Barbell Shrugged - The Evolution of CrossFit, and Finding Space for Everyone in Fitness with Will Lanier, Founder of The Out Foundation — Muscle Maven Radio Episode #5

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Will Lanier (@truebluewill) has worked for the past decade as a CrossFit Coach and general manager for Brick New York, and has spent time working for other fitness organizations like Barry’s Bootcamp and 24 Hour Fitness. He’s now the founder of The Out Foundation, a non-profit organization that works to remove the barriers that block LGBTQ+ individuals access and participation in health, wellness and fitness to ensure their success through fun, inclusive fundraising events like OUTWOD and by providing health and fitness-related scholarships to LGBTQ youth.   Today is a fun walk down CrossFit memory lane, as well as peering into the future of the sport: Ashleigh chats with fellow CrossFit NYC OG Will Lanier about the early days of CrossFit in New York City, his work as a trainer who helped bring the Brick fitness franchise to the city, his experience as a gay man in CrossFit, and his current work as founder of The Out Foundation/ OUTWOD fundraising events, with a goal to increase inclusiveness and access to CrossFit for everyone including those in the LGBTQ community. We talk about transgender competitors in CrossFit and other sports, and why CrossFit is so unique in its ability to bring people together.   Enjoy! -Ashleigh   Minute Breakdown:   0 - 26 Intro to Will’s background at CrossFit NYC, becoming a trainer, the growth of CrossFit in New York and worldwide   26 - 44 How he came to start his foundation and what it’s about, what OUTWOD is, about the fun and learning that comes with creating your own community; why inclusiveness is important for everyone and why it doesn’t have to be political; what he learned working all the different types of fitness organizations from CrossFit to a more globo-gym environment   44 – A discussion on trans athletes competing in different sports from CrossFit to MMA, the complexity of the regulations, and why testosterone levels shouldn’t be the main determinant for who can compete in women’s categories ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/mmr-lanier ----------------------------------------------------------------------   ► 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

Hey everybody, you're listening to Muscle Maven Radio. I am your host, the Muscle Maven, aka Ashley Van Houten. Both of those names are weird, I know, so let's just go with it. Anyway, today I am talking to a CrossFit person because I'm told that a lot of you listeners are CrossFit people and you'd be into that. And I'm just, I'm here to please. So I actually used to be a CrossFit person myself. I got into it pretty early days in about 2008. I used to go to what I think was the first CrossFit gym in New York. It was called the Black Box on 26th Street. And it was pretty grimy, but it was super fun.

I remember when I moved to New York from Bermuda in my kind of early-ish 20s, and I didn't know a soul. And I was just getting into CrossFit. I joined, that was the first thing I did, was join the CrossFit gym. And I immediately had a group of friends, a social group, people to talk to, to go out with, to work out with, people who are into the same things I was into. And it was awesome. It made my life in New York at the very beginning way less scary, way more fun. I got my first muscle up there and it helped me get super strong. I still obviously incorporate CrossFit into a lot of my own workout programming. I still love to watch the games and be a part of it. And

I don't know, it's just been really fun to see how the sport is growing. And I wrote my master's thesis on the CrossFit game. So like I was pretty into it. And I just love to see how it evolves. And my guest today is actually a part of that evolution. Will Lanier, he was a coach at the Black Box in 2010. He helped develop and open the Brick New York CrossFit gyms, which I think kind of paved the way for a nicer, cleaner, almost more boutique version of CrossFit in the city. Because before that, you know, the boxes were classic boxes. They were pretty gross and grimy. And these ones were

actually like, you know, they had like nice showers. So that was kind of a big deal. And then he moved on and started his own nonprofit organization called the Out Foundation, supporting the LGBTQ community, supporting inclusiveness in fitness. And you may have heard of his events that he hosts all over the place. It's called OutWOD, which is a fundraising workout event that helps support his organization, which among other things, it provides scholarships for young LGBTQ people by way of gym memberships, nutrition and coaching support, and a lot more. It's a super, super cool concept because I think more young people from any walk of life, I mean,

we need to support people in learning how to be fit and take care of themselves and join a community and have fun with being healthy. So Will says he's basically just looking to support his community and provide a place for everybody to get into CrossFit and fitness. And he feels strongly about it because CrossFit is a place where he personally found so much joy in community. So I think it's super cool. I think it's great what he's doing. I've known him for a while, but I haven't seen him in a long time. So it was nice to reconnect recently and learn more about the stuff that he's doing. So we talk about early CrossFit days. We talk about what he learned through his work as a trainer, a gym manager, an event manager, and now the founder of his organization.

And we get into a discussion about transgender people competing in various sports because what a complex topic that is. And, you know, we just kind of talk about how great it is to learn from and hang out with and support people who are different from you. Because, you know, I subscribe to that hashtag always learning life. Because I think if you're only hanging out with people that are exactly like you, I mean, that can be fun. It's great to get together with people who share common interests. But if people are exactly like you, agree with everything that you say, have the exact same kind of like background and life as you, you're not going to be learning as much as you could. Right. It's just kind of boring. But anyway, that's my two cents. I hope you enjoy the chat. As always, I'd love your feedback. So please talk to me on Instagram at The Muscle Maven. Share this podcast on social and tag at Shrug Collectives that we can get a conversation going

and learn a thing or two and share. I appreciate you. And I hope that you enjoy my chat with Will. Where did you, when did you start? Like, when were you going to that gym and when did you like i guess tell me kind of like before we get into like the the real meat of it let's talk about sort of the crossfit origins and like when you kind of were in new york or came to new york or started going to that gym talk me through that yeah i started crossFitting actually in Dallas, Texas in 2000 and I think 2009. And then I moved to New York in 2010 and started working out at CrossFit NYC because it was literally the only one or the one closest to my house, I guess, because there was like four, four in the city at that time.

So, yeah, I started working out there in 2010 and then started coaching there in 2011. And so it's come a long way, baby. It's been a lot. So what brought you into what got you into CrossFit? Like what was your maybe athletic background or what made you decide to get into it? Yeah, so I'd been in sports kind of grown up my whole life. I played every sport under the sun. Coming from Texas, I actually settled into competitive cheerleading for 12 years.

So that was my sport of choice. But after college, there was really nothing beyond, you know, just going to the gym. And one of my friends invited me. I had seen her on Facebook. She had posted a picture of her doing a pull-up with a weight vest and I messaged her on Facebook and I remember this and I was like, Erin, what are you doing?

What is this? And she's like, oh, it's CrossFit. You have to try it come Saturday to the free class. So I came that Saturday, I joined and that was a million years ago. So that's how I found CrossFit. Yeah, I'd say there's probably a similar story for a lot of people. And I know, I think that was one thing that got me really into it, too, because I'm somebody who has always been into

like muscles and strength and seeing what especially what women were doing in the early days of CrossFit, like that nasty girls video that's infamous, because it's just these like buff chicks doing crazy stuff. And, you know, this is like, it wasn't long ago before when people thought that like, women just couldn't, like, we can't really do pull ups the same way men can do them. Or we can't really, you don't have that kind of upper body strength. And then it's like, CrossFit's like, hold my, hold my hat while I go. You know what I mean? So yeah, the nasty girls video where they're doing like strict muscle ups from like a little baby rig because they have to do them like seated. So cool. So okay, but the competitive cheerleading. So did you have a like a

gymnastics background at all? Or was that you were just straight cheerleading? Yeah, I did gymnastics for a few years and then kind of hated the structure of gymnastics uh so went into competitive or i cheered for school but also did competitive cheer the longest uh it was yeah it was a crazy time um you know a little bit solid for for gymnastics too aren't you like you're kind of on the tall side for i'm on the tall side for gymnastics yeah yeah yeah so you know the guys were better than me who were like you know six inches shorter than me yeah um but it's cheer like you can be whatever how you want to so it's kind of good so with so your role because i don't i don't know a whole lot about competitive gymnastics except that it's really entertaining and sometimes like terrifying to

watch the way people are getting thrown around and flips and all kinds of cool stuff but does it work generally i would imagine mostly for men you guys are doing like a lot of athletic gymnastic stuff but you're also providing like the base and the person who's kind of holding people supporting people throwing people like is that yeah is that accurate to say totally accurate so we do the i mean we were on i was on a large co-ed which means we had equal um male and female um cheerleaders and you we would kind of all do the same when it came to tumbling and the cheer port the portion of cheer. But then when it came to, um, the pyramids, you know, we were all, um, there are very few male flyers. So a flyer, someone who's in the air, um, you have to be very small. Um, so most of the guys on the team were bases and yeah, you're,

you're part of that, you know, structural crew to crew to get the girls up in the air. Yeah, it's such a cool sport. It's so cool. And it has all the aspects that people who are watching want to see. Because there's that extreme athleticism. It's good-looking people. It's high energy. But then there's like, is somebody going to die maybe?

People are really into it. There's everything, mystery and intrigue. It's just all of it i'll watch yeah i'll watch videos of what they're doing now like compared to what we did you know a million years ago when i was in high school and college but the stuff they do now i'm just like are you out of your like if we had ever tried that someone would have definitely broken their neck yeah it's terrifying but it's so exciting that's why people like it. I mean, that's why it can become a sport on its own. Because I think most a lot of people who don't really know about the sport think, well, this is the thing that goes on the sidelines of a real sport. But there's like a whole thriving sort of industry for that sport on its own. Oh, yeah. Especially in the South. Oh, man. Yeah, right. Well, and it's

interesting, too, that you come from kind of a gymnastics background, because I feel like a lot of people in CrossFit find, they find it through sports like gymnastics, or maybe like powerlifting, where, as you said, if they don't kind of take it further in a competitive way, or there's no ability to do that, and they're kind of feeling lost, and what do I do? And then that's how they find CrossFit. Like I did gymnastics growing up too, and actually really liked it. I think maybe I might have been able to pull off size wise. I'm five four. So I probably would have been on the taller, taller side. But, you know, I didn't take it much further out of like puberty. But I think even having that base, you know, like just having some of that, like, body awareness, the upper body strength that people maybe don't get as children, unless you're doing stuff like that, really lends itself to CrossFit. So it's kind of interesting how people. Yeah, CrossFit is very, yeah, it's very, you can tell when someone has played a sport or has, you know, danced or been a part of, you know, something where they have to be kind of aware of their movement. And when someone hasn't, it's a learned skill for sure and it's definitely

you know from being a crossfit coach for so long you see those people who can come in and you know oh you can do a hang power snatch and i don't really have to coach you much on it and then you see the person who's like you want me to do what with what and you know their body mechanics just haven't had that you know innate um or learned experience from when they were growing up. And it's beautiful when you get to see them, you know, finally it clicks in their head or it clicks in their body. And, you know, they're 33 years old and you're like, you did something that your body didn't think it could do. And I think that's the beautiful thing about CrossFit, too. Yes. Yeah. Lots of lots of good things and not so good things about

CrossFit as is anything that's very popular, but we'll get into that. So what brought you to New York when you moved there? Um, so I was in public relations. I did PR and marketing, um, for the W hotels and for some skincare company, uh, in Dallas. And I kind of loved that, that job and loved that market. So I, um, or that field rather. So I took a job in New York in fashion PR and quickly realize that it is very much about the, uh company that you work for and less of less of it was more about the the category that you work for less about the the job itself so fashion was definitely not for me um i did enjoy what i did but it was taking up kind of a different um a different part of my life that i didn't like i was working you know 60 65 hours a week

not getting into the gym and i'm like i did not move move to New York to be unhappy and a fat slob. I came here to like thrive and, and do something really cool with my life. So I remember going to the owners at the black box at the time, uh, and was like, Hey, I'm a decent CrossFit athlete. Everybody likes me. You don't have any gay coaches so how about you hire me and i'll help you with some pr as well i was like i need to make a certain amount of money to you know not die in new york yeah and i remember josh and harry and court were like cool yeah let's do it so sweet i like quit my pr job and became a crossfit coach teaching you know 25 classes a week how did you so you became an instructor in new york or you already were

before you came over okay all right that's a pretty big leap like going see it's funny because i actually did kind of a similar thing i moved to new york i my background's marketing communications and i was working for like an insurance company downtown, making lots of money, like hating it and being like, this can't, this can't be all there is. And I did like the same thing, except instead of becoming a coach, I got into like publishing, which is, you know, people who go into communications, they do it instead of journalism because it's more lucrative. Right. But what they really want to do is be in journalism. So I kind of did the same thing. I was like, my boss was like, you're never going to make that amount of money again. I was like,

yeah, but this sucks. And you know, I haven't looked back. So but so you you left it like a basically a sort of a corporate sort of job and then became a trainer and you did some PR stuff for the black box. That's what you and how many years did you do that for i worked at the black box from 2011 to 2014 okay and what kind of talk to me a little bit about some of the like marketing and pr efforts that you did it was really a fun time back then because they're like there were only four crossfit gyms in the city there was was, you know, CrossFit NYC, Hell's Kitchen, Metropolis, and maybe that was only three. Like there were not many. I think that's it. Yeah. There might've been one in Brooklyn too. Yeah. Brooklyn, definitely.

Like there was Virtuosity in South Brooklyn, but nothing like on the island. So, you know, it gave us this opportunity to really capture a market that no one really knew about. And, you know, that 26th street gym was awful. Uh, I mean, it was, uh, you know, It would not go over well today. Like if people were like moving to New York, like which CrossFit gym should I go to? If they saw 2010 era black box, they'd be like, yeah, no, that's not happening.

No, but you know, I, I have such great memories of that place you know the the four showers that were literally in the middle of the classroom the bathrooms very yeah you know you're just it oh god it was so great and you know the ladies coming up from downstairs complaining that that drywall was falling in their hair because we're dropping 25 pounds. No, no real flooring, nothing really structural. I'm sure that building's going to fall down soon, but. And any Metcon you had to like go down the, like four flights of stairs. Yeah. Around like the Disney city block and yeah, so good.

You know, I, you know, I just have these great memories of that place, but yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I don't know what we were talking these great memories of that place. But, yeah. That's cool. Yeah. I don't know what we were talking about, but that was great. Yeah. I mean, so, yeah, the kind of PR and marketing stuff, I guess it was, you know, a very, very kind of different world back then because it was a lot more niche. There was a lot less competition.

It was also new. So you were kind of, like, able to sort of invent whatever the sort of experience or the message was that you wanted to get across. And people didn't know as much about CrossFit. It was still kind of this like weird sort of kind of underground thing that people were doing at that point. Yeah. And like it was before the big revolution of boutique fitness hit New York, like Barry's had just opened and, you know, SoulCycle had their one studio on the upper east side and it was the like it was part of that revolution where people like oh we're gonna do this we can do this we can do this and you know we took what crossfit was about community and just try to expand upon that

on facebook on twitter is before instagram like it was just this really you know incredible thing so our like biggest marketing was like getting people to buy t-shirts and you know the black box was never about t-shirts but you know we would create t-shirts for you know fight gone bad or any of these little events and people would see finally that CrossFit was a thing and you know we grew from when I started 2011 we had 200 members to when I quit in 2014, we had like 1400 and over, you know, two spaces. And this just the the excitement around CrossFit in the city was was a really cool experience just to see just regular Joes on the street wearing crossfit shirts and then you know the boom of crossfit in new york when you know all the gyms started opening up the ones downtown you've got and now you've got you know how many we've got 14 15 in the city and you know it's hard and then i opened brick with the brick brand and that was you know the most wildest craziest

time of my life and but it was the boom of CrossFit. I feel like it was like, you know, the Wall Street boom. Yeah. It's so interesting though, how, and we're going to talk about this, the, the unique aspects of CrossFit and the sort of community kind of aspect that it has that other gyms didn't have. And it's something that I think a lot of gyms moving forward, we're trying to emulate, but it's also interesting how that kind of really tight knit community aspect that helped build it and that appealed to so many people, as it grew, in a way, it's like, it's growing, but it's also becoming sort of diluted, because I this has taken me down such a like nostalgic stroll right now, you're talking about the black box. And like people back in the day before Instagram, when

people would like go to the website to see what was gonna was gonna be like it's just like it's like it's so old-fashioned it's blowing my mind but yeah you'd like walk down the street and if you saw somebody with a crossfit t-shirt it was like you know people who have like motorcycles and they like ride their bikes on the street and kind of give each other the nod like they're in their like own little kind of group it was the same with crossfit like you just you'd be friends with the person because they're wearing a crossfit t-shirt and you're into CrossFit too. And that's cool. And now it's sort of like,

yeah, of course, whatever, who cares? Like everybody's done. Everybody's done CrossFit or like I used to do CrossFit or whatever. It's the growth. It's like,

there's always kind of good and bad with the success of, of a movement like that. It's, it's interesting. Yeah. It was just a really cool experience to be a part of it. And like you said like being a part of the rise and the and the the growth of what crossfit has become yeah so the next move then after black box was that brick or what happened when you decided

to move on from crossfit nyc yeah so um one of the members that was going to CrossFit NYC, one of my, uh, guys who would always come to my class, he, um, asked me to coffee one day. Cause we had talked about like, what are my goals? You know, I'm, I was 25 and like, what are my goals? I, you know, at some point I want to be more than just a CrossFit instructor. Like there's been a great part of my life, but like, what's next, what's next next i've always that kind of person who who tries to look forward in the future to be like oh what am i doing in two years what are doing five years what does this look like so we had conversations and anyway we had coffee and he was like hey i know you're wanting to do more he's like i'm working with the owners of this big crossfit

brand out of la to open a gym in the city. And I think we would like you to do that for us. And in my head, I'm like, me? He's like, yeah, well, you're the face of CrossFit in New York right now. And I just like fell down on the stairs. I'm like, there's no fucking way. That's a great accolade, but no way. Like, I'm not that person. you should be like yeah i'll take

it i'll take it for sure so um so i met up with them the next day they flew in from la and from there forward i was working for the brick brand on securing a space finding um a contractor architects getting kind of everything together to open a space. And I would put together these cool presentations for the owners because the owners lived one in LA, one in Kentucky, one in New York. And they were involved, but they weren't boots on the ground involved. So I was the boots on the ground to kind of facilitate the birth of what brick is in new york so i would put together these presentations of all the different spaces i went and visited with our broker and be like you know it's close to this train but not close to this train i think

this would be good this is not great and then we found that old uh dagostino's space on 17th street and i was like this is where it needs to be um so we you know over the course of what eight nine months turned a grocery store into new york's largest crossfit gym and was it immediately because there so there were other bricks outside of new york they they'd opened before like new york wasn't the first yeah the first was la yeah okay and so was that originally intended to be more of like a boutique higher end like nicer version of because before you remember when crossfit first opened it was like a point of pride that these were like garage gyms they were kind of dirty and they were kind of gross and that was kind of part of the appeal

and then we saw a shift where it's like well actually people want to have like clean showers and they kind of want it to like look cool whatever was was that brook was brick sort of like the the tipping point for that do you think i think in the city for sure um yeah because it had started to happen around the united states more and more gyms were becoming you know hey you're not going to get a staph infection at our gym you should try it out all right right um but brick was the first yeah because you're in new york city you're charging 425 a month like you better bet your ass you have towels and a shower and lockers like no new yorker in their right mind is going to pay 400 for a gym

that they're going to have to you know bring their own towel and like yeah like it's gonna be a nightmare um and that's kind of a thing for me it's like i saw the success of barry's boot camp of soul cycle of of these higher end of equinox you know they have the client that we wanted to appeal to at brick you know that the the the higher end client that wants these things sounds like if you want these people you have to do these things if you want you know, you have to do these things. If you want, you know, this demographic,

this mom, you know, who just did drop off at nine, who took him to the gym at 10, like you've got to provide the ways and means for someone to come here at 5 AM shower and then go to wall street to work. Like you can't, it's not just going to, you can't just suck the,

the, the members from Chelsea, the people who live in chelsea you want to bring people in from the outer boroughs like because we were off the l so we could get anyone literally across the island and we had people who lived in brooklyn but worked in the city and they would come you know come to the 6 a.m class go to work at 8 and they can do that because you offered an experience and a and a facility that was able to deliver that, you know? And so, so your job then became kind of like, man,

like what was your role? What was it on paper when you were kind of putting together these brick locations for New York? So I was general manager. Yeah. So starting basically in February of 2014, I started that full time building the team, hiring the coaches, kind of building that first little brick family. And then we opened the first gym in, no, that wasn't 2014. I don't know. They've run together. It's all a blur. run together um yeah maybe 2013 makes more sense yeah 2013 uh no because yeah no 2013 was the year and yeah so just kind of building it all together and and building that first big uh excitement

around this cross a gym that's opening in chelsea and people were like losing their marbles we opened with almost 300 members like they were i remember that the excitement around the and people were like losing their marbles. We opened with almost 300 members. Like they were, I remember that excitement around the gym. People were very pumped. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, um, did you continue to coach at all or was that it when you started? Yeah, no, I still coached. Um, uh, a big part of the brick, um, of the brick philosophy is that you're never too good to coach um you're always part of the family always on the floor because once you lose touch with your members like you lose touch with you know the business and and everything so no i would coach you know between 10 and 12 classes a week still um and across the board, like CrossFit, we also had BX, which is kind of the boot camp version.

And it was a really great way to stay in touch with everyone. Like you understand the members more when you don't sit on a pedestal or hang out in an office the whole time. Absolutely. Which is what I tell anyone who comes to me for you know consulting or advice you know they're like oh I used to teach 20 classes I don't teach any anymore I was like and that's why you lose members because they literally joined because of you yes yeah and even just having a closer connection to the actual like physical movement side of it

too because how many friends do I know who have started gyms or open gyms or whatever and they're like I'm in the worst shape of my life ever since I opened a gym. I'm not doing anything. You know what I mean? I get it. Like you're, you're busy. Like that, that doesn't, it's not the priority anymore. But I think building that into your life is better for your business and better for you. Yeah. There was, I read a book, um, one time I've read a few books maybe i'm like i read this one book no congratulations yeah this one book that i have on my the one book on my bookshelf no i read a book i can't attribute to the author i don't even remember what it was but a quote stuck with me and the this guy always scheduled his gym time into his calendar like every week he had his calendar laid out and he

had the hour and a half that he was going to the gym. And he was a big CEO. He was always very busy. And what he said was, this is my time. And I put it and I schedule it like a meeting and I wouldn't miss it. Just like I wouldn't miss a meeting for my company because this is for me. And I ran with that. Like I always scheduled which class i was going to do the whole week um so that i could be on the floor with the members i still do it like i still schedule my gym time if any of my staff looks at my calendar they're like oh i wanted to schedule meeting at 12 30 i was like sorry i'm taking the noon class you're not i'm not missing that because you can't schedule around it like because that's important to me and that's important to the the life of what we're doing you know so yeah i feel so strongly about that too and i sometimes

feel like an asshole when i have friends who are asking me about like how do i you know make this part of my life and schedule because i don't have kids and all my friends do and i know that there are people who are busier than i am but i just have a hard time believing that 90% of the world doesn't have the time if they put the priority in and that and creating it like it's a part of your, your daily life, like eating and showering and brushing your teeth. Because if you if you approach it, like it's an important part of keeping you healthy and happy and able to do the rest of the things in your life better. Like you look at it that way, instead of this indulgent thing, or this thing you don't actually want to do, but feel like you should,

you know, it's really about how you approach that, that part of your day, that fitness part, like it's, that's an investment and that's important to everything. It has repercussions for the whole rest of your day. Right.

So, so building it in and making it like, well, I got to eat sometime today. I have to go to work. I have to do all of these things and I have to move around a little bit. And just kind of thinking about it that way takes out the, you know, the decision fatigue when you're busy and stressed out and you're like, well, should I go down to the gym and do I have to do this? And maybe I can wait until tomorrow.

Like if you kind of take that out of the equation, it makes life a lot easier, I think. No, I agree. One million percent. Yeah. So tell me, talk me through now the progression from the general manager at Brick to the work that you're doing today. Walk me through that. Ooh, Lordy. How long do we have? We've got all day. We'll go for it. at CrossFit NYC. So when I started coaching at CrossFit NYC, like I said, we had maybe 200 members and I felt like the only gay in the village, but I wasn't, there was like five or six other gays that I could like, you know, pick out of the crowd. And I was, I saw a fun idea to, Hey, I have keys to the gym. We don't have classes on Sunday. How about everyone come at,

you know, 10 o'clock on sunday we'll do a workout and we'll go to brunch and it was that's all it was it was just a gathering of the gay dudes at the gym and we called ourselves gay wad and i thought it was hilarious and very good that's the marketing background right there your pr right so it was called gay wad and we did it you know once a month and you know there'd be six eight whatever and then more people started joining the gym this was you know again during the growth of of crossfit in the city and you know i'm not gonna say that the gays made crossfit popular in new york city but i'm not gonna not say it um it didn't hurt it didn't hurt because i would get you know rsvps for 15 or

20 people and i was like well shit we can't have that many people at the black box so i reached out to you know anthony at hell's kitchen i was like hey we've got about 30 guys um who want to do a workout on sunday can we come you know when your classes are over and he'd be like yeah sure totally cool i was like it's called gay wad it's just fun um he had a laugh about it and it just kind of developed into this monthly workout we would go to different gyms as they opened around the city we'd go into brooklyn um and it was just a fun thing um uh someone reached out from la saw what we were doing like hey we'd love to do something like this um in la and i was like cool let's do it and he's like but we can't call it gay wad because we're sensitive here on the west coast um can we call it something else and i was like okay cool

yeah let's call it out wide so it's more inclusive i got like i understood his sentiment. Um, so that's when outwad was kind of born was I think late in 2011. Yeah, no, 2012. And I saw this, um, opportunity for, you know, our fitness community to come together and do something for good. So I started taking in donations from people. So it was like 20 bucks, come work out and we're going to donate the money that we bring into Charity X in New York City. So monthly, we were hosting these workouts and would raise, you know, a few hundred dollars, $500 for a different charity every month. And sometimes the charity would come and they would speak about what they do. And that was really cool. But we're just kind of giving the money away. And, you know,

fast forward, four years, five years. And, you know, by this point, we had had people reach out from Chicago wanting to host one Miami, you know, some of our people from New York had moved and they're like, Oh, we want to do it here, here, here, and here. And before I knew it, we were doing like, you know, 30, 40 events a year all across the United States. Um, and all raising money for different local charities within those cities. Um, and then, you know, I left, I left brick in 2016, started at berries. Um, and then I left berries and started working at 24 hour fitness, um, to kind of complete the circle of my fitness career. Yeah. That's kind of an interesting trajectory. I feel like most people start with the sort of, you know, like whatever, quote unquote, like regular regular gyms and then, yeah. And then go. So what,

what made you make those moves uh so i left um i was like how deep do i want to go here i left new york in 2016 to uh move to la for barry's boot camp um i went through a bunch of like health stuff in 2014 i had cancer dealt with all that fun stuff in the city. And I was like, I just need a break from New York and you know, all this, all that came with it. Um,

moved to berries, loved that brand, loved the, the people there, love the gyms, love the workout, uh, met a boy and moved away for him and took a job at 24 hour fitness um i used 24 hour fitness as kind of

like business school it was a completely different model than what i was used to i was like this will serve me well because i've never worked in this um this model before it's subscription based it's not um it's not experiential based it's not instructor based um it's kind of anything you want but it's a subscription so you are selling subscriptions to a gym um and how do you bring people into that where were you when you were when you were doing 24 hour Portland Oregon you're in LA oh yeah yeah it's amazing the places we move for significant others. It really is. I have a story about that. I can tell off. Anyway. Yeah. Okay. was ended up being a failed relationship so portland kind of took the taste of that you know so i was like i'm gonna get out of here when i'm done but that's what kind of drew me to really expand upon what outwad turned into and in 2017 i quit my job in portland but stayed there

because i had an amazing apartment and also a lease and started the Out Foundation, which is now our nonprofit that OutWatt has now become a program of. So the Out Foundation and the work we do is all in health and wellness for the LGBTQ community in a way that we weren't able to support our community before. So like I said, before we were raising money for other charities, giving it away, which is great in the overall scheme of things where, you know, we're helping our community in other ways. But I hadn't seen, and I still haven't seen beyond what we do is an organization that promotes health and wellness for the LGBTQ community specifically. So not only are we raising money from the health and wellness industry or the people who enjoy health and wellness,

we're also pouring that money back into our community in the health and wellness field. So we have scholarships that we award LGBTQ young adults that pays for their gym membership, a CrossFit gym membership for a year, food from kettlebell kitchen, apparel, shoes, like really providing access and removing the barriers that come with trying to get into fitness. You know, I know like to get into fitness is expensive. It's insane. like gym memberships for crossfit specifically are upwards of 200 and i need to cough so you're gonna have to cut this out yeah and it's also it's also

overwhelming and it can be intimidating and you sometimes don't even know where to start and if you're like a young person who's like i want to get into fitness i want to have this community you know like the kettlebell kitchen thing like like people, I mean, there is more information out there than ever before, but almost to the point where that can be debilitating. You're like, well, I don't know how to eat. Should I do keto? Everybody else is like, no one knows what's going on. Right. So having a little bit of a little bit of like, support and guidance and just kind of help is really interesting. I was looking at the website and I think that the, um, the, um, the scholarship thing is really cool. Does it have to be a CrossFit gym? Could it be if somebody wanted to do like, I don't know, something else, could they do that? How does that work?

We ideally like to do CrossFit for a couple of reasons. Um, one, because it's awesome, but two, and more importantly is that it's community-based uh and like you and i spoke earlier it's it's all about the community and that is what makes you successful at crossfit is when you're part of something bigger um we will definitely award if people want you know oh i'd like to go to x gym or you know if you know if orange theory is the only thing in their town and there's not a crossfit like sure we'll we'll definitely kind of consider it. But ideally, we want to feed back into CrossFit because it has been what has changed all of our lives. Everyone at the foundation does CrossFit and it has changed our lives in many, many, many, many ways and to to award that to someone who yeah i mean it's it's god the ways that the ways

that crossfit has changed so many lives it's it's incredible and we want to pay that forward yeah that's super cool so so people can apply for the scholarship all across the u.s right we have and how many do you give out every year so we just piloted it piloted it um yeah piloted it um it's a weird fun word so we piloted it we have 10 athletes on the program right now so in April um what's in that's like less than a month so April 1st we will open up our next round of applications it'll be open from april 1st to april 30th and my goal as as the executive director is that we get a hundred athletes on it every year and whoa yeah so a big that's crazy

it's insane um but i feel like the more people we can affect, the better we're doing our jobs. Right. So we have April and we have October, so we're going to split it between the two. So we're not like processing a hundred people. Um, yeah. And how many, like how many, I guess it's your first, it was one year, but how many like many like um applications are you getting um for the first year we just we sent it out to a few people we didn't even like push it out on social so we got about 37 i want to say 37 38 application applications with very little push like we didn't we reached out to a few gyms was like hey do you have anyone could you share this because we didn't want to like push it out and not be able to deliver um yeah but like and what's your staff like at the out foundation like

how many how many staff do you have right now working on all this stuff because that's only one part of what you guys do right so um i have myself we have one full-time employee, Eddie, and I've got a publicist because I think it's always smart to have a publicist. We have our digital engagement manager. She does all of our social media and kind of any outreach there. And then we've got, those are all the paid positions. So just two full-time and two part-time. And then we've got a are all the paid positions so just two full-time and two part-time and then we've got a bunch of volunteers it's crazy because you and you so you must have volunteers who are helping because you said you you do like goal coaching nutritional counseling like all that

stuff that goes with these scholarships so our we have we have one guy who does that um alex he's our out athlete coach so he meets with all the athletes once a week via skype um and monitors their um monitors their nutrition intake um does a live stream with them every week on face on our facebook group so there's a private facebook group that they get um so they can interact with each other as well and like provide tips of like hey this is working for me this isn't what do you think about that? Like, so they become their own community. And so, yeah, he's, he kind of heads up all of that. That is so cool. Like what a, what an interesting and cool opportunity that of course, I think that it's, you know, amazing that

you're doing this for the LGBTQ community, but anybody would be like, hell yeah, I want this amazing scholarship, like a year of, you know, a membership and all this like support and counseling to be healthy. Like, I mean, that's such a cool concept and something that I think, as you said, like, we're all kind of, you know, especially younger people, like floundering, like, we know we want to do this stuff for ourselves, but not necessarily sure how to get started or how to financially kind of pull it off. So this is such a cool thing. It's awesome.

Yeah. Okay. And then you're also doing, so the OutWOD is the thing that a lot of people kind of know about. And these are like pretty big events that are happening all over the world. Yeah. We do about 100 a year. That's crazy. How many of these are you involved in? events that are happening all over the world. Yeah. Yeah. We do about a hundred a year.

That's crazy. How many of these are you involved in? Like you must just be like traveling because you're based back in New York. You came back. I'm still in Austin right now. I haven't moved back to New York yet. Oh, okay. You just came to New York for the strong New York thing.

So you're just hanging out in New York. Oh yeah. I spent about half my time there. Yeah. You can, you can kick me out, but I. Oh yeah. I spent about half my time there. Yeah. You can, you can kick me out, but I'll come back. Yes.

Yes. Okay. That's cool. All right. So you're based in Austin. Is that, is the company, um,

that's like officially in Austin or you kind of just like sort of online and people are coming from all over. Yeah, we're online. So, um, yeah. So Carly,

she lives in Brooklyn. Eddie's in Jersey. I'm here. Dan's in Boston. Yeah. We're all kind of all over in Brooklyn. Eddie's in Jersey. I'm here. Dan's in Boston. Yeah, we're all kind of all over the place. Cool. All right. And so then, yeah, the outwads.

Can people, like if somebody in Toronto wanted to host one, how does that work in terms of how you collaborate with you guys and make it happen? Yeah, so it's super simple now. I still do all the logistics for all the outw. So I'm very, very hands on with every single gym that hosts. So gyms would just go to I am out.org slash host, there's a form that they can fill out. And it basically just says, what's the name of your gym? Who are you? Where are you? You do understand that this is a fundraiser this is what you're fundraising for um can you commit to a saturday or a sunday you know main event type thing and then we create all of the collateral so we'll create the poster we'll create the workout with the gym um we have kind of a set few workouts that we work around as far as the structure, but then we leave it to the gym and I'll work directly with the gym on, Hey, what equipment do you have? What would this work with this work?

Can you run in your gym? Can you not? Is it, you know, are you on the street? Are you, you know, like what is, what, what makes your gym unique and how can we highlight that in a workout? Because you're going to have people who come from all over that are coming to your gym that may have never been there before. So I want to make sure that the gym is getting exposure as well you know so it's not just hey it's a fundraiser it's hey it's a fundraiser and it's

also you like patting yourself on the back and us celebrating your inclusion and your you know your your openness to include the lgbt LGBTQ community in your gym in a big way. That is so cool. How do you, do you ever sleep? Or I just feel like I'm thinking like a hundred events a year. That's crazy. I used to travel to them all and now I don't. Yeah, I would think not. Yeah. Okay. And this might be kind of like a clueless question, but I'm just, I'm interested. So I'm going to throw it out there. So like because this is a this is a non-profit organization is that right okay so how do you guys like make money to support the work that you're doing so outwad yeah so outwad is our big our big um fundraiser um with each event so each each event has a goal of $2,000 to fundraise. And if we're able to hit $2,000 at each of our events, that pretty much covers our operating costs so that any other funding that we need can come from individual donors.

So OutWOD is kind of our, we can pay for everything that we're working on currently and then anything else comes from other stuff so we also have the Open Plus which is happening right now which is our open leaderboard so it's also a huge fundraiser for us our goal I think this year is $65,000 and that

is that helps the scholarship program as well so right yeah it's all these fitness events yeah yeah yeah which is good i mean because everybody wants to come hang out and get a cool t-shirt and take pictures for instagram like i mean it's it's a there's a reason why this works like it's's, you know, it's getting people out there. But, you know, like ideally the goal or my goal with OutWad though is not to have it. I don't want to forcibly have them in order to raise money. I want to have them as our advocacy and our celebration. So my goal this year has always been like corporate outreach to get the big corporate donors.

Because if I can get three or four corporate donors that want to give us $50,000, I can have outwads and not have the stress of the, hey, it needs to make 2000. I can just be like, hey, let's celebrate our fitness and CrossFit and all the cool things that we're doing without the stress of, do you have enough people registered? Did they raise money?

Because that part takes a little bit of the fun out of it. Yeah. So while I love OutWOD and what we're doing with it and all the great things we're able to do because of it, my goal is to make it less structured and more fun. And I think over the next couple of years, we'll be able to do that. Cool. Can you explain a little bit more about what the open process? Yeah. So last year, 2000, what is this year? 18, 2018. Um, we saw a need or I saw a need for basically what would happen, what would happen is during the month of the open or the month and a half of the open,

we weren't able to have any outlawed events because gyms were doing the open. So I was like, what can we do during the open to raise money? Because that's basically two months that we aren't bringing any funds. So that was the initial problem. I was like, this is a financial problem for us. Why is this a financial problem for us? What is lacking? And why do we have this gap? And then I realized, oh, we have the open and what can we do with the open to, you know, include everyone in our community? So we had now we had two problems, right right we have the open as it was in 2018 where trans athletes couldn't compete so i saw an an opening and that solves both of these problems to be like oh well we have a leaderboard that will include trans athletes and we can you know

compound it with the rest of the lgbtq community to create a leaderboard that then they can see where they stack up amongst there are smaller um community within the community so it created this leaderboard um and it turned into this really big advocacy campaign towards crossfit so it was kind of a hey we have 500 people who signed up for this event. Many who signed up for our leaderboard, but did not sign up behind the scenes in CrossFit with a bunch of different people to change the trans policy since 2014. And this kind of just put a button on it to be like, now we have a, you know, a mass of folks who are lending their voice to this,

this message. So that was kind of the big thing out of the open last year for the open plus was trans inclusion and then this year so after greg announced that trans athletes could compete in the 2019 games now we're just kind of in the celebration phase of the Open Plus. Now we have, again, another 500 athletes involved. We've got games competitors on the list now and really starting to see some really cool stuff come. We have great sponsors, and it's a really cool opportunity for the LGBTQ community to see how they stack up against each other. Because we have a lot of athletes who, you know, maybe they're the only gay at their gym, or the only lesbian or, you know, non binary, you know, person in the middle of America that doesn't get to interact with other queer folks in their CrossFit space. So it kind of gives them the

space to do that. And kind of see where they stack up. I think it's super fun. It's my favorite thing every year. That's cool. Do you know what the, the details are, um, with that announcement that, that trans people can compete now? Do you know what the sort of criteria or the rules are for that? It's very long. Um, it's actually in the rule book this year. They,

when they released the rule book in December, it's, it's a few pages. Um, so trans men can compete and there's no real restrictions as far as, um, like hormone therapy or anything. Um,

trans women have a bit of a longer list of criteria to meet in order to compete at the Games level. So for the Open, you don't have to do anything. You just register as your identified gender. They're not like calling you and calling a doctor or asking for medical records for the Open. for, you know, medical records for the open. Beyond that, like say you're the top two, you know, one of the top two in the country or in your country, then that's when it gets a little more involved. So you'll have to submit medical records and, you know, hormone levels from doctors

and blood tests and all sorts of things. It's super sciencey. So if people want to see it, it's, it's in the rule book, but essentially I think it's one year and maybe two years. You have to have had a hormone therapy for at least one year to regulate your, your levels of testosterone for trans women competitors and then there's a whole list that you have to kind of stay in a certain range it's all developed from the international

olympic committee's consensus that they released in 2016 so crossfit took you know, the, the research and, you know, the billions of dollars spent on, uh, competitive fitness, um, or competitive sport and, uh, took the, the rules from there. Have they, I mean, have they still even figured that out though? Because it's, I feel like every couple of months, there's still an article about like the sprinter olympic sprinters and castor simenya and they're still trying to mess with her and have her take more tests obviously anytime as i know being a woman with hormones it's always right because our hormones are just a nightmare on like every level but it's so tough when we're talking about like testosterone levels because you know born biologically female women can have higher testosterone levels than transgender women

who have been on medicaid it's so complicated like have we figured out an appropriate range yet like i feel like we're still trying to figure yeah out. Yeah, and it's funny to me that testosterone is the one hormone that they're looking at. Because I feel like it's like over 30 different criteria, or not criteria, but things, for lack of a scientific term, that make up how your body reacts or how your body grows and how your, you know, bone density and all these different things. Um, but the reality is that in competition and in sport, nothing is fair. And I think that's what people are failing, failing to see. Um, Serena Williams is an incredible athlete. Take, you know, me also a decent athlete, completely different gender than Serena. She would still kick my ass. Um, take Michael Phelps. Yeah. It's never fair. Playing tennis against Serena Williams. But take Michael Phelps, you know, he's 400 feet tall. He

has the arm span of, of, you know, double his, his height. He's got partially webbed feet. He can smoke a bowl and still kill the competition. And, you know, and, and there's not, you know, it's, it's different. It's, it's like, there's no, if you had to take everyone's blood to like see all of their levels, there's not going to be like oh if you have this you know micro liters of of uh testosterone you're in this category and if you're this micro liters you're in this category it's just never going to be like you can't i don't feel like you

can use that as the only test um so to answer your question in a very long-winded you know rambling way it's like no it's not figured out are they still working on it yes is it ever going to be perfect probably not because competitive sport is not fair in in the in essence you know so yeah and i mean to get to you know everyone likes to get sort of um overexcited about sort of like fear mongering aspect of this, but like how many human beings are changing their gender to like buck the system and win at a sport? Like, I don't think that's really the thing that we need to be getting overly worked up about. I mean, I will say one of the sports that I think has, there's been a lot of attention paid to it. And I wanted to mention this, because I think you've also talked about it on your website. And there's been some podcasts and interviews and stuff. And I just curious as a mixed martial arts fan myself, personally, and there's been a lot of conversation about a transgender woman fighting against women. And the the argument being that even if she is on, um, you know, hormone therapy, that she still has a, like a, a frame and a body structure that's more similar to a man's than a, than a woman's.

And people, I think are extra sensitive about it when it comes to a fight sport, because this is something that more so than, you know, sprinting or tennis or whatever can be, um, especially dangerous for the people involved. So I think that that's maybe a more complicated issue. But what are your kind of overarching thoughts about that? I mean, MMA, I have so many thoughts about MMA. It scares the hell out of me in general. It's very intense.

You know, I looked up her record and I looked up just because I only know one other female fighter, Ronda Rousey. Rousey? Rousey? You know, she, her record is, Ronda's record is better. She's won more fights. And I think the girl that you're talking about has like broke someone's skull or something and i think the just the argument that i have if it if it can be an argument is that she's not the only person who has broke someone's skull in fighting and i think that's just part of

the the what you're getting yourself into when you go into a fist fight kind of sport um that one is a very complicated one for sure and i think because like when you look at ufc though like there are there are classes where there's like a 125 pound weight class right like that's the weight class that i'd be in and i could be a way more skilled fighter than a man who's 125 pounds. And he's probably more likely to break my skull. For sure. Yeah. For physiological reasons. Right. So yeah, I mean, there's no, I think the biggest takeaway that I like to kind of leave people with when it comes to trans, trans inclusion is sport is that, you know, sport is inherently binary binary it's very male or female um yes co-ed sports exist and i think that's a beautiful thing but what we're trying to advocate for is you know there's

a place for men obviously always there's a place for women most of the time and we're just asking for a place for a trans person like because right now you're before they had no place to compete and now we're just asking for a place at the table for them um because the sports that we enjoy the fitness with you know the competitive fitness that we enjoy we're all very mediocre competitive fitness people um in crossfit right it's um, in CrossFit, right. It's, they've never had a place at the table, so I don't want to deny them any, any space that we have the privilege of having, you know? Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. Do you, were you surprised when CrossFit, um, came up with these more inclusive rules or were you like, yeah, of course it's about time. Good. you like oh wow i didn't see this coming and i'm happy about it what was your reaction

well we kind of had a hand in it um so this amazing amazing amazing advocate and person that has now become one of my great friends alissassa Royce. She wrote an article in 2014 when Chloe Johnson, um, who's on our board, um, sued CrossFit for forcing her to register as male, um, in the CrossFit games. Cause she was, they were competing. Her team wanted to go to regionals and they were close to potentially being at regionals. And Chloe had emailed them i was like hey just heads up we may go to regionals um i identify or i'm a trans woman competitor and

they're like well sorry you have to register as male or you can't compete and then obviously her scores as a male competitor would not have gotten them anywhere near, you know, regionals. Anyway, so she sued CrossFit in 2014. And Alyssa wrote a huge scathing article on her blog and has since been working with CrossFit and with the powers that be to just kind of change the conversation and get the conversation started. So I attribute a lot of their, their policy change to just her work and being a vocal advocate. And then when we worked with, or when we held the open plus last year, you know, it, it raised the awareness of the trans exclusion and then in june of last year uh russ berger um tweeted um about a pride event tweet heard around the world and that kind of was the impetus i feel feel, that was like, all right, CrossFit now wants to put their money where their mouth is and not only say that they support the LGBTQ community,

but truly support it. And that's what they did when they announced at our big gay happy hour at the CrossFit Games. That's nice. Is that something that's going to happen every year, Mel? Because I'm going to the CrossFit Games. Okay, I'm very pumped. I can't believe I actually have never been,

but I'm finally going this year with the Shrug Collective folks, and I'm very excited. I've already started designing the poster. It's so cute. Nice. The important things. Hey, marketing is very important. You know this.

Hello. Yes. It's one of those things,, just like, you know, good writing and stuff like that, that people think anybody can do. You're like, oh, well, what's marketing, but you know, communicating, anyone can do that. Nope. Nope. Hard no. Okay. So one of the kind of more high arching questions I wanted to ask about the work that you're doing, because I don't, it's not that I want to this to be a fluffy conversation but I don't want to get too political just because it makes me so sad and it's just like it's just like this like never-ending cycle of like negativity and anger and despair and it's

just really upsetting right so I try and I found like yeah one of the ways that I've dealt with it over like well you know the past few years has been to really try to, well, practice some empathy, but also just like, look at it with like a minimalist approach in that I'm not turning a blind eye to what's happening. I'm not ignoring what's happening. But there's a certain element of like, okay, well, I'm gonna look at the news less, I'm gonna look at social media less, I'm gonna look at the comments on social media less, because it isn't helping me, it's not teaching me anything. It's upsetting. It's giving me anxiety, like all of these things. So I try and I think one of the

things that is very hard for people to understand, but I think it is a very human quality is that to get to, to enact any real change or to expose people to new things. And with the hope of people becoming more empathetic or open-minded, it's less about telling people all the ways that they're wrong or bad and instead just kind of providing, like you said, a space for people or providing a positive experience for people or living in a positive way and hoping that people see it and are inspired by it, right? So because one thing that, you know, politics has proven over the last few years and also ever is just yelling at people about why they're wrong. And you're right. Really does not do anything positive for anybody.

No one responds to that. Right. Yeah. It gives everyone anxiety and it makes everybody more angry. And it's just like, we're in, and I don't know if we are more divisive than we've been in the past or if it just looks that way because of social media and because of the things that people tweet. Yeah, I just think we have more of a platform to be assholes than. Yeah, we have more people to be a part of it and want to do it is, it's one thing to appeal to the LGBTQ community who of course feel this very strongly

and, you know, want to be a part of it. But pretty much everybody, I would say most people I know, know and care about someone that's in that community. But we may not feel strongly enough to be like, well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna do this event or whatever, right? Like, it's the same as like, women's equality, like everybody knows a woman that they love, but they have most of them, a lot of people don't give a shit about, about, you know, trying to work towards women's equality, like, you have a mom or a, you know, sister or girlfriend doesn't actually mean you give a shit about helping, you know, the cause in any way. Right. So what are what are some ways that we can, we can, you know, I guess, like open this up to be inclusive to people outside of the LGBTQ community and make them feel like it's something that is also for them or that they can be a part of or that they would want to be a part of? How do we make this something that's just a positive, let's all do this for everybody and give everybody a space and, you know, just have a positive experience instead of something that maybe people will be like, oh, well, that's not for me. That's not for me.

Exactly. No, that's an incredible question. And I think you hit the kind of a nail on the head of what our goals are when it comes to allyship is you know we're nothing without our allies um and for those listening who like an ally is just someone who is not lgbtq but understands and supports um and you know the work that that an ally does is is is is important in in different ways than what we do um for our community right so we create these events to celebrate the lgbtq community but we also celebrate otherness and this is kind of a concept that we developed last year when we were developing our podcast was how do we celebrate not just being lgbtq but also being other and other can be anything other is you know being uh you know who uh for instance kiana welch is on our podcast and we

celebrate her otherness because she's you know a strong black female who's going to be a new mother but also holds the american record in the Olympic snatch. And right. It's like, what is her otherness? Well, her otherness is, you know, she's a black woman of color and a lot of communities still don't, you know, accept black women of color. Like if you visit, you know, some places in the South, it's like they're, you know, black women are the underdogs and we celebrate her in in different ways and i think the the takeaway especially from out what the outlawed standpoint is like you can come and celebrate with the lgbtq community knowing that there's something in your life or someplace in

your life or someone in your life that has felt other whether they're gay or not doesn't matter but like you know if you have a yeah maybe you're a girl who's into football or maybe you're you know like anything where you feel like maybe you're kind of the odd one out in any situation it can be incredibly so we celebrate that um with outwad and with with the work that we do because it's not just for the lgbtq community while that is yeah still our huge um the work that we do, because it's not just for the LGBTQ community, while that is still our huge mass of what we do, it's really, we want to celebrate these, the otherness and the, the uniqueness that makes, you know, this country great. Right. So that's how I would answer that question. Yeah. I like it. And I think one of the one of the kind of other points that I wanted to get across and something that I'm feeling as I'm talking to you is, I think one

of the things that we can all benefit from understanding is the idea that more and different perspectives and brains and minds and opinions only enriches the situation that you're in. Like I, you know, I look at, so this work that I'm doing with Shrug Collective, I'm pretty new host in their kind of group. And I'm, I'm the chick, I'm the chick. And they're like, I'm like, you need a woman, you need a woman host because in the fitness podcasting world, like, I don't know if you've seen this meme on Instagram, but it's like, a group of white guys. Oh, yeah. Oh, my God, that's, that's extremely on point. But yeah, so in like the fitness podcasting world, I know, like the half a dozen that I listened to, it's all white dudes, and they recognize it.

They're like, Yeah, we definitely need somebody who doesn't sound like a 35 year old dude, bro, we all look the same. Like, you know, they're joking, but like, they, they wanted somebody who had kind of a different perspective. And I recognize, you know, I'm a straight white female, I've got a lot of privilege, and I try to, I try to see it, it's hard to see the privilege that you live with, right? It's the same reason it's hard to wake up in the morning and be grateful for being healthy and breathing and being safe, because you take things for granted that you've always had, right? But I do think that even just being a little bit of that other in this world, I bring, like when we're all together podcasting, I'm going to ask different questions. I'm going to, you know, be interested in sort of different

topics. I'm going to have different guests than they'll have. And I'm going to look for women, or I'm going to look for, I want to get Canadian guests because I'm Canadian. I'm looking for it with my work that I do with Paleo magazine. I'm always looking to bring on people of color because everybody in Paleo is a white chick. Like, you know, I'm looking at that in a way it's different just because I'm just that little bit different. So I think that having just more different opinions, like when you grow up, when you're a kid and women are taught that like, if this girl's prettier than you, then you're not as pretty and that sucks.

And then you grow up and learn and realize that someone else being beautiful doesn't take away from your beauty or someone else being successful doesn't take away from your success. So I think that the more we can really internalize that everybody having a voice and a space and being included doesn't take away from what you have. It only enriches it. And I guess that there's the fear of change that can be scary for people. But when you really, when you experience it, when you go to an event like you have and experience it, this is just a great time.

It's just people having fun and having a good time. And I met maybe people that I wouldn't have met otherwise. There's nothing but positive that comes out of that. And I think that that's why the work that you're doing is important. Thank you. Yeah. Just to like highlight your point, it's, I liken it to the argument, not the arguments, but the information that we kind of have, the studies that we have on rural communities versus urban in, you know, the, in the urban environments, because there are so many people from different walks of life and different,

you know, economic statuses and, and, and gender identity and cultural differences in an urban environment, it's a lot easier to, to get along and to understand the plight of the human in general instead of you know categorizing everyone and then you have you know the the rural environment where it's you're kind of like-minded and like skinned and like you know uh idead and it's hard to understand someone else because you haven't been there and you haven't met anyone but you know you treat equality if you treat equality and inclusion like um an opportunity as as infinite right because it is it's not pie

like you giving me a slice of pie isn't taking away from your pie it's not pie yes it's it's it's a yogurt machine yeah it's always always full of yummy yogurt yeah i like that oh yeah i like okay that's a good visual i like it all right are you gonna be at the out while there's one in um in new york i will not be there no that's too bad totally go it's at cross the evf west side yeah okay cool awesome all right is there anything else before i let you go is there anything else that you want to talk about or let us know or i mean you can definitely tell us where we can all go online to follow you yeah for sure um nothing else really is as you know what we're doing with you keep it busy there's lots going on if you

want to follow us definitely um instagram is the place to be at outlawed um the foundation is at the out fdn we also have a podcast called outcast so if you follow at outcast underscore podcast um they're short little 20 minute episodes of us celebrating otherness. They're hilarious. If I do say so myself, um, super cute. Um, with a couple of hosts who live in New York and yeah,

we, we have a lot of fun, so definitely hit us up. We're everywhere. And if you go to, um, if you go to, I am out.org,

they also, that's where they're going to list like the um event times and locations and things like that yeah for sure so yeah imout.org slash outlawed you'll find all the outlaws um i try to keep them updated all the way for like three months in advance so i think we're up to the end of april so. I need to put some more up there. We've got a bajillion in June. Look for those pride events. Once it starts getting warmer and sunnier and people are starting to think about leaving the house and also getting that beach pod ready, it's like, uh-oh. Better start the workouts again.

Gotta get my Hampton pod. Thank you so much for taking the time. Better start to work out some hands. Gotta get my hand in fun. All right, cool. Well, we'll... Oh, God. All right. Will, thank you so much for taking the time. It was so great to catch up. I can't wait to come to the CrossFit Games and we can hang out in person.

And thank you for all the work that you're doing. This is very, very cool. Yeah, thanks for having me. So thank you. All right, thanks for listening, everyone. If you are not subscribed to Shrug Collective podcast yet, please make sure you do that. If you're not following us on Instagram at Shrug Collective and at the Muscle Maven, please make sure you do that.

You're missing out. I've got a lot of cool guests. Next on deck, I'm talking about fit pregnancy, how to just dominate and crush being a fit and healthy pregnant woman, which I know nothing about. Um, so I'm kind of interested, so don't miss it. Join me next week. Uh, please, please, if you like what I'm doing, go to iTunes and leave a nice rating and review so that shrug collective team knows that I'm doing a good job so that I can continue doing a good job. I appreciate you.

Thank you for listening, and have a great day.