Barbell Shrugged - Greg Glassman and the Future of CrossFit w/ Anders Varner, Doug Larson, and Travis Mash - Barbell Shrugged- #476

Episode Date: June 10, 2020

In today’s episode the crew discusses:   What happened with Greg Glassman’s Tweet What are the next steps for gyms What if the athletes leave CrossFit Should gym owners rebrand away from CrossFit Why fitness professionals are not the best leaders on complex subjects like race and culture The future of CrossFit The future of the CrossFit Games And more…   Anders Varner on Instagram   Doug Larson on Instagram   Coach Travis Mash on Instagram   ————————————————   Training Programs to Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/34zcGVw   Nutrition Programs to Lose Fat and Build Muscle: https://bit.ly/3eiW8FF   Nutrition and Training Bundles to Save 67%: https://bit.ly/2yaxQxa   Please Support Our Sponsors   Organifi - Save 20% using code: “Shrugged” at organifi.com/shrugged   www.magbreakthrough.com/shrugged - use coupon code SHRUGGED10 to save up to 40%   http://onelink.to/fittogether - Brand New Fitness Social Media App Fittogether   Purchase our favorite Supplements here and use code “Shrugged” to save 20% on your order: https://bit.ly/2K2Qlq4    Garage Gym Equipment and Accessories: https://bit.ly/3b6GZFj Save 5% using the coupon code “Shrugged”

Shrug family, this week we are talking about the state of CrossFit. We typically try to stay in our lane. We talk about strength and conditioning. We talk about getting strong. We talk about making strong people stronger. The current state of the United States is very hot, very heated. There's a lot of things going on and 99% of it has nothing to do with us. We're not experts. We work out. We teach people how to get stronger, and that's our main role.

As things have shifted from a national perspective and into the very specific CrossFit scene with the comments of Glassman earlier this week or this weekend, I think it was important for us to kind of address just a lot of what's going on, what's on our minds and how we can just kind of push the conversation forward. We're not experts. We're people that spend a lot of time in gyms

and we hang out with people that spend a lot of time in gyms. And in order to be barbell shrugged, the show, the platform, in order to be good enough at what we do inside the gym and coaching, we don't pick our heads up too often to see what's going around in the world. We don't watch the news. We don't really see anything outside of barbells, people lifting weights, smiles on their faces. And we enjoy being able to coach you through this amazing podcast.

As a higher level statement, we are more than happy to have everyone be a part of our community, specifically people of color. If you would like to come and join the Barbell Struck family, be a part of the conversation with us. This is a platform where we try to fill the room every single day with love. And for us, we find the most love inside weight rooms. It's where we get to create the most change. It's where we feel the love back from everyone that we're associated with, and we wanted to take some time during the show today just to have a conversation with some of my best friends, Doug and Travis, and shed some light on kind of the state of CrossFit, which has given us so much and just a little bit different of a feel today. So I hope you enjoy the show. I hope it opens your mind up a little bit,

lets you know kind of where we're at, what we've gone through over the last week or so. And we're still going to be doing ad reads here in the middle of the show, but I just wanted to get into this as quick as possible. We'll see you guys at the break. Welcome to Marble Shrugged. I'm Anders Varner, Doug Larson,

Coach Travis Mass. Today's show, man, usually we are filmed a couple weeks out, but some things have been happening in the world, and we probably need to discuss a little bit of the scene with fitness. Over the last week, our nation, our country, so weird for me to even say our nation as if I have a clue what's going on in the world outside of fitness. But it's been very, very hot and relatively tried to stay away from cultural events, from racial events, from all things that are very complicated, complex subjects.

And the reason is just because for the last 23 years, I've done nothing but bury myself in a gym and try to become as good as I possibly can be at lifting weights. And in order to become very good at something, I feel that the only way to do it is to ignore everything else in life. And part of that means that I don't watch the news. Part of that means that when social media gets really crazy, I just ignore it. But on Sunday morning, Saturday night, Greg Glassman issued, or not issued,

but said something on Twitter, the Floyd 19 comment that everybody knows about um and put a lot of this stuff right in the very center of the fitness world there's a lot of gym owners that are really unsure of what to do there's a lot of athletes that are backing out of the crossfit games um and it it did kind of incite me or it kind of pushed me to actually come out and say something about it. And that our support as Barbell Shrugged is with all people of color. And it's a really heavy situation. All of us are really kind of come from the CrossFit fabric.

We have like a very intense history and relationship. And I say intense because the depth that we serve that community is first and foremost, like a very important part of our business. And it's the people that we love. You know, Barbell Shrugged helps thousands of CrossFitters get better at CrossFit through strength and conditioning principles that we teach. CrossFit has put barbells in people's hands and pushed the weightlifting community forward, the powerlifting community forward. People have found weights and found a way to have fun lifting weights that has created a lifetime of health and wellness and strength. And I'm not the person to really be able to comment on the grand scheme of racial relations and politics

and all these giant macro systems that are being discussed right now. But when it comes to the fitness community, I think that we do have a role to, one, offer our support and be a part of the conversation. Just knowing that all of us, Travis, Doug, and myself, are here on this and you're listening to us because we've put the last couple decades of our lives strictly into ignoring everything else except lifting weights and and learning how to grow a business in the weightlifting space um i i feel like it's a really, really tricky situation in that CrossFit has probably been the most important and pivotal piece to the strength and conditioning world over the past 15 years, giving it tons of attention and growth.

And I just want to have an open conversation with my bros that I trust, with our audience that we trust and know and love us. And most importantly, just so you guys know that during this craziness, like we're here, we're still going to pump out strength and conditioning and fill the room with love as much as we can, which is our number one goal is just making strong people stronger. We talk about it all the time, but part of that is just everybody we encounter, just filling the room with love. And that's kind of the backbone of Barbell Shrugged.

Doug, I'm going to kick it to you. Not that there's any easy way to kick it to you, but just some general thoughts on kind of where you were and just kind of, I know you have three kids and a family and it's the weekend and we try to stay off our phones. But yeah, just anything that's kind of like gone through your head over the last couple 48, 72 hours. Yeah. I mean, it's shocking to see how fast all this is unfolding.

It happened like within 24 hours, I felt like the whole, the world, just the CrossFit fitness space just imploded. I was like scrolling my feed and every, I don't, I don't go on social media that much anymore. I don't know if anyone's noticed that. I only post like twice a month these days. So I don't really go on social media that much. I found that I'm just happier when I don't, but I, but I did, I did check my phone at the end of the day and just every post was somebody saying I can't believe this happened and I'm so embarrassed and I'll be you know de-affiliating and I'm not going to compete in the CrossFit Games and just it was like every post and I was like what the fuck is going on like what what happened what did you know obviously everyone was posting that they disagree with what Greg said. And I was like, I had to go look at it.

I found the email and I found the Twitter post. Anders, those were the two primary things, right? Was there anything else said? Did he follow up on any of that? I don't think I have the full story even yet. He's apologized. Yeah. He did apologize?

What did he say? People crushed it more, I think. Anders, you can tell him. The apology, look, this is the part where I wasn't in the room. Let's just say that I have a relative history with talking shit to people and i kind of in a way if if i were to understand like try to be in that room and understand i feel like there was a relationship that he had with that modeling company whoever or school or the academics that were doing the modeling with the covet 19 and glassman has been fighting very hard with them to get gyms open.

He's been very angry about the closing of gyms and that gyms are not essential. And his take on CrossFit being a health care system piece. He believes that he is a very important piece to health and wellness in America or around the world. And that company, he believes, got the model of COVID-19 very, very wrong. Which actually this morning, I did see the news and I saw that the World Health Organization just released that they're finding asymptomatic people are no longer responsible for transmitting COVID-19 from person to person. So that's a very – If you have it but you're not showing symptoms, you can't spread it?

Correct. Correct. And that's been the big thing. I haven't heard that. Yeah. Yeah, it just happened this morning. So Glassman has been very, very angry at this company who's been mainly responsible for the modeling of the coronavirus. And I would imagine he has been on the phone with these specific people.

And he has a very specific relationship with these people. He's not just making a tweet to the world. I believe that that tweet was directed at a single person telling them how bad they were at their job. And instead of saying, like, you suck at your job, he made a very snarky, very insensitive comment and wrote Floyd 19 as if you already got this one giant thing wrong and now you're getting this other giant thing wrong too um oh i see what you're saying and i didn't know what he meant by i don't well it's a weird comment right and i'm i'm purely

just trying to put myself in glassman's shoes and thinking about all the things. Here's the thing. Glassman wrote nine letters in succession on Twitter and cost himself hundreds of millions of dollars. Hundreds of millions of dollars. Like Reebok, out. Rogue, out. There's multiple hundred right there. Is Rogue officially out? I think they kind of

talked around it. I think they basically said we're out unless Glassman's out. There's more or less paraphrasing there. Glassman can be out. He owns it. I know people are saying that. This is ridiculous. I thought Rogue said they were going to

fulfill their commitment to season or something like that all the contracts are through 2020 all the contracts are through 2020 this was like the negotiating year and more or less they all were like unless something happens

Reebok said we're out of the negotiations but there's already roughly 750 gyms that have de-affiliated which they can't actually de-affiliate until their contract is is up um and who knows if they just two weeks from now they're like oh that blew over but i know a lot of people i think are saying stuff what's that i'm but i know a lot of people i think are saying stuff what's that i'm like you know a lot of people are saying stuff and i don't know if they're really you know they're just like letting people know they're mad about it but i think the way they're

saying it is like we're out unless something changes like they're giving themselves an out to to not do what they're saying they're doing which i I think is like, you know, that's kind of being lukewarm either in or out. I love how Reebok was like, peace, I'm done. Yeah. Anyway. But yes, he did apologize. Try to explain himself. He apologized, but did he try to explain what he meant when he said Floyd 19?

Everyone has their version and their assumptions about what he probably meant but did he ever try to say what he did in fact mean when he was writing that that's why i can't what i just said he he basically said um i was making a comment at these specific people um and it was not in it was not like intended to be this broad statement against african americans and black lives matters and all that like he got pissed off at somebody and lashed out and and made a comment that i mean literally cost him hundreds of millions dollars it's crazy when you when you read the email what were your general thoughts as you were reading it? Because I read that email before the Floyd 19 comment and before there was all the backlash against him. And I basically read it as, oh, this is Greg being Greg. It's a very, it's just a very aggressive, scathing email coming from someone who's known for being

very aggressive and scathing. I thought it was very in line with who I believe he is, even though I don't know the man at all, personally. Two people called me yesterday to do podcasts about it, and they were like, well, what did you think of the email? And I was like, that's what it's like to be an affiliate if you color outside the lines with CrossFit. They don't come down and say, hey, could you tighten that line up

and color inside a little bit? No, they write you an email that says, you're out. You're an idiot. We hate you. They had an entire team, the Russells, that would... Russ Green is a super nice dude,

but Russ Berger used to... those guys used to smash people that, like, it was embarrassing. And I used to have to answer questions all the time, like, well, what do you think of this? And I'd be like, guys, I just want to do fitness.

I don't want to get wrapped up in all that. Like, that's too much. But, yeah, when I saw that email, I was like, that's Greg doing Greg. when i saw that email i was like that's greg doing greg that's that's just been going on for 15 years yeah i i feel like a lot of people i'm about to say something super controversial but a lot of people they're like saying i'm out or or you know they've known this dude for years nothing he said like just said, is any different than what he's ever said. It's almost like a lot of people are doing it as a publicity stunt. I don't like him. I've never

liked the way that he portrays himself and the way that he is so rude to affiliates if they don't do what he considers they should do. Instead of like most business owners would be like, hey, could you try to get this in order? He's like, you said. He's like, you're out. You're stupid. I've never really appreciated the way that they do that. But all these people who have been with him for 10 years,

this dude has never pretended to be anything that he's not. And I do respect that. Be who you are. Don't try to pretend you're something and don't be that. He's always been that. So, like, are you just using this moment in time to get good publicity? If so, you got to check yourself on that one, I think. Like, this dude's been like that forever.

Well, I think that those big organizations, and we can just kind of say who they are like when when nc fit and invictus and like crossfit new england start backing out what it does to me is it just makes the the cascade it makes the domino effect so easy for everyone else like you've got the three kind of big pillars of of gym owners kalipa is a big, big name. When Bergeron starts doing it, like Bergeron is like he's got CrossFit in his veins. Like he's everything he does is CrossFit. There isn't like a NC Fit brand like Kalipa has.

You know, Invictus rebranded their gym about the same time that we did, maybe a little bit before, a little after. I'm not 100% sure. And they became Invictus rebranded their gym about the same time that we did, maybe a little bit before, a little after, I'm not 100% sure. And they became Invictus Fitness. I would say that most of these larger, not Bergeron, maybe Bergeron, but I'm assuming not because Bergeron is through and through CrossFit. But I'm assuming that many of these gyms already wanted a way out. And then when you look at the other 740-something, 50 gyms that have already said they're going to de-affiliate, how many of that 750 really even know what that means? Do they? They don't. Their whole brand, like, that's the part that I think is very interesting about, like, those people that own those gyms never had to really think about branding.

They just did what all the CrossFit people did. Right. So now their business is going to be in really big trouble. And I can let all of the gym owners that are listening right now know that when I rebranded my gym, I just wanted out of CrossFit. But I didn't put a ton of thought into the rebrand, new culture, new – you can't just change the name and say oh but we're still crossfit like no it's fake you should just ride this thing out and say like look we love the methodology this is exactly what we do we we don't think about fitness in a way that we're gonna go create our own brand like we were trying to do that with san diego athleticsics and creating our own brand and message. But you know how long that takes?

A long time. A long time. It's not – and you're going to – I think many people are going to realize in this rebranding process that you can sit in your office and you're the owner and you're the cult leader and everybody loves you and then you go downstairs and you realize you've got 100 200 300 people and all of them are paying you to do crossfit and you're going well we don't do that anymore they go well what are we paying you for okay well i want to go to the crossfit gym because i do crossfit and they go well that guy's a racist well i just kind of want to go to the gym and work out for an hour and get my sweat on and do some Olympic lifting and go home. Oh, you don't really give a shit.

No. Like how far down, how far away from Greg Glassman until people just want to go about their freaking lives? And now you got a thousand gyms over the next week that are going to de-affiliate. Like, do those people just really want out? want out, or are you really going to go and create your own brand here all of a sudden? I mean, honestly, think about the era. I think a lot of people are simply using this time to peace out because they're struggling financially,

and they don't want to pay the $3,000 or whatever $3,500 dues anymore. So I just think it's you know they see that you know what they were using as a brand is kind of imploding so that's probably not going to be as good of a value for them anymore they're already struggling because of covid 19 you know you know some states they're still not opened up and the ones that have people aren't coming back and so it's just a way of cutting expenses for something that they now see is not going to help them anyway because it's a bad brand now. And so I think a lot of people are just like using it as it's supposed to get out. I don't know.

The interesting thing too is like this isn't the first time CrossFit has been deemed on the wrong side of the race card. Yeah. There's been like four people i don't really know the exact number so i'm not i'll take the four back but the percentage of what the crossfit games looks like is not what the majority of athletics looks like when it comes down to race like it's a very very white crowd and it's a very white playing field out there. And they've, this isn't the first time that like race has been an issue, but when it becomes an issue in the middle of this super hot time as a country, and you've got a bunch of gym

owners that are like, dude, this sucks. I want out. Now it's not their fault. Exactly. I think that's's you're hitting the nail on the head and is isn't the guy i heard a lot of people saying he's been known to be a racist for a long time like you said it's like it's no secret that this dude is like that i mean he set a price point for his gyms saying this is a 150 to $200 a month gym membership. If your family comes here, you might be out like $700 a month if you have two to three people or three people coming to the gym.

$500 a month. I mean, at one point in time, we charged $210 a month to come for a month of working out to my gym. So you're kind of going after a certain demographic in the first place. Well, yeah. I mean, they sold the model and the large group class model thing didn't really happen until 2013, 14, 15, because that was the boom. That was all of a sudden all these people showed up. It was small group training, seven to 10 people

if you were lucky for a very long time. And I would say that we had one of the bigger gyms. We had over 300 members in a town of 40,000 people. So I don't know how many inner city gyms. I know, what was the people that made the, was it Steve's Club? They used to make the paleo treats in New York. That was like the only gym that I ever heard. Yeah, in Jersey.

That actually was creating CrossFit programs in the inner city and doing it as a non-profit i think that's cool total side note what what happened to that is that still around kids i'm good club i we did we did a show that i got like five or six years ago and i used to i used to eat that stuff all the time i loved it and i haven't seen it in a long time um steve's paleo goods looks like you can still buy them. I'd get over there and do that. That's a great place for you. 15% of your purchase supports Steve's

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I feel like so many things have come up, and I wonder how much of it was because we were put in a cage. We've been in our homes for two or three months, so people are getting restless. Then the stupid cop in Minnesota doing what he did, and then it was just it was just bad timing you know bad timing for him to say that and like but if you know it was me it was a matter of time for crossfit because they never really cared about what they said you know because they

were so big and so good they could say anything and people would keep doing crossfit but they just chose the worst time possible to continue that pattern and now i feel like you know it's probably got them um it's just sad because all of us are where we are because of that movement of crossfit you know because of great glassman you know i can stay at home with my kids and i get to help thousands of people online and same with all of us. I feel like Glassman has been incredibly consistent over the years. Like he's Glassman's Glassman. And now the situation that he's in is just radically different.

The situation we're all in is just radically different. And people are fed up in so many ways for so many reasons. And once he said something that was insensitive that people didn't like, they just jumped all over him. And rightfully so. Like he said shit that was incensed that people didn't like, they just jumped all over him. And rightfully so. He said shit that shouldn't have been said. He's done that. But like you said, he's done it many times before.

So many times. And I think people should really go and follow Chandler Smith and EZ Muhammad right now. Those guys are doing like – they're kind of like the big leaders in that Muhammad right now. Those guys are doing like they're kind of like the big leaders in that community right now. The fact that I can just name two of them and that is about the extent of the list kind of tells you where there's

I don't see that's the thing is I don't know if it's a problem. It's like it's not great. Especially when you say things like that. The interesting thing about it being's a problem it's like it's not great especially when you say things like that but the the interesting thing about it being like a problem is like greg glassman grew a business and aimed it at a demographic and i would love everything to be for everybody but it's glassman's thing and he's the guy we're all downrange beneficiaries of something he created and to throw us into it

and say like we didn't know what was going on is is an interesting like perspective to be in it's like until this week i if you had been like as greg glassman races i would have been like dude i don't know look at the crossfit games like i been like, dude, I don't know. Look at the CrossFit games. Like, I don't know. I still don't know if Greg's, if Greg's walking around, like carrying a backpack that inside it,

something says like, I'm a racist. Like, I don't know. I think, I don't know what he said is not great. It's, it's terrible for a brand.

It's terrible for a human to say it's terrible for all that stuff but like to think that all the crossfit gyms in the world didn't see glassman for what we were just talking about his he's consistent he hasn't really changed it's just it's a weird time right now have you ever thought about like what constitutes like someone being a racist like what is the definition? It's pretty broad. Is it because most of my friends are white? Am I racist?

That's why I didn't say anything on Instagram. I know. I think this gets into the assumption that people... First off, the people that have reached out, it's been about us not posting the black square. And this is just in general how people should be treated and talked to as a whole. Almost everybody that asked, am I going to post the black square was doing nothing but projecting their thoughts onto me telling me I should go do this.

To which all I wanted to say was, I think you should leave me alone because I don't need to do things for you that don't feel authentic to me. You can give me a week to figure out what I would like to say about something. And right now, I don't know about culture. Because when I was 13 years old, I walked into a gym and kind of never left. I also have just been working my whole life. Hard. Hard.

Yeah. I didn't have... i don't come like my my childhood is like straight up suburbs but like dude i didn't have summer i cut grass from 13 until 18 and then i sat on the bottom of navy boats like cleaning fucking decks for 12 hours a day, six days a week. That's just what I did for a summer job. And then I got it.

And then I went to college because it was just like the next thing. Like I also went to a high school in which it costs $30,000 a year that I paid for. Like I cut grass to pay for that shit. That was my commitment to my family that I would go, in a way, start a grass cutting business and go fucking work to put myself through it. And I don't know. At no point in time did I ever feel like it was my this – my civic duty to pick my head up and stop working. I just put my head down and went.

And now people on the internet that I barely know want to come at me and say like, you need to make – like, how about you just let me keep working? I don't know anything about that. I'm not educated. You shouldn't be looking at me as an expert in something. I just work and I lift weights and I try to get other people to lift weights to live a healthier life. And I don't know where my role or voice really matters in a way. I don't value my own opinion that much in this matter because I know that I'm uneducated just because all I've done is work. And fitness. And fitness.

And that's just where it's at. Plus, people need to understand when you put pressure on someone to do that square and then they do that square, is that square, is it true, you know, or are they just feeling pressure and now they're putting it out there. So now, because you know, they're putting so much pressure on companies to do that. You got to wonder now where do people lie? And so now, now we've got a country filled with like,

who knows where people really stand. Personally, I want people to do whatever they're going to do. And like that way I know where I stand or where that company stands but the pressure who knows really what people are thinking right now because people are are afraid that they don't do a certain thing that they're going to be you know proven to be racist i'm like i so i i you know what i did is i reached out to um i have african--American fraternity brothers, Mark Retreat, shout out, he's my boy. But so like I wanted to make a response to it, but I talked to this guy.

Because I don't know, like I don't know, I'm not a sociology major. Like I don't really think about, you know, how the actions of humans that often. And so I asked him, got his point of view, and then I tried to put myself in George's shoes by thinking if that were my son, if George Floyd were my son, what would I do, and how would I act? Then I started to understand things.

I'm starting to say, like, if I watch Rock or Bear or Magnolia get killed by a police officer, I'm probably going to react illogically. I'm probably going to burn and loot, and I'm not going to really care what I'm burning and looting. I've lost my mind. You killed my son.

And so to the African-American population, I get it now because they see that a lot. They've grown up being told stories by the – Mark said his mother had to tell them, look, if it's dark out, don't go outside because the police, you know, like if an African-American goes to their mailbox at late at night and a police officer happens to ride by, they might think that that guy is looting or stealing or whatever and something bad happened. And so you have to tell your kids that story and then you see something like that happen. Well, then I could understand. And like, yeah, anyway, so so yeah i was doing the same thing

last night but i was thinking like i was i was in my sauna and i was i was meditating my sauna which is the best place to meditate for the record and uh and uh well yeah i was trying my my best to to empathize um with with that community like seeing seeing someone who someone who's on your team, so to speak, that you have a close connection to, just get blatantly killed by someone who easily could have not killed that person. He could have gotten off his neck at any time. I was trying to think if that was my dad,

and I was standing there with a cop in front of me, and I'm like, he's unconscious. Get the fuck off of him. How angry and irrational, to your point, Travis, what I get watching someone murder my dad right in front of me where I know that if I try to do anything about it, I'm going to get arrested. Yeah, you're next.

Yeah, I'm just the next in line. I'm going to hope that I would. Terrible situation. This is going to upset people, but I would like to think that if I were there and I was seeing this happen to my father, I would pick up the biggest rock and crack that dude's skull in the biggest way possible to where his brain fell out on the streets is what I'd hope I'd do. And go to jail. I mean, that's kind of what happens in a way in a smaller version happening in these riots almost.

Like they're just acting they're mad i get that like if you put yourself in the shoes and you think about your family i get it now you know like it doesn't make it logical or smart you know to be going and like you know blowing up their own stores but like but now i get it. Anyway. Yeah. I think that we can – we don't have to do like a full show hour, hour and a half on all this. I just wanted to get a lot of our thoughts out there. Just talk to the audience. Man,'s it's super super intense um but as we have always done we're going to show up every monday every wednesday we're going to talk about strength conditioning

we're going to help you live a stronger healthier life um things are crazy i hope all the gym owners out there um can can rally their communities it's been i i texted nick the guy that owns crossfit surmount where i go and i was just like dude what in the world is happening and the past four months the government shuts you down and tells you you can't run your business and then as soon as you start to have eight or nine people allowed in a class now you have to have a discussion with your entire community about race and are you going to be affiliated with greg glassman um i just can't believe that the last four months has happened and specifically to the fitness community like and the gym owners like man if there's just like a thing you can do just go to the gym i think

one of the biggest reasons that i this is probably one of the first weekends i've really put a lot of thought into issues like this is because i spend time in the gym and when somebody walks in the gym they're just that's my bro and we lift weights together it's not a i never think about anything else except let's rage let's have some fun and the gym's just white or whatever yeah yeah like if you like picking up heavy stuff you're on my team i don't really care about anything else you like loud music you like good energy and picking up heavy shit let's roll and that's just yeah and and i think that if the story for me and i haven't really told either, I guess, I think I told Doug yesterday, but I didn't know any of this was going on.

And I was on an island in the middle of a lake with my family, my two-year-olds running around in like the most beautiful place, like literally my favorite place. In my will, it says that I would like my ashes scattered on this island because it's my favorite place in the world. And there's like a light breeze. There's an American flag like blowing in the wind. And I consciously go to my phone, pop on Instagram to see what's going on in the fitness world. And I entered into hell. I went from my favorite place in the world with my favorite people

watching my daughter run around and I entered hell. People screaming at each other, Greg Glassman dropping these racially whatever. Put your phones down and just go to the gym and lift weights with people. Like, inside those walls, we're all just people that like getting after it. It's when we start chopping all this stuff up into social media tidbits and getting people fired up about the stuff that like craziness happens i i it it literally was i i opened my

phone and i saw what just it it looked like there was a war going on inside my phone and i realized that like that shit's not where you need to be it's not where health happens you know to reiterate on your point and um kind of solidify that i think it should be stated here that if you are passionate about training and you are respectful to other people, regardless of your group, tribe, race, sex, gender, all those things, like at Barbell Shrugged, you are welcome here to train with us, to hang out with us, to listen to the show. We'll help you back, whether it's digital over social media

or we see you in person. And if you're passionate about training, then you're a friend of ours. And I'd imagine it's the same for Master Elite. 100%. Yeah, like, I mean, Easy on War, it's not the Easy that CrossFit knows, but

you know, Easy is like my son. He's like, he does holidays with us. And if I had a daughter of age and Easy wanted to marry her, I would not think twice. EZ is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Yeah. Every time I see him with his family, I'm like, dude, I want my family to look like that. It's like these just super radical little kids causing terror all over the place.

You can't control them, and he's got like six of them. You're talking about EZ Muhammad, Anders? Yeah. Travis, you're talking about a different EZ? Yeah, I'm talking about EZ Onwara is like, is this the guy who grew up in my gym? Oh, I thought you were talking about EZ Muhammad. EZ Muhammad is one of my favorite people. Sorry, we got our EZs mixed up.

No, EZ Onwara. He's in the military right now. So he's, you know, I found him around the gym. I used to have my, Master Lee was inside another gym. And I saw him hanging out and doing nothing. And I just kind of adopted him. And, you know, on Facebook, his name is Easy On War Mash, he says. And so, like, yeah, like, I don't care.

I think a good quote, I don't like, I'm not trying to be all biblical, but it's from the Bible, but it's a quote that matters. It's like, if you look at John 7, 24, it says, do not judge based on appearance. This is God. But judge with righteous judgment, meaning look at the individual. Can we stop saying black, white, Chinese, Mexican, brown, yellow, green? Who cares? Judge the person on who they are and what they are inside at the end of the day we all bleed red and if for anyone who is of man really whether you're muslim whether you're christian i think pretty sure we all agree that

it started from adam and eve you know so like at the end of the day we're all the same race if you're you know not to take this a christian or a biblical thing but like if that's what you believe though we're all the same anyway so like who cares i just wish we could get past it i wish we could just stop talking in terms of like this group is black this group is brown this group is white like when can we just start saying all we're all humans sometimes i wish we get attacked by a bunch of martians because guess what just like that we'd all be human and we would not be black or white that's what i was really the whole race thing is just as ridiculous as saying like that people with curly hair are better than people with straight hair it's like it doesn't make

any fucking sense just one outwardly visual thing determines who's better or worse. It's, it's all ridiculous to your point, Travis, like we're all human. We're all, we're all cut from the same fabric. Yes.

Yeah. Mash elite. Where can they find you, sir? Mash elite.com. And just, uh, my heart goes out to all of you during this crazy time because of

CrossFit, because of the COVID, because of, you know, what happened to George, just my heart goes out to everyone in the whole world right now. Yeah. Doug Larson.

You bet. Find me on Instagram, DougLCLarson. I'm Anders Varner, at Anders Varner. Make sure you get over to barbellstrug.com forward slash store. That's where all the programs, e-books, nutrition courses. We will see you guys next week. That's a wrap, friends. It feels good to get some of that stuff off your chest, you know?

Just, it feels good to say what's on your mind, talk things out. Communication is good. Words matter. The ability to express yourself. Talk to friends. Get over to barbellshrug.com forward slash store. We've got programs courses ebooks nutrition mobility

everything that you need in order to live a stronger healthier life make it strong people stronger barbell shrug.com forward slash shrugged and use the code shrug to save 10 at checkout also make sure you get over to mag breakthrough.com forward slash shrug. Do the coupon code shrug10 to save up to 40% on magnesium. Breakthrough, our friends at Fit Together get over to the brand new social media website app, fitness app. Sorry, Fit Together, F-I-T-T-O-G-H-T-E-R, Fit Together. You can download it across all of your platforms and Organifi.com forward slash shrugged. That is where you are going to find the green, the red, and the gold saving 20%. And friends, we will see you next week.