Barbell Shrugged - Should You Open A CrossFit Gym? w/ Chris Spealler  — Barbell Shrugged #346

Episode Date: October 13, 2018

Chris Spealler was an individual competitor in 7 CrossFit Games, is an Affiliate Owner, and trainer for CrossFit Headquarters teaching a variety of seminars both domestic and internationally.   Chris has been fortunate enough to help grow the sport of CrossFit through competing and teaching at a variety of competitions and seminars from as early as 2007, and is currently sharing his knowledge and experience through programming for and developing Icon Athlete.   In this episode, we talk about the early days of CrossFit, before it was a fitness empire, how wrestling leads to mental toughness, being the smallest CrossFit athlete at the CrossFit Games, the business of owning a CrossFit gym, taking your workouts outside and doing grunt work, and more.   Enjoy! Doug and Anders ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_spealler ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Please support our partners! @organifi - www.organifi.com/shrugged to save 20% @thrivemarket - www.thrivemarket.com/shrugged for a free 30 days trial and $60 in free groceries @OMAX - www.tryomax.com/shrugged and get a box FREE with your first purchase @foursigmatic - www.foursigmatic.com/shrugged  to save 15% on your first purchase @vuori - www.vuoriclothing.com “SHRUGGED25” to save 25% storewide ► Subscribe to Barbell Shrugged's Channel Here ► Subscribe to Shrugged Collective's Channel Here http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedSubscribe 📲 🎧 Listen to the audio version on the Apple Podcast App or Stitcher for Android Here- http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedApple http://bit.ly/BarbellShruggedStitcher Shrugged Collective is a network of fitness, health and performance shows that help people achieve their physical and mental health goals.  Usually in the gym, but outside as well. In 2012 they posted their first Barbell Shrugged podcast and have been putting out weekly free videos and podcasts ever since. Along the way we've created successful online coaching programs including The Shrugged Strength Challenge, The Muscle Gain Challenge, FLIGHT, Barbell Shredded, and Barbell Bikini. We're also dedicated to helping affiliate gym owners grow their businesses and better serve their members by providing owners tools and resources like the Barbell Business Podcast. Find Shrugged Collective and their flagship show Barbell Shrugged here: SUBSCRIBE ON ITUNES ► http://bit.ly/ShruggedCollectiveiTunes WEBSITE ► https://www.ShruggedCollective.com INSTAGRAM ► https://instagram.com/shruggedcollective FACEBOOK ► https://facebook.com/barbellshruggedpodcast TWITTER ► http://twitter.com/barbellshrugged

Shrugged family, another Saturday edition of Shrugged coming your way. Hanging out with Chris Spieler. This dude is a legend. If you are an OG CrossFitter and you remember him pushing that gigantic prowler across the stadium in Carson at the CrossFit Games, That was a pretty inspirational moment. That little guy just hanging out with all the gigantic monsters. And Spieler's just an awesome guy. He was actually the lead flowmaster

at my level two like eight years ago when they first came out with the level two. We went on a massive road trip all the way up the coast. Got to go hang out at NorCal CrossFit. Jason Kalipa was there. It was super cool. I really had a blast talking to Spieler.

He is just such an OG and probably millions of people have come through his brain and the way that he perceives CrossFit and just all the wisdom that he brings to the methodology. Just so much experience and what an awesome guy. I want to give a shout out to Viore Clothing. These guys, we have a photo shoot with them and a video shoot with them coming up on Monday, but I literally cannot take the clothes off. My wife loves me in them, which means they make you look good, strong, athletic, all the right places. They look nice. That's a huge one

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Man, when I go through our website, there are so many interviews, probably like 1,000 interviews on our website. There's probably 500 articles on making you a better weightlifter, a stronger human being, all the things. There's so much good stuff on there. So what I have been up to for the last month plus

is scouring through the website, finding the best 30 articles on weightlifting, nutrition, CrossFit, just all of the best articles that we've written with the most information and putting together a free 30 day email, just 30 days of free coaching and how you can become a better, stronger, leaner, faster, healthier human being. We have so much good content on our site, and it's so hard to sift through, so I have done it for you. I don't have a link for you. I'm just getting you stoked on it.

It's going to be phenomenal. 30 days of free coaching to a bigger, stronger, leaner, happier, healthier, fitter you. Fitness Forward. Said it again. But stay tuned. That's probably coming out here in the next two weeks. And I'm really, really excited to get it to you guys. There's so much good stuff on the website.

And it's just too much. So I'm going to put all the best content together for you it's going to drip out over 30 days i'm really excited about it i can't wait for you guys to sign up and be a part of it just stay tuned i'm going to make sure we get all the information to you websites all that fun stuff so that you can get all of the information you need. Nutrition, weightlifting, getting shredded, being awesome. 30 days of free coaching coming your way. We are going to kick it to Chris Spieler. Interviewed him at the Granite Games.

Hope you love the episode, and I will see you guys at the break. But now, we're good to go. Do it. Welcome to Barbell Shrugged. I'm andrews warner hanging out with doug larson chris spieler we're at the kill cliff granite games in saint cloud minnesota i say that but we're actually in a hotel we've got ed sheeran hotel music yeah take me into your loving yeah we're jamming um dude you're like the legend of CrossFit. I think everybody remembers you head down like a stack of red plates. Well, if they were around in that, because there was only like 50 people in the stands that day, and it was a billion degrees out on the tennis floor.

It was a billion degrees in the stands, and it was even hotter down there. You pushing 12 times your body weight across the competition floor and the whole place erupting while the monsters next to you made it look like it was just not a big deal. Grocery cart. Yeah. A lot of people probably remember that, but from your perspective, what was that whole thing like?

Oh, my gosh. That's, I think, 2012, and that's when things started really evolving, kind of coming on the scene with more significant programming and training. And, you know, that's where I think things started really snowballing. And it was one of – it goes down as one of the most memorable things that I've experienced on the floor for sure. You started – what was the first one in 2006? Seven. Seven? You were there.

I was there. You were in first place until the CrossFit total. Yeah. I don't know if I was in first place, but I think I was definitely podium contender until the CrossFit total. I thought they were doing it by weight. They made us weigh in and everything.

I was like, why are you making us weigh in? I didn't know that. And then after we did everything. I was like, why are you making us weigh in? I didn't know that. And then after, yeah, after we did the, I was like, oh, I'm going to crush this because it's by weight. You invented the kipping pull-up before anybody wanted to put a name to it.

You were like, this is stupid. You guys are doing this the old way. No. I saw Brett Marshall do the butterfly pull-up and then I kind of mimicked it. I actually never, ever learned how to do a regular kipping pull-up because I saw Brett Marshall do it as pull-up and then I kind of mimicked it. I actually never, ever learned how to do a regular kipping pull-up because I saw Brett Marshall do it as well. AFT. If you don't know who that is, you're too new.

I saw him do it and I was like, that makes way more sense and I'm not going to try to even learn the old way. In Gold's Gym trying to swing on the bar, basically. Dude, the progression of that though, from CrossFit Games 1 up until the floor, or up until kind of that moment, I guess that was like the crescendo. Actually, that probably wasn't even the crescendo moment.

When you qualified after not making it, that has to kind of – there was a lot of work. There was a lot of eating going on for you. Yeah, that was 2012 and 2013. That was my bulk years. Cool. Yeah, but it didn't uh it didn't stick didn't stick to the ribs quite like i wanted it to but uh yeah it was part of it that was just part of the journey trying to put on size and i think uh in 2012 i was floating around like low to mid 150s when i was out on the floor, low 150s,

which is monstrous for me and puny for most normal. The guys now, they're all your size, but 205. Yeah, right? They're a hair taller than me, but roughly 50 pounds heavier. Yeah. Was that just like an all-consuming thing? You just have to eat all day long? It's a true 24-hour job?

Yeah. I was eating 5,000 calories a day. So it was, I would have, you know, eat as much as you can. And at that point you try to eat well, but there's no real quality at that point. If you're honest density. Yeah. So I would have like a thousand calories shake before I went to bed every night just to finish off the cows. And it was a lot, man, a lot of food and a lot of time eating and lifting. And if you're not doing that, then sitting, and if you're not doing that, sleeping.

That's the bodybuilder lifestyle right there. Minus the tanning. Exactly. Did you own Park City when you were at CrossFit Games 1? Let's see. Yeah, I did. I started CrossFit Park City in the spring of 2007. So I had the gym for basically about three months.

Oh, nice. And by the gym, I mean I had the affiliation and was just working in the corner of a rec center. Did you think that anybody would ever do CrossFit for fun or for health and fitness? Yeah, for sure. I had this feeling where I was like, man, if I could just get people in and trying this, they're going to stay. Interesting. I never thought a single person would try to do this for health and fitness.

Health and longevity. It was a sport from day one for me and all my friends it was just there was only five people that played it so we happened to it was just our own like competition every day but yeah it hurt so bad i never ever thought at like 22 years old that anybody would try to just do this just to be in shape there's so many different ways to do it where you don't have to do fran feel like that right right so i felt like the opposite like i came out of like mainstream like like you know college professional sports strength and conditioning yeah and i found this new thing cross and i was like this is way more fun than what we were doing like like as far as like the

mainstream general population goes like they're going to be much more likely to do this because it's so fun compared to like regular strength and conditioning and then people kind of now i feel like people weave into crossfit and then they kind of weave out into into something else whether whether it's weightlifting whether it's like functional bodybuilding or just like general strength conditioning just like for regular fitness like crossfit's a part of it but it doesn't turn into into their whole life but crossfit's like the gateway drug yeah you came from a wrestling background so you were already into sick and twisted forms of conditioning and yeah yeah wrestling it's funny i was just talking to jason about that wrestling is harder than

crossfit yeah it's it's uh it's like crossfit but they smother your face into the mat yeah it's except someone's trying to hurt you and you're starving all at the same time and you're responsible for yourself and a team and yeah wrestling was i grew up doing it and it was awesome it was such a great um a great sport to learn so much about life and i have to be a little little careful because my son i want him to wrestle but it is not a sport that you can force a kid to do no not so i am very uh very non i encourage but um you know hey do you want to do it man and you want to get out there again buddy saying i don't think so it's like okay it hurts my soul a little bit but um but it's funny i was talking with uh my old wrestling coach and uh one of the

guys that we we had there his name's car Collott, and he is talking about a monster. He's down in the Wrestling Hall of Fame. He went to the Olympics. He got third in the world. He's a monster. And he even told, I think, my old wrestling coach. I heard that he was just like, you know, I could have been good at anything. And it's just that I was kind of forced to wrestle.

So that's why I was good at that. But I could have been good at anything. So that's encouraging for me to hear because I keep thinking, okay, well, you know, if they're driven and they want to be good at something, it could be anything. It doesn't have to be wrestling. I think wrestling really pushes people into that because you learn about the mental side of how hard it is to be good at something. That's like a – for for some reason I feel like wrestling

is a little bit harder than all of the other sports because you have to starve yourself. I would, yeah. And I'm not a wrestler so I'm biased but wrestling is the hardest sport. Well you can be good at hockey, you can be good at football, you can be good at a lot of sports and you're doing it well nourished. Right.

So take all of the food away and then try to be good at that sport and it just adds an extra layer of extreme pain so yeah it's not like mma though where you like you fight twice a year it's like you're going to be doing it like next potentially multiple times a week sometimes you got big tournaments on the weekends plus matches during the week like you're always cutting weight and you're always on low calories for the whole fucking season yeah the stories that we had you know some of the stories i heard and some of the stuff i saw was just all surrounding cutting weight is just nuts and they they did their best to to change the structure of it because my freshman year this was years ago this was you know 2002 or no gosh

this was 97, 98. Yeah. You're really scrolling. Anytime you get down to the 90s when you're, like, filling out an online form, you have to – it's like it used to be, like, right there. Multiple scrolls. You just hear ticking, keep going on your phone. 83.

Holy crap. There's a significant portion of people that are listening to the show right now that are like, that's when I was born. Yeah, right? Don't worry. In a couple years, there's some kid that was born in 2000 that's just gonna be at a bar getting hammered what the hell you were born in 2000 yeah i know it 2000 yeah wait what were you guys doing for for strength and conditioning back when you were wrestling i it

was really interesting we had i i remember we had a new strength and conditioning coach come in and we worked out you're lucky to have one of those at all back right and we we worked out in the bottom of it was called rogers gym and it was this old gym i mean like we're talking old wood floor with a wood track above it in this little just crusty building and we were in the basement and they had a bunch of equipment down there and i remember when this guy came in he basically like cleared out all the equipment because it was just old but it was all barbells and weights and stuff which is great uh and at the time remember hammer strength yeah it was legit yeah and he got i'll still hit some of that every once in a while he got the whole gym set up with hammer strength

equipment and it was like your upper body and lower body machines and all that stuff. Because it was kind of the free weight. You know, you put the free weight on and stuff moved independently. And he would put us through these vicious circuits, you know, where it was basically a full body workout. And you would pretty much do one exercise, failure and then go right to the next right to the next right to the next and then the next week you would either try to hit the you know if you got let's say the reps were 8 to 12 if you got 13 reps then you'd bump it up five pounds and then you try to get eight reps and then if you got eight reps at that weight

then the next week you try to get nine reps or ten reps so you're always trying to either increase by a rep or once you hit the rep range by weight and uh even though it wasn't functional you know by the definition of crossfit we destroyed ourselves like we would crush ourselves doing that stuff and just the wrestler mentality and being in there with the guys oh my gosh yeah we guys would be crying like in full tears on those things so you guys work out in like full sweat suits every day that happened occasionally yeah there were some sauna suit workouts like a thousand burpees in sweatpants and hoodies. Yeah, we used to wear like a... Tucked in hoodies.

That was like the wrestler look. You had to have the tucked in hoodie and the tucked in bottom of the sweatpants. Yeah, so you can stay hot. Into large white socks. Yeah, stay hot. And we would sometimes wear sauna suits. So if you guys don't know what that is, just swing by your local Walmart. Go down the fitness section.

Get yourself a sauna suit, which is basically a trash bag with some rubber bands around your neck and your wrist and your waist. And yeah, we would sit in saunas and stuff. And we would do swim workouts. Guys would, you know, sit in, like we'd go do a swim workout to kind of open up our pores. And then we'd sit in the sauna and they'd bring their ID cards in and like scrape their skin to get their pores to open up, get all the sweat off of them. Does any of this actually work or are you just doing it? Yeah, there are guys that would lose, you know, 17 pounds, 20 pounds in two days. God.

It's brutal. Sauna works. Oh, the sauna definitely works. You're dehydrating yourself, but the scraping of your skin. I mean, the scraping, it seemed to work. Guys would sit there and sweat, and then they'd scrape all the sweat off, and you would see more sweat come out. And then when it got real bad there's just no sweat you're just you would just get so hot and i remember trying to eat a jolly rancher one time it was

horrible man oh i was sucking weight and i was like see we were hours from weighing in and my tongue was like sandpaper dude there is no moisture in my mouth. And I thought, you know, when people, this drives me nuts, they'd be like, well, I just have water. I'm like, moron. Look at like the water. It says it's 16 ounces. That's a pound. If I drink that, I just gained a pound. It doesn't have any calories.

But that doesn't matter. Like it's a pound of weight. And if it's outside of me and it goes inside of me, I just gained a pound. It's so simple. It's so simple. So we would look at the weight of food instead of calories. And that's how messed up it was. And a Jolly Rancher is like a half an ounce, you know.

So I thought, okay, I can eat that. And I put it in my mouth and it got stuck to my tongue. And I was in my dorm room and I couldn't get it off my tongue. So then I ran down to the end of the hall to put water on it. And then I was scared to drink water cause I didn't want to gain weight and I'm so sucked out. And I'm like, just like spewing Jolly Rancher and water into the water fountain,

trying not to drink. And Oh yeah. That night, Friday night I weighed in at one 20 and a half and Monday I weighed one 35. Wow. Yeah. that night, Friday night I weighed in at 120.5. Wow. And Monday I weighed 135. Wow. Yeah. Did you, was this collegiate? Yeah, that was college, yeah.

When did you find CrossFit? It was pretty soon after that? Actually, there's like a pretty good span there where I was kind of like a lost puppy. I was full ski bum. I went to school in Pennsylvania, moved out to park city because i just wanted to be in the mountains real bad and uh so i moved out there was doing the ski bum thing just you know skiing 70 days a year 60 days a year and ride my bike making nine bucks an hour working four days a week dirt poor living the dream though it was really cool it was it was awesome

it was an awesome time in life it was was a really challenging time. It was great looking back, but when you're there, I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life. I knew I didn't want to be stuck in an office. I missed wrestling. I miss competing. I didn't really feel identified as an athlete anymore. It was a hard time with that, like identity. And I think I went through that for about five years, you know, because I graduated college in 2002, once again, dating myself. And then I found CrossFit at the end of 2006, almost 2007. So about four years there was this time where I still worked out, you know, but it was not like CrossFit. I did a bunch of mountain biking. I did, you know, a long mountain bike race and some other stuff that was fun.

But, yeah, no organized thing until I stumbled into CrossFit. I feel like the universe found all the people that really liked sports. And then this CrossFit thing happened because I was in the exact same place. I was just doing bodybuilding workouts. And I was like, there has to be something better. I want to play sports with people that care about the result. I don't want to be in some kickball league. Right.

Where there's no really. It's really. It's really like a it's like a drinking league where we have an activity. Exactly. It's social. Yeah. Which is cool because CrossFit social, too. But when it's time to work, it's time to work.

Yeah. But it's cool for a lot of people. But I still feel like I'm an athlete. Right. And then this little website came by, and we could post our time as if anybody knew what the hell that time meant on CrossFit.com. Or it was actually valid or not. Yeah. Yeah.

And OPT was in there just smashing things. Kelly Morph, remember that? Didn't know if it was a guy or a girl. Remember? I don't remember. Kelly Morf, remember that? Didn't know if it was a guy or a girl. Remember? Kelly, it's a girl, but she would post these redonkulous times on pull-up workouts. And I remember getting beat by Kelly Morf and thinking, like, this has got to be a dude. Oh, yeah. Actually, that's a girl.

Some random gymnast. It's the girl that the Kelly workout is named after, right? I think it is. And she was, like, weighing the kettlebell stuff and workout is named after, right? I think it is. And she was like, weighing the kettlebell stuff and doing kettlebell. This is so old school, man. People just have no idea. There's like eight people that resonate.

Yeah. Which is perfect. Back with like Eva Tordokens. Eva T was such a gangster. Kelly Starrett was barely coming on the scene. There was like this guy that was finishing school. He was still teaching on his table. When him and Adrian Bosman would post their videos of the things they were doing,

like in some weird boathouse shed-looking thing outside. Yeah, it was a storage container in the back of a sporting goods store. Did you ever train there? Yeah, once. It was awesome. I had a blast. Kelly used to – I lived with my ex-girlfriend in San Francisco for a summer, and I sent him – he was not Kelly Starrett yet.

Right. And I sent him an email, and I was like, hey, I'm in town. I don't even know if it's, like, possible to drop in at San Francisco or if, like, whatever you guys do. He called me. Yeah, right. He was like, please come by. Oh, hey, Kelly.

Right. Thanks for the phone call. Such a different time. He's busy now. A little bit. He's probably not calling drop-ins. Probably don't know where his number is. Why did you go to the CrossFit Games?

We probably started CrossFit right around the same month because probably three, four months into me doing it, and I was like why why are these people in the middle of the desert climbing a hill against each other like my friends and i are just trying to kill each other now there's a group of people organizing yeah this this event i remember seeing the flyer that's what it looked like it was a pdf but it looked like a flyer on crossfit.com and i was like oh that looks cool i'll go do that yeah i mean literally just walk up and i i remember driving to the ranch thinking i was lost driving through watsonville california if you guys have never been through watsonville basically like driscoll the all the strawberries

and blueberries you guys buy that's what's where it's at. Yeah. And there is nothing. And it is so out there and crossing that death trap of a highway to get to the ranch once you get there. I was thinking there's no way this is right. Yeah. This can't be right. So you just went out there all alone, didn't know anybody that was going to be there? Not a soul. Yeah. New one.

Didn't act. This is crazy. So, man, this is so old school. I did know. so i was talking to nicole carroll um and i didn't know anything about the area but she lived in santa cruz and it was kind of close to santa cruz and uh eva t actually let me stay at her house so i stayed at eva t's house and uh would drive over to the games each day. And then I stuck around for another couple days and did my level two, which then was just taking the level one again.

Yeah, right? You have to be the best trainer. You've taken the same course twice. Which, oh, my gosh. I mean, what a ride, you know? You just forget about that stuff. Well, Nicole Carroll had to have been the best marketing piece in all of the internet at the time because glassman was throwing her out there in the overhead 95 pound overhead squat

challenge no one understood how to do an overhead squat no yeah no and she just happened to have perfect femurs and mobility and perfect mover and all the things and she would just go smash these like marines with like a firefighter he was like a 95 pound bar and she would just go smash these, like, marines and firefighters. I think it was, like, a 95-pound bar. And he would call it out, like, down, and she just made it look so easy. No one knew why. I think she hated that. Really?

I think that was a really hard thing for her. Just crushing people? No, I think, like, being put in that zone. I don't know for certain, but I think that's hard. You know but i think that's hard you know i think that's hard for anybody that happened to me a couple times you know not from glassman necessarily but at seminars they would this is so old school man this does not fly anymore but they would you know they would have people do fran and they'd they'd grab me after a day of working and whatever and be like, I want you to do Fran with everyone. And you're like, all right, here we go.

I'm like crushed right now. Yeah, they don't do Fran at all. There's this expectation sort of at that time, like go crush everyone, destroy everybody. So now you're trying to do Fran in 220 at a seminar. After you've been coaching all day. And everyone expects you to right do a 220 right right everyone's looking at you like spotlights on it's old school and the old med ball clean oh my gosh they used to do a med ball clean and jerk thing where they get the entire

seminar like circled up and everybody would have to have a med ball and they would put a trainer in the center and one of the other trainers would call like you know clean stand jerk stand and if people were out of sync they were jerking the med ball yes wow that was before my it's crazy i never knew that crazy could imagine teaching a clean and jerk now with a med ball and it i the people would cry like they get to the point where people would be so worn out because they were like the whole thing was just we're just going to get to 30. But everyone had to do it at the same time. And if someone got tired and like collapsed at the bottom or stood up too early, they're like, no rep, back to two. You've done 13 already.

But I mean, this is, gosh, a decade ago. Yeah, well, it's really interesting to me. And being around for, well, I guess you could say I was, like, really into it for 11 years. And then being kind of on the outside and still watching the progression of it, I feel like CrossFit's done such a good job. Man, because the early days were, they deserved all of the hate that they got. It was brutal.

Even though, but they were constantly progressing to make it better. Exactly, yeah. It was just the culture. There was few people that had i mean you were literally when you think about the number of people that you have affected in the fitness space that has to be are we are we in the seven digits i mean there's tens of thousands of people that you've connected with through seminars your gym online platforms now like there's there's millions of people almost in the rippling effect of yeah it's funny you're like that yeah i love thinking of it like that no it's it's cool it is it's a cool way to think of it i think i get so caught in you know trying to keep things really personal at the moment with either people at the gym or doing the online pieces that

i have like i try to be really engaged with those things. So I think I sometimes forget about the broader picture because I'm so focused on investing in kind of what I have going on at the moment. But it is crazy to think about the amount of seminars that I taught, the amount of people that have done the online programming that I provide, the people that have come through the doors of the gym or a podcast. I mean, there's plenty of other people that fall into that category, but you get a chance to, yeah, impact a lot of people and, and talk to a lot of people, meet a lot of people, train. It's just, it's crazy. Yeah. We think big

picture is really crazy. What's your favorite thing that you have going on right now? Right now? Um, honestly it's the grunt work stuff. It's been a really big breath of fresh air and really good. I mean, I love CrossFit, you know, and I love our, I love our gym. We've got a great culture, a great community. I really love the icon crew that we have set up and it's, it's, we've got good people there that have like a good head on their shoulders. And I think we're doing a good job of not, uh, not giving people too much in the sense that, Icon and to watch that community kind of grow. And we're getting people that have no experience with CrossFit or people that have a ton of experience with CrossFit or people that used to do CrossFit and have kind of, you know, just fizzled out. And it's been really cool to see that evolve. And, yeah, real breath of fresh air. A lot of people don't really know really know probably don't know what the icon thing is or the grunt work yeah yeah what are

each of those things so icon athlete is is an online program very much you know resonating with the crossfit crowd we offer programming for people that um are just looking for like i just need to work out my garage like 45 minutes to an hour a day uh all the way up to people that are adamant about trying to go to the CrossFit games. So we have different tracks of programming to follow and it's all built off one another. And we do videos and you know, the, the whole gamut. Um, and so that's been really cool. And we've been doing that for, I think this is year four now, uh, for icon. So that's been really, really fun to help that part of the community. And then Grunt Work kind of evolved out of that because we program in cycles, depending on what track people are following in Icon.

And one of the things we have programmed is we would just call it Grunt Work. And for the past three or four years, we would just program, as we led into kind of the CrossFit games or some of the regionals pieces, we would program two or three workouts a day or a week that would fall under these categories of like drags or pushes or carries or odd object lifts, you know, things that people just don't do very often at all. And the reason why is you're going to see it at the CrossFit games at some point, it's like dragging the dummy or, you know, the bird and run or whatever it is. So we wanted to prepare people for it.

And a lot of people that weren't even trying to go to the CrossFit Games would do the workouts. And a lot of people talked about how much fun they were or, hey, I had my affiliate do it and they loved it. And it's a good change of pace. It's way harder than i thought this one and they really loved it and i thought this year i was like what the heck people really enjoy this and i'm just gonna offer it as a separate thing like really low barrier to entry price as far as equipment you literally only need like four things so you don't need a lot. And I kind of came up with the programming. And like I said, it's a lot of carry variations, odd object work.

So sandbags, sled drags, prowler pushes, sled pulls, stuff like that. And I got together essentially like kind of a brand book with the team that I have and presented it to Andy Stumpf. I was like, hey, Andy, if you guys don't know Andy, I worked with Andy at seminars years ago. He used to work across seminars. He was in the Navy. He does base jumping. He's hunting.

He likes to jump out of airplanes without a parachute. I know. Just a squirrel suit. He's, yeah. Go a million miles an hour head first. Yeah, so Andy's, you know, so he, a lot of the stuff that he does or has done, that kind of training sort of resonates with that. You know, the hiking to do the base jump or the military training or the hunting now with the rucks and things like that.

So I thought, man, it'd be cool if he could maybe contribute. So presented him with that and he thought it was cool and is a contributor to the programming and yeah, it's been awesome. So we released it. We're trying to kind of get out, um, into a little bit of that outdoors community, but we also have a ton of people that are doing it, um, and finding it like really refreshing that are in the CrossFit community. And I think the reason why is the way we write the programming,

we have two rucks a week, which is like, do them if you want, don't if you don't need to, and they're longer duration. So we just tell people, load a backpack up and we'll put some, some ideas in there for how to do the ruck and people are starting. It's really cool. People share that, you know, and they show us where they went and, you know, going on hikes with their dogs or taking their kids out or they're on vacation and they went to go, you know, whatever,

walk the great wall of China. And I did it with my rucksack. It's really cool. And then the other four days are these other pieces with the carries and things like that. Um, and we don't say for time, we don't prescribe weights. We just list light, moderate, or heavy. And we keep it crazy simple. And people, I think, find that really refreshing. That was what initially drew everybody to CrossFit almost was the simplicity of, oh, I can just work out for 15 minutes and be done with this. And it works really well. And it's new.

And it seems just so accessible. Yeah. And then because it was so accessible, we had to make it really freaking complicated. And I think maybe that's funny you say that because I haven't thought of it. I think that's kind of what this is doing. It really is so accessible because you don't need much at all. You really don't. You need a sandbag, a sled, and we have on our website like hey here are links

where you guys can buy this at rogue if you want and here's how you can make it at home depot so it's like it's not difficult to get stuff a set of dumbbells or a set of kettlebells either or if you guys have both great so what you don't need it there, like, like I said, it's so simple. And I think people just really dig that. It takes a little bit of the pressure off. Yeah. No, when I do them, I don't even set the clock. I just, just go and do it. So many people also are so just, they've been in the gym for so long. Yeah. And you start to just get beat down of being in that place yet. You want to practice physicality yeah train yeah in that zone but it's like do i really have to go to the freaking gym to find this stimulus yes and there's

a jillion places to go you need some variety after a while too like it's supposed to be different every day but it's different every day within a small box exactly yeah yeah that's and on all those it's funny because i think that's why people are kind of resonating with this because, and here's the catch, right, is we know what works. So for people that do CrossFit, like we know the movements work and we're not going to like abandon ship and then all of a sudden. And that's what's cool is I think the grunt work stuff is it gives people, it's still functional, right? It's still stuff that they're familiar with but it's different so they don't feel like they're abandoning ship on crossfit and like turning their back on something they know that works really well because they see the semblance of it with

the movements and they get the similar kind of feeling sometimes you know um but it's so different it's stuff that they generally don't program and it's been a ton of fun to do and to watch and it's so different it's stuff that they generally don't program and it's been a ton of fun to do and to watch and it's uh when you're writing the program to you it's i struggle writing any program even for myself because it's like sure what am i gonna do like do i am i really gonna write a workout like, thrusters and pull-ups. I've done every single combination. It actually blows my mind that Castro can try to come up with a new way to do Fran every year at the regional. Yeah, yeah.

Like, this year is like. How can I change it? Rope climbs and heavy thrusters. Yeah. We'll cut the rope. We'll fray it at the bottom. Yeah, like, there's only so many ways we can do it on one side but 25 on another a vertical pull and a thruster like we can only do it a certain number

of ways and it's at some point you just have to go outside and figure it out i think like trail running has like i've been at doing them for like the last year and it's unbelievable because even if you run the same trail every day there's something different going on and you breathe better yeah not smelling gym mats and it just it's so nice to get outside and change that up and just have a new stimulus and it's it doesn't need to mean that you know you guys like we said abandon ship on what works it's just adding it in or substituting it once or twice a week. Just experience something new. Yeah, and that's what's cool is the whole setup.

We're not programming in cycles. We're not making it. So if people want to cherry pick. Are people tired of that shit? So what? People are like, hey, I'm going to do Fridays today. I'm like, go for it. Aren't people tired of the regimented?

Once you get to a point where you realize, here's my athletic capacity. My genes are only going to let me be this good. So if I spend an extra five hours a day in the gym, I might get like a quarter of a percent closer to that. And that still is a million miles away from Matt Frazier. So what's the point? Let's go have some fun.

Yeah. I think it comes full circle. I think a lot of people, there's probably two things that happen. And I've talked about this in the past on some other stuff that I've done, where if you guys don't have like a, an understanding of why you're doing what you're doing, you don't have real purpose behind it. I think people get lost, right? So they don't really know why they're training so much anymore. And they don't, they just start doing it because they feel like everyone else is doing it they have to do it and i think one of two things happens one you either burn out on crossfit and then you completely stop because you're so over it because you've just exhausted you ever get there um i never got there with crossfit you know in the sense that i just am not going to do this anymore i've never done that

because i can see like why i'm doing it, the purpose that it serves, but I've definitely had ebbs and flows of what that looks like, you know, in practice. And then the other, I think, falls into you just kind of come full circle and all of a sudden you realize, okay, this training methodology is the best out there. There is no better for just general physical preparedness so now how do i have my training serve me and not own me and a lot of people are in the they're getting owned by their training right now and by serving them that might be to try to beat matt razor that just looks real different than um you know i want to be real i want to be able to rip on my dirt bike and ski a lot, you know, that, but that, are you at the mountain a lot more? Oh my gosh. Like,

yeah, I used to, I moved to the mountains to play in them. And then I got into this CrossFit competition stuff and stopped doing that. And then I did a lot of burpees. Yeah. And now, yeah. Now it's been really fun to get back out there and, like, actually apply it, right? I mean, that's the – and we talked about this in one of the podcasts we did with Doug at Icon. It's, like, it's in the world-class fitness in 100 words. It says learn and play new sports. That's part of the program. But nobody does that. Nobody.

It's, like, guys – We actually all talk about how nobody ever does that, and still nobody ever does it. Right. It's, like, part of the big message of, like, do guys go. We actually all talk about how nobody ever does that, and still nobody ever does it. Right. It's like part of the big message of like, do new shit. Yeah. Please. And no one still ever goes out and does it.

And it's awesome. Once CrossFit turned into a sport, that's when the other sports stopped. Yeah. Like people were more willing to do it before it turned into, okay, now I need to focus on this because there's status involved with winning, and now there's money involved. And then all the other sports were just like, that takes away from playing the sport of CrossFit.

Or if you want to be the best at CrossFit, let's be honest, then you have to do CrossFit all the time. Like, same thing, if I think of, you know, Eli Tomac, who's like a shredder on Supercross, I have a feeling he's not,'s not going out learning a new sport. He's spending more time as a dirt bike to be the very best in the world. But if you guys aren't in that category, if you're not trying to win the CrossFit Games,

a huge encouragement to you to get out there and try something new. You develop athleticism. It's fun because if you really stink at it, you see progress really quickly, which is really cool. And then you can actually see what your training is doing. It's like, oh, wow, it's serving me. That part really geeks me out is when you get so much better so fast. Like, I forgot.

It's like the first five times you do a frame, you knock three minutes off your time. Like, I'll be at two minutes in no time. This is easy. And then. Oh, yeah. Also, if you're a coach and you've been doing CrossFit for 10 years or whatever it is and you've got new people coming in they're trying to learn squat snatches

and they're just totally messing it up but you don't have that empathy for them because you don't remember what it was like to not know how to do squat snatches but then you try to take up surfing or snowboarding or something that has a heavy balance component where you being strong and fast doesn't quite matter yet because you just have to learn the skill involved in snowboarding.

You're going to fall on your ass a million times. Like you can relearn what it's like to be a beginner in a physical environment and have more empathy for your athletes when you go back to the gym coaching them that week. 100%. I mean, there's so much value to that. And it's fun. Like, guys, gosh, like your training should be fun. Yeah. And I mean that like your CrossFit should's fun. Like, guys, gosh, like, your training should be fun. Yeah. And I mean that like your CrossFit should be fun.

I can't stop talking about it because it just happened like a month ago, but I just jumped into a pool with weights for the first time and back and forth, hold your breath as long as you can, and do some of this stuff. And it was like, oh, my God, there's a new thing. Yeah. I've lifted weights everywhere but not in a 13-foot pool. I'm drowning.

This is so awesome. Yeah, yeah. How am I going to get to the top where there's air? The team's so far away right now. I'm, like, freaking out, throwing my mask off, like, just going nuts. And, yeah, you have to go be a beginner because it connects the dots. It makes everything else better. We're going to take a quick break. When we get back, I want to talk about the gym ownership, the coaching side of things,

because that's been a massive progression from all the seminars you've done to kind of leaving that world and what it looks like back at Park City. For sure. Yo, we're on the break. It's me, Anders. Hope you guys are enjoying the show. I know you're enjoying it. I don't even hope.

I know you're enjoying the show. I know you're enjoying it. I don't even hope. I know you're enjoying the show. It's rich. We're about to get into some really good content about gym ownership here in a minute. And you're going to love it. It's a very, very tough world out there right now. If you're a CrossFit owner, gym owner, box owner, or somebody thinking about starting your own gym, you should chase the dream, but you should also be thinking about these things in a very deep manner of how you are special. Once again, I don't have the website for you. This is the teaser.

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How to Get Strong e-book. All of it. Get in there. See you guys after the show. Welcome back to Barbell Shchallenge.com, How to Get Strong e-book, all of it. Get in there. See you guys after the show. Welcome back to Barbell Shrugged. We're just talking about the Woodstock of fitness that's not the CrossFit Games. Coming to Costa Rica near you, maybe. Even if you're not near Costa Rica.

Yeah, we're at the Granite Games hanging out with Chris Feeler. This process, this journey of yours has not just been in the athletic side of things but dude the coaching running running the seminars running your gym um when i took my level two with you all of the years back um man you were super dialed into the methodology of crossfit and it was like very by the book but you're're not doing that. And you've kind of progressed out of the seminar thing. I guess even before progressing out of it, you probably had a lot to do with leading the charge in the education side of it and how to make that education system better over the, what, eight-ish years that you were doing seminars. What is maybe a little bit of the behind the scenes or like how did you make that conversation so much better? Because I think I was in probably one of the first 10 Level 2s that existed. As soon as it came up, we signed up and went on like a big vacation up to NorCal

to working out and doing all kinds of craziness. So, I mean, a lot of it, you know, the methodology, although I don't teach seminars anymore, that's more like the travel thing, but the methodology is, uh, you know, obviously something and running an affiliate. So it's very much still in that, um, world, but you know, when I was there, I was lucky enough to kind of evolve with it and be a little bit of a go-getter to where I was able to, you know, have the opportunity to help develop the coaches prep course, which is down to level two. And wrote the competitors course with Matt Chan and Eric O'Connor. So we did that.

And then there were, you know, countless either Flowmaster meetings or other pieces that, you pieces that we had a chance to help develop things. So I was lucky enough to be there. And it was just an evolution of the company. Them investing in trainers and how to make things better for them and create... It wasn't the evolution of a normal company. We're talking about the evolution of a company that was growing at what felt like 100x every month. Yeah. It was moving so fast.

And as much as we may want to criticize the methodology or whatever it is, nobody knows what it's like to grow a company that size, that fast, and still be very, very good on the education side of it yeah and i think that's you know that's when they started getting into first it was we need to make the level two i mean it went from going from another level one to the coach's prep course and how do we make that practical and and then that changed the gosh the level two turned into at first a practical thing it was first yeah first the level one then the level two turned into, at first, a practical thing. It was first, yeah, first the level one, then the level two was like this brutal practical test that I think was, hands down, still one of the best training experiences and tests that somebody could have done. And that's now the level four that they're coming out with. And the level two turned into kind of the coach's prep course, and now it's called the level two.

And the level three with the certification. It's the hardest test I've ever taken in my life. I failed it miserably. Yeah, I mean, it's like legit. And then you've got level three, and then you go back to the practical, you're level four. And this is all stuff that I know from two years ago, so maybe it's a bit different.

But, yeah, they got into the accreditation type stuff to have more validity within the, uh, fitness community. And I think that was a massive undertaking to find companies and figure out how to like write tests. And those are things that just, I wasn't as much of a part of that, but seeing that helped write some of the, um, like the continuing ed credits, the things you can do online. I think I wrote one of the scaling course ones. It's just, yeah, they have evolved to try to create, I think a really reputable training company. Um, because it wasn't, yeah. At first, you know, everyone would kind of knock on it.

Oh, you've got your CrossFit level one. It's CSCS or NSCA or whatever. I have these three letters after my name. And now CrossFit is in that category. Whether people agree with it or not, just like anything else, now it's accredited. And people can say, hey, a level three is a legit test. Well, the NSCA doesn't have a sport attached to it. And I think that it was something that I struggled with a lot coming up in just my progression as a coach as well was, especially when I was at the level two, because I was so into the sport of it.

And I was like, if we're going to level two, the next step has to be teaching people how to be good at the sport, right? And then the training methodology that we were learning and the programming side of it was like we're just going to do this one piece and the warm-up is going to be 15 to 20 minutes long and there's going to be skill progressions i was like uh what about the lift and then the skill and then the conditioning yeah and this wasn't that way yeah it wasn't that way and i think all of the things that crossfit's doing now with the crossfit health initiative and kind of like the chaos that it's creating in the sport um with restructuring everything but that that really has been at the core of what they're doing and with the level one which i didn't really know

until i went back and got my level one re-upped whenever that was a couple years ago and i had left the sport and i was way more focused on the health and longevity side of it and i went back and did the level one and i was like oh this is really good it's all like day one is really really hard to argue with yeah like when you get into olympic lifting stuff we could probably talk a little bit about like methodology but you're doing it like uh you're teaching olympic lifting Olympic lifting with a PVC pipe to 50 people. It's really hard. But day one is really, really dialed in.

And I was like, oh, oh, I didn't know this when I was 23 years old. But this is really good. Yeah, it's really if you take the approach of not, you know, take the competition aside, you know, because that's like the training protocol for being the best in the world across it as a sport is different than, you know, using it for health and longevity. But if you take the competition out and you sit in on a level one, it's really hard to argue with. Yeah. It's really hard to say. It's really hard to say. It's really hard to punch holes. Is that tough for you to do as somebody that's like probably the number one flow master of the whole thing

and like you're deep into the competition scene and then you have to go on the weekends and talk about health and longevity? No, because that's what it's about. That's what the training program is. You know what I mean? That's what CrossFit is. And that's the 99% of the community. And even now, the competitive side of it is a small sliver of that. And you could probably divide that segment into a much larger picture, you know? So when I say 99%, I'm talking about the people that aren't going to the CrossFit games, you know? Do people compete and love it?

Sure. I'm sure there are plenty of people that do weekend competitions, but again, their training should be different. It should serve that and not trying to go to the CrossFit Games. So it was never hard for me to kind of go back on that because the reason is still there. It's just the way that it was put to practice was just amplified. And it turned into a pretty separate world, you know,

but you're still trying to be good at the same thing. You know, I was still trying to be good at CrossFit and it's just the, the demands that we were being put under were way different, which means that our training had to look way different, but the core was still the same. Yeah. I still need to be good at CrossFit. so guess what i need to do a lot of yeah what does like a week of your training look like currently currently oh i work out i usually work out six days in a row um just because i can

you know kind of handle that volume but one of those days i just lift heavy so i tend to like doing some kind of heavy lifting cycle or a day a week where i just like to lift heavy. So I tend to like doing some kind of heavy lifting cycle or a day a week where I just like to lift heavy. And then the other five days I'll do usually, you know, like either workout with the class at CrossFit Park City, um, maybe hit up an icon workout that I want to. And then probably three days a week, two days a week, I might throw in some of the grunt workout stuff afterwards. And, but I mean, altogether we're talking 45 minutes to an hour a day and that's warm-up workout a cool down sometimes the workout like i said i'll have like a you know i think i did uh some earlier this week so like the master's version of the fran type thing whereas like bar

muscle up whatever that one was so it's a short workout then i did a grunt workout but i was out of the gym in 50 minutes i feel like a lot of the CrossFit stuff now is really like I just go and play. Like it's fun. I don't really care about the time, but it's cool to go back into that, like feel like athletic barbell strength athlete. And yeah, I think it's, you know,

it depends on where people are. If you've been doing it for a decade, then you're probably not going to care as much about your time. Yeah. As a gym owner, the progression, I mean, you've been open for 9, 10,

12, geez. Wow. Your affiliate fee is like $24. $17. Glassman pays you each year to still have the Glassman's. Not quite. Can you send Spiele that $200 check? I think we owe him every year. Yeah, not quite. Can you send Spiele that $200 check? I think we owe him every year.

Yeah, not quite. So the messaging, one thing I loved when I opened the gym in 2010 was nobody knew what the hell we were doing. Yeah, most of them didn't. So when they came in, you had this awesome opportunity to teach them about a methodology and a way of thinking. And as CrossFit has become such a massive part of the mainstream of fitness, everybody has that just preconceived notion that they already know exactly what they're buying.

What's been a little bit of the journey just in gym ownership and like the high-level snapshot, and then where you've seen it over the last couple years since you've transitioned out of the HQ role? Yeah gym ownership's hard don't be fooled guys i think you know do it invest all your money like people just so you can work out more there yeah right i mean like i think people fall into a little bit of the and this isn't crossfit's fault it's just i think personality wise you know uh people love working out and they love CrossFit. They want to share that with people and they try to open a gym and don't take a good hard look at what that looks like as a business.

I think the model of an affiliate at the very start, just like if you just think about the model alone is already hard. So you are providing a service that is probably more expensive than anything else in your area for a group class or similar price. It's already got kind of a connotation with it, like you said, whether you like it or not. So it might be a similar price to a boot camp, but it's called CrossFit. And if that's what you guys are going to do, then do it because you know it works, right? So the model's hard.

And if you are not in a good spot, if you're not in a good location, it's going to be a grind. It's going to be a grind anyway. But if you guys are not, if you haven't thought about the demographic in the sense of where you are, what's the population

around you, what's the average income, are there very many other CrossFit gyms around you? If you aren't looking at that, you want to open a gym, you are going to be in trouble. Or you're going to get really lucky. And it's probably more likely that you're going to be in trouble.

Yeah. Because it's a really tough grind. I feel like on top of that, like out of all the people that I know that run CrossFit gyms, nobody's just raking in cash. Like most people that are making money, they have their gym and then they make their money online or something similar.

But even if you're good at business, you're still just going to be just kind of getting by. You're not going to be taking in a bunch of money. You're not going to pay your staff insanely well compared to other business opportunities. But the only reason in my mind to do it at this point,

especially with given the amount of competition there is in the world, is if you just really love being in the gym all fucking day long, you love the community, you love the lifestyle, and you're able to be there all day long. But if you have a family,

wife and kids, and you need real money, starting a CrossFit gym maybe isn't the best idea at this point. And it might be depending on what model and where you guys are, but all those things have to be well thought out. You know, they have to be really well thought out. And otherwise you fall into kind of the category that you're talking about where you guys are in the gym for 10 hours a day and you do everything. You keep the books, you teach the classes, you try to trade, you know, I'll trade you classes if you coach classes.

It's like, I'll trade you a membership if you coach classes. Those things are like a recipe for just the long grind and eventually the tap out, you know? And I think people can do it really well and some people do it really well, but it's not as easy as the good trainer thrives and the bad die out. There used to be this mentality of, oh, if you guys are awesome trainers and you invest in people with your training ability and you're a great coach, you'll do great.

That is not true. It's just not. I want to break that connotation because I think sometimes there's like people don't talk about that you know and and i think i'm a good example of that like i'll be totally honest with you guys crossfit park city is not a profitable business for me it's not and people are like oh well you're chris spieler and you know you have all like this stuff behind you it doesn't matter people in my town town have no idea who I am for the most part. People in the gym still are like, wait, we had some guy come into the gym probably three weeks ago.

And when you walk in the gym, we had these gals kind of design the front area and do this really cool stuff. And I had all this old game stuff, and I gave it to them, and they put them in these shadow boxes. And they're all for all the seven years that I was at the games we've got like CrossFit Games medals hanging up we've got rogue plates hanging up that say CrossFit Games on them and this guy was inquiring about CrossFit he's like hey so he's and I'm talking to him and he was like hey so have you guys ever

sent anybody to the CrossFit Games I was like yeah we've done that before you know and he's like okay so you know and I could tell it's like because he was interested in that side of it. You know, he's like, well, do you guys have anybody that's doing that now? And I was like, not so much anymore. And he's standing right in front of the boxes. And I'm standing right there. I'm right there. Let me give you a history lesson, son.

So it doesn't matter. Like, that doesn't matter. And here's the demographic that we're in. And this is my fault. This isn't CrossFit's fault, right? This is my fault as a business owner. We live in a town that's roughly 16,000 full-time residents. That's really tiny compared to...

I didn't know it was that small. Yeah, it's tiny. And there have been as many as four CrossFit gyms in that town at once. We have two or three, two, three, two or three rec centers where you could get a membership there for 45 bucks a month. We have every fitness program under the sun. It's a crazy active town. So there are orange theories and bar methods and boot camps and local people killing it, doing all sorts of stuff. And we also have the mountains. So people ski and they ride their bikes and they do all this stuff. Right. And our rent is a really

high because we live in a tourist town. Yeah. Like that is not a good business structure. It's not. You're right. You're, you're, you're, you say it out loud. You're like, God, I'm stupid. Right. Why would I do this? Exactly. And in college, you know, you're learning about business stuff and they always say like location, location, location, location. Whatever. That doesn't matter. Bro, that really matters. So there has to be people to buy your service.

Yeah. Competition is real. Yeah. So I think letting people know, like, so what CrossFit Park City is for me, it's an awesome community of people that I love. And if I ever closed it, it would be devastating, you know, to those people and what, you know, so that's part of why I keep it around. And the other thing it does is it creates a really great home base for icon and for grunt workout.

So it gives me a chance to have a home base to run events out of, or, you know, do the video stuff to teach and educate people. Uh, and you know, so that has some benefits there, but there, there will come a time where I have to figure out what to do because we looked into it. We thought, okay, rent's crazy high. Maybe we can build. I can't build. It's way too expensive to build where I am and the zoning behind it. So we've gone through that process a number of times and just kind of came to the realization that that's not possible. So now I can't even look at the gym as like an investment or like a real estate investment. It's not, that's not even a possibility. So I have to figure out how to continually like reinvent that place to make it worth the time and the energy to sustain the community.

Well, what did it look like during the sexy time of CrossFit when there was fewer gyms and it was exploding? Was it different? Same exact thing. Really? I have always had to do something else to provide for my family. Always. And if I wanted the gym to be that,

I would have to fire almost every one of the trainers that I have there and work probably 80 or 90-hour weeks. That sounds super fun. Right? I don't know why you haven't done that yet. Yeah. So I've always done something else. Trade the kids in.

Right? My gosh, man, it'd be nuts. And other people. It's not really providing for your family at that point it's like here's a bunch of money but i'm gonna be gone forever yeah and it's yeah would it even be a bunch of money i don't know you know and and that's the thing is i know other people out there that you guys have you know in your mind these these gyms that are killing it and they are but they're few and far between and if you think about the business model the demographic that they are in it's dialed it's not just haphazardly i live in x town i love crossfit i'm going to open a gym

i think one of the one of the most successful gyms that i know of is ryan fishers in costa mesa and it took him at least three and a half years before he was profitable and he's got 300 plus members and i mean he if you looked at his instagram account and talked to him and heard the numbers it'd be like wow dude you're smashing it you're making 50 60 grand a month like this thing's crushing and he's like oh no no no i had spent seven hundred thousand dollars to have a gym that somebody in costa mesa or newport would actually show up to yeah and take that into consideration Costa Mesa or Newport would actually show up to. Yeah. Take that into consideration.

Like, is Costa Mesa the right spot? Maybe not because guess how much rent is there? You know what I mean? It's like all those things. You've got to figure that stuff out. We were talking about it last night. I was spending over $14,000 a month. And our new friend, Dr. Ben House, is down in Costa Rica.

And his nut for having fun and living is like 1500 a month with him and his wife right and i was just think like we were talking about my the rent payment on our gym and he was like well each month you're basically like here's a new car right here's a new car here's a new car every month you're handing over like a for sure and it's going to someone else small car to somebody else yeah and if it's not you know if that and man i was funny i was talking to a guy in our gym who he he's an older guy he's awesome and he um came from like a family that had car dealerships in california and he even said he's like we realized that the dealership itself wasn't

making money but the land and the building we had it on, it's like that's where the money was. So we bought that, and then when we sold it, that's how we made the money. And he's like, you need to figure out how to do that here. And I've looked, and there's not a way. There's not a way. So far, I'm going to keep kind of digging.

And so those are just, I mean, I don't want to be the guy that people think, you know, like is poo-pooing the affiliate thing by any means, because there's so much good that comes from a CrossFit affiliate. But you just, if you are in the boat where you have an affiliate, you want to open an affiliate, you have to think your way through it. Don't, I'll, if I, if I need to like rip the wings off the butterfly, I will. Because someone has to do it to let people know that it can be done well,

and it can be done where you guys can have a successful business, but it has to be really thought out and in the right spot. It can't just happen. Chances are it can't just happen in the local town that you live in right now. Every once in a while, I will still meet a person that's training people in their garage that expanded into a really small space, and then their one-year lease ran out,

and they went and upgraded a little bit, and they've slowly grown. And I'm like, wait a second. You people still exist? Right. Like you started in your garage? What were you doing? Why didn't you take out a loan and just get after it but that model and what's really funny is because that's what glassman used to talk about

back in the day like learn how to coach people in the garage overhead yeah bring a broomstick over and teach someone how to do this yeah um like i i wonder sometimes if that's possible but then you see how hard it is to build something like that. It's like, man, are you going to put the three years in your garage to learning how to coach and charge your neighbors $50 a month to come over and consistently be updating your garage until you grow out of it? It's a very different conversation now than it was 10 years ago. And you were saying even 10 years ago or 8 years ago, it still was in the same place

it is is now and the part of the reason why is because our overhead yeah you know our rent and that's the demographic we're in right so now people are like oh why don't you just like do a bunch of marketing and get more people it's like okay well now i got more people but i need more space so i get more space and my rent just went way up and now i need more people yeah so it doesn't where i am it doesn't really work that. So we have to get creative with like additional programs within the gym and incentivizing other, our trainers to run those and taking a percentage of that. And, um, it, it's great for them and incentivizes them and they get a really good deal because they don't have to worry about cracking the nut of the rent. And, um, but it's just an honest conversation.

I think people need to have, because I think it's great that crossfit wants to take things back to the health side invest in the affiliates but one of the ways that i think all of us can do this in the community and kind of support one another is having these honest conversations and saying like if you guys are in a position where you're just getting your head smashed into the ground running an affiliate it might be worth like if it's something you guys are really passionate about doing it might be worth, like, if it's something you guys are really passionate about doing, it might be worth like figuring out where that can happen. And in what ways does that change? Does it, uh, do you offer other programs that maybe aren't, you know, uh, so CrossFit oriented? Do you get into high schools or team athletics? Do you, what do you do to create a revenue stream that you can still support the CrossFit side of things if you need to.

And some people don't, you know, but I think more often than not, the conversation today is people are trying to find ways to do that. Are you doing much consulting with gym owners, business owners? No, none. I don't do any at all. And I honestly probably wouldn't want to, because I think it's just so different wherever you are. Because the conversation that I'm having is my experience, right? And if you talk to Jason Kalipa or Ben Bergeron or Peter Edgid, they'd be like, it's great. Yeah.

And we invest in our coaches and we have great coaching. Well, Edgid's in the middle of the desert. But he's got a ton of people, right? He's got a ton of people. He's got low rent and he has little competition around him. And guess what smashing yeah if you have that recipe if you are in a place where you have a lot of people good average income and not a lot of competition and you want to open a crossfit gym and you think about how to do it

how to do it right get good trainers now we're talking about possibly having a successful business the thing that i always anytime someone asks me the question, I always say, well, how many personal training clients do you have? Yeah. Like, try and break even on the gym and run a great gym. But if you look at 24-Hour Fitness, Equinox, whatever it is, those group classes and the gym memberships, they break even. Or, like, the trainers aren't making any money on that, but they probably, the group class is just a part of the gym.

And then the trainers are coaching people and they can create their own business inside it. So even when I had the gym and the gym was crushing and it was like, I still always had two, three, four personal training clients because it was just like, I could put in an extra 10 hours a week and it's not a huge deal. Right. And that's, we've got a guy in our gym that has some, I think they're Planet Fitnesses. Get this. This is crazy talk. This is not the model of CrossFit.

But guess how many employees it takes to run a Planet Fitness, an entire Planet Fitness? Ten? Nine. Wow. Nine employees. That's insane. And what do you think those employees get paid?

Dirt. Yeah, $12 an hour, $10 an hour, because most of them are front desk people, right, or they're cleaning stuff up. employees. That's insane. And what do you think those employees get paid? Dirt. Yeah. 12 bucks an hour, 10 bucks an hour. Cause most of them are front desk people, right. Or they're cleaning stuff up. I mean, and I don't like, that's not CrossFit, but that's a business model that clearly is working. Right. And so you have to kind of put things in a frame of context. And even him, we were talking to him. He was like, Hey, like you have to have a tremendous amount of money to open one of those things up. Right. I think it's something stupid like $1 million in cash and $2 million in liquid assets just to be able to qualify to pay the whatever franchise fee. We were like, so you have some of these things.

How do you know it's going to work? Guess what he said? Location. Shocker. He was like, guess what? He's like, if we find a good location to put one of these things in it's gonna be profitable and he's like if we don't that's where we're in trouble it also yeah it also gets back to some of those like original tenants that

glass we used to talk about because like he was a personal trainer yeah which is super weird to think about that a personal trainer went and created all this stuff that we all talk about all the time um that just happens to be like a billion-dollar industry. It's like just a dude that had some clients and it worked. But I think that the original model was always intended for three to five people in a very small group where you can charge this high premium and it's still like this one-on-one thing. And now you've got 30 people in a class and one coach making $20 an hour. Yeah, and that's the thing is like how do you incentivize them?

They have to have some kind of investment with one-on-ones or they have to have some section of like a program within the business. If you want your trainers to stick around, they have to be incentivized to do that. The model's changed because so many people are doing it now. But if you are a coach or a gym owner and it's like, man, you've got to kind of get back to that very small group model where you can put a higher price point on your service. Or at least offer that within. Given that you've mentioned location a number of times, do you think it's wise to find out where the big box gyms are and then just locate closer to them? If they're putting in all the research to like find out where

where they're going to like put a major gym they're putting big money into it they have money to spend they know how to do the research you just copy them like i heard i heard a while back that you know mcdonald's put so much effort and time and money into like exactly where they place their their fast food shops and and so like burger king and wendy's they would just instead of spending all that money themselves they'd be like they just find out wherever mcdonald's is and just put their thing right right next door yeah that's a good question because i sometimes wonder if even a crossfit affiliate thinks that like did did any of the guys that i think of in my head right now that have really like crushing affiliates did they even think of that i don't think so because

they've been around for a decade and i think they just opened up where they lived, and it happened to be in that spot. I don't think 10 years ago people were looking at those demographics. No, and I think they kind of got, in a way, lucky. Something we were talking about with Kalipa, where it's like he's in Mountain View. They just happened to open Google. Yeah, right?

Oh, it's so weird that google employees have 350 bucks a month to spend on fitness right and like i'm in park city and they happen to not you know like yeah so it's i think i think though i i think like what we can learn from those affiliates that really thrive are a couple things one like check out their location their demographics just like where not the research that they've done, but like what does that look like? And the way that Doug and I, Doug does a bunch of icon stuff with me. The way that we did it, he's really cool.

He looked at like an affiliate map, the affiliate finder map. And he was like, rattle off, you know, four affiliates that you think are crushing it. So I did. We looked at the affiliate finder map. We looked at the, like the census population map. So the density of population in those areas, and they looked at the like the census population map so the density of population

those areas and they looked at the income map and we kind of like compared all of them and they had that theme of the location was just like we talked about um and they all fell under these categories of high population good average income and not a lot of competition around them so if those are things to consider and then i think what we can learn from those people are from there, like does that model that they have work for us? Does the way that they coach their trainers work for us? Then you can get into the more minutiae. You know, like how do they schedule classes?

What are their rates? And why might they be like that? And how many trainers do they have? Are they paid on a salary? Are they paid per hour? Those are like where we, I think, can learn a lot from those affiliates. But before you start going down that road, I think you got to kind of do your own digging. And before it gets too depressing on why you shouldn't open a gym.

Oh, my gosh. I feel horrible. No, but anytime we get to a point where it seems like there's some sort of dead end or it's like, we've done it all and you're kind of stuck you're gonna make this amount of money and you have to be in these people and there's only this way to do it now like that is also where every single opportunity there's there's enough friction in the market right now i think with crossfit affiliates that somebody can come in and reshape the way that we view crossfit and i think with the new model that cross it's bringing think with the new model that cross it's bringing in with the crossfit health thing there's massive opportunities to reshape

the way it looks glassman's doing it he's always doing it he's whatever you want to say about the guy he's always ahead of everyone and sees the future and there is a a new approach that can come out of this that is going to be better than the model that has been existing because we've burnt the current model out. Yeah, I mean, I'm curious to see what happens, you know, and I think the fact that HQ is trying to get back to like an affiliate side of thing is great. I'm curious to see if they do anything like in the sense of like really equipping the affiliate. So not just supporting in the sense of like, Hey, we encourage like CrossFit is about health. It is about health and fitness. And that's great. Like that message is great. Now, are there any things, is the, is it even an opportunity for the way that it's set

up right now? I don't think there is a chance to have it set to be, Hey, here are some common practices that we find really successful. I think there needs to be, like you were saying, a ton of research that would have to be done on affiliates that are really successful and figuring out, hey, what do you guys do? Why do you do it? How has it worked? And now let's start to come together and figure these things out. And that just doesn't happen. Maybe I'm like in the dark, but when was the last time that affiliates really started leaning on one another? We were like, Hey, let's figure out what works. We started to hate each other. Exactly. We really started to hate each other. How many times did you used to go around and travel to the other gyms just to see what

they were doing? It's like, you're threatening me because it's, this is already really hard to run. And you just opened up. You didn't even say that you were going to open up. You know what I mean? Those people, we that's what that's what happened to me like if you're one of those people boo it's like bro if you're gonna open up a gym in here that's another crossfit gym let me know let's have good community let's create this thing right and so it's this weird and when was the last time we did that the last time we did that was in 2007 when there were 150 affiliates in the globe. And I would call them.

You call and Kelly Starrett picks up his phone. I was traveling to Orange County to hang out with people just so we had somebody that was having the same conversation. Exactly. Because we were all figuring it out. And that stopped. At some point, that stopped because we started getting threatened by people moving in close to us threatening our livelihood it's messing with my culture it's messing with my community so i mean what does crossfit put a zone around a gym now maybe i don't think that's a bad idea opex is doing it like is that yeah i think that's not a bad idea to do because i think if we go back

to the good thrive and the bad die out like how what if you saturate the market that's definitely not happening glassman's goal is like 150,000 affiliates in the next five years or 10 years, something like that. And I guess, yeah, so I would, man, I would love to like, what's that look like? It's crazy. For 150, what are there now, 20,000? Individually owned.

Yeah, so there are 20,000 affiliates. 150,000, yeah. And so how do you have, man, maybe he's got the key. I hope he does. No, it seems to kind of have a vibe. How do you have 150,000 affiliates that are successful businesses? Because here's the thing. Man, I feel bad.

Like you were saying, I don't want to like poo-poo like the depressing, like don't open affiliate. It's a phenomenal life. But know what you're buying into. Yes. Yeah. Doug slept in the gym for two years. I did.

Right? So it's like let's be. Made $900 a month. And if you can do that. And loved it, by the way. Yeah, yeah slept in the gym for two years. I did. Right? So it's like, let's be, and if you can do that I loved it, by the way. Yeah, yeah. But let's just be honest. Don't try and open it when you got a couple kids and you got a family nut that matters. Yeah, let's be honest.

And this is coming from three affiliate owners in different areas. You know what I mean? Like, I have a feeling that the conversation is probably similar in other places. So let's just be honest and help one another out. And if helping you guys out means that we just have these conversations now and you can actually go into this and say,

okay, here are things I need to do to be successful, then I think we're doing our job. Then I think Glassman gets to 150,000 affiliates. But if that doesn't happen, if those conversations aren't there and they don't talk to affiliates that are already in in the thick of it how are they gonna know because you know like i don't maybe i don't maybe i don't i'm missing something but like when instead of just saying like crossfit's about health when have we had like a conversation between the affiliates and crossfit headquarters to find out what is working. I don't know that that's ever happened. You know, we used to have the affiliate summit

years ago. Yeah. Remember that? Yeah. Gosh, like that was, I think they had last one was in Big Sky, Montana or Vegas. Well, I think a lot of that stuff has to come back. And I think that Glassman realized, like, dude, man, we got to get Glassman on the show. Whatever that is. That'll be easy. He was just on Girls Gone Wildman on the show. Whatever that is. That'll be easy. Call him. He was just on Girls Gone Wild or something like that. There you go. Whatever it was. But that stuff has to come back because the affiliate owners really hate each other.

Not at all. Oh, yeah. But the ones that are within the five-mile radius of each other aren't, like, they see each other. They're all paying attention to each other. But there's no communicating going on. I think that's probably more common than not, unfortunately. And that's our fault. Totally.

As an affiliate owner myself, that's my fault. Let's take ownership, not blame CrossFit headquarters either. As CrossFit affiliates, that's our responsibility. There has to be a place that would... Maybe there's a fitness business school that comes out of it because there's, there's, there has to be something that he does in order to get to 150,000 that,

that are open. Lord, that's a lot of freaking gyms. That are open and like give a family a salary. Yeah. That they can. Livable. Yeah.

Livable. And that doesn't mean you're making 300 grand a year. It's like, Hey, a livable salary, like 60 grand a year. It's like, Hey, a livable salary, like 60 grand a year. It's more like two 50. Killing it.

Right on, man. This has been freaking pleasure. I'm really stoked. We were having on the show where, where can people find you and all the programs? Mainly, you know,

the icon athlete.com is the, the, the CrossFit and CrossFit competitor side of things. And then grunt workout.com.com is the CrossFit and CrossFit competitor side of things, and then gruntworkout.com, that's the one that we're just releasing, and just super fun. Those are the two big spots. You are putting out webinars and stuff. I mean, we talked yesterday about it,

which is actually where I really wanted to dig into this because I find it so central to people, like, understanding what's really going on in the space um somebody like chris spieler that has a gym that everybody would think is just crushing it and you have a very real story about it sure and in the progressions of it um but how often are you doing these webinars and kind of is that all part of the program so i mean those are like on the live facebook feeds that we do with the programs yeah so any of the members kind of, with the affiliates that we have on Icon, we hash through some of those things and we'll talk about those topics.

And we don't have a huge affiliate community, which is great because I've been able to invest in those people and like give them a ton of ideas and help them actually, you know, personally help them with like some of the options that they might try. And then, you know, we have a podcast with Icon Athlete. It's just called That Icon Athlete. And we'll talk about topics like that or a whole host of things. And Doug and I will hash through a bunch of that stuff. Very cool.

That's awesome. Doug Larson. You bet. You can follow me on Instagram, of course, Doug, Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. And then I also have my own personal site, Doug Larson Fitness, mostly dedicated to courses that I've developed over the years on Instagram, of course. Doug Douglas E. Larson on Instagram. And then I also have my own personal site, Doug Larson Fitness, mostly dedicated to courses that I've developed over the years on nutrition, movement, and mobility. We do Barbell Shrugged every Wednesday.

Is the site live now? I saw the last time we hung out, I saw the beta, we'll call it that. It actually is live. It's not actually on DougLarsonFitness.com right in this moment, because there's one or two things that I still want to update before I push it over to that site. But it's live on the internet if you want to go Google for it.

It's out there somewhere. It's a billboard in the middle of the desert. If you can find it. If you can drive to it, you can visit. I love it. And then, of course, Barbell Shrugged every Wednesday, Technique Quad every Sunday. If you want to check out Technique Quad, TechniqueQuad.com actually forwards to the Shrugged Collective site with all the Technique Quad videos.

So if you're interested in learning how to lift some weights YouTube style, you can go check that out. I love it. You can find me at Anders Varner, but most importantly get into the Shrugged Collective five, six shows weekly. Doing a million downloads a month now. I love saying that. It just finally got there.

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