cares. LA is so spread out.

If you're out there listening to me wondering why the negativity towards LA, it's not negative, it's just a big, big place. And it's very spread out. There's a lot of things going on. Traffic's brutal. But Madison is just this awesome little town. I shouldn't say it's a little town. It's a city.

But it's an awesome place where people genuinely care. And the CrossFit Games Coming does just so much for the economy, small business, the gym owners. And they're truly happy that the CrossFit community is there. And it just seems like such a good fit and such good people. I can't wait to get back next year. Thank you, FitAid. Thank you, Barrett and Sam. Thank you, CrossFit community, everybody that stopped us, took pictures with us.

Man, this is my first time being at the CrossFit Games as the host of Barbell Shrugged, and it's incredible the reefs that this show has and the number of people whose lives are impacted by the information. We walked into dinner on Sunday night after everything was complete and there was a whole bunch of CrossFit headquarter staff in there and it was interesting just knowing that like we're all in this thing together to promote health and wellness and we get such an awesome platform through barbell shrug and the shrug collective to bring information to the crossfit community and crossfit has developed such an amazing brand bringing health and wellness and the sport and with their new initiatives with

crossfit health it just seems like they do a lot of things the right way. There's no such thing as a perfect organization. But they really do spend a ton of time getting better every single year. And it's very, very cool to watch how everything has progressed and the initiatives that they're doing with this gigantic platform that they've built. I can't wait to get back next year and just very, very, very excited and grateful for all the people that we got to hang out with this weekend. Kicking it through the commercials. Come and hang out with us at the program vault. We've got 12 programs in there now. just added a new one um we're gonna get some

barbell shredded up in there soon but three long-term programs tons of three-month-long programs get over to shrug collective.com backslash vault um and if you want to download the muscle gain challenge ebook on basics of putting on mass strength training all that fun stuff get over to musclegainchallenge.com want to thank omax omax has some new products that we're talking about um they just released the game-changing new product called Omax Stress Remedy. It's a triple-action CBD fusion supplement. It helps calm your mind, relax your body, improve sleep, relieve joint pain and inflammation. Along with Omax's fish oil, I personally use Stress Remedy every night

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include mood sleep hormone production nervous and immune system responses. It's also jam-packed with purified amino acids found in green tea leaves that act as effective natural relaxant stimulant alpha waves in the brain. Trust me, this stuff is incredible. Get over to omaxcbd.com backslash shrug for 50% off and a one-month supply. Also want to give a shout-out to Four Sigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com slash shrug. You're going to save 15% off all of the mushroom goodness. We had an awesome show with Taro over at four sigmatic and i love these products my wife is

jamming on the matcha tea i'm learning all kinds of fun stuff about mushrooms these days just how much our body needs to have these things um the adaptogenic properties of mushrooms our ability to stay healthy it's just kind of like a baseline for health in our bodies. Make sure you get to foursigmatic.com backslash shrugged, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com backslash shrugged. Save 15% on your first order and into the show Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm Anders Warner. We're here in Austin, Texas at Onnit Gym. I always want to call this Onnit Academy.

The academy sounds so dope. Where is the Onnit Gym? The academy, I think, isnit Academy. The academy sounds so dope. Where is the Onnit Gym? The academy, I think, is next door. Maybe. Or it's on the internet. We don't know. Yeah, the Onnit Academy is their online division. Yeah, this is their Onnit Gym.

It's not like a whiteboard and a teacher. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Nobody's teaching physics or anything. Okay. Thank God. What up? Nothing. We're hanging out with Doug Larson.

Mr. Strong Coffee, our boy Colton is on the cam. I like how you don't even have a name. You're just Mr. Strong Coffee. I know. You are no longer Adam. I'm no longer Adam. Well, dude, our names, the AV is super hard because I don't know anyone else with the AV. So your name pops up in my phone.

It's like AV is texting you. And I'm like, how did I text myself? How did I do that? What did I say? When did that happen? I've never met anybody with my initials. And I go Von Roth. You've got 12 syllables going on there.

It's a long thing. So we go Strong Coffee, Von Roth. Or just find him at Adam Von Rothfelder on the Googles. All the things. All the things. We're hanging out here. Michael Cashew, you've been in this game so freaking long. Where are we going?

We've got to talk about a little strength and conditioning. You're now doing a bunch of business coaching, business for working against gravity. That is right. That is right. All the things. So what I'm really stoked about is I really enjoy just hearing about the journey. And you were in the crossfit Games for two years you guys won we did you love and 13 killed it

Just kind of the progression through CrossFit and now how how you're taking you know this business approach and helping a lot of fitness Professionals through brute strength through working its gravity and what that looks like for you know mm-hmm I'm also excited to learn about the mindset coaching that you've been really interested in lately. It seems a lot of people, once they get the physical skills more or less handled and those things kind of are second nature, really comes down to mindset. And I'm curious what your philosophies are in that respect. You bet.

Yeah, and I'm excited to kind of continue that conversation that we were having before the show started, which is the sandbags and just kind of seeing where your training has gone since, you know, no longer competing in CrossFit and just kind of where your sustainability and your strength is coming from right now. Let's do it. Yeah. So before we get going, what's a little bit of the background competing in CrossFit? I don't know if that journey starts a little bit before there, starting brute strength, now working against gravity, all the things. Yeah, so in 2009, I started doing CrossFit. I had just come out of drug rehabilitation, and then I ran a marathon,

got really sick of running, and found CrossFit. In 2011, I competed in the games for the first time, and then in 2012 and 2013, we won the CrossFit Games. In 2014, we founded Brute Strength, or co-founded Brute Strength. And that's where it all started for me. So at first, all we did was we were coaching people one-on-one that wanted to compete in the CrossFit Games.

They wanted to go to regionals. They wanted to go to the games. And very quickly, we realized that there aren't that many people out there trying to do that. We branched out into helping a lot of different kinds of people. We started training people

to look better naked or just get stronger or just be fitter for life. I love it. That's awesome. Brute strength, where are they out of exactly? The matrix. You're actually in it right now. Currently, you're there.

You work with Sean from Active Life RX. We do, yeah. Who's somebody I've been talking to recently. Sean is the man. Very smart dude. We brought him on sometime in 2015 kind of the the genesis and the reason why we started the company in the first place is I looked around

and I saw a lot of coaches that were trying to be the expert in every different area of the sport of fitness and I had just come from a strength and conditioning background coaching at LSU, and I was working with football players. And a football player has, you know, a quarterback has his position coach, he has an offensive coordinator, defensive coordinator. They have all of these coaches, these experts, all creating a program together to help these athletes progress as quickly as possible. That didn't exist in the CrossFit space, so we wanted to do that. We wanted to create a team that would collaborate with one another to just stay in their lane

and do the best possible job in all of these disciplines. That's awesome. Yeah. So Sean, back to Sean. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We brought Sean on to be like the injury prevention and movement guy, and he just started auditing all of our programming and making sure we weren't, we didn't have any like discrepancies between pulling and pushing and unilateral versus bilateral. He just made sure that we're building balanced athletes.

Yeah. Biomechanical, like fact checking. Exactly. That's cool. That's awesome. You were talking in your intro. I actually did not know about coming out of the drug rehabilitation and finding CrossFit. What does that transition look like? And maybe a little bit of the backstory, if you're comfortable. Yeah, absolutely. So I left Louisiana where I grew up when I was 17 and went to and went to a wilderness therapy program in Utah. And I spent the next 18 months in a bunch of different therapy

programs and I recovered fully I had one so I ran that marathon and I had a really bad relapse right after because all of a sudden I didn't have any physical goal and I didn't have anything that I was real focused on or anything that was really driving me forward. And I had always been involved in sports and I was a very, I've always been a very type a person. And so all of a sudden I didn't have this goal, this carrot to drive me forward. And I relapsed really, really bad, like way worse than I ever was. Luckily I had a really strong support system. I was still in like a halfway house. So I had a good, I had like good therapist and things like that. And someone introduced me to CrossFit and it was just the, it was perfect timing. I had already recommitted myself to sobriety and to my own

recovery. And then now all of a sudden I had this thing that I just quickly got addicted to, right? Like so many other people. I just, there were so many things that I could strive for mastery towards. I could work towards mastering. And I just got addicted to competing in the gym. Yeah. It played a huge part in my early recovery. I think a lot of people, that addiction thing, I think a lot of people have it. I'm probably one of those people.

Oh, everybody has it. Everybody has it. Most people, it's work. Yeah. Sugar. I spent a lot of time hanging on bars for a lot of people have it. I'm probably one of those people. Everybody has it. Most people, it's work. Yeah. Sugar. I spent a lot of time hanging on bars for a lot. I got really good at that for a long time, and then all of a sudden competing in CrossFit,

and I was like, ooh, there's a different thing. I can use this tool. It's probably a little bit healthier for me. Right. You said hanging out in bars? Yeah. That was like the – I mean, I worked out and trained and all that, but like living for the weekends and stuff.

It's like a very common thing, and it's like, man, if you can just use those skills, you don't have to go to the bar every weekend or you don't have to go down the negative path. You can use that as a positive in your life. It's a really interesting thing. So how did you get to Utah and meet Tommy? So I went – my parents sent me to a wilderness therapy program in the mountains. Yeah. And so I decided to go to college after I graduated from all of the treatment programs and

found CrossFit and I competed against Tommy at some point and I almost beat him. Yeah. And he caught his eye and he said, Hey, you want to come to my gym and start a team? And so that's how it started. Very cool. That's awesome. What did you almost beat him in? It was an event that he put on called Fitness Elevated, and they were all body weight and endurance workouts in the beginning of the day, which is my jam, and then all of the heavy stuff towards the end of the day or the beginning of the day, and so he ended up destroying me.

Like real bad. But I was beating him for long enough to really catch his eye. Well, you guys were in like a little hotbed out there for a long time, and I don't know, is it near the training center, the Olympic training center that he's at? Which, the speed skating center? I don't know. The OTC is in Colorado.

Well, there's one for in Salt Lake City. There's a speed skating center somewhere in Salt Lake City and then a lot of winter sports in Park City. Whatever it was, there was this sweet hotbed that he created out there for a very long time. It wasn't only him. I think we got lucky.

There was a D1 gymnast named Tiffany Hendrickson who's phenomenal. Adrian Conway was a D1 athlete. named tiffany hendrickson who's phenomenal adrian conway was a d1 athlete savage we had all of these d1 athletes just all over salt lake city and when we formed that team we rooted every all of them right yeah and it you know it we all dominant we all leveled each other up and we really pushed each other but yeah tommy was definitely that that leader yeah totally so how do you go from finding crossfit and realizing it's this thing that's going to be kind of the new focus and it gets you out of this this you know dark spot in your life and

then you go from being passionate about it thinking it's a fun thing to do to all of a sudden i'm a two times games champion like what does that path look like yeah it was really really gradual man it was never i can't remember ever deciding, okay, now I'm going, I'm going to take this really seriously or become a professional. I think it was, I started out just like anyone else. I was like last place in the gym every single day. And I said, I just want to beat so-and-so, right? I want to beat like at least one person on the board today. And that turned into, I want to beat five people or 10 people. And at some point in that first year, I got to a place where I was competing against the

best guy in the gym named Rob Schaefer. And I just wanted to beat him every single day. And so it just organically turned into this competing with whoever I was up against. And at some point I met Tommy, he invited Rob and I to move to his gym and we just started a team there. And the first year we were, it was 2011. We had a team of six that placed ninth at the games. And the next year, Tommy said that he wanted to join the team and we were going to recruit as many people as we could to make a super team and so it just happened really organically and then did you ever try to make a run at individual never uh i think mostly because i was just lucky enough to always be around really good teams and then i just never enjoyed doing crossfit for myself as much as for a team i would

never push myself as hard. I remember thinking when you guys went team like multiple years in a row, I was like, oh, they actually figured it out. They're the only people actually making a single dollar doing this thing. Like, they're like, well, let's just do the team, the thing that no one's paying attention to, win it a whole bunch of times, and we'll make more money at this than everyone. Even if it's like five dollars you're

making more money than everyone in the day and back in the day in crossfit i guarantee you that never crossed our mind it crossed my mind i was like they're so smart why am i working so hard right now to do this individual thing actually back then it was yeah right for a college kid that was a ton for me i think we may split like $60,000 the second year. I felt rich. With six people? Yeah. Something like that.

That's more than as a professional fighter. I made less than $10,000 a year for the first four years of professional fighting. Wow. I mean, getting your face pounded in. Like, I made 500 bucks tonight because I won. On your way to the hospital. Totally beat up. I need stitches.

It's going to cost you $5,000 in medical bills. Yeah, about that. When did the coaching piece kick in? And, I mean, almost as soon as I started doing CrossFit, I started coaching classes and then after we won in 2012 I was offered a job at Southern Utah University coaching soccer track and field gymnastics and so I went that route and really that's when I really fell in love with coaching and anatomy and physiology and just learning how the human body works from there I

went on to coach at Louisiana State University, which I grew up just idolizing those guys. So that was a dream come true. Awesome. That's cool. What sports did you work with at LSU? Football, baseball, soccer, volleyball. Were you just in the, not just, but, I mean, were you in the weight room?

Is that kind of like your, that was your home? Yep. That's cool. Yep. So if that was a dream come true, you true, what pulled you away from that eventually? Yeah, that's a great question. So I found that it was super exciting and stimulating, right? I was working with literally the best athletes on the planet.

I mean, a lot of Olympians and people that would go on to play in the NFL and the MLB. Very, very exciting. But at the end of the day, I didn't feel it wasn't very fulfilling to me to take the top 0.001% and make them 0.001% better, right? For me, I wanted to have a I wanted to impact a lot more people than just say 100 football players. I wanted to impact more people. And I wanted to impact a broader range of people. And I also, I think I'm a really shitty employee. I don't like to be told what to do. I don't like politics. I don't like, you know, the whole good old boy mentality where you just have to get in line and just work, work your ass off for 20 years, maybe to a shot i i've never really that's never really

vibed real well for me so uh it made sense for me to try starting my own business it's cool that you know that yeah i mean a lot of people struggle their whole life finding a place and then you're like wait i'm a shitty employee so i better be my own damn boss check i think i had like 32 jobs before i figured that out i was like i'm not good at this working for other people. Maybe it's not the job. It's me. It's me. I'm responsible for this.

I'm actually unhirable. They don't see the value. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm totally unhirable. They don't get it. So that led into Brute Strength, and you're literally working with some of the top CrossFit athletes in the country at that time.

Yes. What does that process look like, and what are you kind of learning along the way there? Learning now? Well, I mean, in the growth from being in the games, coaching, and now all of a sudden you're working with, like, the highest level athletes in the sport at the time. That progression's kind of crazy, and then all of a sudden now you're

having to elevate your game to an even higher level. How do you go from kind of that college piece and where you're at there and then now all of a sudden the exposure at the games? Totally. One of the biggest things I've learned is that whether it's a CrossFit Games champion or an Olympian or it's just like your mom or dad or an average Joe, the training of your mind is absolutely the most important, right?

I love the concept of small hinges swing big doors. The smallest little tweak in your mindset, again, no matter what level you're on, can have an enormous impact on your life and your performance in general. So it's been really fulfilling and gratifying for me as I'm trying to teach my clients how to level up their mindset I have to constantly be working on my own right because I can't teach what I don't know and one of the one of the biggest things that I teach people is that it all starts with self-awareness right we can't change what we're not aware of so

I teach mindfulness I teach different practices for them to start to explore the things that they don't know they don't know yeah and they start to be able to access a larger part of their capabilities I love that what are those practices so what one of the big ones is just journaling so it's one thing to just be caught up in your own head, constantly thinking about what's going on, constantly be caught up in your emotions, and it's another to externalize what you're actually thinking. And through the practice of consistently journaling,

you can kind of build on what you're thinking and you can really explore what's actually going on in your mind, right? So it's a really easy, practical practice. Yeah. The first time I met you, we talked a lot about the meditation piece, and I think we were kind of both going through that journey of, like, learning this process. Is that still something you're after?

A hundred percent, man. I mean, it's one of the fundamentals of what I do to practice or to train my own mind somebody recently asked me on a scale of one to ten how big of an effect do you think meditation actually has on your life and and honestly i think it's like a two or a three right it's it's pretty low if you just take meditation alone right but i think it's the base, again, for all other mindset work, whether it be focus or clarity or whatever that may be. Having a clear mind and the ability to focus and be present is the base of all of it.

Even if it's not like the present piece, just the ability to kind of sit still and just focus on a single thing. I mean, even if I have my computer open and the phone is near me, I can get locked into a lot of work and I feel really good about it. And then I'm like, dude, something cool probably happened on Instagram. I got to check that out. And you don't actually realize how screwy your brain is until you sit still and, like, watch it go wild.

Right. Dude, it's a really interesting process i think when people finally actually get to a point it doesn't matter if like maybe you're getting like five percent better and that's like the total amount that meditation actually will like impact your life but that five percent will at least bring a little bit of awareness to how crazy everything else is so you just become aware so you can be just a tad bit more focused every day. Right. Have you all read the book Deep Work?

Yeah. Love it. Yeah? No, I'm not. It's phenomenal. So one of the biggest things in there is like taking control of your technology because one of the biggest things, one of the biggest obstacles that gets in the way of us being focused and being present is the constant distraction, the notifications, the text messages, all of the shit on our phones that if we allow ourselves to, we're constantly focusing on

the phone, refocusing on what we're doing, focusing on the phone, refocusing on what we're doing. So that's a very tactical way to practice being more present and more focused. One thing that I really like to do is like when we flew out to austin i flew by myself didn't have any team members flying with me didn't have my family with me and i specifically don't get the wi-fi on purpose and so that allows me the opportunity to like be like solitary for like an hour or two at a time now depending on how long the flight is where i where i can just brainstorm or just work on something creative where there's no distractions. I can't check my email.

There's no text messages coming in. My phone's on airplane mode or I'm just not looking at it at all. And I can just sit there and I can journal or I can just make, like, big lists or just brainstorm ideas or, like, think of, like, creative things for the future. But having that condition where I'm on an airplane, I got my headphones in, no one's talking to me, and there's no opportunity for anyone else to get a hold of me, like has that space available for three hours without the option to do anything else. Right.

You can actually get into a flow state. I find it really interesting to try to produce those same conditions as often as possible in life. And it's really difficult when you don't have this, when you're not in a cabin or something like that something like that it can be really difficult a bubble yeah right with with with this you know everything i'm hearing is a lot of this uh did any of this actually i should say come from your time in uh your rehab like with uh like the mindfulness and just kind of was that something that was kind of installed in you on some one the first days in the inpatient treatment that I did was try mindfulness because I learned really early on that I had clinical anxiety. And it showed up as social anxiety and I couldn't sleep and my mind was just constantly going.

The drugs were gone and now my mind was just constantly going. Right. And so they showed it to me, and for the first probably six months, I was like, what the fuck is this mindfulness thing? I'm just thinking the whole time. Because you're like 17, 18 at this time. Exactly. And I'm just pissed at the world, and I felt like I got nothing out of it. But I really cultivated this obsession with my own mind understanding my

own mind and it's led to me just loving to teach other people about it that's awesome i had a brother who went through rehab and i i went through i went to a couple of sessions with him and i noticed that they talked a lot about mindfulness and they took like moments of silence and like you know create thoughts and you know and then write them down and yada yada yada right so as i'm hearing it i'm like that's a great way to um to you know, create thoughts and, you know, and then write them down and yada, yada, yada. So as I'm hearing it, I'm like, that's a great way to, you know, keep yourself in this place, but then to help others, you know, reach a new level. Although they may not be dealing with an addiction, they have a goal, right? And the goal when you have an addiction is to not have, you know, not be addicted to this drug.

So it's like being able just to goal orientate yourself through that mindfulness is awesome. Yeah. You've taken something that was really shitty, and you've just made it really awesome. Right. That's cool. How do you start to implement this stuff into more of like a business setting, I guess?

Business is wild in its own right, but when you're working with companies or working with people that are, I mean, you're running some of the coaching stuff working against gravity are you is this something you guys talk about inside the company of how do we focus how do we create space how does that influence your business in the way that you're coaching people yeah so I'm a firm believer that anything we want to teach our clients we have to teach our teams first right we have to it has to be a top-down approach and about a year and a half ago I started doing these bi-weekly team updates where we have to teach our teams first, right? We have to, it has to be a top-down approach.

And about a year and a half ago, I started doing these bi-weekly team updates where first I'll do some shout-outs to people in the company that are doing really well or they did something awesome for the team. Then I'll talk about like what we're working on immediately, what's kind of out in the future. And then at the end, I will always talk about kind of what's on my mind or the future. And then at the end, I will, I will always talk about kind of

what's on my mind or what I'm learning right now. And that's when I really have started to indoctrinate like our beliefs and, and start to build that culture of what, you know, what we believe in, which is like mindfulness and growth mindset, and just always striving for excellence in every area of our life. So that's been a really tactical way that I've taught our team, you know, what I'm kind of thinking. And then we also started creating just a ton of content via e-mails and all of these things that we start to indoctrinate all of our clients with on any program that they sign up on.

I love it. Carol Dweck, go find that book, Mindset. The Growth Mindset. It's where it's at. And Deep Work. I was going to get Deep Work. Oh, man, it go find that book, Mindset. The Growth Mindset. It's where it's at. And Deep Work. Oh, man. It's one of the best I've read in the last year. It sounds a little bit unplugged a little bit. I mean, in the sense of

just a little, but... I wouldn't compare it to that. It's very, very tactical. Got it. Very tactical. The guy's got another one, So Good They Can't Ignore You. Is that the same? Yeah. Okay. I'll check it out. He's got a nice library in his house. I've seen another one, So Good They Can't Ignore You. Is that the same guy? Yeah.

Okay. I'll check it out. He's got a nice library in his house. I've seen the books. Nice. I can confirm that Anders reads. I feel so smart right now. He's read all the titles.

I've read all the titles. I have a lot of books. I haven't read any of them. But I want to get back into some strength and conditioning. Where's your training at? What are you doing these days for working out? I am very focused on feeling good. Damn.

See, all of us old people, dude. Old? You just turned 35 today. Yeah, but after you lift all the weights. Oh, look at that. It made it into the show. I got him. Got him.

Look at that. Look at that. You get that on camera. 35 today. Damn. Better say happy birthday in the future. Right at that. Look at that. You get that on camera. 35 today. Damn. Better say happy birthday in the future. Right, right, in the future. From the past.

Dude, we all do this CrossFit thing, and you're like, oh, it's really healthy for us, right? We're in great shape, and then you're just broken. Why do I hurt all the time? Why does everything hurt so bad? And I'm definitely still doing CrossFit. I'm using the barbell way less and i'm and i'm hanging on a bar way less yeah i'm just trying not to over pattern things over and over and over and over right i was telling him before we started um i'm really

into heavy sandbags i fucking love them i can go super hard and I don't leave feeling like my joints don't hurt when I'm done. I feel like I just used as much power as I possibly could, and I don't feel I don't hurt. It's not a great tool. I mean, it's a great tool for being in shape, but it's not really a great tool for lifting all the weights. It's really challenging. A 100-pound sandbag is fucking hard. A 100-pound barbell, oh, we can throw that anywhere you want. That's easy.

It's great for total body strength. It would be hard to do bodybuilding with sandbags. It depends where your goals are, though. He wants to argue that. Let's go. You could do it, but it's not very common. What I think is interesting is that we try to use a barbell which is symmetrical, and we're not symmetrical.

So then we try to use a barbell which is symmetrical and we're not symmetrical. So then we try to force symmetry and sandbags and unilateral lifting and that uneven load type stuff actually is more conducive to our asymmetric design. It's actually more functional. It's actually more functional. It definitely seems more functional. And I have the same experience with sandbags

in the sense of I feel less beat beat up you know squatting yet i feel the same amount of like fatigue or the stimulation in my legs or you know carrying a bag or pressing it overhead and like trying to manipulate 100 pounds that's like shifting feels more natural to me than like pressing a barbell that's so fixed totally where it's like my left arm is definitely not equal to my right arm yeah i mean i've tore this thing fixed. Totally. Where it's like my left arm is definitely not equal to my right arm. I mean, I've tore this thing multiple times. So it's like, but you can keep up with the right guy. It's like, not really.

Not totally. You get to hide it with the barbell because it's a good tool. Yeah, totally. I'll tell you what, I'm going through a little bit of a transition where I'm kind of re-realizing that without an external goal, training can be really fucking hard. Without training for regionals or training for some event, it can be hard to just grind away. So I'm definitely moving towards signing up for some kind of intense adventure race

or something. That sounds exciting. Have you seen these new Tough Mudder accents? Injuries are coming. Here you go. Here come the injuries. Back to training again. Go to the Spartan World Championships with us this year.

Oh, that'd be cool. Tell me about it. Go to the Spartan World Championships with us this year. Oh, that'd be cool. Tell me about it. It's the Spartan Race World Championships. Okay, how long is it? Last year we did it. We went to Tahoe. It was like 17 miles, something like that. The first six miles, like you start in the village in Tahoe,

and then you run up past the chairlift. So, like, the first six miles, like, it's uphill the whole fucking way. It took us like two and a half hours. So, nice. It took us a long time. Plus, there's obstacles along the way. Plus, it's uphill the whole fucking way it takes it sounds like it's like two and a half hours so nice it took us a long time plus obstacles along the way uh plus it's in the mountains like you get wet you get fucking super cold they gotta figure out how much to wear as far as clothing and whatnot but i mean we weren't running it fast running it in a group of like six people you know so it takes us hours and hours and hours to do it but phenomenally fun like one of the most

fun things i've ever done plus you get to the top of the fucking mountain and the view is just fucking amazing on the way back down. So, I mean, it's a 17-mile race. It's going to take you hours. That's very endurance-y, you know, way down the spectrum from doing, you know, heavy sandbags. Yeah. But really, really fun.

So we go there. We podcast with a bunch of people while we're there, and then we run the race, and it's a killer time. Hell, yeah. That sounds awesome. That sounds great. Tough Mudder X. Tough Mudder just came out with one, too, called, like, Tough Mudder X.

Yeah. It's like a CrossFit adventure race type thing. My buddy Hunter McIntyre was like, dude, check this out. This is perfect for you. It's not, like, barbell skills at all, but it's, like, a sandbag clean press, and it's a one-mile course with ten stations that are very intense, heavy lifting or, you know, like a wall balls with like a 35 pound ball and you got to get x and then you go to the next station i heard he's like the matt

frazier of that thing yeah yeah he just destroys everyone he invited me up to his canyon and it was like a power move in like five minutes he just destroyed me and i'm like so the next day i'm like let's do some of my movement stuff yeah you know and he's like how the hell do you move like that i'm like i don't know how the hell you run like that he's a big dude too oh yeah 200 pounds 200 five minute miles 200 pound pony uh whatever pony bulk pony love that guy macho man yeah he came out to my house i used to live i was living in san diego like off the um a little bit away from the coast in the hills we took the 85 pound giant camber bar from my gym in my garage and like went running in the hills with it for for hours and he was just like i'll carry it nice we're all trying to keep

up with him always carrying this big fucking bar like like taking it through rivers and creeks no shit dude he was all about it yeah i love it he's just one of the dudes that's ready to go at all times well he started training for the crossfit games like last year and he was like i'm not even He was all about it. Yeah. I love it. He's just one of those dudes that's ready to go at all times. Well, he started training for the CrossFit Games last year, and he was like, I'm not even going to really do the CrossFit. I'm just going to do the lifts, and then I'm going to try to compete. He's like, and then he goes, wait, this is way harder than I thought. Yeah, that'd be a wake-up call.

He can't lift the weights that those guys are doing, but he's got a big engine. Yeah, he's an awesome dude. We went to a retreat in his house or something, and it was like, let's start this off with a 12-mile hike. And I was like, where's the retreat part? Are we going to talk? Is anyone going to have a goal, or are we just going to go try and bury ourselves in the Malibu Mountains?

So weird. So what does a typical sandbag workout look like for you? So a couple hours, actually right before I came here, I did 800-meter run, 45 burpee pull-ups, 30 cleans with the bag. It looks like you got a fresh pump. Right? Right? I had to. I had to.

I was like, who's the dude with the arms walking in the gym? It was our next guest. I hope we get to interview him. Today's your day. It's not a full workout exclusively with sandbags. You're working in the Metcons. Exactly. That's the hardest part of the workout, for sure.

When you're training like that, do you do accessory lifting? Do you get in some bicep curls? Do you get in some triceps? Honestly, no, man. I'm in and out right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's not ideal, but that's how it is right now. Yeah.

Your elbows feel good? I feel great. Awesome. I feel awesome, dude. First time, injury-free, pain-free. Yeah. Right on. When we get back, I want to dig into a little bit of the nutrition stuff you're doing with

Working Against Gravity. Let's do it. All right, on. Go. Hope you guys are enjoying the show. I want to remind you to get over MuscleGainChallenge.com. We have some free e-books over there. How to Get Strong Now.

If you are interested in a mass building program that we know works, we have had thousands of athletes go through the Muscle Gain Challenge. And this e-book is the kick starter to the to the program so make sure you get over to musclegainchallenge.com it is one of 11 programs 12 programs now that you will have inside the program vault over at shrugcollective.com backslash vault but get over to the muscle gain challenge download how to get strong nowcleGainChallenge.com. And you're also going to get a sweet t-shirt in month two of joining the program vault, StrugCollector.com backslash vault for access to the program vault

and MuscleGainChallenge.com to download How to Get Strong Now. Putting on some mass, getting strong. It's going to be awesome. Want to say thank you to our sponsors Organifi. They've been with us all year. We love them. They're a part of my morning routine. They're not even a part of my morning routine. They're just a part of my morning routine, my midday routine, my night routine. I just can't. This stuff is in my fridge. It's delicious. It gives me all the things that I need. You should do this.

It makes you healthier. People need to be healthier. I also just don't eat all the vegetables in my life. I was at the CrossFit Games for five days last week. How many vegetables do you think I ate? Yeah, you're right. Not many. Not many at all.

But you know what I did have? I had my orange or my orange drink. I had my green drink to go packets and they make me feel better just mix them up shake them in a little water if possible if you got some coconut water near you your life's gonna get even better it's gonna make make things more delicious just put the green drink in shake it up in a little shaker bottle organifi.com backslash shrug 20% using the coupon code shrugged. Yeah.

Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. I'm glad we hashed that out. We're still here. We were handling some real business during the break. We had to build our own confidence back. We got some food. We're hanging out with Michael. Michael Cashew.

Michael. Michael. My little sister called me that. Really? She's a good, like, one or two. Nice. At least I'm on that level. That's what Ashley Bledsoe.

He just called you a girl. Mike Bledsoe's wife calls him Michael. Michael. Who does? Black Sally? Oh, Ashley. Yeah, Michael. Oh, she's got the Oklahoma accent going.

She's from Texas. Yeah, yeah. Her parents live in Oklahoma now, but, yeah, she's from Texas. So she says things like that. She's got that draw. Curse lot. Oh. Curse lot. Yeah, yeah. I love that. She's from Texas. Yeah, yeah. Her parents live in Oklahoma now, but, yeah, she's from Texas. So she says things like that. She's got that draw. Got that draw. Curse lot. Oh.

Curse lot. Yeah, yeah. I love that. She's awesome. Right on, man. Well, one thing that I'm really stoked to talk to you about is you've built a couple pretty good-sized online businesses here. From Brute Strength to now you're working with Working Against Gravity. Got that right. Dude, I just recorded our first audio book,

and I had to say working against gravity over and over and over. Coming from the south, that's fucking hard. Yeah. I just want to draw and just shorten them all. Who's called working against gravity? Weg. Working against gravity. Working.

Working. Working against gravity. But, Rydell, what's the deal there? You got an audio book? That's dope. Against gravity. Working. Working. You're working against gravity. What's the deal there? You got an audio book? That's dope. Yeah, we're turning this really huge piece of free content into an audio version that we're putting on Amazon. So it's our entire philosophy on tracking macros, on all of the education, tips, tricks, a bunch of different stuff on audio. It will be out in the next month.

This is for working against gravity or this is for working against gravity? Working against gravity. W-H-E. Wag. Wag. Carbohydrates. Wag. It's wag from now on.

Yeah, so you've been kind of at the top of the food chain in both of these companies and lots of employees, lots of coaches. Kind of starting at the beginning, what are some of the lessons learned building those? And we're definitely going to get in managing these things and continuing to keep what was so cool about, I remember when Brute Strength hit, it was just like this really cool culture that you guys created. And Adi's got the same thing going. You guys are doing this together now. But maintaining culture as things grow to a much larger business

and maintaining that same culture is a really difficult thing. But how did that start at Brute? What are some of the lessons learned that you're using now at WAG, working against gravity? Yeah, just to be clear, we grew these companies independently of each other. Well, we met really early on when we started them. Matchmaker. But I wasn't exactly the barbell matchmaker.

The D always reminds me. Exactly. We owe you so much. Yeah, so we met very early on when we started the companies, but I didn't join the WA wag team until about six months ago with that said uh how do we build culture i think one of the things that we've been really good about is understanding our own strengths and weaknesses right i think a lot of entrepreneurs and this is really well summarized in the book, The E-Myth, entrepreneurs make the mistake of trying to do everything themselves, right? They start out as the CrossFit coach and the box owner and the accountant and the manager.

They try to do everything themselves. We are really good at understanding what we're good at and hopefully better at understanding what we suck at and finding talented people that can do an even better job at all of these things that we're not good at than us so it's just it's been a process right we as as soon as we can afford to hire out something that we suck at we do for me For me, I'm a generalist, right? Physically, I'm a generalist. That's why I was good at CrossFit, and I'm a generalist when it comes to business.

I don't consider myself great at anything, so I end up hiring out just about everything. I've learned that I'm really good at providing energy for new projects, getting things started, and I feel really confident making decisions. So when we don't know what to do, I feel confident providing the vision and the direction. Most other things, somebody else does. Anything that has to do with organization or attention to detail, I can't touch it, right? and most people get stuck spending 90% of their energy doing 20% of the activities such as like for in my case I would spend all of that energy trying to organize

or keep things like pay attention to details and all of that kind of stuff as soon as I started hiring out those types of things like a director operations, so much of my energy freed up so that I can spend more time communicating with the team, leading the team, doing the podcast, reaching out to our clients, all of that stuff that I really, really love to do. Right on. And the managing of employees is never an easy thing, especially coaches. And I know that in working against gravity, you guys have kind of created the structure with your coaches where they even have a specialty, whether it's a personality, a methodology that they're using. But how do you guys kind of go about that with your coaches in the training process that you put them through to get them up to speed so that you actually are able to trust them getting taking on their own clients another thing i want to clear this up we are we're

moving towards where we want coaches with different specialties so we want just as we did with brood right we have all these experts in different fields we want to create a team where we have an expert in gut health we have an expert in micronutrients which is a huge topic yeah but we want all a team of these experts right now what we are experts on is behavior change right and and lifestyle change and so we have a very rigorous training program that takes about eight weeks to eight to twelve weeks to go through and it's a four-stage program that all of our coaches go through and they they're they basically get their hand held by one of our head coaches throughout the whole process and they get feedback on how they're doing whether it be on

their writing or the actual content of what they're saying and their sample questions and they just get a ton of feedback on how to be a better coach. Nice. Yeah, and that's not easy because you guys are – everything you guys do is remote. Everything's online. So your coaches are scattered around the country, maybe even the world. Yes, the world. We have people in, like, Germany and Canada and Mexico.

International fame. But, you know, how do we – or we or like how does that process look because everything being online i think a lot of people get into the online business and they think like all of the people are out here we can service all of them somebody's gonna want to buy it but really dialing that in and then even with your coaches like it's really challenging to find really quality people and there's something to being in a room one of the reasons we like and doing these interviews in person is like there's something to being in a room. One of the reasons we like doing these interviews in person is there's something to being in a room and feeling that energy and feeling that commitment level to actually caring about the product

and what they're putting into being a part of your team. How do you guys decide and make those really hard decisions when it comes to personnel? A couple things. One, I think Adi and I learned this from you guys. Like the best place to hire is from within. So what we started to do is just blast our email list saying we're hiring a marketing guy, we're hiring a coach.

And at WAG, we've got a list of well over 100 people always ready to start the application process from people that have had their lives changed by the program like there's no better candidate for it they know the culture they understand it and they are so passionate about what we do because they just lost a bunch of weight or they changed their relationship with food or their marriage or whatever it is that they got by being a client, now they're just fired up. They're potentially the best employees on the planet. They're already committed to that process.

We do some other cool things like we make people send in a video as part of their application, and that weeds out a lot of people that really don't care. We have some fun questions like that. And then in terms of how to create culture without actually being in person, that's something that we're constantly working on. There's no substitute for the things that happen in between the meetings and, and, um, like productive sessions. So I think one of the biggest things that builds

trust in relationships is things that happen at lunch or at the coffee machine or whatever. Just talking about life, catching up. We don't get a lot of that. One thing that's starting to happen is we're having, I don't know, what's the opposite of an exodus?

We're having a lot of people. The opposite of exodus. We're having a lot of people. Ins opposite of Exodus. We're having a lot of people. Insidious. No, no, no. Making a word up. Making a shit up. Snoop Dogg over here.

So we're having a lot of our staff just organically start to move to town. And on Mondays, the whole team comes to our house and we just work. We don't have any, like, formal trust-building exercises or anything, but we're getting to know each other better, and we're actually forming trust. And it's been amazing. That probably adds an element of fun to what you do. Running an online company, if you're just on your laptop at a coffee shop

by yourself all day long, every day that shit gets old really quick. The voice of experience over here that is not fun for very long. laptop at a coffee shop by yourself all day long every day that shit gets old really quick absolutely the voice of experience over here that that is not fun for very long yeah like having your team around it really is nice so what we've what we started to hear and i can definitely this definitely resonates with me is that everybody's starting to feel a little bit lonely because they're at home they don't they're not interacting with people on a daily basis and so they're missing something in their lives so we're definitely encouraging people to move closer to us yeah yeah it's interesting because you there's i've i'm friends with a couple of friends with a couple people who

own companies that they have you know uh satellite employees just everywhere yep and building that culture is challenging have you guys ever uh like like big like group meetups you know like in the future like where you just uh put together a whole summit type thing yeah we do one every single year in austin oh and people get together and it's you would think it's like a family reunion these people fucking love each other that's awesome it is so cool to be a part of. I have one employee, and she lives in Washington. I'm in Venice.

And she's like, I feel like I'm on an island out here. But yet, when I call her, instead of email her, she'll be like, text me. Like, right? No, really? Don't talk to me. No, pretty much. It's kind of like, this isn't as yeah by you having a conversation with me like this conversation is longer than a 30 second email read yeah where then i could execute i'm like well then don't tell me you're on an island right you know like i mean if you want engagement i'm giving you

engagement i'm calling you yeah i feel like you just gotta you gotta call him anyway yeah yeah yeah oh i'm not stopping we're catching up right now whether you like it or not because i feel like on an island right i mean i'm sure you do too at some times. Totally, totally. Doing our team with key team members, I set up a weekly call where we talk for 30 minutes to an hour once a week no matter what. It doesn't matter if we have something to talk about. Yeah. That has been enormously helpful for our company.

Yeah. When you called me, it made me feel super good. Yeah, totally. You called me and he was like, yeah, I feel like we should talk once a week a week and i'm like this is what it's like to be on a team again yeah yeah you lose that just hang out vibe and everything just becomes such a work conversation exactly and i think the majority of the people pretty much everyone i've ever worked with was some sort of gym relationship and we're like we should like, we should do this. We should make this cooler.

How do we make it cooler? Let's go into business together. By the way, you can do that with people that aren't on your business team. Like, I do that with my little brother. Oh, yeah. He lives in Australia. We talk once a week. Got to check in.

Do y'all have it set on the schedule at the same time? Set time. That's awesome. Every week. That's the brother that we just met at the Naval? Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, the Naval Yard.

Yeah, that's right. Really nice guy. That's cool. That's very cool that you do that. People sometimes are a little shocked. There was this great meme where it was like the stages of someone calling you, right? Where in a time where everybody texts, it was kind of like the stages of what's going on in your mind, like these seven stages of like, oh, no, I don't want to talk to this person.

Oh, no, why are they calling? Right, it was like all these kind of denial things. And then it was like, I'm not picking it up. Where's the last one? Or it was like, text them, call me, or text me. You know, like, text them, text me. Can't talk now. Yeah, yeah, can't talk now kind of thing.

It's like if someone calls you, you don't pick up, and they leave you a voicemail, you're like, what? Why didn't you just hang up the phone and text me? This is an emergency. This is America 2018. I turned my voicemail off years ago. I just don't do it. Yeah, you don't have it at all.

I do not do voicemail. If someone calls me and they don't pick up and they don't text me, they're not my friend. Or they didn't need me. They don't know me. Mine literally says, send me a text. I don't know. Don they don't text me. They're not my friend. Or they didn't need me. They don't know me. Mine literally says, send me a text. I don't know. Don't leave a voicemail.

I'm going to delete it. Right. Or not check it. You said you're kind of working on the higher vision side of working against gravity. What does that look like? And, you know, where are you guys going to be in five years? Or what is kind of the big vision? Yeah, man.

Our goal is by 2020, the Olympics, we want 20,000 clients, and we want the affiliate program that we're building to be in every CrossFit gym in the country. Awesome. All of them. That's an amazing goal to have. All of them. There you go.

What does that process look like building the affiliate side? Well, right now it looks like we just launched it, and we're selecting five people to test it out so that when it goes public, there aren't like. So we know that things are going to break. We want to test it out with a smaller group first so that it doesn't break with a lot of people all at once. So we're going through that right now. And I'm fired up about it. We have a lot.

We have a ton of new. Like at first we were just going to give them a little bit of marketing materials. And now we have like a huge social media package and email package that they can just use to promote the program. And, I mean, the coaching side of it we feel incredibly confident about because it's the same exact one that our coaches go through. People love the interaction that they get with their coaches, so now we're going to just give it to gyms. Is there a rollout plan? And so five, people that are listening that may be owning gyms,

it's a really good idea sometimes to start small, even though we all think, man, how are we going to get to this place where we can pay ourselves, or how do we grow and get to 300 members so quickly? It's like, well, you're also going to fail a lot along the way and learning those lessons while you're small is a lot easier than learning them when there's 300 people or 500 coaches or wherever the hell you go how many coaches are you guys expecting when you're at 20 000 people oh shit putting me on the spot that would would be, I think, 250. It's a big number.

Yeah. There's a lot of systems in place to keep 250 coaches happy. I don't think that part will be the obstacle at all. It's the marketing. For almost three years, we did very, very little marketing, zero paid marketing, and now there's a ton of competition in the space. There's so many new businesses, so we actually have to do some marketing to grow and it's super fun but the the management side i feel super confident in yeah when you said you have oh i'm sorry and you said you have so many employees

that are i mean not employees but like people in waiting almost that want to just work for you yes where like right now your your wife said that you're somewhere around like 28, 28 coaches. Exactly. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a great problem to have. Right. Oh, we have a bunch of people that are awesome that want to work for us and have great success stories of their own from us.

Yeah, that's an awesome thing. And the quality piece, that is something, that's like a superpower of Adi's, right? Where we could grow much, much more quickly, you know, surprising to most people, but we could grow much much more quickly um you know surprising to most people but we could grow more quickly and she is constantly holding us back because she wants the quality to be yeah through the fucking roof right and that's why we get the rave reviews that we get it's because of that that commitment to serving people yeah it's a really challenging process as a business owner to not grow as fast as you can

because you see those revenue dollars come in, but the problems on the back end of that can become almost insurmountable if it's systemically rooted and there's a big problem getting people into or in that scaling model. Right. I compliment her, praise her on this all the time, where I tell her she's one of the most ethical people that I've ever met. The decisions that she makes for our clients and for the for our team are just she's always looking for what's the best for them. You know, it's really cool to be a part of. Yeah. So what does that look like for the affiliate owner?

Which part for the gym owner? Which part? For the gym owner that takes on your program, like what does it look like for them? Like what's the benefit to them and to their clients? So the number one – To the athletes that are already in their gym. And y'all can speak to this. I believe that the number one issue that CrossFit gym owners have – no, that's not the thing. So people start doing CrossFit and what do they want? They want to change their bodies. So they have the fitness side of it,

but they also need some kind of advice on their nutrition, right? And what CrossFit gym owners have at their disposal right now is some knowledge, but not a system to give to their clients right so what we're giving them is a system to be able to coach their clients to have a better relationship with food and to reach their goals so much more quickly we've always heard we've all heard of some in some way that abs are made in the kitchen right or 90 of what you look like is in the kitchen. So we're giving people the tools to help people change their relationship to food. So is it the coaches at the gym that are doing the coaching or is it still your coaches? So the gym will provide a coach.

We will train the coach. We will give them the marketing materials. We will give them the software to use. And then we'll just give them a bunch of ongoing support to help them coach their clients. So they'll have an app to use? Yeah, so we rolled out an app called Seismic about a year ago, which handles all of the communication between coach and client. Oh, yeah, Adi mentioned that on her show.

So, I mean, it just makes it stupid easy to do everything that we do. And now MyFitnessPal is connected with our app, herschel so i mean it just makes it stupid easy to do everything that we do and now my fitness pal is connected with our app so they weigh and measure their food they log it and then it goes straight to their coach their coach checks them in gives them some feedback gives them some tips and then they're just crushing it that's cool do you guys ever do any uh type of um like you'll see with some of these nutritional companies and you know i don't know if it's bad or good like it can be weighed in on but when they do these um you know transformation competitions to kind of like create more like culture into the group right and they're like hey we have all these people and like the people with the best body composition you know in the

next 30 days that have x percentage like we're going to give x to do you guys ever do things like that to try to grow your your well i mean she holds it back from growing so maybe not but is that something you guys ever do is that or if if not why not kind of thing right uh actually no and we probably never will yeah we're trying to help people change their relationship with food forever. Right. And so what we found is if people work towards a 60 day or a 90 day goal, they work really, really hard, but somewhere in their mind, they're thinking,

okay, at the end of this, I can go and smash them, you know, right. Enormous amount of pizza and ice cream and throw it out the window. And maybe they're not conscious of the fact that they're going to throw it out.

But when that carrot is no longer there, then they are no longer, they don't have those habits anymore. So we want to take out that external motivation and just look at, like, what are the smallest little behavior changes that we can make that you can maintain no matter what life throws at you, no matter if you're on vacation, you're stressed at work, or everything is going your way and you're in routine that's awesome i've always i've always kind of felt negative against those competitions right because i felt the same way because it does create that and it's like not everybody has the next thing come on their door like seconds later

like you see like the rock after he wraps a movie, he eats, you know, like whatever, like a pile of pancakes, French toast and like pizza and stuff like after the wrap. And then he, well, he has another movie to get ready for. So he's got to, you know, get back on the thing where somebody else. And I think he might be using some supplements to help him. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just turn it all into muscle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

I don't know what it is. He funnels it. I don't know what it is. Progenics. There it is. That's the one. It's definitely progenics. Really, yeah. That's the one. It's definitely Progenics. Really, yeah.

Proud sponsor of the CrossFit Games. I think it's nighttime casein protein that he's got going. Type A1. The stuff that doesn't digest well. That's awesome. Right on, man. This has been a lot of fun. Yeah, likewise.

I got to meet you, hang out in person. It's an honor to finally be on the show. As well. Where can people find you? You can find me at MichaelKaju on Instagram. I haven't been on there in months, but you can go and look at all the pictures of me.

You can look at my history. How do you spell that last name? C-A-Z-A Y-O-U-X. You can find all of the training programs at BruteStrengthTraining.com and all the nutrition stuff at WorkingAgainstGravity.com. And if you're interested in the affiliate program,

email me at affiliate at WorkingAgainstGravity.com. Damn, that's a mouthful. You did a great job. And you got rid of that southern draw. It's really hitting home right now on their drive to work. Smooth talking. I like that. Mr. Strong Coffee, Adam Von Rothfelder, AVR, Bob Roth, all of the things.

Tell us about some delicious coffee. It's delicious. That's all you need. You're done. Drink it. Drink it. Yeah, that's all you need to know. I mean, it's great for you.

It tastes great and mixes easily, and it's convenient, and it's got all the things you need. I love it. When I think about it, I don't think about it as coffee specifically. It's like a you. It tastes great and mixes easily and it's convenient and it's got all the things you need. I love it. When I think about it, I don't think about it as coffee specifically. It's like a meal replacement slash coffee. Yeah. You know, one of the terms or the thoughts that, like, goes in my brain a lot is the idea of sophisticated energy or nutritional energy.

That's sexy. Yeah. Sophisticated energy. There's a ton. Yeah. Well, there's, like, this interesting thing that happens between, like happens between like the age of like 18 and 23 where, you know, walking in to a meeting with a Red Bull may not be as sophisticated as walking in with like a coffee, right? So then like the guy that's like 40 looks at you like you're a just coffee because it's, you know, in my opinion, a little subpar to the idea of, like, sustainability of energy because you constantly need it because your body burns it off so fast. So, yeah, so it was just the idea of combining some science with some whole food nutrition

and making it taste really good. I totally co-sign on that because every time I see somebody drinking a monster energy drink, I think what are you, nine? Why are you seven years old right now? You know that's not good. You're making a terrible decision. It even comes in like that. I bet you smoke cigarettes.

Do y'all not go on road trips and grab a monster every now and then? No, never. No. Wait, do you? I don't know how many hours I would have to be driving monster every now and then? No, never. No. Wait, do you? I'm out. Hold on. Leave the microphone. They're expensive.

I don't know how many hours I would have to be driving in order to think that was, like, an acceptable decision. Starbucks is open all the time. Middle of nowhere in Texas. There's probably more monster energy drinks than Starbucks in the middle. It's possible. And what you were saying, I mean, like, we're all saying here is like time is an issue. You know, and like we waste so much time standing in lines where it was like, damn, like I just want to have the thing that tastes awesome and makes me feel great like in five seconds at my house.

Bam. I like that you said that you threw some science in there. Yeah. I love it. The science in the drink. Yeah. Sprinkled on top. Sprinkle a little science in there and you can check it out. Science in the drink. Yeah. And you sprinkled on top. Sprinkle a little science in there and you can check it out.

For those of you at home, that's science. That is. You can taste it. Yeah. You can taste it. Come taste our science. Oh, man. Doug Larson, tell us about you.

Yeah, yeah. Not much to say. All I ever say at the end of the show is follow me on Instagram, Douglas E. Larson. I love it. If you want to come hang out with me, I'm at AndersVarner on all the things. But more importantly, like, subscribe, find us on YouTube, get into iTunes, leave us a positive comment.

And I read them, and I'm emotional, so I need the positivity from you. You like that? A vulnerable side. Don't leave me any constructive feedback. Praise me. Just tell me I'm awesome. iTunes, YouTube, subscribe, like, share with a friend. See you next Wednesday.

Yeah, yeah. Shrug family, hope you love the show. Once again, make sure you get over to shrugcollective.com backslash vault. Get signed up for the program vault. Want to give a shout out to Organifi. Organifi.com backslash shrugged. Save 20% on all products using the coupon code shrugged. Also, foursigmatic, F-O-U-R-S-I-G-M-A-T-I-C.com backslash shrugged.

Foursigmatic.com backslash shrugged. Saving 15% on your first order. And omaxcbd.com backslash shrugged, free 60-day trial, 50% off your first order. I love this stuff. Make sure you get in there, and there's a 60-day money-back guarantee. So use the products, no risk. omaxcbd.com backslash shrug for 50% off your first purchase, 60-day money get back guarantee,

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