Barbell Shrugged - Feed Me Fuel Me  — Shrugged Collective w/ Doug Larson  — 106

Episode Date: September 27, 2018

To whom much is given, much is required. Or so they say. Doug Larson sees it a bit differently as he has been given much in the way of coaching and mentorship, so he has made it his mission to give as much, if not more, as he has received. Doug is the cofounder of Barbell Shrugged, one of the longest running podcasts in the fitness space and still going strong.   Doug has understood the value of coaching and mentorship since his adolescence, when his coach took him under his wing and introduced him to the world of strength and conditioning. He would go on to play football in college while building proficiency in mixed martial arts and jiu-jitsu. As his education flourished he followed his mentor to Memphis, Tennessee where he would attain his Masters in Movement Science and meet his eventual co-hosts and business partners Mike Bledsoe (@mike_bledsoe) and Chris Moore (@barbellbuddha). Together they would train together, run a gym, and start one of the most prolific fitness podcasts ever.   Join us this week as we dive deep into the journey of Doug's evolution from student, to teacher, to master. Find out why Doug has made it his mission to pass on as much knowledge, through as many mediums as possible (ebooks, seminars, podcasts, etc...), reciprocating all that he has been fortunate enough to receive. Doug truly is the embodiment of the abundance mentality and we can't wait to share his message with you this week on Feed Me Fuel Me!   Also, make sure to check out Doug's fresh new website - douglarsonfitness.com   Enjoy! - Jeff and Mycal ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/fmfm_larson ------------------------------------------------------------------------------► 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

Mike Bledsoe here, CEO of The Shrug Collective. Today, we bring to you a new show, Feed Me, Fuel Me, hosted by Jeff Thornton and Mike Landers. As we're expanding what we offer, traveling to great guests, and introducing you to the best content, we have partnered with amazing companies that we believe in. We talk and hang out with the founders and owners of these businesses. Not all products are created equal, even if it looks like it on the surface.

We've done the research and have been in the industry long enough to see what really works and what will make the biggest difference for you long term. With that being said, one of my favorite companies, Thrive Market, has a special offer for you. You get $60 of free organic groceries

plus free shipping and a 30-day trial. ThriveMarket.com slash feedme. This is how it works. Users will get $20 off their first three orders of $49 or more plus free shipping. No code is necessary because the discount will be applied at checkout. Many of you will be going to the store this week anyway, so hit up Thrive Market today. Go to ThriveMarket.com slash feedme. Enjoy the show.

This is episode number 106 of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast with our special guest, co-founder of the Barbell Shrug podcast, Doug Larson. Welcome to the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. My name is Jeff Thornton, alongside my co-host, Michael Anders. Welcome to the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. My name is Jeff Thornton, alongside my co-host, Michael Anders. Each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message related to our three pillars of success. Manifestation, business, fitness, and nutrition. Our intent is to enrich, educate, and empower our audience to take action, control, and accountability for their decisions.

Thank you for allowing us to join you on your journey. Now let's get started. What's good, fam? Welcome to another episode of the Feed Me, Fuel Me podcast. Coming to you live from the CrossFit Games, literally out here at Vendor Village in the FitAid booth. Much love to FitAid for allowing us to do this this weekend and have the esteemed pleasure of one of the co-founders of Barbell Shrug, Doug Larson, with us today. How are you, brother? Dude, doing great. At the CrossFit Games, having a great time, walking around,

talking to folks, hanging out. It's sunny out right now, sunny and warm. Anytime it's sunny and warm out, I'm a happy person. I go up in the Northwest where it rains every damn day. If it's sunny out, I'm having a good time. Dude, awesome. Awesome. You know, compared to last year where it pretty much rained us out, this opportunity wouldn't have been possible. So now we're here rocking and rolling. For everybody who may not know, and it's hard to believe at this point that nobody knows what Barbell Shrugged is or who you are and where you come from, people have been, strangers have been walking up to you and shaking your hand and taking pictures all week.

So that's got to feel pretty good. It's fun, man. Give us the cliff notes of where you come from, how Barbell Shrugged got together, and, you know, give us the story, man. Yeah. I'm one of those very fortunate people. You know, like you meet somebody and they're like, God, I just wish I would have started CrossFit when I was like 12, that type of thing. I'm that lucky person that started when I was really, really young. So I'm a lifelong athlete, did gymnastics starting like age 3, age 4,

did that for a number of years. I stopped when I was like 10 and started martial arts. Played baseball my whole life, played football my whole life, and then was very lucky to get a really good strength coach when I was about 14 years old. So I, at the time, thought I wanted to be a Navy SEAL. I thought that would be really cool. And then what I eventually realized was I actually just liked the training that the

Navy SEALs were doing. I used to read all these books about BUDS, which is basically like Navy SEAL boot camp. And I would do all the workouts that would prepare you to go to BUDS. And I realized eventually that, okay, maybe I don't actually want to go to war and do that whole thing. I just think the training is really, really cool. So maybe there's a different industry that I could go into. And that's, of course, the strength conditioning fitness industry. So I got a strength coach, very fortunately, around age 14. He was a former power lifter who had learned Olympic weight lifting from Coach Bergner.

And so I met Coach Bergner many times, even up to 20 years ago now, and was able to get some coaching from him back at when I was like 19 at NSCA conferences, which that strength coach would fly me around the country to strength coaching conferences even when I was in my teens just because he wanted someone to go with. He was a mechanical engineer. He worked at He to go with yeah like he was a mechanical engineer he worked at hill of packard and just strength you know as a strength coach on the side just because he thought was really cool yeah and so he never never charged

me a dime i had free coaching you know for hours and hours a day every day he would you know we'd lift weights in his garage on the laco barbells from day one and uh afterward he'd say you know i'm gonna go make some food and make dinner you, if you want to eat, come up here and grab some food. And while we were cooking food, he would teach me what was in all the, you know, different, you know, in the meats and in the vegetables. And, you know, teach me how to make guacamole. And he'd be talking about avocados and healthy fats and fiber and the whole thing. So I just was very, very fortunate. I had a very good mentor, you know, since I was, you know, mid-teens.

Yeah. In a way that just you know i i couldn't plan it couldn't plan it better so yeah really really lucky okay so that's kind of how i got my start that's dope holy so i mean you're you're very much an early what role did your parents play in that mentorship because that's that's very early adopter like having a no strength coach yeah at 14 years old that's something that's like becoming the thing right at in that age group right you know like how did that manifest in terms of your your parents just letting you spend that much time in the weight room yeah i mean

again being a lifelong athlete they just kind of expected that after school i was going to go to practice right you know whether it was wrestling baseball, or whatever it happened to be. I never came home after school. I always went to some type of sport, whatever it happened to be, and they were just totally cool with that. It's a healthy thing to do for a kid. Many, many other things that were

much worse in my parents' eyes than going to baseball practice. I met that strength coach at my high school. Okay. And so, you know, that's hanging out with this guy. They don't know who he is. But I met him at school. He was a coach at the school and then eventually broke off

and wasn't a coach at school and I would just go to at the time his apartment complex and he had a garage gym. Yeah. He had a half rack with Lego bumpers and kettlebells and gymnastics rings like I had a CrossFit gym. Nice. Basically before it was called a CrossFit gym.

Okay. And we had weightlifting shoes. Didn't know anyone else that had weightlifting shoes. The fact that I had, like, no hundreds or thousands of people that own weightlifting shoes now, I never would have thought that was going to be a thing when I was, like, 15, you know? Right. And so that guy, very friendly person. You know, my parents dropped me off at practice, and he'd go talk to them and, you know,

ended up developing a really good relationship with him You know he's still very good friend of mine to this day So my parents were very comfortable with me spending a whole lot of time with with this guy who was only you know he's only 25 at the time he was he wasn't he wasn't that old really in retrospect That's awesome, and then you know we just had coach be on the show and the fact that you have that long a relationship with him That's massive mentorship that you now have long a relationship with him that's massive mentorship that you now have a deeper access to doing what you do now so from high school where did you go from there um i was encouraged very heavily um by that strength coach based on you

know my my passion for training to to go to undergrad and get my degree my bachelor's degree in exercise science and so i did that i went to to linfield college and got my my bachelor's degree in exercise science. And so I did that. I went to Linfield College and got my bachelor's. I did my senior project in 2005 on the biomechanics of snatching. That was my college senior project. And then with that same strength coach at NSCA, probably in 2005, 2006, he introduced me to Dr. Andy Frye, who

was a professor at the University of Memphis who had done a lot of research on weightlifting specifically, done a lot of research on overtraining. And he's a very prominent muscle physiologist still to this day. And I wanted to do weightlifting specific research. And the University of Memphis was one of the best universities to do that at. So me and Andy Galpin, who people will know is a now as a PhD

muscle physiologist at Cal State Fulton one of my best friends in the whole world me and him were at that conference together you know over a decade ago we had and we wouldn't have scotch you know drink we haven't drinks and smoke of cigars with dr. Annie Frye and that was like my graduate interview oh yeah let's new kids out there if you want the in, go to Vegas and drink scotch and smoke cigars with your soon to hopefully be in the future professors. And that can be your graduate interview. You don't need to do the formal way.

Right. It was way more fun than like applying and like doing a phone call interview and making it all formal. I just called him up one day. I was like, I would love to come. And he was like, okay, cool. You're basically in just, you know, sending the formal paperwork and I'll see you soon and he was like okay cool. Well. You're basically in just you know send in the formal paperwork And I'll see you soon

And during the entire process like learning from all these great people when did you discover that you had a passion or an interest in coaching Well, that's funny. You say that cuz I actually don't consider myself to be a coach like at the deepest level okay? I always love to train and I know a lot about training and I'm happy to share that knowledge, but I kind of think of myself as more of an instructor than a coach specifically. So I do coach a lot of people, but

coaching was never something that I really wanted to do. Not specifically. Again, I've done a lot of it, but I never really identified with being a coach, which is why I don't coach any CrossFit athletes currently at all. Like, we do a lot of online training programs. Like, I coach CrossFit classes, but I never, like, adopted an athlete. Like, I'm not like Jeff's my athlete.

I've been with Jeff for five years, and, like, you know, he was a new guy, and now he's a regionals athlete because I trained him for all these years. Yeah. Like, it's just never something that I ever aspired to do. It's just not me. I like to have a lot more freedom to that. I feel like I have commitment issues. I feel like it ties me down in a way.

Anytime I have to be somewhere consistently, I just don't really like it very much. We ran the gym for years and years. I started CrossFit Memphis with Mike Bledsoe. He started in 2007. I officially bought it in 2009 after I moved back from Australia, which is where I went after graduate school for a little while. Taught weightlifting at CrossFit North Queensland in Townsville, Australia, which was really, really fun.

Came back from that and then officially bought it as the owner of the gym and coached a lot of people, taught a lot of classes. But that was more so me just really liking the lifestyle of living, literally living in a CrossFit gym. We lived in the gym for 18 months on mattresses in the attic above the offices for 18 months while we weren't making any money. And I just liked being in the gym. So it wasn't like the coaching piece that that really drew me

to uh to hanging out across the gym it was just the lifestyle i just want to be around other people that that love to train and love doing weightlifting and love gymnastics because because i thought that was like insanely special yeah because i because it was like it was the thing that i loved growing up like like throughout my like teens and in early 20s that that I love that every time I brought it up people like I never heard of that I don't know what that is like I most people happen they know what gymnastics are but they they didn't know what kettlebells were and they didn't know anything about snatches and clean jerks and and in graduate school we competed in

weightlifting and then after graduate school all of a sudden all these people were interested in learning weightlifting and interested in in just lifting weights especially women you know women were not interested in lifting weights until crossfit came around in the same way that they are today you know across a really popularized weightlifting for you know for the female population in a way that it hadn't done before right and so it just it just turned into this really cool lifestyle and and coaching was like something that kind of just had to happen since i happen to own the gym yeah and i was happy to do it but um but i never really i never really like wanted to be a coach my whole life I'd much

rather be an instructor you know do seminars where I'm like teaching people information but I'm not it's not like this big long-term relationship piece that uh which is kind of how I think about coaching is more like a big relationship you have with some for a very long time and that's not something that I was ever like really pushing for specifically. Okay. Yeah. What led to you? I'm interested. You said you slept in the, what, in your gym for 18 months. What led you down that path? Like even pursuing entrepreneurship and willing to take that, that dive and doing that. Cause a lot of people, they want that security blanket. They'll get a job, something that's safe.

But what led you down that path of starting your own gym and yeah taking that big dive um i feel i feel like my answer is like the opposite of a lot of people where they're like gosh he's really passionate about this thing and and uh you know i really want to make the leap and i had to have all this courage and all that it was like well that's all kind of also true but really was like i don't want to go get a regular job. So what can I do to not have to be getting to get a regular job? So I can just keep having fun, you know, graduate school is over and I didn't want to go, you know, work at a medical device company and, you know, you know, write papers that you have to get like approved by the FDA or whatever, like boring thing I would end up doing with a, you know, with a movement science degree. Yeah. There's, there's

many other cooler things you could do than that, but I just wanted to hang out in the gym. That's what I wanted to do. And so starting CrossFit Gym was, especially at the time, a very cheap business to start. You could start with like $17,000 or something like that, which is not a lot of money. And the standards for gyms in 2007 were pretty low.

We had zero competition. We were the only CrossFit gym in town, so we could make a lot of mistakes. We didn't know shit about business. We didn't have a lot of capital to invest. We had a passion for training, and we knew what we were doing. And people could tell that we were excited about CrossFit, weightlifting, powerlifting, which we had weightlifters, we had powerlifters. We had all these different subsets. It wasn't just CrossFit, especially at the time.

And we were able to survive on not that much money. And that's why we had to live in the gym because I was making 900 bucks a month and I couldn't afford to have rent also because 900 bucks a month, you're paying rent, it's probably all gone just on rent, depending on where you're paying rent, it's probably all gone. Right. Like, just on rent. Sure. Depending on where you're at. And where did the brainchild of Barbell Shrug come from? Mm-hmm. Because you describe yourself as an instructor. Yeah. And based on the content that you guys have been producing for the last,

are you guys five years in now? Barbell Shrug started at the very beginning of 2012. Okay. So we're about six, six and a half right now. Okay. Yeah. Based on the content that you guys have just consistently put out week after week after week and now it's manifested into the Shrug

Collective, which we're extremely pumped to be a part of. Now you've got the ultimate platform to be that instructor. Right. Was that like, oh shit, if we do a show show I can now put all that information out there and cast any the widest net possible is that kind of

like how it came together or is how that how'd that go yeah so like I mentioned earlier like I see myself more as an instructor when I think about instruction being an instructor versus coaching I think about instructors kind of project information to an audience, which is what I'm doing right now. Like I'm projecting information to all the people listening to this. It's a one-way communication with the audience. And that's, I'm talking with you guys, but we're all instructing the audience right now. And so, you know, doing a show was something that worked very well for me. It wasn't specifically coaching, even though I'm teaching a lot about health, fitness, movement, nutrition, et cetera.

And so I knew a bunch of guys who, back then and still now, they were running these really cool online digital information product companies. And so I always wanted to have 100% virtual company. That way I would have ultimate freedom. I could teach all the things that I knew since I was so fortunate to have

such a longstanding background doing all this stuff my whole life, basically. I recognized that I knew things that other people didn't know just because I had so much experience and I had the academic side of it and the mentors and on and on. I knew I had a lot to share and a lot to teach. I just needed to figure out exactly how I wanted to do that. Doing it at the gym was certainly one level of doing that. But inevitably, what I had tried to do back in 2006 how I want to do that doing it at the gym was certainly one level of doing that but inevitably what what I had tried to do back in like 2006 well I tried to blog a little bit and sell some online affiliate products I sold some of John Berardi stuff for like back in my graduate school and it never really got any traction with it cuz I'm not I'm not

really into writing specifically I don't like to sit sit down and write yeah but I love talking and I love being on video and making videos. And so once really the turning point was when smartphones got popular. Once smartphones became a thing and you had HD video in your pocket everywhere you went and you could upload immediately to YouTube, I was like, oh, okay, here's the opportunity for easy content creation where I can share what I know. And it's not me sitting down bored in front of a computer and trying to make everything perfect and organize the content and check for misspellings and editing. It's just a slow thing for someone who doesn't enjoy it in the first place. So once I was able to make, at the time, a three-minute video because it wouldn't let me upload something to YouTube any longer than that. I would just at the gym, I would set my phone down, hit record, run in front of the camera,

yell at my phone since I didn't have a lapel mic or anything, and I would teach weightlifting. And you can go find those first technique wads. They're not on the Barbell Shrug YouTube channel. They're on the Faction Strength and Conditioning, or now maybe it's been renamed Across Memphis YouTube channel. Fourth of July, 2011, the very first Technique WOD posted. And you can go watch it. Zilk is still on YouTube, and you can see what the quality looks like

compared to the things we do now. It was good enough for the time, but we've made a lot of upgrades since. But it was a lot more fun to do that than to simply sit down and try to do the whole blogging thing, which I had really no interest in. I was just doing it because I didn't know what else to do. And so that was really the first show. And I made those shows partly because at the gym every single day, I'm having the same

conversation over and over and over with all of the same clients and all the new clients. And it's all, you're teaching squats and deadlifts and snatches and cleans the same way to people all day every day you got teach a classes a day or whatever it is and you do it for years like you're repeating yourself a lot and so what I what I want to do is kind of document that knowledge that way I could tell someone okay you know you know weight on your heels or whatever it is and then I can say oh and by the way I made a video on that I couldn't and I all I'll email it to you whatever and then they could go watch it and and by the way, I made a video on that. And I'll email it to you or whatever. And then they can go watch it.

And then they're getting better from a trusted source, which is myself. And then they can get better at home and they can come back and they'll get better results in the gym. But it's not taking up as much of my time now. But they're still learning it the way that I want them to learn it. So I was really doing it for the people at the gym. And then, of of course it's on youtube and and other people are seeing it and um having known these other people that have these these 100 online companies which is something i was really interested in um i you know spoke with

them and and had you know look at some of their business products about how to do the whole online thing and you know create a website and you, started making an email list and started posting stuff on social media. Had the YouTube account, of course. And I was going to the model at the time was I have a gym. I can use it like a studio. I can do seminars for my gym members whenever I want to. And I can record it. And then I can sell those things online.

And it could supplement the income of the gym. So now we have multiple revenue streams. All things that I'm really passionate about that I think are really, really fun. And so that's kind of how the business started. And then, so that was 4th of July, 2011, that TechniqueWad started. And then the first Barbell Shrug posted very beginning of March 2012, so about six or eight months later. And then that caught traction within a couple months, and it was very obvious very quickly that oh barbell shrug is going to be the thing that really scales that it's more fun to do than technique quad because we're just sitting around

with all my friends now now i have a group i'm not doing it by myself anymore it's and i don't have to be all the knowledge all the time because i got other people that that know what they're talking about yeah that i'm very friendly with We've been training together for 10 years, so we have all kinds of stories to tell, all fitness and weightlifting related. People could feel that authenticity, and they could feel the closeness, the connection. They could tell that we're super tight, like we're actual best friends on a show together, but at the same time, we're a very diverse set of personalities at the same time. And that's good. Having that diversity was really, really powerful for Barbell Shrugged,

especially in the beginning. And how did you, Mike, and Chris come together? Me and Mike were competing on the University of Memphis weightlifting team together. And then Chris Moore was kind of like the sole non-weightlifter. He was like the only powerlifter in the group. But there wasn't any powerlifting at the University of Memphis, so he would come train powerlifting in the weightlifting room with us. He trained with Louie Simmons,

and so he was a big fan of the conjugate method and chains and bands and the whole deal. So we thought it was super cool that he was training with us and we came very close over time. And then once we opened CrossFit Memphis at the time and then eventually renamed it as Faction Strength and Conditioning, and we were all out of graduate school, we all together, you know, our whole weightlifting team basically from graduate school, turned into like the beginning team for CrossFit Memphis.

Okay. All right. Yeah. That's awesome. Go ahead, Ders. Go ahead. Oh, how did you – Ders and I talked about this last year. When you're building a business together with, you know, several partners, how do you guys continue to maintain that relationship and continue to build that rapport and strength together?

Because seven years is a long time and keeping each other's emotions in check and growing a business at the main guys who we kind of consider ourselves to be, Mike was like the CEO, I was the COO in a way, and Rob was the CFO. There's some overlap there, but that's like an easy way to think about it. We had already been business partners since 2007. So Barbell Shrug started in 2012. So we started Barbell Shrug, we'd already been business partners for five years. And so it was easy to do this bigger thing because we already had a very very tight relationships we already had a very good idea of our strengths and weaknesses who's going to do what and yeah and all that so uh it

was it was pretty easy with barbell shrug but with with faction since we didn't know at the time that we were all going to very easily fall into those roles. It's just super lucky that we happen to not have the exact same strengths and weaknesses, which is common. People get together and they're like, oh, yeah, we're really passionate about this one thing. But really, they're both like, it's like two creatives or like two super analytical people that they want to do the same things in the company and they don't want to do the other same things in the company. And then there's a lot of conflict.

In our case, we were very lucky where it was obvious no matter what the task or role or project was who was going to handle what just almost purely based on temperament sure and personality types yeah you guys uh had a very cohesive conversation style between the three of you yeah And I think that made for great, not only information delivery, but I think where you guys nailed it in terms of longevity is you also had an ability to entertain in those conversations.

We've sat down in the NSCA conventions and just stepped by PowerPoint. And you guys deliver a lot of that high level information, you know, uh, in, in a way that the, the layman or the, the, the newbie can, can understand and digest. And it's between the three of you pushing that information. Uh, like as I viewed you watching barbell shrug back in the day, as I was opening CrossFit PHX is like, okay, Doug's the

technician, you know, if you have a guest onX is like, okay, Doug's the technician. You know, if you have a guest on and, you know, this is probably never the case, but who's, uh, has a differing opinion or something, or is believe something that is been proven not so true, you know, Doug's the dude that's like, here's where, here's why I think that's incorrect, and here's 18 studies that prove me right. And it's like between the three of you, that dynamic and that accountability is very, very apparent just watching the show. Yeah. Yeah. I definitely like accuracy.

Yes. And truth. There you go. 100%. Yeah. But I also don't like conflict so I don't I don't tend to like call people out be like that's fucking bullshit really polite about it at least I try to sure but I definitely want the

information to be very high quality right like high quality information paired with with humor and entertainment seems to be the magical combination that that strength coach that I had growing up he always said that really should be about 25% content and 75% 75 entertainment okay which for a teenager you know like that's that's perfect especially like you know the you know as as time goes on I feel like teenagers need more and more and more humor and entertainment like if it's boring today's teenagers aren't having it no fucking way you know maybe in the 50s like if it was boring people would feel like they had to be here.

And they would just stay because they felt like they were supposed to. Some people may feel like that still, but a lot of people are just going to be like, fuck this shit, I'm leaving. This is boring. Why are you even doing it? It's so boring. Right, right. So we always knew entertainment was going to have to be a big piece of the puzzle.

And then beyond that, not just like we want to make it entertaining for the audience. We're trying to have a great time. Like if you want to have a sustainable company, like at some level, it needs to be fun or you're not going to want to do it forever. You're going to start like questioning your life and your decisions. Like what the hell am I doing with my life? This, this fucking sucks. So, um, the, the entertainment pieces, it's just a win, win, win for everyone. The more fun you can have, the more you're laughing. Just that's a good life. Yeah. Yeah. That's dope. When did you, When did you all decide to make the transition or the move from Tennessee to California, and why did you make that transition?

So 2014-15, we were traveling a lot. Okay. Back on what I was saying a second ago, as far as it being entertaining and fun, we decided early on that if we were going to do this the right way then we're gonna do all of our interviews or conversations everything in person and doing it in person though it's it's more expensive and it's more difficult and you gotta travel more and it's every part of doing something in person versus like doing a Skype call or making a phone call is more difficult

but it's way more fun to travel around the world with your friends and be able to meet cool people and see them face-to-face and develop a real relationship with that person, train at their gym, the whole deal. So we were trying to build a lifestyle for ourselves, a really fun lifestyle. Working for us is the most fun thing we can do. I couldn't create a vacation, is this is an exception it's across the games like uh but even like our regular weekends where we go just hang out and podcast with people like our are on par with any vacation i could plan for myself and so we decided from day

one that we're gonna do everything in person if we if we did skype calls i think we would have done it for a couple months and then been like ah this I mean, it's it's content we need content Because if we don't have content then how are we gonna make money online and like it just everyone would have fizzled out And so doing it all in person was was just absolutely key to keep the team excited and motivated Okay. Yeah, and I forgot the original question. Oh So Oh, the move to California. Oh, that's right. So 2014, yeah, check this guy out. Check that out. Got that memory.

So yeah, 2014, 2015, we were traveling a lot. We were flying like every week or two. And that was fantastic, especially because I didn't have kids yet. That was great. We eventually decided, though, that Memphis, Tennessee is not like the fitness hub of the universe. And it would be a lot better if we went to Southern California, which absolutely is a fitness hub. There's so many people to interview between San Diego and Los Angeles

that we wouldn't have to fly ever again if we didn't want to. We still choose to on occasion. But we could just travel around by driving an hour or two at most and pretty much find anyone that we would ever want to interview then on top of that it's san diego if you live in michigan and you're a fitness expert and it's fucking january you're gonna pay your way to san diego i'm not i'm not gonna buy your flight for you you're gonna be like oh i can go on vacation in san diego and hang on the barbershop guys fucking sign me up so people would fly to us whenever we wanted to do a

show because it's it's a vacation spot. It's a tourist destination, and people are happy to go to San Diego because it's a great place to be. So we moved out there primarily for those reasons, just because it was a fitness hub, and we wouldn't have to fly so much, and then people would come to us. That's dope, man. So you mentioned that you did all that, and you didn't have kids yet, and now you've got three.

I do. How's been the integration of your family into that lifestyle that you guys built? Well, it's certainly more difficult to go on trips like this because now when I leave, I've got to leave my wife with three kids. I have three kids under three and a half right now. I had three kids in less than three years. Three kids in diapers for a period of time. It's a lot of work for my wife to handle on her own.

Actually, we just recently moved back to Memphis, Tennessee because my wife's family lives out there and they're very, very helpful. That makes it where when I go on trips, it's a lot more bearable for her. I want her to have a good time want the kids to have a good time right and it's it's just better having this family around

so i never really really really really cared about having family around of course i have a great family and i would love to be around them but it wasn't like on a daily basis like man i really wish family was around because life would be a lot easier but after i had kids i started really seeing the value and having some some family around to help out with all the little ones. It's super interesting to me as you guys continue to build and it doesn't seem like there's any stopping in the near future. Did you ever reach a point of inner dialogue where – because I experienced this with the gym,

so I'm asking this question very selfishly, where you were kind of putting the business and the family against each other, consciously or subconsciously. Your progress in either one was kind of stagnated because you were conflicted? I've often felt like that. It's two very important things competing for my time. Right. And I want both the business and my business partners and and the gym members and our online athletes and the audience that listens to

us to have the best experience I can possibly create for them and same thing with my wife and kids and and all the other downstream family members I want them to all have a fantastic time and have a good life as well and so I only have so much time in the day and I, you know, it's, it's very tough to make everyone happy all the time. And then when, when one party demands more time and attention, inevitably it takes away from the other one. Even if you don't want it to, and you say it won't or whatever, like there's only so many hours in the day. So it's definitely a, it's a tough thing to deal with. I try to do it as best I can. I don't think I get it right a% of the time, but both those things are really important to me. So I work really hard to make sure that all parties are happy. Sure. Because you obviously have an open dialogue with your

business partners and everything. You had that same two-way communication with you and your wife? Yeah. Actually, it's funny because running these various companies has made my communication skills much, much better because you have to. You have to grow and evolve. If you're growing a company where, you know, Barbra Shrug at one point, when we were kind of at our peak, we had 25, 26 people full-time on the team.

Nobody sees that. They're all kind of in the shadows in the background. People think we just talk on microphones all day, but it's a very small percentage of what we do. And there's a real company behind it that needs to be there in order for us to do what we do. And so, you know, leading all those people and then coaching at the gym, you know, hundreds of members and leading all those people, like your communication skills are going to get better, even if you don't want them to almost just because you're practicing talking to people all day long.

And so that's actually bled over into my relationship quite a bit where I'm a much better communicator with my wife because of all the business stuff that I do. Sure. And then the deep rapport and the deep connection that I have with my wife actually helps with the more important people on the business side, most of my business partners and our team members that I have a very strong relationship with. And so I feel like it's complimentary to have kind of both sides of that equation. That's awesome. That's cool.

What have you learned from being both a husband and a father now outside of communication? That's a pretty open-ended question. So I don't know. I'll turn it back on you while I think about it. Do you have any kids? I don't have any kids. No kids? No relationships?

You got two kids? Two. Mike's got two. Let's turn it over to Michael while I think about that. What have you learned about being a husband or a father? Dude, I got a two-year-old and a three-month-old, and there's a lot of, like you said, carryover from doing what I do as a coach and a business owner and a business partner that comes over to how I raise my kids.

And part of that is just the empathy thing, which wasn't really a strong suit of mine anyway. But having hundreds of people in our membership base, leading a staff of coaches, the communication with my wife, and now having to deal with my children, it's that patience with instruction as they develop. There's a lot of carryover between taking somebody who's brand new at weightlifting and taking a kid that hasn't spoken yet, hasn't walked yet, all those things. And it's very easy, as I look back on my less mature self to want to rush that process yeah versus just being being patient with their development as I would with a

member learning barbell or or just crossfit in general right movement you know so like that's been a huge carryover for me it's just the the patience thing and you know uh babies are just very volatile beings you know what i mean so when they go when they go up a very learned skill for me is when they go up i come down you know and being equipped with that based on some of the the emotional responses of members and you know they're they're disappointing when they don't PR and stuff like that, you know, has definitely helped me be a better father. No doubt. Cool. I'll play off what you said a little bit. I was using you to get ideas to answer the that. I have noticed as a father that my demeanor walking into a situation impacts my kids and their behavior a great deal.

Okay. So if I walk into the living room and I want to, like, you know, I want to get one of my kids to brush his teeth, right? We just finished dinner. He's playing in the other room. We got to brush teeth and put on pajamas and go to bed, right? My kids aren't just, like, going to stop playing and go brush their teeth and put on pajamas and go to bed. My kids aren't just going to stop playing and go brush their teeth and put on their pajamas on their own. They're 20 months old, and one of them is just over three years old.

It's not on their radar to do anything like that. They just want to go have a good time. So if I walk into the room, and I'm super chill, and I'm relaxed, and I'm calm, and they can tell. They can really tell if I'm chilled out and I'm relaxed and i'm calm and they can tell they can really tell if i'm like chilled out and and i'm not upset about anything but like even if i'm not even if it's like super subtle like they can tell that i'm frustrated or like i you know if like if i left the end of the day the work day and like i got like this open loop there's something that i really wanted to

finish and i didn't get it done i'm fucking kind of pissed about it or whatever like but and i'm not saying anything to anybody it's just like this thing static in the background of my mind it's like i feel like they can really tell that stuff they can tell if i'm frustrated or if i'm just like a little bit agitated or if i'm like not fully present if i'm not really paying attention to what they're saying 100 even i'll pay attention 99 right it's like they can tell if i'm just like nodding my head going okay cool buddy you know come on let's go brush your teeth like it you know I'm just like I'm just like if I'm just saying oh yeah whatever whatever whatever now do what I say like I'm not actually taking into consideration their thoughts and their feelings and their

emotions or whatever and so having that knowledge now I go into situations where like I make sure that when I when I am interacting with my kids that my demeanor is 100% focused on them, and I'm doing my best to always be super present, not lost in thought, and really listening to what they're saying. Yeah. And I've noticed that when I'm, like, really making a lot of eye contact and really listening to what my kids are saying, especially if I, like, kneel down, I always try to get on their level as much as I possibly can. Then when I'm like, hey, you want to go brush your teeth?

They're like, oh, okay. And they comply with what I want them to do. There's no underlying resistance. I don't think in those moments they feel as controlled as they would be if I as an authoritarian figure came in

and you fucking do what I say or you're in trouble. You know what I mean? And that's how business is a lot these days. It's not so authoritarian as it might have used to be where the boss comes in, the boss says you have to do the thing, and if you don't do the thing, you're in big trouble. That's strike one, strike two, strike three, you're fired. It's not like that anymore.

That's what bosses do. That's not what leaders do. Leaders are someone that you follow because you want to. You respect this person. This person's a role model. You want to be like this person. You aspire to be like this person. You want them to like you back. You want them to respect you because you want to. You respect this person. This person's a role model. You want to be like this person. You aspire to be like this person. You want them to like you back.

You want them to respect you because you respect them. And that's how I view all relationships now. Just because you have the power doesn't mean that you should fucking throw it around. And if someone doesn't do it, then you stomp them with your power. Eventually, that shit's going to come back on you somehow, some way. Maybe in the example of kids, maybe I hammer them for the first 10 years of their life 20 years of life or whatever they get out of the house and then when i'm when i'm old and i need them they're like no fuck you and like when i needed you you didn't help you didn't help me out you fucking stopped me now now i'm out sure you know easily

could happen and i don't want that to happen like i want my kids to to feel that that i respect them like when they talk to me that they're being listened to. They feel understood. And I generally, you know, I generally care about them and I generally love them. And, you know, they'll reciprocate that back to me. And that goes for any relationship I could ever possibly have. Totally. And it totally shines through in watching you with all these awesome people here that you have built some of the most genuine relationships from the outside looking in that I've ever seen. So that shines through in you.

You know what? Actually, since we're at the 5-Day booth right now, Orion's walking that way. Aaron Hine is walking over that way. That's something that these guys do really, really well, man. Aaron and Orion are the fucking greatest dudes ever. They treat everyone with an immense amount of respect. Everybody loves them. They just know how

to treat people right. I consider those guys to be role models. I want to run my company like they run their company where everyone has a good time all the time. Which leads me to my next question. When it comes to leadership, genuine relationships, all of those things,

in the beginning, where did you become conscious of the the importance and the difference between being a boss being a leader and the importance of creating the genuine relationships the very first place so I used to fall guy named Evan Pagan I still follow him he's awesome person and there's a very friend of his named Brian Franklin, who was a leadership coach that Mike primarily worked with there for a little while. And Brian's an insanely intelligent person, one of the most intelligent person I've probably ever met. And he wrote a book, which you definitely should go read. It's a very, very good book

called The Last Safe Investment. It's phenomenally good. Have you read that one? It's in my queue, actually, in my Audible. Okay. Yeah. 100%. I got to get through that book at some point. It's phenomenally good. Have you read that one? It's in my queue, actually, in my Audible. Okay. Yeah, 100%. I've got to get through that book at some point. It's very, very good. And he was really the first person that really made all the distinctions for me between leadership, management, being in charge, who's the like that that type of thing and and really pulled the leadership piece out and and and really made it where just because you're in charge doesn't mean you're leading and just because you're leading doesn't mean you have to act like you're in charge mmm if that makes any sense oh yeah and so that was a big shift for me realizing that if I want to go far in life then fundamentally leadership was one of the highest level skills you could ever possibly have right for all the reasons that i mentioned earlier like you need

people to want to follow you it's hard to get people to to continue to follow you if they don't like you and they don't respect you so first you got to be able to like be the person like you you yourself have to be a person that's worthy of respect, and that's its own separate thing to go worry about. And then after that, it really is about how you treat people, where they will also feel you're worthy of respect. You've got to respect yourself first, and you've got to be a good person and all that, though. And the reason I ask all that is because those are all things that are hammered into us as Marines, you know, there's, there's, uh, um, there's leadership where by, by position, by rank, and then there's, there's leadership by, uh, by, by committee almost, you know what I mean? It's like, yes, we're going to do this because we have to, this is the mission,

you will go forth and accomplish it. And then there's the, the other stuff that just makes the unit operate that much better. And that requires buy-in because it doesn't necessarily have to be done, but it does streamline things. You know, there's one way to approach the mission, and there's a whole other way to approach the unit cohesion. You know what I'm saying? So it sounds like there's so many parallels between what I learned as a Marine and, you know, what you've learned via business that are very complementary to each other.

Yeah, that's a piece about the military that I feel like I missed out on by not participating in any type of service where leadership is such a big part of it. I feel like if I would have learned that earlier in life, joining the Marines or whatever it is, early 20s, getting those leadership skills I think would have been really, really valuable. I didn't really think much about it until I was late 20s or early 30s. So I feel like I'm a little bit behind the times or just behind the eight ball or whatever with learning leadership skills. I'll say you're doing all right.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it. Dude, so from hearing your story, to me, I define you as like an early adopter because you found CrossFit at an early age or like an early period. Then you get into podcasting at an early period. And that to me, like taking the dive and pushing your limits seems to be like a huge part of your story. How do you continue to find your edges and limits and continue to push past that as you continue to grow? Oh, I outsource all that stuff.

Everything. I'm not even joking. Everything. I never said it like that before, but I actually don't consider myself to be an early adopter specifically. Okay. If you look at that model of innovators, early adopters, early majority, late majority, the laggards, I'm probably early majority.

Okay. Easily. Maybe early adopter. What I've told people lately is like, maybe I am an early adopter, but I hang out with other people who are like super early adopters or innovators. And so I feel like I'm not an early adopter because like my the context is that these people are so far beyond me. I must be more in the middle of the spectrum. But relative to the general population, maybe I am more of an early adopter.

But but really what what I meant by outsourcing is that I actually am not super proactive about starting new things. I generally like things to be well-established as something that is really good or works really well or whatever it is before I want to invest all my time and energy into something. I don't like to be the person that tests everything and realizes that nine out of 10 things aren't going to work. I feel like a waste of my time. Bledsoe, on the other hand, loves to do that stuff. He loves to try new stuff. And anyone that tries something new all the time, a lot of those things aren't going to play out the way you think they are going to or they don't catch traction or whatever it is.

But he enjoys the process of being one of the first people to try things. And so kind of the model that we've established is that he tries a lot of new things and he comes to me and tells me all about it all the time. And every once in a while I go, dude, that's the cool one. That's the good one. He tries a lot of new things, and he comes to me and tells me all about it all the time. Every once in a while, I go, dude, that's the cool one. That's the good one. Or he'll tell me about something, and then the next week, he's still talking about it. And the next week, he's still talking about it.

And the next week, he's still talking about it. And if he keeps on something for a long period of time, I'm like, oh, okay, this thing might be something we should look into. So like the CrossFit thing. He tried CrossFit first, and I wasn't, like, super into it. Like, CrossFit, CrossFit, CrossFit specifically. I love weightlifting, powerlifting, lifting weights, et cetera. But Mike was, like, the first person to get into CrossFit specifically. And CrossFit didn't have a lot of traction back in 2006 when we first learned about it.

I didn't know what it was. And until I realized it was going to be a big thing, I wasn't, like't fully invested in it. So in 2006, I was kind of like, oh, yeah, CrossFit, it sounds kind of cool, but I'm on the weightlifting team, and I like weightlifting, so I'm going to keep doing weightlifting. And Mike was trying CrossFit, and I really wasn't paying much attention to it. And Mike was the one who decided to start the gym.

And I, at the time, was like, well, that's cool. I'll go over there and lift weights with you if you want, and I'll help you out however you want. But I didn't want to be a CrossFit gym owner with him. I didn't buy until 2009. Part of that's because I was still in graduate school

when I moved to Australia and all that. But Mike tends to be the early adopter, the real early adopter. And then I tend to come in not too far after him if it looks like it's going to play out and it's going to work. So Mike started, it was his idea to start the gym. It was his idea to start the podcast.

I did start Technique Wild on my own, so it's not like I can't start things on my own. But the podcast idea was Mike's. The Shrug Collective idea was Mike's. A lot of the ideas that we have caught traction with were really mostly Mike's ideas. And then, you know, we have a lot of conversations about which ideas we actually want to scale and actually take action on. And then once we come to an agreement about, okay, that thing's going to work, then I become more involved and we start to build. Okay.

And scale whatever it is. Okay. Yeah. So I know that I'm not like that. so I don't try to be like that. I find people like Anders. Anders is kind of like that. Like Mike. Other people who are more proactive and more creative in those domains than I am,

and I partner with those people. And just like those people. Those people? Just like. What do you mean? Those bad people. Creative. You know, just like anyone that's the opposite from you.

It's just easier for all the things you don't want to do. Like I said, I don't like to do a lot of writing. Anders loves to write. And so I let him write everything. You know, he writes the emails and he writes a lot of social media posts. And, you know, as we make e-books and things like that, he does a lot of that writing. I might contribute to it, but I don't want to be the primary person. So I don't try to do it.

I let him do that because he likes it and he's good at it. So I think that's a big part of business is stick to what you're good at, stick to what you enjoy, stick to what you have the capacity to do, delegate, outsource, partner with all the other stuff. And so that way you're having a good time and you're actually doing something that you're really good at, which means other people are going to be more likely to think it's really good because you actually have a talent

at that thing. And then everything else that you're not good at, you don't have to do that stuff. That stuff you can let somebody else do. That way whatever that thing is, is actually good. Sure. And that takes a lot of honest introspection to develop

a very real self-identity. What are some of the instruments that you've put in place over the years or even currently that allow you to have that realistic look in the mirror of this is what I'm good at. This is what I enjoy. This is my creative genius. Totally. Right. So you don't step outside your lane and create a product that is less worthy of your energy. Yeah. There's a lot of things to go into that Having many many conversations about business with a lot of business leaders my business partners included You know, we just have over time figured out what what works and what doesn't Mostly do the trial and error sure a lot of stuff that we do doesn't work. Most the things we do

I would say don't work. I Must stop you right there because I think that's that's huge for people to really hear that being willing to try all these things yeah with the understanding that more often than not it's not going to work but the shit that does work is massive right right uh barbell shrug right sure so i mean google google launches stuff and it doesn't work yeah happens everybody like i'm sure uh elon musk has has almost gone out of business many times like it talks about like almost going bankrupt uh he got fired as a ceo steve jobs got fired as a ceo like no one is is immune from from failure or for something not working right uh at all every every entrepreneur that i know has has some type of horror story

where something didn't go their way and you know and disaster struck but then they they pulled their way out of it so it's just it's just a part of the game you know you can be a professional soccer player and you can tear your acl it's like it's just a part of playing soccer yeah and so you got to just recognize that you know acl terrors are normal and don't beat yourself up over it and do your rehab and get back up and get back on the field and play the game right that's the damn truth so sorry to take you off track but and then going back to like the the instruments and the Dement what you know what do you have in place that keeps you in your lane yeah um I think one thing that really helped out was when I started learning about like personality typing you know like some of the stuff I don't do quite as much anymore like the Myers-Briggs

type stuff Colby scores I never really got into disc and things like that these days the after talking with the talk of Jeffrey Miller who's a pretty well known evolutionary psychologist and and now Jordan Peterson who got really really big over the last couple years they both you know they come Jordan's a clinical psychiatrist or psychologist one of the other I can't remember and then then like I said Jeffrey Miller's the evolutionary psychologist both those guys say that the big five personality traits it's a good job it's ocean consciousness conscientiousness extroversion agreeableness neur, neuroticism, and openness.

So those are like the big personality traits and there's subsets of each one of those things. But you can score yourself in these categories and then get a really good idea of what your temperament happens to be. If you do a Colby score, they score things like are you a strong starter or a strong finisher? Are you going to start projects and then get bored and move on to start another project or if a project has already started are you gonna drive that project to completion and make sure that it gets done all the way done right you know student certain types of people are they're great at starting things certain types of people are not great at starting things they never start anything but if you give them

a project and give them the guidelines they'll knock it out and they'll finish the project so if you can partner those people together good starters and good finishers then that's a magical combination. If you take someone who's super creative and really artistic and you pair that person with someone who's really analytical and really organized, then you can knock something out that is totally legit. So doing the personality typing was really, really important. The love languages is kind kind of a, kind of a similar, similar thing. It's just like, it just, it just tells you categorically how, how people are

likely to respond, uh, to, to certain stimuli, if you will. So I'm a physical touch person. So like if someone wants to like get on my good side, you know, like doing, doing handshakes and bro hugs and all that, like, that's how I know people are my friends. Like if I, if I do, you know, if I walk up and say, oh, hello. And like, we don't like shake hands or like, hands or give each other a hug, we're not friends. If we hug, we're more likely to be friends. So just knowing that about myself, that if you give me compliments, it's very nice, but it's not like winning me over.

Like, hey, dude, good to see you. Give me a hug. That type of thing. And everyone is like that to some extent. There's certain things that your personality or your temperament are going to be more successful with a certain personality or a certain temperament over other things. And so doing these tests, so to speak, and figuring out what your temperament is, what your wife's temperament is, what your business partners, your kids, whatever it to be, really helps you, helps me rather, shouldn't speak for anyone else, it really helps me just make better decisions about how I treat other people, what role to put them in, what projects to put them on, you know, just what I ask them to do. If I give someone who's like super creative and they love to do all kinds of new stuff all the time,

and I say, hey, you know, go into that Excel file and file and you know one by one you know make all those all those boxes green where it's like totally monotonous some people be like oh my god shoot me in the face and like and other people are gonna be like oh that sounds easy thank you for giving me something that's like that that i that i know exactly what to do and so it just depends on who you are um that that's really helpful um i think i think the whole psychedelic drug movement is really helpful for introspection. I've gone down to Peru and done ayahuasca. That's a level of introspection that I think is impossible to get any other way. So Google that if you don't know what I'm talking about. But doing things like ayahuasca in a safe setting where it's legal,

et cetera, et cetera, I think it'd be really, really valuable. Okay. Where you currently are in your life now, how would you define your life's purpose? So back to the original thing that I said about me being so lucky and having a strength coach from day one, I've always said that since I got fitness coaching for free, high-quality coaching from early teens, basically, it's my life's mission, so to speak, to kind of give that back. Like, I think, I think I'm so lucky that I don't really have to worry about my health. Like people, like other people do, even if I, even if there's something I think could be better, um, or, you know, like I, I am not as in as good a shape as I would prefer to be.

I'm still probably in better shape than 99.99% of the population. And if there's something that I want to improve about my fitness or my health, I generally have a pretty good idea of what I should go do. It doesn't mean I have all the answers. I know everything at all. There's still much, much more to learn. The rabbit hole goes very, very deep. But I'm not generally worried about my health.

And I don't feel lost. I think some people, they feel completely lost. And they have no fucking idea what to do. And it's this hopeless feeling that they don't think they're ever going to get out of that situation. That's a horrible thing to, I don't know what that feels like. But I imagine it's a horrible way to feel. I don't think anyone should have to feel like that so like part of my mission is to to to give back all that i learned in a in a you know a medium like this totally for free where other people can can take control of their own health that way they can be the healthiest

they can be and they don't have to fucking worry about it sure man they don't have that anxiety anymore yeah they can be they can have peace of mind. That's dope, man. I love that. Before we let you get out of here, I want to ask you two questions in succession there about your daily routine and how you're living in the now. I'll ask them in succession, then you can answer. The first of which, what do you do each and every day to feed yourself and kickstart the momentum for all the things that you're driving forward? And then the second is what do you do to fuel yourself to create that momentum sustain a sustainable momentum over the long term yeah a few things especially now that I have kids

not everyone can say this I'm pretty lucky to be able to say this but I actually sleep really really well debatably I sleep better now that I have kids mostly because the kids have a routine that's very consistent, and it's seven days a week. So it's not like five days a week, and then the weekends you stay out until 3 in the morning, and then you wake up at noon, like I've done before, back in college and all that. I don't go out and party in the evenings anymore because every day I've got

to put the kids to bed at like 7.30 or whatever it is, and then they're going to wake up at 6, no matter what, seven days a week. And so having that consistent sleep schedule, I think, has actually been really, really good for me. And my kids, very, very luckily, thankfully, they sleep really, really well, all three of them. So I don't wake up during the middle of the night almost ever. And everyone's shocked by that, but I don't know how or why that happened,

but I'm very, very lucky that that happens to be the case. So I get very consistent sleep. And then every morning I wake up. The first thing I do every morning when I wake up is I go to the bathroom, I weigh myself, I log my weight, and then I drink two very big glasses of water. And then I take a shower and I go downstairs and make breakfast. And that's pretty much my piece, a very small piece of my morning routine before all the other kids stuff and whatnot happens but um that that very simple um that very simple action of drinking two big glasses of water every morning uh i actually really think prepares me for the day okay like it it wakes me up better than drinking coffee and And I, it makes, I don't know. I,

I just feel really, really good about it. By the time I get to breakfast, I've already digested all the water and I'm not thirsty during breakfast. So I can, I can, you know, eat a high quality meal where I'm not like, you know, not, I'm not missing out on a big breakfast because, because I'm drinking, um, whatever at the same time, I pretty much only drink water. Um, and that, that's been really, really helpful. I've done that for a couple of years. It's super simple. Anyone can do that.

And I feel like that was a really big, really easy change. Okay. And where does this community go follow you and support you, both personally and professionally, my man? Of course, everything Shrug Collective. Is this like the end of the show, pitch all of our stuff type thing? Yeah. That's it.

Okay, perfect, perfect. Yeah, I mean, Shrug Collective, we have shows every single day. You guys are on Thursdays. We fucking love having you guys around, of course. Everything Barbell Shrugged. We're Shrugged Collective on Instagram now. Me personally, I'm Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. I'm also in the process of launching my own kind of side project site,

which is DougLarsonFitness.com. Being an instructor and really enjoying teaching things, I like making courses. I like doing seminars. I like making online digital information product courses. And so I have a variety of movement-based and nutrition-based courses on douglarssonfitness.com. So definitely go check that out. If you happen to hear this before that site is up, there's a landing page. Just put your email in and then when it launches, I'll send you an email, and you can go check it out. But that's more of a passion project for me. Most of the stuff I do is a part of the Shrug Collective,

but I want to do a bunch of things that aren't necessarily specifically for the Shrug Collective that I've wanted to do for a long time, and so I decided to start my own side project, purely as a passion project, just because I think it would be a lot of fun. On top of that, we have many things within the shrug collective if you're an athlete you want to have access to a variety of different training programs we have the the shrug program vault which is basically a membership site where we put all of our training programs in there for one monthly price we used to do training program launches you know like every six weeks we would launch a new training program you only had you the, the ability to join those programs once or twice a year. So if you want to do muscle gain challenge, you would have to wait, you know, eight months to get started.

And that was of course, you know, a pain in the ass for people that wanted to start today. And it was a pain in the ass for us because every six weeks we would have to like, you know, do a big marketing push for a launch and then start it and then start prepping for the next one. It was like this, this neverending launch cycle that we were on which was cool really cool for a period of time had a great time doing it i really enjoy that stuff but having all the training programs on one membership site is much less work for us which is fantastic because it's much less work for us we don't have to charge as much for it so the athletes get access to all the training programs programs instead of just a single training program and they pay like half the price that they used to pay. So it's just a better model

all the way around. So if you want to get involved with Muscle Gain Challenge, which is all about building muscle, Flight Weightlifting, which is a very awesome weightlifting program, Strug Strength Challenge, which is kind of more of a cross-fitting program with a strength bias. Those are like the three main, main, main programs. And then we have aerobic capacity programs, high-intensity endurance programs, strong strongman programs pull-up programs overhead strength and shoulder stability programs there's 11 programs total on there right now and and i you know i add something to it every so often i just i just put a new program that we did with zach evanesce on there a couple weeks ago uh it's a gangster membership site it's only 47 bucks a

month which is fucking insanely cheap so if you're an and you want some online programming, that's really good. You have the ability to stop training and start a new training program as your interests and goals change without having to do anything. You just stop and start a new one because you have access to 11 of them. You can easily do that on that site. If you're interested in checking that out, you can

go to shruggedcollective.com backslash vault. All the information about that program is on that site. Dope, brother. Appreciate you, man. Yeah, appreciate you. Dude, really appreciate you taking the time this busy week here at the CrossFit Games. For everybody out there in Feed Me, Fuel Me land,

make sure you check out the Shrugged Collective. We drop on Thursdays. There's something dropping every single day. Check out the vault if you're looking to step your fitness game up and be on the lookout for everything that Doug is putting out on the personal side with his passion project, Doug Larson Fitness. And, dude, thank you so much for being with us. I'm happy to switch roles and be asking the questions on this go-around, man.

So much appreciated, brother. Good time, man. Have fun. Thank you. Definitely. And until next time, guys, feed me, fuel me. And that'll do it for this episode with our special guest, Doug Larson. If you want to check out everything that Doug has going, go to the full show notes on shrugcollective.com. Also, be sure to connect with us on social media, including Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Feed Me, Fuel Me. We would love to hear from each and every one of you.

If you found this episode inspiring in any way, please leave a rating and a comment in iTunes so we can continue on this journey together. Also, be sure to share it with your friends and family on social media, including Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, or any other social platforms that you use. We really appreciate you spending your time with us today

and allowing us to join you on your journey. We would love to hear your feedback on this episode, as well as guests and topics for future episodes. To end this episode, we would love to leave you with a quote from Bruce Lee. The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus. Thank you again for joining us, and we will catch you on the next episode. The successful warrior is the average man with laser-like focus. Thank you again for joining us and we will catch you on the next episode.