Barbell Shrugged - Barbell Shrugged  — Controversy, CrossFit, and Future w/ Russell Berger

Episode Date: June 9, 2018

LGBTQ controversy How Russell found CrossFit Gym jones and the black box Affiliate growth and CrossFit business model The future of CrossFit in fitness 

Shrugged family, this is Anders Varner, normally the host of Barbell Shrugged with my main man, Mr. Doug Larson. Today we are not on the show together. We have a special guest. When I took this job over six months ago, becoming the host of Barbell Shrugged was a single piece of it. On a larger level, I've also become the program director at the Shrug Collective. And with that, my intentions for the Shrug Collective are to ensure that Barbell Shrugged

and the Shrug Collective are and will always remain at the center of the conversation for all things strength conditioning. This network and these people have all kind of built our names through the world of CrossFit. It's incredibly important to us. It's been the education system that's taught us how to be great coaches, entrepreneurs, and to find ourselves in the world. CrossFit's at an interesting spot right now. Barbell Shrug's at an interesting spot. The Shrug Collective's in an interesting spot right now. Barbell shrugs at an interesting spot. The shrug collectives in an interesting spot. We CrossFit has, has fired Russell Berger for a tweet that he made in response to a gym owner canceling an event for pride and his comments about the LGBTQ community community, have landed him unemployed, you could call it. I wanted to interview him. I feel like he's a massive part of the CrossFit story. His rise from relatively unknown athlete to becoming

kind of the face of affiliates and over the last 10 years the changes that have gone on in CrossFit and the messaging whether you agree with it or don't in large part has been because of Russell Berger. I think it's an incredibly important character in the story of strength conditioning in 2018. Really for the last 10 years he's played a very integral role in CrossFit. And I think that it's important that we have the conversation. Your opinion on what he said is completely up to you. You're entitled to that opinion. Me personally, I just stay away from it. I just want to hear the conversation. I want to facilitate a place where people are allowed to talk that are in the strength conditioning world.

And I think that it's an important place that Barbell Shrugged has in strength and conditioning that we're able to gain the trust of this community, the trust of the entire strength conditioning world, and be able to facilitate a place where people can share their voice. I think one of the biggest things that I've learned in my life is that I don't, I've stopped believing in right and wrong. I don't think that there's one right way to train people. I don't think that there's wrong ways to train people. I think that everyone's kind of living in this world and they're trying to be the best people that they can be based on the circumstances that they've been handed. I don't know if Russell Berger is an awful human being. I don't think that what he said is great for a lot

of people. I don't think that what he stands for in a lot of areas of his life really meshes with a lot of people's opinions of that community. I'm not really here to judge Russell Berger on what he said or his beliefs, but I think that his role in strength conditioning and the growth of CrossFit is really important. This interview is important to me. I think that we want to be the center of the strength and conditioning world. We're forever grateful for CrossFit. It's literally been the education system that's allowed us to be strength coaches, to be entrepreneurs, to be able to be free thinking, to be able to create systems in our brains that allow us to help other people.

I don't think Russell Berger falls outside of that realm. I think that he had a moment in which he voiced his opinion and he attached a company to that opinion. And because of it, he doesn't have a job today. And to discredit the last 10 years of work because of 140 characters on Twitter, in a way doesn't seem fair. It doesn't mean I agree with him, but it also doesn't seem fair to me. I appreciate you tuning in. I appreciate everybody having an open mind. There's no sponsors on this. There's no reads. There's no anything. This is just a conversation with somebody that is in an interesting spot and a very interesting transition. And when we're in these transitioning moments,

we have the opportunity to listen. And whether you agree or disagree, that probably isn't the most important part. The most important part is that we're able to facilitate conversations and spread ideas and react to them based on what your core beliefs are and the way that you perceive the world based on your experiences and beliefs. I appreciate you being a part of this. I love having this voice. I love the fact that Barbell Shrugged is, has been, and will always remain at the very epicenter of strength and conditioning, and that's going nowhere. We're going to be having

all of the conversations with all of the people that matter, and this is one that is, I think, important to the strength and conditioning and CrossFit community. So thank you for tuning in and I hope you enjoy. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. My name is Anders Varner. I am on a solo mission today. No Doug Larson, our guest today. We are doing this, we usually are in person doing these, but due to some circumstances, this gigantic country we live in, Russell Berger is joining us, and you are in Alabama, right? Yeah, that's right. North Alabama. Right on. And I am in San Diego, so we are not in the same room together, which is the normal way

in which we are doing this, and Doug Larson is in Memphis, Tennessee. So with the time-sensitive nature of today's conversation, all the things that are going on with you, we're loading up the internet here and we're recording this, so a little bit different feel, but I'm excited to talk to you. We talked a little bit pre-show. I started CrossFit in 2006 and started to hear your name significantly more around the 2009 timeframe. And you've been an integral role just in CrossFit as a whole, kind of, I don't want to say enforcement,

even though sometimes that felt like what was going on. But a lot of the ideology and a lot of the, you know, when sometimes when people would ask who the Russells were, I would just refer to you guys as soldier number one. Anytime there was a message or someone that needed to be kind of knocked off their pedestal a little bit, or some ideologies brought to the forefront of the CrossFit community. It seemed like you specifically and the Russells as a whole kind of led that conversation.

Your name has come up clearly being dismissed by CrossFit. And I just want to read that quote and have it lead into a larger conversation of CrossFit because I think that what has happened recently is just, it would be terrible if people didn't know the full story of who you were and just saw this little piece. And at the same time, I think it's a really good framework for kind of understanding what is CrossFit. I think that there's nobody better to answer kind of where the growth and where it's going,

where it's been, and how the role that you've played in all of those pieces. But first, welcome to the show. Well, yeah, thanks for having me. Thanks for that intro. When you say you want people to understand who I was, it sounds like I'm dead. Yeah, well, you're still here. This is maybe the first step of the next chapter. Yeah, that's exactly right. But yeah, thank you for having me. I'm the next, maybe the first step of the next chapter. Yeah, that's exactly right. But yeah, thank you for having me. I'm happy to be on the show. This is great. So the tweet that went out, and I really don't want to spend much time on the specific tweet, the quote. I think we're all kind of entitled to our own belief system and however we would like to go about communicating with people.

So the tweet goes out. It reads, thank you, CrossFit Infiltrate, for standing by your convictions and refusing to celebrate sin by hosting the Indie Pride workout. The intolerance of the LGBTQ ideology towards any alternative views is mind-blowing. Hashtag CrossFit. And the piece that is interesting to me about that is if, you know, I owned a gym for six years. I did CrossFit for 10, 11 years. And the number of people that have walked up to me and said, what is CrossFit? Has to be in the thousands by now. And if I was an alien that walked onto planet earth and found this Twitter thing and found Russell Berger and found this tweet, and I looked at this and said, what is CrossFit? It looks like CrossFit is a social, political thing.

And I guess the way that I want to start this is just in your opinion now, 10, 11, 12 years later, however long it's been, what is CrossFit to you? You know, my favorite way to answer that question is, is actually a way that, uh, Greg Glassman answers the question, uh, which is come to my gym at 6am tomorrow and let me show you, you know, I think it, I think it's something that really has to be communicated through experience. Um, but you know, the, the fundamental definition is that it's constantly varied functional movement done at high intensity. But what we've come to recognize it as and realize what it is, is a life changing, life saving health and fitness technology that's really revolutionizing and changing the way that people treat their bodies and the way they eat. And, uh, not just in America worldwide. Um, of course you can't separate that from the community

aspect either. Uh, you know, CrossFit is a thriving community of people from all walks of life that are united by the fact that we all need the same thing. You know, we all need health and fitness. Yeah. And when, whenever you have a group of people brought together in a community like that, you're, you're inevitably going to have moral and political and ethical issues come up. Um, and I think this is just a reflection of that. Uh, and the tweet being, you know, sort of an overlap in both the CrossFit

world and the affiliates who I spent years defending and my personal religious views and the kind of thing that I would tend to comment on as a outspoken pastor and defender of the Christian faith. And when those two worlds collide, it created a pretty unique situation for sure. Yeah. When did you get involved in CrossFit? Because I like to tell people, even though I have no basis for this number, that I was somewhere inside the first 2,000 people that started this crazy thing. And I think you are inside that 2000 as well. So what, what year did you find it and kind of where, how did you get involved in this? I first heard about CrossFit from a guy who I was in ranger school with. We were literally like in

the swamp and talking about what we were going to do when we graduated, which is just the only thing you ever talk about in ranger school because it takes your mind off what you're going through. And one of the things we were talking about was how we were just going to get just ripped. We were going to get super fit because we were watching our bodies waft away. I'm not a big guy, and I think I probably weighed 118 pounds when I left mountain phase of ranger school. We wanted to get fit and he'd heard about this program called CrossFit. And when I actually got out of ranger school and got to where I could sleep and eat in a normal way

again, I started trying it. I googled CrossFit.com and me and a buddy saw this workout of the day. It was this thing called Murph. And August of 2005, I ran to a pull-up bar that I knew was roughly a mile away from my barracks. And I thought, oh yeah, I'll knock this out, 100 pull-ups. Well, the Army PT test makes you get off the bar at 20 pull-ups. So I'd never done more than 20 pull-ups. And so I did 20 pull-ups unbroken and dropped down and shook my hands out. And then I did like two pull-ups and then I did one pull-up and then I waited five minutes and did one more pull-up. And then I walked home and I was like,

this is the stupidest thing I've ever done. Clearly a joke and I quit. I decided I was never going to do it again. Decided I wasn't going to go out that easy and kind of tried a couple more workouts over the next couple of weeks and then I got hooked. That's awesome. We all have some weird story of getting our ass handed to us on the first day um so when does when does crossfit become something so you know we always we either

joke ourselves or get joked on by others of this thing being a cult. And the way those things usually work is the hardest working people that want to be the best at this thing, dedicate their lives to it. And they work their way as close to, in this case, it would be Greg Glassman. When did that start to become maybe something you were interested in? Like, there's the affiliate owners who have dedicated, you know, their lives to coaching and all of this, and then you get to the level one people. And then there's a higher rung on the, on the scale of people that are in that inner circle. When did that start to be something that you were interested in and, and being as close to the inner circle as possible? Well, a lot of that all happened by accident. Um, I was,

uh, I had just gotten out of the military and was, uh, at the university of Alabama and Huntsville and was doing CrossFit at a gym there, uh, was kicked out because they wouldn't allow me to do the movements I was doing there. Um, decided basically to work with a local gym owner to start a CrossFit program in the corner, turned into an affiliate, CrossFit Huntsville. As I was, you know, working as an affiliate owner and coach there, I started writing articles for CrossFit. You know, I just, I submitted something I wrote and they liked it. And CrossFit, yeah, it was Tony Budding at the time started sending me things, hey, go write about this.

And then they started flying me places to do seminars. You know, the Jim Jones course was one early experience I had where CrossFit sent me to go do something and write a review of it. And that pretty quickly turned into kind of a full-time or sorry, a part-time contract gig on the side. When I competed in the 2009 games, Nicole Carroll met me and said, hey, why don't you intern for our seminar staff? She had me go do the level two. So I went and did that in Jacksonville and passed. The level two back then was just a brutal evaluation by guys like Pat Sherwood and Adrian Bosman, where they just stared at you with a clipboard and watched you coach people.

And it had like a 30 percent pass rate. It was not a pleasant experience, but I passed and ended up interning and joining the level one staff. After a couple of years of that, I became a course supervisor, which meant I basically ran those courses. Then at some point around 2012, Greg Glassman decided he needed some staff, writers, thinkers, public speakers, and defenders of the brand working for him closely. He hired Russ Green and I to work for his office. The rest is history. You mentioned the article about Jim Jones. I think that was the first time that I – so there's kind of 2009.

It's a big, a fun, an interesting year we could call it. The Black Box Summit happens and the article of Jim Jones. And now all of a sudden russ green is like in the forefront of a lot of conversations um what what goes on i guess in the the interesting thing to me about the jim jones article is mark twight is you know and and i've been in this situation so many times where I'm defending CrossFit, especially when I was an affiliate owner. And there was a piece of me that maybe if it was 1%, and that 1% maybe grew to 10% or, you know, over the years, but there's a lot of

really smart people out there. And I believe that Mark Twight really is one of those people. So when that article comes out and you're in there smashing workouts and beating all their people, and I remember reading that and then thinking, is that messaging or is that coming, is that experience that you're having clouded by our perception of how great crossfit is or are you going into those completely open-minded to learn things and then come back and write an article about jim jones and you know mark twight oh man you're you're making me dust some things off here um i'm I'm, I'm trying to remember even the, this context of how that all went down. Um, you can see how important these things were to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Going down your little personal memory lane here. I feel it.

Yeah. You know, I, I went to that, um, that course that he hosts that he provided, uh, having actually been a pretty devoted follower of, of his website from a distance. Um, you know, I got into CrossFit first and while I was in the military, I actually was like, yeah, CrossFit's dumb. I like this really cool Jim Jones website that's all black and white and hardcore and makes me feel elite. Um, so I did that for a while and you know, it's, it's not a fair assessment of his program cause I was following workouts that he would, I think say were written for other people. Um, but at the same time it, it, it led to me being less fit than just doing the workout of the day. And eventually I realized that. Um, and I realized that what, you know, what Twight was

doing was just using CrossFit in a kind of slightly different way to tailor it towards individual athletes. And, um, you know, were there, were there not a CrossFit, there would be no Jim Jones because it was clearly inspiration and he clearly, um, took the methodology and ran with it. Um, and that rubbed people the wrong way in the early days because, uh, you know, CrossFit wasn't ubiquitous back then. You know, these days, everyone is either a CrossFit affiliate or they're trying to imitate CrossFit. That's just how it is. Yeah.

Because it works. And you really can't make a living as a trainer anymore doing the old buys and tries and elliptical stuff because it doesn't work. Yeah. But back then CrossFit was really very unique. And to see somebody who was an early supporter of the program, just kind of rip it off and go off and imitate it was, was hard. Yeah. And so I think that's why they sent me. Um, you know, I, I, uh, and clearly was biased, you know, anybody who says, well, that was

such a, such a biased piece against Jim Jones. Well, yeah. I mean, everything you clearly was biased. You know, anybody who says, well, that was such a, such a biased piece against Jim Jones. Well, yeah. I mean, everything you write is biased. Everybody has bias. Um, and anybody who goes back and reads that article should read it through the lens of this is a CrossFit guy. Um, but that doesn't change my observations or the, the, the arguments that I made in it, uh, which I completely don't remember at this point anyway. Yeah. No, I, well, so that was the, one of the first times that I kind of like, like I said, like your, your name kind of popped up and it was like, oh wow, this is, this is maybe aggressive is too aggressive of a word, but a very devoted voice in the community.

And then later in that year, getting to the Black Box Summit, and this was kind of leading into a future question that I would like to kind of discuss, but that was the first kind of big experience, like having a lot of big personalities and big brains in the same room, talking kind of about best practices, where the future of this thing is going. And it kind of turned out to be a disaster. Yeah. And I also feel like that also kind of, what's that? I was just going to say my biggest regret of that entire ordeal was not keeping the t-shirt that I got as an attendant.

That's so good. I wore that t-shirt for a while and it just disappeared. I think I left it in a hotel room or something, but I try and collect t-shirts from all the crazy stuff I do. And man, that one would be the perfect piece for the collection and it's gone. I bet Rob Wolf has it stolen, tucked away in his closet somewhere for no one else to find. But the interesting thing about that, I mean, clearly you read that this event happens, everyone's kind of excited about it. And then all of a sudden it unfolds into this

disastrous ego driven just battle inside this room of who's right and who's wrong. And what's the direction of CrossFit and what is the methodology and things that we're going to be talking about? But a piece of me feels like that really just set the stage for how CrossFit handles big personalities and people that are doing their own thing. It's like, we want you to be a part of this brand, but don't be too good at it because then we have to kind of, we have to push you aside and get your voice is becoming too big. Um, just clearly everybody kind of understands the OPT, Rob Wolf, A little bit more recently, like Kelly Starrett has gone off and done his own thing. Is that part of the kind of top level pushing things down to you guys saying,

hey, these voices are getting too big? Because in a way, you became kind of the enforcer of the brand and how these situations were handled. So I would want to separate out all those examples that you gave and say that they're not all the same. Okay. Totally fair. just to give a sort of a background. So like the black box summit, I was a fly on the wall, um, brought there by Dave Castro and Tony bought him to just kind of document because they knew I could write. Um, I had some limited engagement with guys like Rob who actually did my level one

and, and, uh, kind of, I, you know, I respected him as a, as a source of some pretty solid nutritional knowledge. Um, but yeah, those, those relationships fell out not because people became too big or too popular or too good at what they did. It was really just the way that they, in the process, kind of misrepresented CrossFit or they kind of, you know, to give an example, I don yeah, I, I don't even remember the details of this, but there's a presentation in there, uh, about weightlifting. And, um, I think it was, um, uh, Greg Everett, you know, kind of taught the right way to teach weightlifting and rather than just teaching in a positive sense, like this is how I think you can best teach these things.

The bulk of his presentation was just how CrossFit does it wrong. Um, and there's, there's a way to do your job well, and to promote your ideas and philosophies in a way that's, um, not besmirching or dragging the CrossFit name down in order to do that. Um, which we have no problem with. And a good example of that would be Kelly Sturette. You know, Kelly's moved away from CrossFit. He's kind of doing his own thing. But I mean, to my knowledge, I've never seen the guy say anything really negative about the CrossFit brand. We wouldn't want to say anything negative about him. You know, we just went separate ways. I've personally had some, you know, very, very specific sort of technical fitness view differences with Kelly and expounded on that online. But as a, you know, business guy, and as a guy looking out for his

own brand, you know, he's done a good job, I would say of not throwing CrossFit under the bus as a means of promoting himself. And so, you know, every, every situation is different. But in the early days and throughout the time that I've, I've worked for CrossFit, one of the things that we've consistently seen and consistently, it's been my job to address is people doing just that. You know, I, I'm, I'm going to tell you how CrossFit's done it wrong in order to get attention to myself so I can show you the right way. And, you know, I just, I, we just couldn't handle that. You know, we can't, we can't let that go when it's a misrepresentation of what we were teaching, which more often than not it was. Yeah. One thing that I really enjoyed and I still believe,

especially in those kind of earlier days, call it in the 2010 ish. mean you could go 2008 to 2012 maybe as like a time gap like the pre-rebox thing um yeah the number of like individual thinkers that were attracted to what is what was happening at crossfit this new platform kind of this open source let's bring the best information in sift through it see what the are, and then let's spit this back out as a program and test it. And, you know, so many people, and myself included, were just so drawn to that free-thinking side of things and that early adopter side. do you feel like that is still something that CrossFit gets in their coaches? Or is there kind of a model now that is, like, I don't believe that we've figured everything out, but I also don't see the Kelly Starretts or the Rob Wolfs or, you know, Greg Everett's, the people that are kind of pioneers in their own trade or own craft. Maybe it's because I don't pay as close attention, but I often wonder if those early days and the

early adopters really brought such a fire to it. And if you feel like that is still a piece of the education system, or is it, has it become more standardized and more, I don't want to say cookie cutter, but less edgy and less, less, uh, groundbreaking as maybe in 2008 to 2012. So, um, brother, you just asked me like six different questions right there. Yeah, I know. That's how I. That's how I get to the question. It's usually my free thought, and then it's like, yeah, that's where I want to go. It's like I'm listening to slam poetry, and now I've got to respond. I think I hear what you're asking.

CrossFit is still open source, meaning we lay out for the world to see our methodology, and you can go and experiment with it. And if you find something better, I guarantee people are going to do it. Yeah. Um, and I've seen even CrossFit, uh, Inc as an organization, tweak things and tailor things in our programming on, you know, CrossFit.com as the years have gone by and we've made observations. Yeah. Uh, that's never going to change. And if you, as an affiliate owner, want to do your own thing and experiment with nothing but deadlifts, see how that works out.

You're welcome to do that. I don't think the company's going to change its policy on that in any way. Now, at the same time, the longer that time goes by, the more CrossFit's refined. I keep saying we, like I'm still representing CrossFit.

I apologize for that. You're allowed to say it. Yeah, of course I have it. So CrossFit is still refining. And at the same time, as the years have gone on, that refining process has become less and less obvious because we have years of data showing what works and what doesn't. It's just, it's getting more and more polished. The workout of the day is without a doubt, you know, the best general source of fitness and like what the average person needs and will continue to be that. But by no means does that mean that, you know,

the days of experimentation and learning from what does and doesn't work are over. And you see that with the games athletes as well, you know. Yeah. There's a lot that the games athletes do that is – it would be really foolish to think applied to you and I and like general people. But we can still learn and, and,

and gather information from what they do and from their experiences and from the things that don't work that they do and, and use that information to improve the way that we train regular people. Yeah. It's, it's been interesting, especially kind of with the development of the games and seeing how far the athletes have gone and then realizing that we can still use some of the basic principles to take somebody that has never worked out before and give them these healthy prescriptions of this methodology and still continue to develop.

There's an analogy that I've heard used by somebody in the company, and it's been years. I don't know even who to give credit to for this. It may have been Greg. The athletes at the games are like the NASCAR drivers, and the NASCAR drivers have some specific needs, and we don't necessarily need to teach people who are driving to the store on Sunday how to drive like NASCAR drivers.

But it was the sport of vehicle racing that led to the invention of the seatbelt. And that seatbelt has been be learned from the top level performances. As long as we are careful to interpret that data and not make foolish and hasty generalizations about, you know, Rich Froning eats a gallon of peanut butter a day. I guess my 35 year old mother of three client at my affiliate needs that too. You mentioned the games or we were talking about the games athletes. I was at, so my very, so the first time I did my level one, Dave Castro came in and did the programming lecture at the very end and ended the lecture by saying, oh, by the way, this year we're moving the games from the ranch to Carson. And a couple months later, I went to Carson. And there was about nine people in the stands as I got the worst sunburn of my entire life. You do look pretty white in the pictures.

Oh, man, unbelievable. And there's not a lot of shade in the StubHub Center. No, there wasn't. So – and you could just walk to the front row and basically be on the floor with everyone. What was kind of – Yeah. I don't remember this. We had an event in 2010 that literally utilized the empty stadium space.

Yeah. that literally utilized the empty stadium space where athletes carry sandbags up to the top. Because there was no reason not to because, hey, there's nobody sitting there. Sorry, go ahead with your question. Well, I guess being kind of close to the inner circle of these decisions, where it seemed at the time like such a massive jump. And then when I got to Carson and saw that there was 200 people in the stands and you know, where was that decision made on we're going to make this big push and make

this thing a sport? Because the jump from the ranch to Carson was so massive. And I mean, it was very impressive and clearly still is impressive what the production is now and how popular the sport is. But is there anything from, you know, those early days of those conversations of we need to make this thing huge that stand out. Um, and, and the confidence that kind of goes into believing this is going

to be the next big thing. You know, I, I I'm hesitant to speak on the decision-making that because I wasn't really involved and I've never had much to do with the games. Um, you know, if you, uh, if you got to pick Dave Castro's brain, I'm sure he could give you a good answer on that. But what I do know is that there was an awareness that the games was going to be enormous. And we needed to be prepared for that. And the rate of growth that we were seeing,

I think, justified the move to a bigger venue. And that's the only insight I can offer there. Yeah. 2012 was probably one of the first when Anthos came into the scene as Lauren was selling her shares. Again, there may be some small details that I'm missing here, but she was selling her half of CrossFit Inc. potentially to a private equity firm called Anthos.

And that was when you kind of stepped in as the voice from HQ to the affiliates, which I think is kind of where you really started to take your stronghold in the company, is becoming the voice of the affiliates. Was kind of a little bit of the background on the decision to have you be there, and what did that mean to you to become the voice of the affiliates? So the issue with Anthos was, it was complicated and it was something where internally we needed to communicate pretty clearly to the affiliates what was going on, but also what it meant for them or could mean for them. And, you know, I think, I think Greg, having already have hired Russ and I, uh, for purposes that were in that vein, you know, um, representing the brand, defending the brand, publicly responding to criticism, uh, saw that as a place where we

would be valuable, especially given our ability to use and, um media, which was, you know, honestly, even at the time, social media was sort of new. I mean, the way news spread on social media and the way it could be used for messaging and for PR and things like that. So we used it to our advantage and we rallied the troops and basically exposed what was going on as a really bad thing for CrossFit. Tried to educate people on the facts and tried to respond to the arguments being made from the Anthos side that they're just, you know, it's all going to be rainbows and sunshine and not to look at it too hard and not to worry about it and just make the deal. And it pretty, you know, successfully combated and refuted a lot of what they were trying to say. And ultimately, you know, what saved us though was, you know, the white hat venture capitalists that came in and donated the money for us to be able to buy those shares from loan or loaned us,

not donated. Sorry, loaned us the money. I can't even remember the amount, millions of dollars. Yeah. And the decision by the court to give Greg that opportunity to buy those shares. And so it ended up working out. You know, that it's water under the bridge and ancient history at this point, but it was a really important part of the history of the company. Yeah, it was massive.

So on the affiliate side, did you find yourself more connected to that than, say, the games or maybe the vision of where Greg was taking things? Did you really sink in maybe because you owned a gym or, like, what drew you to kind of having that relationship with the affiliate owners? You know, I didn't own a gym at the time, but I had owned a gym in the past. And I think that gave me a unique insight and ability to speak to the concerns of affiliate owners a little bit more effectively than say Russ Green, who had not owned an affiliate, though I do think he's competent in doing that. I think it's just I had a different skill set because of my experience. And yeah, that's kind of where that began. I don't claim to speak for affiliates everywhere and never would have tried to do that. But I do think even the affiliates appreciated having somebody that had owned a gym be the guy who was, you know, kind of keeping them informed and keeping them up to date on the issues that the company was dealing with.

The affiliate model is a very interesting one. And, you know, I, I feel like me owning a gym for six years and growing with CrossFit, I had all of my own problems in, you know, this, this, this growth curve that CrossFit went through tons of people coming into the gym. How do we get all these people on a program that's going to make them healthy, keep them injury-free? You're clearly going to piss some people off. When I view what you guys were dealing with, it's more or less the parallel of owning a gym but times, say, a million. It's impossible to make everyone happy. Right. Um, and, and unless you've maybe

been in an entrepreneurial situation or in a place in which you are under attack or answering questions and representing a larger brand or even the larger brand of your gym. And you have to stand by those kind of decisions. But I have had friends that you have been in, we could call them a somewhat friendly debate online on the actual business model and the affiliate model and how quickly CrossFit grew. And I'd be lying if at the beginning when money starts rolling in, everything's great. And then all of a sudden you've got four gyms on your street, and there's no protection, we all have the same name. And one thing that I started to struggle with with me is owning CrossFit PB. There was something about like

the pride that went along with this is my town, and I own the CrossFit gym in this town. And as that market got so saturated, it almost had, I don't want to say it has become a better marketing tool. But you see a lot of gyms venturing away from that model. And with your relationship with the affiliates, you know, there's a piece of that that kind of died inside of me. It was like, oh, I wish I hadn't named my gym CrossFit PB. How do I get away from this now when I still want to live by the core tenets. Is there anything from your experiences in which kind of maybe you feel like a slower growth model or maybe the just open source affiliate model needs some restraints on it? Or do you still believe that, you know, that is the best model, the cream rises to the top and we should just roll the dice and see what happens and see who's alive in 10 years.

Yeah, I absolutely believe the affiliate model is the right way to have done all this. And I think the reason for that needs to be clear because I do absolutely want to sympathize with the struggles of, uh, you know, affiliate owners who are dealing with a bunch of competition that they maybe didn't have initially, or, you know, maybe there's a gym in town who's not doing things the best way and runs, you know, runs the CrossFit name down in that community. Um, that's all, that's all real stuff that happens from time to time. And yet our mission has always been to improve the health and fitness of a society that is literally drowning in chronic disease and and not just America. I mean, worldwide, we are,

we are trying to make people better. And the only way to do that quickly and efficiently and to get that information out there in the way that we need it out there is to be open source, to let anyone who wants to do CrossFit do CrossFit, find it online, it's free. And then to keep the barrier to entry for affiliates really relatively low. And that barrier to entry has a lot more to do with getting the right people on the bus, as Greg has so often said, than it is about getting people with a bunch of business expertise or technical knowledge,

because we know we find people who genuinely care about improving other people's lives. And we give them the cross. We, again, in CrossFit gives them the affiliate name, you know, the licenses that them the name to use CrossFit with their brand, that that life-saving fitness technology is going to be implanted in their community. And that's ultimately what we want, even though we recognize that there are some side effects to that. Yeah, it's an interesting model because, I mean, when you're the only one in town, it's pretty fantastic. When there's two in town, it's cool. And one of the things that I kind of struggled with when there became four was I felt like that community piece, you know, when there's 10 from L.A. all the way to San Diego, we all train together. We all talk.

We all did the best practices. It's like we almost had all of our, the black box was almost like a thing we did on Tuesdays when we all got together to train and figure out how to run businesses. Do you feel like that CrossFit community piece has suffered at all? Or do you think it's still alive and cranking just as hard as it always has been? I think the CrossFit community is alive and well and cranking. And I think what you're expressing is some nostalgia for the old school days. You're definitely right. You're definitely right. Hey, we're a dying breed.

There's only so many of us, and now there's millions of people that have jumped in, and that's changed the dynamics. But the CrossFit community I really do think is alive and well. It's just it's different. And the community tends to be centralized around individual affiliate memberships rather than sort of a, you know, global loose network of, of fringe people who check out this website that GeoCities technology built in 1994. And, you know, we, we all work out together in some, somebody's garage with our homemade equipment. And, you know, that's, those days are, are a relic of the past as you know as much as i love them um but i don't think that means the crossfit community is is in any way declining i think it's just changing and i think

changes honestly it's inevitable and i don't see it as a bad thing no i and i went to the west regional this year and um man i had a blast it was great seeing everybody the vibe of everything is still great I think that the question a lot of times comes from me if you're going to the West Regional and you're flying down from Canada or NorCal

even LA and you're driving down are you in that top 2% of very dedicated people and what does the other 98 percent of this thing feel like um and and do they still feel very connected to the brand or the workouts the results like what does what does that mean to them um i guess i guess that's kind of the the bigger picture and a lot of that comes down to the messaging, I think, that comes out from CrossFit of clearly we have the games. And I think that they do a great job highlighting the health and wellness benefits.

Man, that sport is so sexy. Sorry, I just wanted to add, I think that the company has done a much better job of highlighting the health benefit to the average person of the CrossFit program in the last 12 months. It really has been an impressive swing towards focusing on that. And I think that's essential. I'm glad that the CrossFit community gets to see that. Yeah. I've called you the enforcer, whether that's fair or not. I'm not, for a lack of better word. But an interesting thing that you talk about kind of how news spreads and how social media happened really in the middle of this thing and really pushed CrossFit to the forefront.

You've been a part of maybe two, three, 20, 30 good internet debates about the methodology and the business structure, the affiliate structure. Not all of those go really well. Or maybe they go great for you and your mind, but you're not afraid to stir the pot a little bit. And I think one of the interesting things to me and representing a brand and then your own personal thoughts and thought processes is just where, how, what is the decision making on kind of what is appropriate and what is not appropriate? And I'm totally excluding kind of what has happened over the last 48 hours and where you're at, because I actually am most interested in, in kind of what happened two, three, four, five years ago when the massive

explosion and a lot of these internet debates were kind of happening in a very public forum. And a lot of people were very frustrated. Just maybe the direction wasn't what they wanted or the business model wasn't what they wanted. Their businesses were hurting. You know, where does that process come in for you of this is an appropriate conversation to have, this is an appropriate way to structure CrossFit's beliefs or my beliefs? And what does that thought process look like for you? Well, that thought process has changed a lot over the years. You know, I, the internet and social media in particular makes everyone act a little bit more like an idiot than they are. Myself included. It's a very difficult platform with which to have reasoned discussions with people. It tends to make people say things they wouldn't say in person. It tends to make

people exaggerate and sort of overstate their case. It tends to make people say things in a way to get support from their audience rather than to say things just how they honestly see them. So there's a lot of problems with trying even to engage on social media, on these conversations. And honestly, one of the first and most important lessons I learned in doing this was that you can be right and still not be right. You can have the right position and still just handle it in such a way that even though the people you're talking to may be forced to recognize like, okay, yeah, that's a good point. You just come across as a jerk and nobody respects your point of view. And I'm certainly guilty of that. Back in the day, I can think of at least a couple of scenarios where I walked away from trying to defend the brand and thought, I don't really think I did

that the right way. Over the years, I've kind of developed a process of, um, just Jen generally trying to avoid responding to anything without taking time to consider, uh, exactly how that might be interpreted and also taking time to not knee jerkjerk react. Also taking time to consider developing the voice of a brand representative. There's certain ways you can speak to your company, for example, or speak for your company, for example, that sound more professional and sound wiser than if you said it this way. And so, yeah, that's been a process of learning through trial and error and experience. And it's, you know, the job that we were given is, you know, I'm speaking about Russ Green and I, I can't think of a parallel that I've ever seen in any other

company for the kind of work we were asked to do. And so in many ways, we kind of wrote our own job description and took very broad principles and direction from Greg and tried to figure out how to make it work. And yeah, that was a learning experience in the early years. Even today with the controversy that's going on this week, you can see that nothing goes unnoticed on social media. And many times when you say something, it doesn't matter how you say it and it doesn't matter what your motives are. They're going to be people who are unhappy. And that's just a fact of the job and a fact of reality.

And I learned to live with that a long time ago. Yeah. It's the nature of the job. You were the first line of defense and offense and defense. It was a, it was, it's, I agreed. I don't think I've ever seen, um, and it's, it might purely be because social media did not exist where you actually had access to somebody that could be sitting in the room with CEO. And now you're having a real conversation. And to think the number of different ways that you can see a situation, you have to defend

against all of them. That's pretty frightening. Yeah. Yeah. And you know, the one really helpful part about the job was that, you know, the vast majority of the topics that I was defending and speaking on were things that I had really in-depth knowledge on and was confident that we were right. We're correcting left and right. We were correcting misrepresentations of the CrossFit philosophy and methodology and brand. And like, I taught that every single weekend working for level one staff for years. I knew that stuff. And I would go up on Saturday in front of a level one participant audience and teach them something that CrossFit has taught for years, and then see that completely misrepresented in a news article on Monday and have to correct it.

So there was an element of that dynamic that actually made it kind of easy. Um, you know, the truth, the truth is an easy thing to tell. It's, it's usually, uh, easy to identify and easy to explain. Um, yeah, that wasn't hard. I can promise you, uh, from my side of all of this conviction is not something you struggle with. You were, you were locked into, to understanding where, what the, the voice was and, um, did not have a problem portraying it to people. Yeah. I, I like to, I like to think that I'm humble enough to admit when I don't have an answer to something or when I don't know something. I'll certainly admit when I've gotten things wrong. Where I firmly feel that I understand the CrossFit methodology and its principles, where I haven't taught it for so long, I was fully confident in defending and defending the brand. Yeah. Kind of looking forward, what is a little bit of just the state of CrossFit now? I've actually, I know it's almost like a half a million people

joined the Open this year. I feel like the international growth is just incredible right now. But domestically, have things slowed down domestically? And is the big push on the international side of things? Good question. I don't think CrossFit's growth is really slowing down anywhere. I can tell you, though, that there are international areas where the explosive growth is pretty noteworthy. And that's definitely just, you know, we, we, we could, we could have guessed that was going to happen. It's, it's not a surprise, but it's, it's presented some interesting challenges, you know, things, simple things

like translation, you know, tons of really important, compelling media about how CrossFit and the CrossFit lifestyle can reverse type 2 diabetes. And that's great if you speak English. So what happens when that pops up in somebody's Facebook feed in France or Brazil? So our media group, the CrossFit – do you see me doing it again? Our media. The CrossFit media team has done a really good job of translating stuff and getting out CrossFit core messages and media into other languages. And it's exciting to see CrossFit spread to the rest of the world.

I'm sure it's no small feat to take, what, 11, 12 years of the journal and have it translated into 50 different languages. It should be pretty easy. Right. And cheap. Yeah, exactly. Um, one thing, and, and I want to be respectful of your time and, uh, let you, let you get back to normal life. But, um, the one thing that I have always loved about CrossFit is the, their ability to stand up for what is right in the fitness community. And, you know, maybe right or wrong isn't necessarily the correct verbiage, but, um, yeah. And, and when they are going out and battling Coca-Cola and, you know, I think one of the things that first drew me to Glassman, and I've maybe met him one time, but I really believe that he was like one of the first mentors I ever had,

just his ability to stand on that stage and talk about what he believed to be right. And the future of CrossFit, kind of going after Coca-Cola and the licensure side of things with the government. How do you kind of see CrossFit's role in the larger idea of fitness and health and how it can grow? Because in order for us to truly make a difference in anything, we have to go and battle the largest companies, and the largest companies, the government, and maybe the second largest companies, Coca-Cola.

And Glassman's never been afraid to stand on that stage and let his voice be heard. Where's that battle at? And if it ever ends, you know, you were, I assume you were going to be a pretty integral part of that messaging and that battle. You know, where is it at now? And is that something that you're, I would say, like going to miss in going forward? Yeah, absolutely. You know, one of the, one of the saddest parts about my leaving the company is that i really do care about that battle you know i i i think greg is absolutely right in his assessment of the fitness industry which is that it is essentially for decades been run by some pretty corrupt and pretty well-funded by soda pop organizations that were just asleep at the switch. And that's a great deal of why, you know, we had decades of

low-fat, high-carb, treadmill, abs, you know, buys and tries, machine, globo gym kind of stuff that was just a little bit better, if not worse than sedentarism. So the, the mission, it's, it's going to be tough to let that go. You know, it's, it was important to me. And I really hope that CrossFit continues to be successful in pushing these corrupt organizations like the American College of Sports Medicine and the NSCA National Strength and Conditioning Association, out of the fitness industry. Maybe that's not what will happen. I would be perfectly happy to accept them reorganizing with a bunch of CrossFitters on their boards of directors. That'd be fun. Good luck. You know, I think I'd rather see them just dissolve.

But, you know, whatever it takes. They've just done an immense amount of harm to the rectification of all the myths and errors and problems that they've caused in the health and fitness industry, they deserve it. They really do. Yeah. and their attempt to misrepresent CrossFit and besmirch CrossFit's reputation and legislate us out of existence and lying about us. And, you know, I get to see the big picture behind the scenes. And trust me, yeah, they deserve it. And we're going to do our best to expose that and to make sure that the truth gets out there.

And like I said, I'm just – I'm sad I don't get to be a part of that anymore, but I do hope the company continues down that line of attack. Yeah. The future of Russell Berger, where I'm sure you need like a week or so to kind of figure some things out. But where are you headed? Is there any sort of plan yet? Yeah, I was planning to go to the pool this afternoon. There it is.

The future. I had a good friend leave a case of beer on my porch last night, and I think that might be involved. There you go. Yeah, I haven't put a ton of thought into it. There you go. all kinds of people basically just saying, Hey, look, I totally support you and your position. And I hate, I hate this for you. Sorry to see you go. Can I help? And so I got people who've really genuinely offered, you know, jobs and employment opportunities and all kinds of stuff, man. I have,

I have a lot of options. I'll just put it that way. A lot of options and a lot of things to think about. One of the, one of the biggest options there is just, you know, go into ministry. I'm already a pastor of things to think about. One of the biggest options there is just go into ministry. I'm already a pastor of a church. My defense of the Christian worldview and my Christian beliefs is a big part of this entire ordeal, and it's something that I was convicted enough about to make the decision to tweet on.

Maybe I should continue to do that. I don't know. But, yeah, you'll, you'll find out, I guess, in a couple of weeks here. I love it. Um, well, right on. So where can people find you to ensure they, they know what's going on? Uh, you can hit me up on Facebook or Twitter or, uh, Instagram. Um, is I've been trying to keep all of those social media accounts clean from the graffiti of yeah people activists who want to threaten me and tell me that you know they hope my kids die and all kinds of stuff because I spoke out against LGBTQ beliefs so I am keeping those

those social media accounts up though and I'm trying to stay as close to the them as i can so that anybody who has legitimate questions or comments or anything i can get back in touch with you right on uh well i appreciate your time i know things are probably a little crazy right now so taking an hour out of your morning to hang out with us and um I think that one thing that's really cool about this, this podcasting medium is we just get to have a conversation. I probably since I learned about you in 2009, have agreed with a lot of what you said, I've disagreed with a lot of what you said. But I've always felt like I was getting a lot of honesty in whatever you were saying. And maybe that's great. Maybe that's at times leads people the wrong way and pisses a lot of people off.

You know, I, I'm not, I wouldn't say that my, my voice really matters in that community. And I don't really have, you know, what, what you put out is what you put out. And I just, I think it's important that people are able to have conversations. So I appreciate you coming on and taking the time to talk to me. Yeah, man. Thank you. I appreciate it as well. And if there's any lesson to be learned from this entire ordeal, it's that regardless of where you stand on an issue or where you might disagree about something,

tolerance is a valuable virtue. And I'm glad to be able to discuss things that I disagree about with other people respectfully. And I appreciate you being able to do the same. And I hope we can continue that. Right on. I appreciate it. We will talk soon. Later. All right.