Barbell Shrugged - No Leg. No Sight. No Problem. How Would You Adapt Your Training?

Episode Date: September 24, 2015

Highly recommend going to BarbellShrugged.com to watch the video version of this one!

In Corey's situation, he describes he has a few drinks with some buddies. This is a night in December. He wakes up a month later in January with USC. To learn more about how you can support the show, kind of describe what happened, sign up for the news, brother. Come out and say, hey, son, guess what? Life has changed.

Hey, this is Rich Froning. You're listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellsug.com welcome to barbell shrug i'm mike bletzer staying here with chris moore we have traveled up to crossfit la and we are have our guests cory reed and kenny kane and what we're going to be talking about today is uh adaptive athletes and cory reed is one of have our guests, Corey Reed and Kenny Kane. And what we're going to be talking about today is adaptive athletes, and Corey Reed is one of those adaptive athletes. He is a overachiever of sorts. Not only is he missing a leg, but he is also blind, so he likes to make things extra difficult

is what I hear. How's it going, guys? Great. What's cracking, fellas? Good to have you guys back to the gym. Kenny, this is the first time you've been on since episode 180. Right. It was a whole 15 episodes ago.

A whole 15 episodes ago. We like you so much. You're becoming probably the most reoccurring. Yeah, if you missed that show, you've got to go back because Kenny broke down some coaching strategies. You've been coaching for how long, Kenny? Tell the people. About 30 years.

Yeah. Since 1984. 84. Yeah. 84. That was my first. I was two years old. years old you're two how's that make you feel kenny oh it's it's it's it's what's funny is i had a seminar here recently a mobility seminar one of the uh coaches presenting looked to me and i had to get over my ego when she said now who are you and we were we were hosting it here. And she goes, and you're a coach? And I was like, yeah, I've been, yeah.

And I just sort of. You didn't know I was the coach. Sort of a big guy, right? A coach. Sort of a coach. But it was funny having a seminar at your place and then somebody questioning like, oh, what is it you do? And I'm like, I coach. You've got this immense, rich coaching experience, even some martial arts.

You bring a really interesting and fresh take to the gym, and you see things in a very interesting way. Now, I'd like you just to kind of bring in Corey into the fold here because Corey represents a very unique challenge to you as a coach. Why don't you kind of intro Corey. We can get into him telling his story. But kind of let's – where you guys met and how this thing got going. So, uh, in 2012, a friend had approached me, uh, a friend of both of ours, Corey and myself named Blair. And he called me, he called me in tears and he said,

I met a guy today who changed my life. And he goes, and, and, and Blair's not one to, um, you know, over articulate anything or or get horribly emotive about things. But he just said to me, he goes, look, this guy is so inspirational and I want him and you to meet because some of the stuff that you're trying to do at CFLA might blend really well with who this guy represents as just a human being. So the universe put you in contact with somebody who would change your life in some way. Yeah, and I didn't exactly know what he was talking about. You know, he mentioned that Corey was blind and that he was an amputee and that he was interested in CrossFit. Other than that, I really didn't know that much.

And the conversation quickly turned into, hey, let's take this guy, Corey, who's an athlete but has never done anything like CrossFit, let alone the exercises in CrossFit outside of maybe one or two, body weight, maybe some basic lifting in his early days, bench press and so on. But the stuff that you do in CrossFit is very different. He said, well, let's get Corey involved on a competitive level, and let's see if we can't gear him up to compete in an able-bodied functional fitness competition. We're talking about competition before he's even walked in the gym. Corey, can I ask, now, we mentioned the injuries. Can you share quickly with the audience just what happened to you, man? Yeah, so back in 2005, I was out at a bar with my buddy. Last call. Sure. Rolled out of the place. We're going to meet bar with my buddy. Last call. Sure.

Rolled out of the place. We're going to meet up with some girls. Jumped in the car with my friend. That's the last thing I remember. We made it about almost back to his place, and he crashed at high speeds, like almost about 100 miles an hour. Lost control of the car. Wow.

And, yeah, it left me with quite a bit of pretty serious injuries. So one minute you're having a good time looking forward to evening, and the next minute you're waking up in a hospital room. Yeah, exactly. Before that, did you have an athletic background? Were you competing and doing any kind of training? Yeah, so, I mean, growing up I played all the traditional sports. Baseball was my primary sport. Played that all the way through high school.

Played water polo as well. But my passion was always in action sports. I surfed, snowboarded, skateboarded, rode motocross and freestyle motocross and stuff like that. I just really always passionate about action sports. But, yeah, I had a strong athletic background for sure coming into this. What's interesting about adaptive sports, one thing I would clarify for the audience, you might not be in a situation to directly benefit from this now. Maybe you are not injured, but you damn well could be.

You never know what kind of roll of dice you're going to get. If you're a coach, you might not coach anybody currently adaptive, but somebody might present with this situation really quickly. If you're an athlete or a coach in a room where somebody is going to maybe join, who they are dealing with profound injury or setbacks, this kind of information resonates deeply, quickly. Well, in Corey's situation, he describes he has a few drinks with some buddies, and literally it was a night in December. He wakes up a month later in january with the usc football game going on and his dad next to him kind of describing what happened so you're in a coma for a month you come out and it's like hey son guess what life has changed and so you know

just to give you guys some context like my my blindness and my my leg being amputated you know losing my leg that was like the the smallest of the hurdles that i had to overcome so i had in the accident i had two collapsed lungs three broken libs ruptured spleen uh ruptured bladder i had a compound fracture on my right wrist my all-nine radius um man major injuries to that the hand almost to the point where it was amputated so you're smashed smashed. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's absolutely crazy that I've gotten back to the health that I'm at now. I mean, I'm more fit and healthier than I've ever been. But, yeah, I had some serious, serious hurdles to overcome. How was your perception?

I mean, you wake up and you have a quick assessment of what has happened and the rundown of the damage. I mean, what's the first thing that strikes you in terms of, wow, this has happened to me, and how do I get out of here and take on something else? Well, it was interesting because I was living a lifestyle that was pretty hardcore. I was partying my ass off and just getting involved in the wrong things. So I had a lot of family, a lot of friends that saw that and were warning us about it.

So, you know, when I woke up a month later after, you know, all this had happened and, you know, I can't see and I'm missing my leg, you want to talk about your world being flipped upside down. And, you know, I'm a confident guy and I was, you know, was making a good living for myself and had a lot of things to look forward to. You play these action sports and live in life at a fast pace. Yeah, and suddenly I'm sitting in a room in an ICU and they're telling me I barely have a shot to even walk out of there.

So it was very humbling and very, it was a scary time. Very scary. And for Kenny, this was not, as a coach, this is what I've kind of picked up on in discussions we've had, is this challenged you in a whole new way and that you brought it back into the gym after coaching. Corey, you were actually coaching other clients differently. It improved, and Corey had changed the gym here. Yeah, I mean, like there was sort of, in many ways, there's sort of a gym culture before Corey arrived and then a gym culture after, after, um, he was here. And, and so much of that, I mean, everything from the emotional leadership that, that a situation like

this inspires because, you know, Corey will come and do the open with us. And so whoever's in a heat with Corey always feels like an asshole because they're dying during the open and they look over and then he's reaching to find his barbell or wall ball. And like, okay, awesome example. I better do another rap. By seeing this, like they're feeling well with me and I go, well, okay,

well, Corey's kicking ass, and he's got his situation, I need to get my shit together. It makes people reassess their own situation. And it's very quick, and it's very immediate. And that's, you know, one of the things that our larger CrossFit community responds to is that sense of immediacy, and so, like,

that's right, it's right in front of you. But on a much, sort of, deeper level, there's everything, like, it changed me as a coach because it made me really respect the the importance of trust with an athlete or client as as like almost more fundamental than what it is, you know, about them physically or what their metrics are or what their even blood panels are because without that sort of energetic um embrace like you can't do the impossible and what we did with cory is really i mean it was i i've never been pushed like that as a coach each year i try to take on a challenge but like this is one of the biggest challenges you could ever face yeah i mean going back to Blair telling me about this, he's like, he's so inspirational.

But I didn't really realize what I was getting into. And there's also a challenge he's overcoming to trust you in this process. Totally. So you're asking him, like, we just came up with a plan, and you're asking him to make a literal kind of blind leap into the situation and trust you to lead him out of this. I mean, looking back, I don't know if it's different for

you, Corey, but looking back and knowing what we know, I don't know if either of us would have necessarily agreed. I wouldn't change a thing. But there's also like, holy shit, what do we do? We said, all right, it's the blind leading the naked. We really didn't know what we were doing. There's not a user's manual for this sort of situation. There's no user's manual.

I mean, Corey comes to me, and Corey, I'd love to hear your thoughts on it. But like, there's this idea of trust that we had to establish very quickly within like just a ridiculous timeline to try to get him integrated with the three teammates that we're going to surround him with. And then go, okay, now we've got to go to Arizona and do this able-bodied competition. By the way, you've only got like maybe 11 weeks to learn everything in this. And I'm sorry you're missing a leg, and I'm sorry you can't see everything that's happening around you, but we've got to fucking go now. Hurry up and trust me.

Hurry up and trust me. And just to give you guys some background, as far as me coming in here, it wasn't just like I was sitting on the couch one day, and I'm like, you know what, I want to get into CrossFit. So I was, you know,? I want to get into CrossFit. So I was, uh, you know, about a year after my accident, I got hooked up with an organization out in Colorado that, um, is an action sports camp, a development camp for the blind. And I started riding recreationally, uh, snowboarding and developed this system where I was riding solo to the point where I was actually riding intermediate, like, blue runs,

which probably are equivalent to black runs here in California. Sounds very dangerous. Sounds like something I'm not going to be able to achieve in my lifetime. The game is stand-up on skis. I want to see Chris on skis. I will be adaptive, I fucking guarantee it. If you get me on a ski slope, I'm turning adaptive really quick. Yeah, it's interesting. So two years after riding recreationally, I was approached by the U.S. coach,

and he said, what do you think about riding for your country in Paris snowboarding? I had no idea that the world of adaptive sports even existed. That's a growing world, man. Yeah, especially to that level. So I started out in Paris snowboarding with hopes to go to Sochi in 2014. And I actually was injured in a local mountain here, Big Bear, and I blew out my shoulder. And, you know, I had all these hopes of, you know, I started getting my identity back after my accident snowboarding. I'm like, man, this is badass.

Like, you know, I can do these things. I'm like, man, this is badass. I can do these things that I did before, and I had this attitude. I wasn't really an adaptive athlete. I was like, dude, I used to shred better than you. Don't tell me how to snowboard. So that was kind of the attitude I had. Well, now I blow out my shoulder, and I was actually using CrossFit at the time, but just very basic CrossFit. Sure.

Kenny talked about Blair. Blair was just kind of running me through your basic CrossFit movements, more like body, you know, just body weight stuff and just functional movements, no barbells, no gymnastics or anything like that. So I called him up after I had this accident, and I was like, dude, like, no more snowboarding. I'm not going to do this anymore. Like, I got a pretty bad accident. He's like, like well what do you think about CrossFit what do you think

about competing at CrossFit I didn't know anything about CrossFit like nothing I'm like yeah sounds great he's like cool I'm gonna hook you up with Kenny down at CFLA so the eagerness to take on challenges doesn't go away you're still eager to take on anything that comes yeah and that's it's interesting because that's changed like it's in in the beginning. And when I got into the, you know, sports, it was more to prove to myself and to prove to other people that I was still Corey. Like I was still the Corey that was that,

you know, before the accident. Sure. And I, it got to the point, you know, where people like family and friends, they just felt so bad for me.

And like to the point where they were almost just, it was like they were babying me and it just And it just got really, it was hard for me. So I kind of had that attitude like, I'm going to tackle the world. I'm going to do all these things. I'm going to show you otherwise. But there was a transition, and that transition, there was this emotional kind of spiritual moment

working with Kenny through this process where I kind of found my identity again. I kind of found myself working with Kenny through this process where I kind of found my identity and I kind of found myself in a new way and it didn't, uh, yeah, it, it, it wasn't doing it for the, you know, different reasons. So amazing experience though. It just, uh, it was life changing. So you saw how this experience sets you up to still achieve and contribute and lead by example and show people that even an athlete now I'm blowing out my shoulder, I'm still overcoming this. So you saw how this experience sets you up to still achieve and contribute and lead by example

and show people that even an athlete now, I'm blowing out my shoulder, I'm still overcoming. There's just some lessons here that apply to everybody no matter what their pursuit is. Are you talking about the rower? Yeah, the rower was definitely a very powerful moment. Kenny, you want to talk about that? It sounds like I would love to hear. I'm dying to know this story now. There was a a moment like we had some metrics and basic metrics on cory where he was like on a 500 meter row and we'd gone through some particularly rough a rough training patch and so um there's a

place that um i describe in coaching and i got it from a book that i had many read many years ago a runner's book but it talks about the orb and the orb is that place where you transcend self or your definition of physical self and you find access to greater physical powers. But that requires like an emotional and spiritual relinquishment in order to like let something higher work through you. And, you know, in Sanskrit, the word for that is cry, which is basically a spiritual surrender. And so,

you know, and here in the West and, and through running and stuff, I, I've, I've identified it. It's happened, you know,

it happens rarely with an athlete, but they go through this like gateway. It's a conduit to like, like a breakdown of old self and an appreciation of new self. And I call that the orb. And so when you see the orb, it's a moment of clarity that is the definition of beauty because everything collapses around that. You know, forward thinking, backward thinking, definitions that were pre-existing.

And you see how you've been led to this moment. Yeah. And things, you know, a sense of peace. A very reflective moment. Time almost slowed down in a sense. And so he was on the rower. So he basically PR'd

on his 500 by, I want to say it was about 13 seconds or I forget what it was, but it was something profound, like something that doesn't, you know, see 13 second PRs

on a 500 meter row. Yeah. And, you know, he, as soon as he completed that, immediately burst into tears. um, you know, he, he, as soon as he completed that immediately burst into tears and, you know, and, and that to me is that sort of, that was the access point where the, the level of trust, which we were securing very rapidly then leaped to sort of like an experience

that you might have with somebody that you've spent 10 years working with. And, um, what it required is literally a leap of a blind leap of faith, if you will, on his part and, you know, him willing to go to a place that he didn't know existed. And in many ways, the benefit of being blind helped access that because if you have vision and you can see the metrics on the row and you know how bad that's going to feel you might not want to go there you start projecting and protecting yourself you're going to do anything if you want to try anything blindfolded rowing is probably one of the more safer places where you can truly push yeah yeah and and and so we'll give it a shot and what happened is is you had me row the 500, a 500.

I hit a PR and then you had me row a second 500. And that's, that was one that, you know, and just to give you some background, you also got to remember this was an accelerator, an accelerated experience. Like we were moving very quick. Um, and this was probably a month and a half to two months into it. Um, so I'm physically just beat down. Emotionally, I'm just, it's like a roller coaster because of. You're making a lot of demands of yourself. Yeah, I'm pushing myself to the limit.

So this was a moment where everything kind of came to a head. So I physically just was done. But like Kenny said, it brought me to a new place. And now looking back, and I didn't even see it this way until more recently, is that that was a moment where I kind of accepted my disability. Like I defined my disability rather than it defining me. And that was a powerful moment because before then, you know, I didn't accept it. Like everything was, I was trying to deny that.

But the funny part is once I accepted it, that was when I started thriving. Wow. That's probably a lesson everybody needs to learn. As soon as you can get your head around what you are, what you can do, what you could achieve, and what you necessarily aren't, that's a pretty powerful moment in people's lives. Yeah, because I'm glad to hear you share that experience. Yeah, and I was like you guys. I mean, like literally my night, I mean, my world changed one night. I was a completely able-bodied athlete.

I always picked up sports really easily. And then I find myself blind and with one leg, and people are treating me totally different. You know, it was tough. It was a tough pill to swallow. So Blair introduces the two of you guys, and I'm assuming you just rolled up to the gym, and Kenny meets you,

and then what's that first day of meeting Kenny like, and what's the first day of being at CrossFit LA? Well, it was one of my favorite, I mean, looking back, literally I rolled up here, didn't know what to expect, sit down, there's like a front patio, and we have my three other teammates and Kenny, and basically Kenny, you know, before that, he was, you know, nice Kenny, joking around, and I'm like, this guy's pretty cool, but not that time, he sat down, and he was dead serious, he's like, look, you want to do this, you're going to do what I say, you're going to work your ass off, I'm not going to treat you any different than anybody else. I don't care if you're blind. I

don't care if you have one leg, like we're going to do this. And you know, that, that set the tone and it really helped me trust him because immediately I, he told me, he was showing me that he didn't see me as someone with a disability. And that was so important, like so important. Cause I, you know, there's probably a lot of coaches out there you get an adaptive athlete that walks in especially someone with you know blind

or blind and with one leg they would they might turn the other way or not know how to handle that situation so I admired Kenny you know a lot

just how he handled that situation in the beginning threw me right into the what did you say baptism by fire I think baptism by fire that's right so Kenny threw me right into the, what did you say, baptism by fire, I think? Baptism by fire, yeah. So Kenny, you worked to get the trust

in a relationship going. The biggest thing I want to ask now is how you start the plan of assessing how you're going to actually work with Corey. Because the next big thing on my mind is that there are some profound issues here with sensory perception, proprioception. His nervous system has lost a whole channel of feedback.

There's a whole limb missing. What sort of neurological issues have you tried to overcome? Let's take a break real quick and we'll dig into that. This is Tim Ferriss and you were listening to Barbell Shrugged. For the video version, go to barbellshrugged.com. Barbell Shrugged is brought to you by

you. To learn more about how you can support the show, go to barbellshrugged. brought to you by you to learn more about how you can support the show go to barbellshrugged.com and sign up for the newsletter and we're back and as you know every time we talk about the best stuff during the break

so this is one of those times we have to bring it back to that before we hop into training the nervous system which is for the first two weeks that Corey was here he thought that, Kenny, you

were black. And if you're watching the show, it's clear as day that he's not. I'm melanin deficient. You're a soulful guy? I'm over that soulful. It was funny because I don't know how it got broken to you or somebody said...

It was kind of my personal assessment just through what blair you know things blair had told me and then i had met you one time before that when i came in and did that workout when you ran me into the chain link fence i call that establishing trust but i knew that you were a hip-hop dancer right in a in an instructor and coach and I knew he was he too just had swag. He just had swag. There's no other way

to put it. That's what I always say about KT. I'm like, that guy's got serious swag. I can't even explain it. But who told you? I mean,

who told you? I don't even remember how it got brought up. Like, maybe I said something to Blair or Zach or something like that, and he's like, no, he's not black.

I'm like, what? Really? How disappointed were you? Was it a big disappointment? Yeah. Because mine's always cooler. Did you think differently about him after that? No.

No, I didn't. No. Still liked him. When Corey came in, I mean, the biggest thing uh chris to answer the question that you asked before the break was just taking a look at a body that was a little bit different right so most of the people that come in have two feet that are connecting and sending information through the feet up through the hips up to the brain yeah sending it back telling the feet what to do and how to apply force well anytime you remove one of those things you

have to kind of go okay well how are we going to address this here? So immediately, as Corey described at the beginning of the episode, you know, the radius, the ulna had broken. He's missing a limb.

So there's going to be like shifts, you know, and so the skeletal system is going to be rotating. Some different misalignment issues. There's going to be huge misalignment issues. Maybe you think

your tight hip makes you run crooked if you don't mobilize it correctly after a hard run. Totally. Think about missing a shank, you know. shank you know it's gonna set up some profound mobility issues and so and and and huge imbalances and so the first thing that we had to do is sort of evaluate okay well how do we then go let's bypass the feet as the sort of base setting and then let's go up basically a major joint and go all right are we going to create the hips as the sort of base setting. And then let's go up basically a major joint and go,

all right, are we going to create the hips as the sort of place where he's going to find his sense of balance? So immediately in the first couple of weeks, it said like listen to your hips rather than the one foot because the one foot is probably going to, it's going to give you some information, but it's going to more likely than not send you into incorrect trajectories. But if you can find your hips and find them consistently, it's going to put you in the right direction.

Now, had I had any sort of way to corroborate that or had I been working with adaptive athletes prior to this? No, I had no idea. I mean, I haven't studied biomechanics other than all the textbooks and certifications and things that I've done through the years and just working with people through the years. So it wasn't anything that I was specifically studied in. It was just more of an intuition on how do we center the hips. And a lot of that I would rely on old martial arts training because martial arts is like any proper sport. It's like move from your middle.

You got your middle, everything's going to be fine. Corey, today we're going to start you off with some kata. It's funny. You've seen Karate Kid's going to be fine. Corey, today we're going to start you off with some kata. It's funny. You've seen Karate Kid, haven't you? We started with him, Gichu Young Ilbu Samgap. That sounds like a real thing. I wasn't making a fucking joke

and you referenced a real thing. It's a Korean. It's a Korean. See, I've been coaching for so long. Damn, Kenny, you got that real knowledge. Anyway, so as soon as we sort of got

Corey's hips oriented, his learning curve went up. And he learned there would be times where the suction on the prosthetic was off, so it would tilt the foot one way or another. I was wondering how things got connected. So there's a suction cup? Yeah, there's two different systems. I wear an elevated vacuum system, but at the time I was not.

The elevated vacuum system is basically you time i was not the elevated vacuum system is a it's basically you have your residual limb the stump you have a silicone liner that goes over that that's i don't know about a millimeter thick then you slide into the prosthetic down into the socket and then there's another silicone cover liner that goes over that which creates a vacuum seal sort of like shrink wrap so as you pull like and then i put a vacuum and it pulls air out of that in between the two liners and it creates like a like a suction around the limb but at the time i was wearing a pin system and that's just like a you got a silicone liner with a pin on the end and essentially it's just like a socket wrench

so you got you slide into the socket and the pin on the end goes down into a locking mechanism, which is not it. The, the elevated vacuum system I wear now is I can hang from the ceiling with one leg and I wouldn't fall out of it. Oh, much more secure.

Much more seriously. Yeah. So the technology for adaptive athletes in the last three years has increased exponentially. Like it's just each year, like the, the, the mechanisms to like nice joints together.

One of the, the, the biggest, um, sponsored by one of the biggest prosthetic companies. And that's the cool part through this experience, uh, CrossFit and a lot of the others like action sports that I'm doing,

I'm, I'm able to give a lot of feedback to the prosthetic manufacturers. Um, and it's helped a lot with developments in new feet and different socket systems and whatnot. As far as you pushing it so hard and being so driven, I guess you were destined to be a guy to give this vital data so people can get involved in sports and train more effectively. That could have a profound effect. Yeah.

I want to point out that we filmed some awesome video in here earlier. Doug put on a blindfold. And Kenny led him through just some very practical lessons. Maybe you can quickly give some here. We'll direct people to that. But if somebody's blind, how you orient them into a training space, how you get them to, for example, especially if a leg's missing, how you get them to go in a straight line on an agility run. Well, again, if they go to some of those links with Doug,

they'll see some of the work that we sort of established with Corey. I mean, one of the first things we had to look at is him understanding the space. And with the understanding of space comes a sense of independence. And with that independence comes an ability to meet somebody with trust. Because if it's only reliance, then you have that lack of independence. So then you have an athlete without that free will to choose, I'm going to trust this person. So one of the first things that I went through as a coach was like, how do I get Corey to feel at home in a space and have a sense? I'm going to be running him all over the place.

And the first thing to understand is there's a sense of, look, there will be bumps and bruises. But for the most part, I'm going to be running them all over the place. And the first thing to understand is like, there's a sense of like, look, there will be bumps and bruises, but for the most part, I'm going to keep you as safe as possible, but I'm also going to push you to the threshold. So we have to- You were pushed too. Because one thing I noticed,

you had to do a very good job of describing every move and all the elements in here, way more so than you probably ever have considered. So that's like a lot of the coaching with Corey. And fortunately, Corey walked in. The great tool set that he had is he's a massage therapist. So he knows anatomy. So I go, okay, turn on your TFL.

Okay, turn on your G-meat. Turn off your rhomboid. Turn on your trap. Like that kind of level of sophistication, he's going to understand. So I would literally take my fingers, thumbs, index, and just kind of point to muscles and say, turn this one on, turn this one off, turn this one on, turn this one off. Now you're in a set position. And then describing the more dynamic movements, you know, once we got started getting into Olympic lifts, it's like, okay, I'm going to break this down intellectually. And we're going to do a sequencing of how the muscles fire. Yeah. Now, when you do that, that sequence that took us

about an hour to describe is going to happen in less than a second, maybe a second at its fullest. So intellectualizing that, and that's what makes Corey rather special, is that his ability to listen, learn, interpret, and then actualize was very fast. I mean, his learning curve was extremely steep. It's about 11 weeks he went from having not done CrossFit before to competing. So in 11 weeks, he learned box jumps, double-unders, snatches, clean and jerks, wall balls. Those are some of the more sophisticated movements, but any of them are very complicated movements. Corey, did your background in extreme sports help you pick up these skills a little quicker so imagine your powers of focus and flow might be a little more well honed than other people absolutely and you

know i've been on a number of championship teams and played in the marmani league which is very pretty competitive league in high school with baseball. And so I definitely had that experience of being able to just kind of get into that flow state and having the confidence with my abilities and my athleticism. So for sure, I think I know the confidence helped tremendously coming into this. Did it help you filter out? Because another thing we want to bring up is that when you have missing vision in this case, you're getting flooded and other streams of sensory perception this case gems are noisy as hell we talked about the role of

music and how you know if you can if at home you want to see how this is like put yourself in a noisy room cover your eyes completely so there's nothing getting in and see how quickly it takes for loud noises and distractions and that intense stimulus to make you really disoriented. Yeah, that was probably one of the most challenging parts of the whole experience because at the time it hadn't been that long. I'd only been blind for five, six years. So I was still learning how to, you know, spatial orientation and learning how to function just with just standard, you know, regular mobility and just getting around. Um, and one thing we talked about the emotional component,

it, you know, after, you know, two, three weeks of just physically getting beat down, there was times where I was really tested and I'm sure Kenny can talk more about this, but I know at one moment when I was trying to learn the kipping pull-up, you and I went at it a few times, and there was another time with double-unders where the frustration just got the best of me, and Kenny had to pull me aside and kind of give me the pep talk and be like, dude, you can't do that. That was the juice of the trust. Yeah. Stoked the belief a little bit.

But that wasn't just the movement. That was a lot of the emotional baggage I was bringing on with my blindness. And that's one of the things where Corey allowed himself that space to grow. And what helped extract that is that this wasn't an individual effort. This was a team effort. So he's working with three extraordinary people, Zach Gorin, Shirley Brown, brown and nikki merrick as his teammates to sort of help get him through and so the one thing that the team is always going to get a little bit more out of an individual this is the individual striving alone for themselves on an island and so that's that's where that coming to set the foundation on day one where

i had that sort of stern talk like if you're going to do this, this is how it's going to be, then sets the precedent for him to sort of follow those guidelines and come back to this larger picture, which is we are a team. And if you're being a baby about not getting your double-unders or being a baby about not getting your kipping pull-ups, you're affecting other people. So while you're bitching right now, they're getting affected. We don't have time for you to bitching right now, they're getting affected.

We don't have time for you to bitch. We have time for you to put some effort into this, and that's really about it. We just don't have fucking time to dilly-dally. I get that you're a human being. I get that you're frustrated. All those things are fair. But to feel bad about yourself for not getting it is completely useless. All you can do is control putting in the effort and getting after it.

But if we're going to go haul rump, we need to save that for another situation because that cannot and will not work here. And Corey, also, he's describing that. So just think about these learning spikes and these emotional undulations for him. Like, one day, I'm just pulling him aside and you gotta understand this gym at that time like people would come to our training sessions just to watch like and he could feel people's eyes on him so there's like this fish in a bubble feeling

he they're being quiet thinking that he you know he doesn't know right that they're there but if anything you could perceive it more accurately now oh you can feel every eye in the room on you for sure yeah and so there's this like fish bowl thing. Oh, you can feel every eye in the room on you for sure. And so there's this like fishbowl thing going on, and you're trying to learn in this fishbowl thing, and then there's like this level of trust, and there's like this emotive thing that's going on in the space. And then we're simultaneously having the team do things like,

and Corey loved this, when we blindfolded the team, turned on the loud music, and then they're like, oh, this is like a whole nother level, what you just described right there. And oh, by the way, let's find the barbell, let's find the pull-up bar, and let's find the box to jump on. And holy shit, this is not a very easy thing to do. It's an incredible test. It's an incredible test.

And so the team immediately had huge respect for what Corey was doing. But then what Corey's growth was, where he was alone in a bubble for seven or so years, getting himself to this adaptive athlete, you know, extreme sports sort of athleticism. And then the real, the really profound growth was something bigger than himself and not being

defined by the blindness or loss of limb. And so, um, being defined by the blindness or loss of limb. Yeah. And so this is just sort of a gateway to sort of, like, release a lot of that. A lot of the action sports are individual as well. And so, like, the nature of the team is like a whole. I know people who are, you know, have never had a problem physically who can't be on a team. Right. And that's difficult enough for people

in itself absolutely no and that's i mean as any team knows is any successful team or there's been successful teams that are dysfunctional but then there's there's there's kind of rare and they make news and they don't last very long they don't last very long and there's not and the people who are on it aren't enjoying the process so there's a way to do this as a team and to enjoy the process. And somehow Corey allowed, you know, Shirley, Zach and Nikki to learn a lot about themselves and a lot about, um,

you know, what, what, what this, what Corey was going through felt like, but Corey got to understand that there is something greater than self. So there's profound lessons on both sides. And the rest of us are sort of absorbing that rest of us,

meaning the entire CFLA community and everybody that was contributing to the effort. I mean it was just like lesson after lesson after lesson. So Corey's coming through. He's describing me getting after him as a coach going, look, you've got to stop being a little bitch. And I needed to step up right now. And then the next day he would come in and part of like his his test one day was he came and took noon class with me and my whole thing was dude i'm not going to help you you have to be able to figure out your own space i want to go hard in the workout next to you and we have to

get you to a place where you can work out with the music with with 12 other people going around next to you and not bump into anybody not putting anybody else in danger by walking in front of their flying jump rope, barbell, or box, and you've got to be able to, and he would do that. He would step up day after day after day, and every failure led to two greater successes. That's the next challenge I was thinking about is how do you know when an adaptive athlete, in Corey's case specifically, when are you ready to train intensely and push progressive numbers again, and how do you overcome any any issues like you're going into pain caves again and you're maybe going to places where you

haven't been in a while how do you take on these challenges we we we simply didn't know that we just i mean this is un i mean i would just i would just push and push and push but cory was like i mean he allowed himself to be emotionally vulnerable, and a lot of it was just going into the unknown, and both of us trusting that whatever's going to happen is going to be okay. As a coach, there was no sense of going, yeah, I know exactly, I knew what we needed to get to. Every day, I would create, as best as i could a template to like just take

two more positive steps two more positive steps and push that throttle as hard as we could but and i will say too there was uh two different occasions where kenny sent me home so i love man yeah i know i think he called i mean he saw the the emotions and he knew that more damage was going to be done emotionally and physically possibly if I kept pushing. Yeah. And he just came to me and pulled me aside and said, dude, go home and get some rest. And that was a really good call on his part as a coach. So maybe he didn't know exactly how hard to push and when the right time was to take it to that intensity level. But when he did and I wasn't taking it very well,

he was very good at calling it and saying, hey, let's call it for the day and head home and revisit it tomorrow. Anything you noticed in particular that made you make that decision, Kenny? The one thing I've always done as a coach is just listen to my gut. Like never second-guess my gut. I've been doing this long enough that it's just like just trust it just simply trust it because hey my friend has hard days but this one's particularly we're going somewhere we don't need to go yet i think some of that was you know one of my coaches devo chester she coached the uc davis track team and

and she coached the 96 olympic team and she was so good at just sort of like looking at an athlete, looking at their eyes and kind of feeling them energetically and just kind of going, I mean, she sent me home a couple times

and I was always furious. Like, how could you send me home? Like, you've got to be kidding me. Like, I'm going to lose ground. I'm going to lose ground.

That fear, fear, it's all fear-based stuff. It's nonsense. It's not, Fear's a motherfucker, man. It is. And part of it's a little teeny bit of it's like physical, but most of it is emotional.

And that's the thing. And Corey was just so big in stepping up all the time and being vulnerable enough to learn. You can't grow that fast unless you're going to open yourself up for the growth oh yeah so there's a level of vulnerability i commend cory for that yeah and and there's there was this level of of exposure that he's showing up to with his heart with this being and like okay i'm here and i'm literally blind just jumping physically jumping onto boxes it starts at a you you know, a couple plates and then it becomes eight inches, then it's 12 inches. Then it winds up after, you know,

a month or two being 32 inches. Every time's a leap of faith. Yeah. Every time, you know, and, um, that, that only comes from a vulnerability, you know, and, uh, that, that level of, of growth and, but also the pain, the pain that can come with failure at, at that vulnerability can be profound. The one thing is I've learned about coaching people just in general is those that have been through some shit and those who have been through some pain. If you can, you know, get the trust points to a certain level, also understand that, okay, there's pain, and I'm okay with that. And that's a beautiful thing about Corey. It's like his, on the spectrum, like, okay, that's as far as real pain can get.

Waking up a month later, not a day later, not 12 hours after some crazy drugs in a hospital, a month later. That happens, doesn't it, Mike? Yeah. Where am I? So, but getting back, you know, to consciousness after a month, missing a limb, and then no vision. Like, there's just things that you have to go through as a human being to process all of that. And that's a

platform. If you allow it to be like Corey has to be a growth platform and vulnerability and a learning curve, if, if one allows it and if one can put themselves in a trusting position, it can be extremely profound. And that's what we've, that's what we, that's what we experienced collectively. It's like, okay, and he was the one doing the work. I was pushing, but he was doing the work. What a profound lesson, and I think it's easy to make a determination when something happens, this is good, this is bad, this is destructive, this is amazing, this is opportunity, this is chaos. Look how much I've lost.

Sounds like this is a lesson in taking whatever comes and making a profoundly positive, valuable thing out of it, not only for you as a coach and for Corey as an athlete, but also for the community of the gym. And potentially now the community of people who will see this, these athletes, and go, you know what? These are lessons I'm learning. I can do this too.

Yeah, and on that, and to take that a little further, I think sometimes you look at a situation and you just kind of go, look, you don't know what the lessons are going to be yeah at a particular moment you just have to simply understand that if you're if you've got your principles right and we had our principles totally on point it's just like short time we're going to be a team you're going to grow like a motherfucker so are your teammates and so is this place but we don't know what that means so we can't trying to define that as it's happening don't try to do it is absurd it's it's it's a ridiculous that as it's happening. Don't try to do it. It's absurd.

It's a ridiculous endeavor. But what's more important is coming back to the task at hand. And in that is the process. And if you open yourself up to the profundity of coach, like daily just being, like the level of accuracy that I had to describe things and just be like, and I was, I'm like, I'm like, I can't, I'm like, and I had, I'm like, Corey, just touch me here. This is, okay, this, here, that's hip, okay. You put your hand really close to your crotch. That's what it ended up being like with the Olympic lifts. It was right hand on the hip and left hand on the elbow.

That ended up being a lot of the assessment for the Olympic lifts because I could feel the hip. Obviously, that's a huge part of those, all the movements in CrossFit. And then the elbow, I could feel, like say a snatch, I could feel the elbows come up. I could feel that high pull. I could feel when you know, like say a snatch, I could feel the elbows come up. I could feel that high pull. I could feel when, you know, they needed to drop. And so, but it took a while for us to figure that out.

But once you feel, I mean, that's a huge advantage though, just where your body is in space. Because I was always good when I had vision. I was always good at, you know, say when I snowboarded or skated, I could watch someone do a trick and I'd be like, okay. And I could go do it. I was really good at assessing movement through vision. So that was a challenge. I had to figure out how do I paint this picture?

How do I understand the movement so I can do it myself? It sounds like there's innate quality in you that allows you to do that with whatever tools at hand. This time you're just using your ability to feel that position. Do you now visualize things? Still, always, yeah, for sure time you're just using your ability to feel that position. Do you now visualize things? Still, always, yeah, for sure.

What's that like? I mean, it's been 10 years now. Do you feel like what you visualize now is much different than, I guess, what other people see as a deviation, or is there such a memory and impact? Yeah, 23 years of everything. I still live in my head in the sighted world so you know like for example this conversation right here i'll go home tonight and when i think back on it like i'll have a visual i won't just i won't have this this experience of like oh i was

sitting in a dark room talking to a bunch of guys that you'll have a visual representation what happened here who sounds sounds skinnier, me or Michael? Match what your vision is to my reality. It should be who sounds more jacked. I think I sound more jacked than Mike. Actually, I'm the shredded one. Can you believe that, Cody? Fuck, man, I'm Jesus ripped.

Take a segue. You gave me an example earlier. I thought Kenny was black. I mean, I got literally... I thought Kenny was black. I thought you were skinny. Can you believe it? Shit, no.

Kenny mentioned earlier one of the cool things. Corey, I want to say how awesome it is you've overcome a profoundly... I won't say devastating, but a cratering and rebirth experience. And the cool things, Corey, I want to say how awesome it is you've overcome a profoundly, I won't say devastating, but a cratering and rebirth experience. And the cool thing about this is you've got your trust.

You guys put the plan together. You've overcome fear and you've gone through many pain caves and got this thing going. He mentioned you've grown like a motherfucker. I want you to share just the results of this too and the progress you've made just physically and maybe on your list so you could do that. I put gains on the notes you've made some profound progress haven't you yes I can give you

one two weeks ago I so to give you a little background I 2013 WWG

Kenny and I went over to Chris's box Chris Smith remember that and we did a CrossFit Trident yeah CrossFit Trident there you go Washingtonith i remember that and we did a crossfit trident yeah crossfit trident

there you go virginia or in washington dc and we did uh squats and that was something a back squats and that's something i never really did that often uh when we were going through you know all these movements and stuff and you don't really find that in competition all that often um and i remember we went for i think it was a three rep max and I got two plates on there was like 225 and I just it was a grinder I think I nailed like two of them and I needed a spot but last week I just hit 315 for three whoa and you know that was one leg man yeah that was like it was huge because I literally dedicated the last year and a half to the back squat and a lot of those compound movements, you know, the deadlift, the squat, the press.

Because that was one thing last year at WWG, like, I realized, like, I'm sitting 15th, I think 15th or 16th right now in the overall world ranking for adaptive athletes. And all the guys right now that are in the top 10 or on the podium, they're just beasts, dude. They're, like, all too hard. I love how like what sets good athletes apart from bad doesn't change no matter what the fucking sport or the degradation or the levels between athletes still if you do compound barbell movements and get

stronger at those things become a stronger athlete you're gonna kick more ass that's it i knew that i needed to start putting more weight on all my lifts and that was going to translate over into you know the the all the other stuff and as far as uh you know the metcon work and building that metabolic engine but it there's only so far you can push it if you don't have that that strength so i i got back on the barbell and got underneath that thing and worked on the squad the deadlift and the press and um you know i started out in 2012 at about 140 145, and now I'm sitting at about 175, 180. Dang. And you guys can –

Look, I found structural difference in you. Yeah, and I'm lean, as you guys can see. I've always been that way, and I'm the type, if I stop working out and I stop eating right, it's like I get skinny. It's like bone skinny. The hard gain syndrome. Yeah, so putting on 25 pounds of solid muscle, now it's pretty badass.

It feels good, and it feels amazing. I feel freaking great now, and I thank CrossFit and Functional Fitness and so much for that. You made some profound progress, Matt. Kenny, fuck, great job. Record, dude. Record the work, man. And the team, and the other Matt. Kenny, fuck, great job. McCoy, dude. McCoy did the work, man.

And the team, and the other thing to understand too, is like this team, the people, like I mentioned that already, but like the people that were on the team, I mean, it's hard to describe like how special Shirley is,

how special Zach is, and how special Nikki is. But I mean, these are people who get it and they get that it was a kind of a unique time, a unique moment and a unique opportunity. And so all them they'd show up they do they do whatever i ask and every day was like some i just would just i just be an idiot and just create things and go today we're trying this and part of it was just again we just it was just following instinct but stuff i know there was no i know there's no manual for anything of this i was just like let's try this and we just kept carving you know path and and the team you know was was

it was just such a perfect group for him and it allowed him a safety so the other aspect of trust is trust isn't going to exist if you if you don't feel like you can fall and those around you the community or the landing you can accept that you can land hard and still get up. If you feel like you can get up, you can accept any kind of fall. And that group provided that for Corey. I mean, Nicky ran him into a barbell during the actual competition, which is, if you watch the documentary about Corey, it's a very comical moment.

What's the name of that documentary? That's Heart of a Champion. And that's available on RideWithCore.com. name of that documentary? That's Heart of a Champion. That's available on ridewithcore.com. Ridewithcore. Yeah, Ridewithcore. And it's also on the CFLA website. You can click a link to it and go to it. It's a great documentary about the experience of him just kind of coming here and then going,

all right, well, how do we get from A to B? Everything we just talked about, I mean, Mike, my partner, he followed us through the whole experience all the way up to competition. So there's some good footage in there between Kenny and I especially and the team. And one thing I will say, this experience has given me a formula

to take elsewhere. So for example, like after this competition i did in phoenix and we went through this three-month process uh about six eight months later kenny and i went through seal fit 20x oh man and i i wouldn't know there's no way i would have even thought of doing that or even you know considered doing that uh just because it i i needed this experience first um and then just you know last september 11th i i did my first big wall climb in yosemite at 1200 vertical feet uh on a team of three you know so and we're underachieving but here's the thing it's like i through this experience

i i i think i learned more about myself and I, I, I took these tools. So my experience at CFLA with Kenny and the team and going through this competition, I, I, I transformed myself physically and emotionally and spiritually. Um, and then I went through seal fit and there were, that was a, another mental, emotional kind of spiritual component. Um, and then all of a sudden I find myself 600 feet up on a vertical wall in Yosemite with no communication between either, you know, my guys. And I'm stuck in this niche, this chimney. And, you know, I have to literally get a hold of my breathing.

And I tell myself, okay, there's two other guys that made it through this. So there's obviously a way to get through it. And did I try 16, 17, 18 different variations of holds to get through it? Yeah, and it was crazy, but I got through it, and I was able to use each one of those experiences. They were tools in my toolbox. Wow. And, Corey, can we expect you to go out and keep sharing and teaching what you've learned, this formula for overcoming, to other people who are entering this adaptive journey?

Absolutely. I speak to high schools and youth groups, and I've done a lot of different types of venues. And if you're interested in having me come to your CrossFit gym or school, whatever, I'd absolutely love it. That's something that I founded a lifestyle brand, Ride With Core, back in 2012 when we were doing all this. And it's basically just documenting my life and my experiences through photography, documentaries, and speaking. And you can learn more about that at setridewithcore.com. Yeah, we've got to check that out, man.

Setride? Yeah, ridewithcore.com. Ridewithcore.com. Yep. Okay. Anywhere people can follow you other than that? Yeah, I mean all the Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and all that good stuff. But everything is on RideWithCore.com.

You can find the links to all my social media. If you go to BarbellShort.com, we will put in the show notes for this episode links to Corey's stuff where you can learn more, watch that documentary, and also find Kenny. Thanks for joining us, guys. One more thing. On a special extra part of this show, we're going to talk about where adaptive sport is going and how you guys, coaches and athletes and volunteers, if you want to get involved, we'll show you how. That's coming up after the break. What's up, guys?

It's Steph Zahamer here, and I'm super stoked to be on the Barbell Shrugged podcast that focuses on adaptive athletics. I am the world's first CrossFit trainer with cerebral palsy that has a level two certification. And while that is something that I'm extremely proud of, I'm even more proud of the fact that I was part of this community when it had first started. Literally watching it grow from the ground up in the last four years has been something truly amazing and seeing people come from all over the world saying that they're truly proud of who they are and that they want to challenge themselves further is something pretty awesome to watch. When I first started CrossFit almost four years ago, I was pretty much the only person with CP that I knew of doing CrossFit. And so having to create my own sort of scales and trying to figure all that stuff out was definitely a process.

But now that I'm able to be an example for hundreds more people and thousands more that follow my journey is pretty wonderful. I know it's a big responsibility, but it's something that I take very seriously because you never know who you're going to inspire and change their lives. And while most people think that being an adaptive athlete is all about being inspiring, that comes naturally. And I think we as athletes want to show the world what we're capable of and what's possible rather than just being an inspiration. And so I think the biggest piece of advice that I could give somebody getting involved in fitness, whether it be the CrossFit community or somewhere else, is to not be afraid of who you

are and not be afraid to figure things out. They're going to happen naturally and things are going to come to you and you're going to be amazed at things that you can do over time. Just give yourself time and don't be afraid to get involved because it's probably one of the best things that you'll ever do with your life. I know that it changed my life four years ago and I hope that you know listening to this podcast will change some of your perspectives and hopefully change somebody else's life. Hi everyone I am Elise this is Marilyn we are the Zosias and together we formed the nonprofit I am adaptive and today we've come here to talk to you about a

very important topic the topic of inclusion. All around the world people are dealt with hardships moments in our lives where we feel like we just can't handle things Moments where we've been left with something missing And this could be a part of our body, a part of our minds, or even a part of our hearts And in these moments we question, what is it that we're capable of? Are we even good enough? How are we going to get to the next step? We are here to remind you that everybody has greatness lying inside of them It's just waiting to be unleashed.

We work very hard at I Am Adaptive to find the best channels to help people do that. And one of the channels we use consistently is fitness. And thank goodness for fitness. It's a wonderful uniter of the mind, the body, the soul, and our communities. We're constantly asked through email, through text, through voice, how can I find people in my community? How am I going to find trainers? How can I find people in my community? How am I going to find trainers? How do I find supporters? How do I support? And the answer is pretty simple.

Start off with what you know and right now you know about Barbell Shrugged. Go and talk and find out about all of the other resources and people that you're hearing today including I Am Adaptive to really find those resources that you're still looking for. I am adaptive look that up you'll see over 12,000 people from all over the globe that have turned the impossible into possible people have believed in themselves despite what life has handed them so we're here to call you out I don't care what life has handed you what disability you think you have, what mountain you see in front of yourself, you need to be motivated. Wake up and find the things that make you move.

It doesn't matter what it is. Find the resources because they're here for you and we're fighting to prove that to you every day. Starting by showing you all of the individuals in the world who are doing these amazing things when life has taken everything from them. So please check out the hashtag I am adaptive. Listen to the people at Barbell Shrugged and don't forget that we want to see you unleash your greatness. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged everybody. This is part two of a very special episode. You'll recall just before the commercial

break we had an awesome powerful chat with Kenny Kane, who's our good buddy and a coach across LA, and one of his adaptive athletes, Corey Reed, who just got it. Corey's got an amazing story. We're still sort of reverberating from it and taking it all in. Really incredible story. If you haven't go back, listen to that again. It's really, really worth hearing a couple times. But right now on part two, we are joined by Sarah Olson. Sarah, welcome to the show. Thanks, Chris. Coming in for part two. You work with athletes like a Corey in an organization called the Crossroads Adaptive Athletic Alliance. I said that correctly.

Can you tell us a little bit about what you're doing, what you're doing to serve these athletes and how you got into it? Just tell us what you're up to. Yeah, absolutely. So we're the only nonprofit of our kind in the country working specifically to build a community for adaptive athletes and their coaches. And we do that by really providing the opportunity for what we think are life changing fitness experiences for these adaptive athletes. And we do that through education, grants and competition. Yeah. And so a little bit about sort of breaking that down.

We actually started with the competition side of it. We were told it's too hard to do a level playing field competition for adaptive athletes specific to CrossFit or functional fitness. Just because of the variable injuries and things people are facing? Right. I mean, you think about Paralympics and they've got 50 categories for a person with an upper extremity amputation. So how do you take that and make it one category or even less? You take the lower extremity amputees, the upper extremity amputees, the cerebral palsy athletes, and you put them all in the same category. And so we said, well, screw it.

Let's try. And that was sort of the birth of Working Wounded Games, which is our annual competition for adaptive athletes. And it grew in 2012 with 27 registered athletes to last year we had 62 registered athletes. Cool. And again, all we really planned on doing was the competition. We thought it would be fun. We worked with adaptive athletes. Um, David Wallach, who owns CrossFit Rubicon, who really introduced me to working with adaptive athletes on a regular basis said, Hey, Sarah, come help me organize it. And I said, yeah, I'd love to let's make this

happen. And as we started pulling athletes in and talking to them that first year of the 27 athletes that were there, we had at least four or five come up to us and say, this is awesome because I've never met another adaptive athlete in my entire life. You know, so here they were doing exactly what Corey and Kenny are doing, figuring out what works for them, you know, working with the coaches, working with the movements, trying to make it work so that they can be part of that community, but they were doing it in pockets of one. You know, here in California, in Oregon, in D.C., it was all these pockets of one. So it sounds like there's a state that we need to work on where people could be very eager to get involved and find a lot of joy and reward in this, but they simply just don't know. Right, right. And, you know, you think about it, there's 47 million adults with adaptive needs in the U.S.

So that's about one in every five adults. That's a huge number. It's huge. So the CDC says basically of the five of us standing here, one of us is likely to have or to become an adaptive athlete at some point in our life. So if you look around your gym and you're not seeing that number, that means there's a huge part of the population that's not being served.

Right. So either you don't know that they have an invisible injury or you're not able to bring them in and provide that inclusive environment that makes them want to show up, want to be there, want to be better. What would some of these invisible injuries look like? So the two we work primarily with are TBI and PTSD. Traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress. Yes. Sorry about that. Can you say what? I'll throw out acronyms. Definitely call me on it. You know, AKBK, that's above the knee, below the knee. But so what do they look like? They don't

look like anything. That's why they're called invisible injuries and it's not until you actually get into that really personal assessment and really working with the athlete that they may even be willing to let you know what what's going on but it's really important because it affects how they work out it affects how they integrate and how they communicate with their coaches with the other members of your gym. And so you need to know that. You need to provide an environment that allows them to work out. Something as simple as an athlete with TBI may have a very difficult time doing burpees.

We do burpees every single day at every single gym, whether it's because you're late for class, it's an easy warm-up. You like to punish yourself in a point of no apparent reason, and you have to do a hundred of these fucking things, but you don't have to, so go ahead, everybody's got their thing. Exactly. So TBI athlete comes in, and that up and down motion, that change in pressure in the brain can actually make them faint, make them dizzy, increase their chances for a migraine that day.

And so knowing that right away and coming up with adaptations and ways to work around it makes them a more inclusive, more integrated part of your gym, and they don't have to be off to the side. We're doing burpees. You can't play. It's not that. It's we're doing burpees, and here's what you already know, and everybody else in the gym already knows what you do instead. Yeah, I feel like there's a point that has be reiterated that 47 million adults who are going to be dealing with this issue it's a growing population somebody in your gym is probably in terms of mental issue or physical issue somebody the chances of them dealing with this

and struggling with this are very large and you might be part of the problem you might be part of the solution but it seems like there's a lot of education effort needs to take place. What are some of the events you guys are doing? And from the grants perspective, what are you doing to help people become better coaches and help these athletes know where they can go to learn solutions to their problems? Yeah, absolutely.

So I already kind of touched on the competition side of it. You know, besides holding our own competition, we'll advise other competitions who want to start having an adaptive division. That's a very cool service because other people are going to be dealing with this issue of how you level the playing field and have a competition with so many variances and issues. Right. We've worked with people in Chile, in Texas, in North Carolina, in California. It's really exciting for us when somebody says, I want to include, I want to integrate, and just, I just

need help. We're happy to do that. But really, that inclusion, that acceptance of adaptive athletes, in our opinion, what gets us really excited about what some of the things we do is getting those adaptive athletes out there. And that's what you mentioned the grants program. That's one of the things that we do because it puts the athletes at the forefront, not us as educators necessarily. So our grants provide the opportunity for athletes to compete. We've sent an athlete to qualify in Paralympic track and field. That's very cool. We've sent an athlete to WCMX, which is essentially wheelchair BMX, you know, ramps, everything else.

Why have I not seen this on ESPN? You know, right? That actually sounds cooler than... It seems like even cooler than BMX. Like, holy shit. I know. What excuse do I have now not to rock my BMX routine?

This guy's doing a fucking wheelchair. That's the first thing I was like, oh my God, this is impressive. Not this guy. This 11-year-old girl who's been in a wheelchair for a year... Even more impressive, man....is winning an award at a WCMX event. Are you saying girls have a more difficult time?

This is what you see. You see how this works now. He gets me agitated and I say unpredictable things for the camera and microphones. But I think what this alludes to is the incredible inspirational effect these athletes bring to any situation. Yeah, and what we try to actually do, I'm going to pick on you effect these athletes bring to any situation. Yeah. And what we try to actually do, I'm going to pick on you a little bit for using that word. Do it. Do it.

Please. So we tell everybody it's not so much inspiration. You know, we have athletes who are told all the time just from, you know, carrying their bags from the grocery store to their car, you know, people stop them. Oh, man, you're so inspirational. They can see the prosthetic. It's like, no, dude, I'm living my life. They, these athletes don't want to inspire you. They want to motivate you to act. You know, it's not so much get excited about what they're doing, but get excited about what you can be doing with them. So, you know, you get an athlete that,

that really wants to separate themselves from their injury, from their adaptive needs and, and prove to the world that they're this full person, this full athlete. And so when they come into the gym, they are the most willful, most stubborn, most incredibly motivated people I've ever met in my entire life. Yeah, we talked about the David and Goliath effect. You want to go into that just a little bit? Because I thought it was a cool analogy to bring out the true nature of these athletes yeah one thing before that Corey was talking about how there was a point where he kind of was identified he identified with his injury right and then there

was a moment where they kind of switched where he's like okay I have this I have this issue but it's not defining who I am right and. And so I think that sometimes when you approach someone and says, hey, that's really inspiring, you're kind of like giving them that identity even further. Like you're maybe adding to, I wouldn't call it a problem, but like adding to something they're already struggling with. Right. It's like all of us standing here. I mean, you're a surfer as well as, you know, a big part of Barbell Shrugged,

but you're not necessarily defined as well as you know a big part of barbell shrugged but you're not necessarily defined by any one of those these adaptive athletes don't want you to see a prosthetic and only see a prosthetic or see a chair and only see a chair um it's a part of who they are it's necessarily part of their identity but it's not their primary identity yeah um so yeah that's that's a great point and it's it's one of the reasons that we we educate in the seminars we start off with language and terminology and how to communicate with adaptive athletes and just start breaking down those barriers and that does get very confusing like if i don't communicate with people who are in these situations on a regular basis like sometimes it's hard to know if i'm saying something that's maybe even offensive or something

right what are some i didn't know just then. I want to get into the David and Goliath thing, but like... Well, I'm not going to let you pass. It's a juicy little thing. What are some things that maybe people say that may not be right? Or I guess right or wrong, but... Things to be aware of. Yeah.

Raise your awareness, please. I'm taking my notes, by the way. So right now we're here and we're talking about adaptive athletes. And we're talking about adaptive athletes because it's two words and it's easier to say, but what we teach is you need to change the way you think there are athletes with adaptive needs and really put that athlete first. It's not the adaptation that's first, it's the athlete. And once you've made that connection and made that switch in your head, everything else becomes kind of, kind of natural. Um, so if you're,

you're an adaptive athlete and you have a visible adaptation, a prosthetic, a wheelchair, um, you're going to approach it the same as if somebody walks in with a boot on their foot, you need to know whether that they can wait, you know, bear weight on it, what you can do in, in, outside the gym. And you're not going to avoid it and pretend it's not there or stare only at it you're going to address the issue that you need to address as a coach to help the athlete it's the same exact thing with adaptive athletes is that your only leg how how often do you use it do you normally work out with it be direct and and as long as your questions are to help the athlete and they're not curiosity, you know, it's what do I need to coach you better?

Not, I'm confused, I want to learn more, this is kind of cool, interesting, you're the first person I've met. Like, that's a conversation you have with a friend, not with an athlete. Gotcha. Once you've created that friendship, absolutely ask those questions if you're on that level.

Right, but don't beat around the bush. It seems like being direct, though, is really important because at the same time as you don't want to differentiate someone for their disability, equally, you don't want to ignore it and pretend it doesn't exist. That's the most awkward thing, right? Right. They know they're in a chair. You're not going to bring up any new news to them.

If they're wheeling into your gym, that's not a surprise to them. I mean... That's the them if they're wheeling into your gym that's not a surprise to them i mean i mean i remember being younger before you know as you're growing up and you never encounter these situations and you as you get older you're like well i don't know what to do it can make people nervous sometimes right having kind of grown up and being in in a society actually hinders people a lot of times so we talked to a lot of our seminar coaches. So all of our seminar staff are adaptive athletes. We've picked people that have already gone out and been mentors and been part of the adaptive community and brought them into the fold of Crossroads to help us spread that word. So we'll talk to our seminar coaches, and they actually love being around kids because kids sort of set the example for their parents.

They'll come up and ask, is that a robot leg? You know, tell me about this. Why is this happening? Kids are beautifully direct. Speaking of directness, kids bring the directness. Can you take that off? Can you stand up out of your wheelchair? I mean, those seem like questions that we would all avoid, and maybe there's better ways to ask it.

But it comes from such a very innocent place with kids that our seminar coaches love it. Because usually you can answer the question, and it's like, all right, cool. Now I'm going to go play soccer. Like, it's no big deal. Right, right. And that's kind of what we try to teach is getting past your own personal mental barrier so that inclusion is second nature they're just another athlete that wants to get better that has goals do you think some people are worried about whether they're being pc or not oh absolutely absolutely they're

worried to ask the questions because they're worried about offending they absolutely are and again that's kind of why i love our seminars is because we bring our seminar coaches, our adaptive athletes who have had the gamut asked of them. And we basically dare the attendees to ask what's on their mind because you're not going to offend them. They'll tell you what's right or what's wrong about the question, but they'll also answer it. And so it's the idea of breaking down that barrier. Gotcha. By the way, everybody, that beautiful, different British voice accent you heard on that, Charlotte joined us on the microphones

for the first time. Charlotte, I didn't introduce you in the beginning of the second part of this episode. I think you missed my count, too. Oh, goodness. I missed my count. Sorry. Back to the David's Galah point, Sarah. I thought it was a. Back to the David and Goliath point, Sarah.

I thought it was a beautiful point because I think it goes a long way to kind of explain just the passion that pulls out of you and explains the work you put in. Can you tell us about that example and really sort of the true nature of the David figures in this case? Sure, absolutely. So Malcolm Gladwell is a New York Times bestseller author, and he's got this book called David and Goliath, where basically he kind of challenges everybody to think a little bit differently about how they think of successful people. And with the idea being that typically your successful people have been an underdog or have been in a position of trauma or disability at some point. And it's that awareness that they have to go above and beyond to be equal to somebody else or to beat somebody bigger, badder, stronger. So the David Goliath scenario that they're going to push themselves harder and they're going to create a skill set. David had to learn how to shoot a slingshot

because he wasn't going to best Goliath in a fistfight. And so when you sort of apply that to some of the adaptive athletes, like I said, they're some of the hardest working, most willful people I've ever met. And I think part of that has to do with separating from their adaptation, their adaptive needs, and really going out there and proving that they've created this other skill set beyond what, you know, intuitively maybe we think they should be able to do. Absolutely. And it's the tide that rises all ships within a gym.

So we've talked about inclusion. We've talked about how important that is to me and how important it is to Crossroads. But it's important to everybody in your gym. So you accept one of these 47 million, one of these one in five adults into your gym that knows they're starting sort of behind or with the perception of being behind everybody else. And they're going to bust their ass and they're going to work harder than anybody else in the gym. And so you've got somebody that comes in that day that had a tough day at work and just doesn't feel like pushing. You don't stop. You don't just not feel like pushing

when the guy next to you with no legs is sweating and panting and pushing himself harder and harder every day to get better and meet his own goals. You really have no excuse not to put that same motivation and that same dedication into your own well-being. Cheers.

Well, that's what Kenny was saying about when he hosts the Open, that anyone that's competing next door to Corey, they just feel like an utter asshole if they're sandbagging it because this poor guy is kind of fishing around for his kit and it's like, okay, I better man up, get on with it. So one of the head coaches at CrossFit Rubicon, where the co-founder David Wallach owns, is Jason Sturm. He's also the head coaches at CrossFit Rubicon, you know, where the co-founder, David Wallach, owns is Jason Sturm. He's also the vice chairman of Crossroads, and he's a below-the-knee amputee.

He's also the world champion pair of bobsledder. That's a hard event anyway. You have full function in your body. Bobsled's tough, man. But, you know, you ask him, he'll go into a gym because he travels a lot and he's doing a drop-in or whatever. And the first thing people, well, how much do we need to take off the bar? How much do we need to adapt? And he just looks at them and laughs.

He's like, I don't need to adapt shit. And he'll go and he'll throw up 305 back squat or whatever it is he's doing that day. And everybody's sort of standing around going. Oh, shit. Yeah. You know, I thought something because of the way you looked and didn't really think of you as the athlete first. He just needs to go on tour to every gym and just like blow people's minds.

He'd buy people up a squat stand. Who wants to squat with me? Yeah. A bunch of hands and then humility after that. Well, the feedback we get after working wounded. So we have, like I said, we had 62 athletes last year. We've already got 57 registered for this year. 100 volunteers.

We end up with some. By the way, we heard that Corey was not registered. Not yet. Corey, come on, man. He did the. Quit being lazy. He's come a few times. I don't know if we scared him off, but.

He's just had a baby. Excuses. He loves his children. Must be a good role model. Go ahead, Sarah. We get 250, 300 spectators to this event, and they walk away to the man that watching this was a life-changing event for them so not

only is it life-changing for the athletes who are getting to compete getting to network getting to be a part of a community that they didn't know existed but the people watching it you know realizing that oh i don't know that i could lift that much on a one-handed lift i don't know that i could be doing pull-ups with one hand or blind. And just watching how much everybody puts into it and what they're able to accomplish, those 300 additional people kind of walk out with their mind blown.

Yeah, we won't call it inspiration, but certainly there's a recalibration of what's important and what can be done. Exactly. When and where is this event? So this year it's at CrossFit Lorton, so DC area, and it's November 7th this year.

Okay. So definitely check that out. Yeah. Another point I want to make is, we were chatting before, you got the awesome events you guys are putting on. Right. There's educational outreach and grants designed to get people involved,

to help coaches understand when they see these athletes, what are some tools they can use to apply, to get right to the issue, to know how to program, to know how to work with them. Another thing you guys do, which I thought is maybe the coolest part, and it's the most, it's the service-based part, because you talked to us about the simple phone calls you'll make to support athletes. Can you tell us just some of the simple functions you guys are doing every day to help these athletes get where they need to get and get supported?

Yeah, because I love it. Yeah, because this is probably the most beautiful thing of all you've done because it's the most gracious, most powerful thing, I think. So we have an alliance of GEMS, people that have gone through the seminar that have pledged to make an inclusive environment that know how to assess programs and adapt them for adaptive athletes. And we're up to, I think last count, it was 33 internationally, but we'll get calls from athletes on a regular basis or emails saying, I'm going to

this area. I've never been there before. I didn't see an Alliance gym on your website. Can you help me out? Can you find someplace I'll fit in? And so I'll either email the five closest gyms to them, or I'll pick up the phone and kind of go through here's what you need to think about we just had a Josh who is moving to Spokane Washington he has spastic CP cerebral palsy and wants to use CrossFit to help with his balance and some of his other strength goals and so I just called the owner of the gym and I said have you ever worked with an adaptive athlete here's who Josh is he wants to know that you're going to be okay with him coming in and you know the length of time it's going to take to figure out what to adapt but he also wants

to be included this isn't personal training he can go find a personal trainer this is he wants to be part of a community somebody that's going to call him out if he doesn't show up to class you know that's one of the awesome things about, you know, these types of, of group classes and especially CrossFit is that you get to know the people and they will, they will hold you accountable. And that's a very, very huge healing mechanism. Um, and so he wanted that environment. He wanted to be part of it. And so I just, I talked to the owner for about half hour and here's some things to think about. Feel free to call me back if you ever have any questions.

We did the same for a newly amputated dual amputee, lower extremity at Brick CrossFit in LA, West Hollywood. Spent several phone calls, several emails back and forth.

Not only is he part of that gym, but he's signed up for Working Wounded and has fundraised enough so that the charity's paying for his travel to come out there. Wow. Nice.

That's an incredible real-world impact of what you guys are doing. I think it's just fantastic. Thank you for your efforts. Yeah. It's really splendid. If it weren't tangible, we wouldn't do it. There's a lot of people out there looking to change policy, which is all good things, or change people's minds, but to us, you can't change their minds unless you're actually out there doing tangible, actionable things.

You want to say the Gandhi quote that was inappropriately labeled to you, Mike? Be the change you would like to see in the world. It's a fucking great example. I'll let you have it. Now people will attribute it to you. It was a big picture of Mike on his Instagram feed. Be the change you want to see in the world. It says Mike Bledsoe. Maybe Gandhi. He didn't say it? He said it as well.

So the quote is technically right. Because I have that picture printed out, posted up on my desk. I've got to be the change you want to see in the world. Oh, my God. Don't tell him that. What's funny is I said that. I said, there's a quote from Gandhi. I said it, and then it still made it.

I was like, literally, 10 seconds before him. Thank you, Michael Bledsoe. You are so powerful and very wise beyond your years. Sarah, where can people learn more about the Crossroads Alliance, what you guys are up to, and how they can provide their support? Their own service and also maybe contribute funds to help you guys do more great work. Where can they go? All sorts of places.

So crossroadsalliance.org is our website. You can find out about our upcoming events, upcoming seminars. You can search our alliance. You can read our latest blog, which will also have resources for coaches and athletes on it, and you can donate. You can also find us on Facebook, Crossroads Alliance. Twitter and Instagram, it's Crossroads AAA.

Fantastic. Or you can email me, Sarah it's Crossroads AAA. Fantastic. Or you can email me, sarah at crossroadsalliance.org. It might take me a little bit because I just started school, but I get back to everybody within three to four days. We're saying you're

a driven individual. You have one master's degree, you thought it would be a good idea, in addition to changing the world for the better, also you get a second master's degree.

Sarah stays very busy. Sounds like she's going to get back to your message pretty damn quick. I don't know if it's a good idea. I consider myself an idiot for doing it, but... But you're a continual master's degree. Sarah stays very busy. Sounds like she's going to get back to your message pretty damn quick. I don't know if it's a good idea. I consider myself an idiot for doing it. But you're a continual learner, right?

Every day learn something new and figure out how you can serve people. Absolutely. Absolutely. Sarah, thank you for joining us on Barbell Shrug. Michael, thank you for your commentary. Charlotte, thank you for joining in with your voice, even though I did not appropriately introduce you. That would never happen again. CTP on the camera doing a splendid job as always.

Folks, if you like this show, go to barbellshock.com, sign up for the newsletter, go on to iTunes, the newsletter, go on to iTunes, leave us a comment if you think we deserve it. Of course we do. Five stars will make me feel all warm and squishy inside. Until the next episode, see you then. Cheers. Thanks, Sarah.

Thanks.