Barbell Shrugged - Why Your CrossFit Coach Is Not Chasing Excellence w/ Kenny Kane — Barbell Shrugged #350

Episode Date: October 27, 2018

Kenny Kane is co-host of The Body of Knowledge, a serialized podcast on the Shrugged Collective network that features stories from the intersection of science and fitness. Kenny is also a former comedian and lifelong human performance coach.   Kenny was raised in fitness. The house he grew up in was literally less than 50 yards away from his family’s business: a fitness club. Working out, playing sports and constant movement were not just part of life – it was the only life as a child. Kenny was born to coach and has trained Olympians, NBA players, Premiere League soccer players, A-list celebrities, Crossfit Games athletes, 9 to 5‘ers, as well as created and run several kids fitness programs, coached an adaptive athlete to compete with able bodied competitors, and more.   In this episode, we talk to Kenny about how to add context when coaching, how to run behavioral tests for your clients success, where is science in measuring behavior, grit and resilience in the face of adversity, and how to developing mastery for massive impact. Enjoy! - Doug and Anders ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Show notes at: http://www.shruggedcollective.com/bbs_kane ----------------------------------------------------------------------- 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

Truck family, we're back with another Saturday. Get to hang out with Andy Galpin and Kenny Kane today. This episode is super cool. I've been dying to talk to Kenny Kane about all the things that he has going on at Oak Park, L.A. with their coaching staff and a very different approach to how they are going about their training, their programming, their coaching development. Kenny's been through so much stuff over the last two and a half years that he very rarely talks about in a public format. And now that he has gotten through many of these life-changing experiences,

been able to work through some of the trauma, he's now open to talk about it, and it, like everything else, isn't just happening in his personal life, all of this stuff bleeds through into his business, into his coaching staff, into his athletes, and these aren't just regular athletes, yes has Oak Park LA where a ton of people show up do the crossfits but he's also working with the highest level athletes performers and just he has an unreal group of people that he is working with on a daily basis that he is implementing all of these tactics and principles and just new cutting-edge things that people need to be thinking about.

If you have a CrossFit, if you go to a CrossFit gym, a CrossFit coach, and they're not talking about a lot of the things that Kenny talks about in this podcast, they should reach out to him. They should seek further learnings. As an industry, we need to get much better at getting past the technicalities of coaching and really start to get into some behavioral changes. And not only is it awesome to have Kenny on the practical side, but we have Andy Galpin in this conversation,

and he brings a lot of the science side. Well, he brings a lot of the science side well he brings a lot of the science side to what Kenny is talking about and bringing some real depth to the conversation so I enjoyed this one not only do I get to just hang out with some friends and talk about what's going on in the fitness world what they're doing in their gyms what Galpin's doing in the lab but we really get to see where the future of coaching is going, and it's very, very impressive. I love the stuff that Kenny Kane works on. I love the stuff that Galpin works on. They're two of my go-to resources anytime something pops up, and I need to know just what the

practicality of it is, what the research shows, and having those two guys in your back pocket that you can call anytime, that is living the shrugged life because not many people get to do that and I'm very, very grateful to be friends with them and to be in conversations like this. I hope you guys enjoy and tell your CrossFit coach, start digging more. Get into the behavioral changes of life. It's important stuff, and that's where the conversation's headed. So this is a very important show, and I'm very excited for you to listen to it.

We'll see you guys at the break. Welcome to Barbell Strug. I'm Anders Warner. Hanging out with Doug Larson, Dr. Andy Galpin, Kenny Kane. We've got a little bit of a bro show here. We're going to call – are you on? Can you hear me? Yeah, you're just a little soft.

Yeah, here, I'm putting you back up a little bit. There you go. One thing I don't want is a soft Anders. Speak up. Nobody wants you soft. Hard Anders. Hard, hard Anders. He's so hard all the time.

Yeah. I wish you were a little more hard right now. If you keep talking. This is almost as good as a blood sewage. There we go. Did you see me try, and then it just got demolished? Scoops of awkwardness. I feel like we're back in, like, episode 50.

Somehow we got below the belt before this show started. I try and keep it somewhat pro, and then it just gets demolished. Hard. Hard. Hard. Well, we are at CrossFit Chalk. We should probably let the people know where we're at in Newport here. We're going state of the fitness,

fitness state of the union address with Kitty Kane talking all day. Is that what this is? Where is the world heading to? The world of coaching and all the things fitness. You've been in this world for a jillion years. When I've talked to you about it on the phone, I've been getting you fired up for this big moment here where you can unleash all the things.

I heard you on a podcast lately, or recently. You can say it. The WODcast podcast. I really like those guys. They're pretty cool with me. And you went on a small rant but had to had to leave the show to go do some coaching yep and as soon as i heard it i called you and i said we're going to do the deep dive on all the things that you just talked about from people investing in their health

um the role of coaches yep and um you've spent probably the last couple of years, if not we could call it a lifetime, taking a really deep dive into what the role of a coach is. And the last couple of years has been an interesting path for you. For sure. I would qualify it mostly as accidental fumbling. Accidental fumbling. Accidental fumbling. Who fumbles on purpose?

Well done. This guy. Well, he does wear socks with a giant hole in it. No matter how intelligent this conversation gets, just know Kenny Kane has a big hole in the toe of his sock. Yeah, just a big toe sticking out.

And we're all in contact. He wants to have the shocker. He has razor-sharp toenails like a Velociraptor. He does have matching socks, though, which is interesting. Hold on. That you would have one with a hole, but they do match. Now, hold on. Let's just talk married life now.

So this to me. Everyone here has kids Now, hold on. Let's just talk married life now. So this to me – Everyone here has kids now. Hold on. This to me is me holding on to some manhood and refusing some sort of domestication. Proud of you. This is what this is. You've got to stand your ground, Kenny.

I am standing my ground. I don't have much in this world, but I'm keeping my holy socks off my back. I would say that there's probably a decent amount of our listenership that understands exactly that. Yeah. How many hours of being at the house by yourself before you just, like, revert right back to bachelorhood? Dude, zero. Like, the place is put so together when Char's's home and then she's gone uh with the boys in sweden this summer and it's just like i don't know how the place got that messy

and not much of a disaster and now all my socks and underwear have holes but unfortunately the holes in the underwear are less well positioned let's just say what would you like for christmas this year some new socks. And something that rubs less. Anyway. Boy. Everyone listening to this right now thinks you are fucking smashing it by that comment. I run CrossFit LA, now Oak Park in Los Andres.

Oh, my wife and the boys are just in Sweden for the summer again. Just snowing for summer in the cottage on the lake. It is a pretty cool life. When I think about it, though, and I think about like, okay, cool, my Swedish wife gets to take the boys back to Sweden for two months. It is actually really cool.

It's tough financially, but it's also like, it's an amazing, you know, it's an amazing thing that our family gets that. How many lives did you just ruin because they listened to this and they thought, I want that. I'm going to open up a CrossFit gym now.

I can make it big. I can make it big. Sounds easy. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to teach my wife right now that finances in america a little bit different than finances in scandinavia um you know actually i don't know anything about that what do you mean uh well you know like you get scandinavia just in general do take two months off per year to vacation and

that's like there's nothing american about that and you know, just understanding what that costs has become a conversation point, let's call it, you know, amongst the family recently. Yeah. And with three children, you know, Doug, and Andy, they're going to be able to start to understand. We only have one third of the problems they have. Not even that. Yeah.

And so, you know. We don't have to buy food yet. No. Listen, delivering a baby is far less... It's far more affordable in Sweden than it is here in the States. And then raising a child

in many ways is a lot more affordable in Scandinavia. Are you telling me the countryside in Sweden is cheaper than living in Santa Monica, California? It's weird. Just got that memo, man. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so the, I guess the, the, the point is I'm just going to keep the, the,

the socks with the holes in them and the under underwear with the holes. Yeah. I feel like the underwear with the holes in them is how you got to this position though. It is so So many children. And welcome. Is this the first time that you've recorded since you guys have both had babies on the same day? No.

Yesterday we did some shows. Would you like to talk about our fatherhood? Yeah. I mean, since we're so off track, I don't really know. It was weird getting messages from you both independently and collectively. We're fathers now. The babies have popped out. So congratulations on air publicly.

This is the first bro show we've had where we just get to hang out like professional fitness people and talk to our friends. Yep. Which is pretty cool. Have you been able to work out for the last two weeks since you had a kid? Yeah. Are you still able to train? There was a solid 72 hour period where we probably got an hour of sleep total.

And then after that I did kind of like some light movement. But then by day five I was pretty much right back. So I've trained pretty much every day since then. Did you go for a jog during labor like I did? The nurses were like, no one has ever done that before. They came in the room and they were like, where's your husband?

She was like, he went for a jog. They were like, you're in labor. He went for a jog? She was like, yeah. He goes, no one has ever done that before. Was that kid three? Or was that kid one? That was kid one. Oh man. How long was her labor? That was one or two. I don Oh, man. How long was her labor? That was one or two. I don't remember, actually.

Yeah, yeah. How long was her first labor? Do you remember? I don't remember, but it was 10 hours or 12 hours or whatever it was. I should have because we were there 30. One similarity that I had to you. I was like, I've got to get out of this hospital. Eight minutes in the hospital.

Yeah, I was just chilling. No big deal to me. One similarity that I had with you, Doug, Ash bought, because hospital food sucks, so she bought a bunch of beef jerky. She was like, don't eat that until the baby's done. And I remember you being like, the worst thing you can do is eat beef jerky.

So like the baby, I hadn't eaten all day, and like the baby comes out, and like 10 minutes later I ripped, the baby, I hadn't eaten all day, and, like, the baby comes out, and, like, ten minutes later I ripped open the bag, and she was like, okay, by not before the baby I also meant ten minutes after the baby too. Like, you smell awful. Get away from me. I was like, I followed all the rules. I did it right.

She was like, you smell. Like, you have to get away. The heightened senses plus beef jerky is not a good flavor in the hospital room. I probably ate 11 pounds of trail mix during the occasion because she bought it. And we didn't expect to be there for that long. And I just kept, like, firing those handfuls in. I was like, oh, shit, those two bags are gone. Did you want any?

Costco size. Yeah, just brutal. I don't eat trail mix ever, but I'm like, because it tastes so delicious. Salt and chocolate, you cannot go wrong. So many three-fuel shakes, so many protein bars. Three-fuel. Because Tosh had this huge bag of food ready to go, all that stuff. Yeah.

Thank God her parents brought us food a bunch of times because I was dying. Dig it. Kenny Kane. Yo. Dude, what are you working on these days? Yeah. One of the things that we're working on at the gym is this Craftsman's Workshop. We have coaches come in from around the country.

Yeah, real schmucks apparently. To hang out with us. We've got one who's hanging out with us, Nathan Andrew, who's from CrossFit Davidson in North Carolina. Last month, we had Ryan Smith from Recharge CrossFit just outside of Washington, D.C. And then before that, we had a 20-year vet, Tina Angelotti, from West L.A. So we're getting some really extraordinary coaches and gym owners coming through to hang out with us for 10 days. And what that does is that forces the sort of conversation on leadership within not just CrossFit but sort of fitness.

And how are you leading your people? And so I guess my response to that, Doug, is a broader question of what am I working on? Well, I'd like to see there be less failure in general in the fitness industry. So that's one of the things that really concerns me at this point, both in the scalable markets of just the fitness industry in general, using general market schematics to make sales, and then the small tribal environments like a CrossFit environment are also failing

as well by lack of retention with their client bases. So, it's a very gross look at the market in general of fitness, health, wellness. I think a lot of people look at CrossFit and they go man, CrossFit is fucking killing it. What do you mean that they're failing?

So, the look at CrossFit and they go, man, CrossFit's fucking killing it. Like, what do you mean that they're failing? So the basic assumption and proposition of what the sale is in the first place. So all fitness sales basically look like this. Hey, you want to change something about you? Come here, give me money, and the change happens. And then there's some conversation of responsibility accountability accountability behaviors what you can do to provide support all that kind of stuff but then if we just if we look if we look at it uh historically like we know the global gym is a 90 plus percent failure model after the big january signups same thing in the small um the

small gym environments there's a longer duration of client membership, but there's also a lack of retention over time. So after 14, 18 months, members tend to go. And so the reasons are very different because in the non-high-touch environment of, let's say, let's call it a globo gym, there's no relational quality to kind of keep people around. So you don't have a coach who's on you, the other people to work out with necessarily that are keeping you vibing and interested in, you know, staying with it. Converse and the flip side of that is like, you're so adherent to a program that you unintentionally start making a bunch of bad choices that wind up either burning you out psychologically and or physically.

And so that, when we look at, you know, when somebody goes, oh, CrossFit's growing and this, that, and the other, it's like, it is, but there's also a sustainability question that, to me, still needs to be answered with a little bit more clarity. And I just say that from the perspective, our gym has been open since 2004. So we've, we've, we've run a lot of people into walls unintentionally. We've seen firsthand, we've been part of that metric. We're like, oh, you smash that person. They don't survive. Okay. Now they're gone versus a member that's

been with us 10 or 15 years. And so you look at those like basic distinctions and start to like ask bigger, to me, more significant questions like why is that and how is that happening? So in it, in, in the whole thing is around this mythology to me around what has changed, like come and get, you know, change is going to happen. And to me, change is an accidental aspect of time versus sustainable growth is a lot more thoughtful, a lot more considerate, and a lot more disciplined about all parties. So starting from the consumer or the person coming in, they need to understand that there's two sort of models within the fitness industry. One is a consumption model and one is sort of an investment model. And there's very few people

on both sides of this equation that want to have an investment conversation. So the consumption is, oh, look, I come, I'm going to buy this thing. It's a service. And it's just like, okay, but within that service,

are you just consuming for consuming sake? Or are you like really investing in your specific maybe targeted goals for the short term but also like the the long-term wellness and progression of you as a person so like within that i see there's like these branches and i don't know which direction you guys want to go with that but all of them. Okay. So, you know, and I think if we can sort of, as coaches and gym owners, wrap our head around, okay, look, you've got consumers and you've got those that are wanting to invest in their fitness. And that's a paradigm shift in and of itself. So let's back it up and maybe just start with um kind of some context to where this may

have started for you but you started very early on in the crossfit model and even before that being in the fitness space your family and all that but you became the owner of crossfit la and you're moving it to oak park and you bought it at a time in which crossfit maybe was a little bit at its peak or you were starting to already see some of that paradigm shift and how does that play into maybe this thought process seeing it from the beginning getting to this maybe peak of where CrossFit's at and then seeing your role as a coach and having to have the sustainability yeah well look there's there's such an attractive quality like what what do people understand universally? They understand connection through suffering.

That's the one thing that is so common amongst all humans through all time. Like, we suffer, period. So when we can do that communally and we understand what the value system is around that, that's something that's going to bind groups of people together very easily because the value system is very clear the problem becomes when you start to like start to articulate that a little bit further and then you get you know you and me on one side going okay we value just this piece of it and then doug and andy go okay we value this piece of it and then the branches start to spread out a little bit further so that that will disintegrate small communities. And anybody that's been around for a long enough time is going to know they either started at a gym, went to another gym, or they were part of an expansion to another place.

So that's almost routinized within the functional fitness or the CrossFit world as far as like the market behavior goes yeah so then if you look at like community behavior and tribal like what is what is tribal connection and looking at Dunbar's work and tribes work within 150 people at a clip and every gym owner that I've ever known seems to have an itch at a somewhere between 150 and 175 people is where the scratch and the itch starts to come from. And it's almost inevitable. And perhaps there's a sociological reason for that because a tribe can only really operate on a high value, like a really connected value-based system within that small number. And then after that number, it's really hard to maintain agreement on what the values are. Which is why, as CrossFit was growing, we started seeing trainers branch off and start their own gym.

Totally. They were disgruntled with, oh, okay, the owner doesn't see it this way. I see it that way. Or he's an asshole or she's an asshole. Whatever. Whatever the thing is. Or I'm going to go do my own thing because I view it this way. And there was a point where they saw it exactly the same.

And it's funny how things grow. Yeah, but you had that. So in your case, you were the owner. So you go from CrossFit LA to Oak Park, which is, you know, CrossFit LA has to be about one of the most marketable names ever. Maybe CrossFit New York beats that. I don't know. But to have that then move to, like, there has to be about one of the most marketable names ever. Maybe CrossFit New York beats that. I don't know. But to have that then move to –

that had to be a struggle going on with you, right? Where you – Oh, that was a deep conflict. That was like a five-year, six-year conversation that we had. Andy, actually the former owner of CrossFit Los Angeles and I, talked about this in 2012 because we wanted a rebrand in 2012. And at that point, like i was making all my money with with uh personal training basically and i was coaching the crossfit la teams we went to the

games in 211 and then had a decent uh regional campaign in 212 and then after that we decided we don't want to go competitive crossfit we want to focus on sort of everyday people um but in 212 we were talking about like this things like that was the year that things started to proliferate proliferate in southern california and simultaneously we were experiencing um you know just a just a the the seeming chaos that was the market of crossfit like suddenly it was chaotic it was it was unifying to that point. And then it was conflictual at that point. And it was almost like there was a sundial.

Like sun was up and then sun went down. And then it felt like, okay, I got to, you know, I got to go from like connecting with other coaches and gym owners to like hoarding my shit because I feel like it's going to get taken. And it was the energetic shift within the market space. Anders was around for that and knows what I'm talking about experientially. And some people came to the market. The majority of the market came after 212.

So once 213, 214, and the overall popularity starts to increase, like there's already old-timers who are at that point bowing out because they're not quote killing it as a crossfit gym sending their kids and families on two-month vacations to scandinavia right there's there there's we're starting to see our first gym closures and it was kind of a quiet thing to 1300 gyms closed nationally then then that starts to expand then there's hundreds of gyms closing and then thousands more opening. But the ones closing are

losing their tribal connection. There's marketing reasons, there's business reasons, there's a bunch of other things that substantiate that. Are the number of affiliates still growing? Yeah. I think internationally they're smashing.

Yeah, it has to. Domestically, I wonder, though. Still growing? When I interviewed Russell Berger, he said that domestically it was still growing, but not nearly at double like it was in 2012. 2010 to 2012 was just unbelievable. You can't keep doing that. So Europe, Russia, and China are going to put a lot of time and effort into

developing it out there. They're taking the entire journal and translating it into 50, 60 different languages right now. It's a big international push. Gotcha. Sorry. Yeah, so

as the teen years of CrossFit, like 2013-14 started to transition this stuff, I started looking at it going, I don't know. And to address your question, Andy, like why do we change? Why do we give up? If that's what you're asking. Yeah, well, basically, I mean, that's a big, big move.

And it's really a fundamental philosophical change on your end, right? It's a very conscious decision. Yeah, it's very conscious. I think part of it was we couldn't control what the perception of CrossFit was. So it's that recognition of, okay, this is, which is that thing in life, you know, control what you can. Well, can we control that? Not at all. Like I have no idea how people are going to interpret what CrossFit is. So I can't, I can't control that yet. We have a very loyal population yet. We have a group of people that want to continue paying us for what it is we offer.

Um, and then the, the thing that spoke to me on a lot of levels was just transitioning to, to the name Oak Park, because that was our family fitness business name. So there's a deep personal thing there. And then also the deep history that CrossFit Los Angeles had historically, the tree, oak tree symbolizes, you know, deep roots, big branches, lots of acorns. So like we, you know, lots of acorns have come from CrossFit Los Angeles through the decade and a half that we've been open. And I, you mean literally people who? No, people that have come through and interned with us or coached with us

or gone on to open their own gyms or be editors of fitness magazines or bloggers or whatever it may be. I mean, there's a giant tree of people that have come to our gym and gone on to do extraordinary things. And, you know, so there's some sort of legacy about that that I wanted to emblematically honor through the idea of a tree. And simultaneously honor my personal roots as, you know, coming from, you know, Oak Park, the fitness business. And then when that place burnt down in the fires in uh in the fall of 2017 i was like okay look now this is deeply symbolic and you know what does a tree

represent his what does an oak tree represent symbolically it's a place where people get there were small tribes gather to get strong so they can go out in the world and and and fight well like that's that's like a that's a human history meeting place for for people so to me you know it was a if we're only needing a couple of hundred people to make it successful we don't need you know big branding branding. We need high touch, low volume, actually, retention-based business. And that's a different sort of orientation than most business models would advocate. And it also kind of flips like a lot of marketing on its head. You know, it's like the anti-marketing marketing in a way. Like, you know, give away the thing that topically seems like it's the most valuable thing and to me i'm like now we gotta we gotta let that go because if we're solely attached to that and that is the value then that's

that's stuff that we can't control yep being crossfit like if that if people are coming in for the name crossfit yeah yeah then then that's the value there. Well, that's something as well because I went through this process and the rebranding, and we were joking about it at breakfast of how I just decided one day I was just going to shove it down people's throats and tell them that what they were doing was wrong for the past three years. What they've been paying us for was wrong. Right. And now we're San Diego Athletics. But I think that that, like –

Such a good choice on your part. Genius, right? Yeah. So weird. you took a couple years to think about it and I was just like you know what but we're gonna we're gonna change now um but what what kind of happened with the the CrossFit thing because I remember that day where and I actually like called you kind of in the middle of it and I was like man we've really lost control of the message here like I don't even know what the message is, where it was very fucking clear back in the day what it was.

It was very intense. It was very in your face. And then all the people started showing up, and it wasn't even allowed to be intense anymore, like to do right by people. And then you really start to lose control of that message. So someone's showing up, and they could be showing up for CrossFit Games training, and they're 23 years old and ready to

grind four hours a day and now 45 year old guy that sits at his desk all day is showing up and now we have to create programs and we have to create messaging that somehow gets both of those people to find a better version of themselves right so what is kind of the thought process? And I guess like, man, rebranding is hard. So what do you build that Oak Park community and message around versus the low-hanging fruit, which now is the word CrossFit? Yeah, I would respond to that. And it's still raw, to be totally candid with you on how we're doing this, because it has been anything but a flawless, perfect process, despite taking a half a decade to try to figure out how we're going to approach it. Yeah, my three-month process was different.

Like, one of the biggest things that I'm really compelled by right now is this idea of a person's ability to hold paradox which is a big theme in general but one of the things that that just fried me on the overall expression of what crossfit seemed to be for a while was a unidimensional, like, okay, this is intensity only. And so the mindset of intensity only is, is there's like a sort of a, to me, there's like a limitation there. Um, and I, I, I can guarantee that some of our listenership is going to mishear this. And that certainly is not my intent. But when I talk about holding paradox, it's like, look, can one day you be intense and the other day let's just call it like do hard work capacity

stuff intensely and then the other day do some skill development stuff so people can think of that like on the first tier which is physical right you can't like as you're learning a new skill like there's this you're you're limited by intensity that you can apply it because you simply don't have the skill to apply but as you sort of deepen the layers of this conversation that gets a little bit more metaphorical and experiential so the thing that was that i saw is that like that and this is what i was talking about you cannot maintain a membership for the most part that is only going to come in and crush it hard physically all the time with an unwillingness to do the other side of the work that's necessary to develop,

not just physically, but mentally and emotionally. So if you look at that, if you were to make a chart or a slide about that, it would be a wave. On the top end, you would have like sort of peak performance. On the low end, you would have rest and recovery. a that's a basic way to sort of describe and understand things and what's your ability to undulate within the bookends of that and you got a population the first wave and the intense wave of the market was like attracted to the top end of that without a respectful recognition of hey some rest is actually required for this thing. And I didn't see that deployed. I didn't see that executed for the most part.

Because intensity can just be like, how hard are you focusing on something or the depth of concentration that you're bringing in presence to a subject versus, am I sweating my ass off and laying on the ground? So the value system is based on the misperception that it's a work capacity issue. And so suddenly you have gyms programming. In that environment, you have gyms intentionally programming less sophisticated movements because there's no neurological development of people. So then you're presupposing that they're not capable of developing so that's that

that's a terrible that's a terrible presupposition so what do you do as a gym owner when you have to you have to you know what your job is to take care of people and make them better but you're also in charge of feeding them the thing that they need and you there's a fine line between selling yourself out and becoming a hack and then living by your core values of this is the right thing to do. Yeah, I would say that one of the things that I've had to really learn personally,

like I've been very righteous through this process and sometimes that hasn't served me very well because it's blown up in my face a handful of times. But I would also say like in the end, like if I can find a way to communicate to a person, hey, what we're interested in is developing you physically. Yes. Are you going to be more fit? Are you going to be more well? Do you have a diverse skill set

physically yes or no like and do you have the willingness to do the work to continually push those bookends out further like that that broad physical capability i'm not talking about elite capability i'm just talking about are you are you willing to grow your skill sets and work capacity and so there's a base there's a base conversation that needs to happen at the beginning to establish, hey, that's significant. And then within that, can you vary your mindset day to day to accommodate that growth? Yeah, this is on a very small level. Intensity and volume, and in the case of CrossFit, reduction of time are not the only ways to

progress, right? That's an extremely minimal view of what progression can be, right? volume and in the case of CrossFit, reduction of time are not the only ways to progress. Right? That's an extremely minimal view of what progression can be, right? What you're doing is saying that is fine for physical progression, but now we need to add other aspects of physical progression like different movement skills, et cetera. But then what you're actually doing, and we got into this a little bit on the last, I think one of the last episodes of our last season of the Body knowledge where now you're actually doing some personal development things um i don't know how you even want to phrase it sure in addition to that so can you talk a little bit about that because i think that's very interesting so so one of the approaches that we're taking right now is

that we do we have a mental skills coach that we brought on onto the team and he does a lot of disc profiles for um so for some of our students and some of my clients specifically. But within that, we basically starting with me, like my characteristics, strengths, weaknesses. These are like personality profiles.

So disk profile, like there's Myers-Briggs, there's disk, there's another one out that's great called Market Force. And what we're doing is we're using those tools to help us program to develop ourselves personally. We're using those tools to help develop our coaching team professionally. We're using those tools to help our clients understand, okay, if I test a certain way, I'm most likely to approach a workout with this sort of, like if somebody tests a high D, they're most likely going to attack a workout. So it's three rounds per time of, let's say it's a thousand meter row, a hundred double unders and a 400

meter kettlebell swing. They'll crush that first thousand meter row because it's an aspect of their personality to do so versus somebody who will test a little bit more high snc they would go a little bit more methodically at the beginning let's just say so then you so then you i'm smashing that so then but then you flip it but then you flip it so then if we're trying to develop our p our people with this undulating capacity psycho emotionally then we'd say to you, okay, Anders, so we know that you're going to try to row a 129 and try to maintain that pace for the first 1K. That's going to smoke you, so we're going to drop that down to 145, and I don't want to see you go a clip before or faster than 145.

That would be the working example for you. Which would be a challenge for him, not physically, but the hard part about him would be to stop himself, right? Or whatever it is. Totally. So that's the personal development now. A huge growth opportunity for the person to go, okay, how do I take this and apply it to,

especially with some of our business guys that we're using this with, like how do they use that in the workplace? So now we're seeing transfers where we've got three CEOs that we've been using this with? How do they use that in the workplace? So now we're seeing transfers where we've got three CEOs that we've been using this with specifically so that they can use it real-time for their decision-making at work. And so their growth and their feedback from the first three or four months that we've done it has been extraordinary because they're making better decisions day-to-day within their businesses because of the physical practice that they've had. And in the end, doesn't that resonate with most people who are doing this thing? There should be some level of transference from your physical practice to the outside world.

And again, that was the thing that was killing me in this sort of CrossFit world is it's like I've got to smash this all the time versus like I need to have the capacity to sort of undulate the intensities or some sort of ability to like modify where my intensity is going. Yeah. What is the responsibility of the athlete and what is the responsibility of the coach in this conversation? So change won't happen if the motivation of the athlete is not expressed through behaviors, and the coach doesn't relate to those behaviors in a real way.

So the coach's job is to listen to the athlete and go, hey, athlete, you're saying that you want X, Y, and Z. And then a really good coach can identify if that's truthful or not. Yeah. So if you're recognizing some truth, you're like, as a coach, you can go, cool, okay, you're going to need to behave in this way, X, Y, and Z. And you've come to me professionally because I'm going to support these behaviors. And then the systems of support would be, let's just call it in our examples, would

probably be class times or personal training sessions or some sort of like programming and accessory work of some kind. So that would be the systemic piece. But the role of the coach in all of this with the role of the athlete coming to you or the client coming to you is to have a truthful conversation about the depth of what it is that they're that they're really wanting and the change that they're seeking if you can get them to understand hey change is one thing that's going to happen arbitrarily one way or another but if we can put this into like a growth perspective it's going to be a lot easier for us to guide that the we're going to take a quick break when When we get back, I want to know what the coaching development side at Oak Park looks like.

Cool. Let's do it. Check your email. You like how I come out of the break and I just yell at you real quick? I am putting together 30 days of free coaching. You're going to get an email every single day for 30 days with the best advice that I can come across the entire Shrugged website I have literally scoured through thousands of podcasts that have happened over the last six years hundreds of articles and my own personal stories and knowledge

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Welcome back to Marble Shrug. Bro Show. The Bro Show. Dude, we touched on a lot of really large ideas in the first piece of this. So we're going to go back a little bit. A couple things that you brought up, this idea of suffering, which not just as a unifying theme for humans,

but a little bit of your story kind of plays into this general arching idea of coaching and the role of coaching that you are injecting into Oak Park. Do you want to break into a little of how you came to this realization and this next step, this next phase of the gym and what wellness or fitness means? Sure. Look, I mean, Andy and I talked about it a little bit on the Body of Knowledge, but, like, it continues to. Thebodyofknowledge.com.

Bodyofknowledge.com. Same as Puck. No shame at all. Ask my wife. It is impossible to embarrass me. Not going to happen. Go check it out, folks. All you want no

what Anders is referring to is the last couple of years that I've had personally if that's if I'm understanding the question correctly and how that's manifested in the coaching what's going on at Oak Park is not just some random thing that happened in your life

that you're like oh we need to start doing a lot more personality development here. That needs to be a piece of fitness. Like, there's a progression of your life. That'll sell on Facebook. Before you become a, we're going to do the Myers-Briggs before we start doing this. I know your knee hurts and you need to lose fat and you need to get stronger, but let's talk about your Myers-Briggs. Yeah, you're an NTJ whatever.

Like, ESTP. So less thrusters. You're an ESTP. What? I have an STD? Definitely an STD. God, I love being 12 again. This is great.

So then let's go back. I think really if we look at August of 2015, like my son Thor was born on the 8th, and then my mom passed away unexpectedly on the 10th. And so that sent into, I guess, my personal history like a series of very painful events. And it was basically 13 people dying over a two-year period um the last of which was a murder um of a lady named justine rosniak who i lived with in minnesota um her and her fiance were um my housemates when i went to take care of my daughter uh cameron in um in minnesota in Minnesota. So who did I lose during that time?

I lost three coaches, both my parents, Justine, and then a bunch of friends. And then to kind of put the final stamp on that, my hometown of Santa Rosa burnt down in the fires of Northern California. And so at that same time, including your family gym, all your property and every family heirloom that we had put aside after my parents' death, that we were going to save and give to my kids that I was going to bring down to Southern California. Um, it, it just all went away. And, um, I mean, everything that you could imagine in that time,

in addition to having two children, which is just going to be, you know, sleep deprivation unto itself. And so if, if you're a parent listening, you know, like,

look, haven't probably a lot of parents not listening because they're parenting and doing parenting things. Time does seem to evaporate this is a family-friendly show it is a family-friendly show especially with the opening um so um and the holes my underpants continue to make babies but um look you know during that time like it was just sleep deprivation was going to happen. Then trauma would happen, like legitimate trauma happened. And, you know, my ability to capably deal with these things started to diminish.

I started to recognize triggers over things that I had never had. I started to notice anger over things that never made me angry. I noticed that my response time was getting very short before my fuse got hot on a lot of things. Very basic things, everyday things. And that means personally, that means professionally, and in all aspects of life. So I wasn't exempt in any particular area. I could maintain myself professionally and maintained great relationships with all my clients and the business kept going. And we,

you know, we, the business has made, you know, nice moves forward since, since I bought the place a few years ago. But, um,

the one thing that I recognized in all of this is that look, man, nature doesn't care. Like pain is going to happen. And no matter how much ambition or no matter like what kind of position I put myself in to be excellent, to be great, to forge my way through all the hardship, gnarly shit happens. And it knocks you the fuck down. Yeah.

And I got knocked the hell out time and time again. And by necessity, I had to get up and kind of keep moving. Because during this time, the other big thing that was at me was the financial pressure. My wife basically wasn't allowed to work. In 2015, by construct of the u.s government she's a swedish immigrant and so there was complications there and then with the both the babies coming after a couple consecutive years there was also like the natural you know you got provider things yeah provider things and so suddenly i, you know, living a life where, you know, I could get by on

what I was, uh, you know, making seven, eight years ago. Well to then, okay, now I've got three kids, uh, a business and transition and a string of emergencies that are costing me money, um, directly and indirectly, uh, especially with our family business. Like we had to keep it open and like we were paying taxes on that property taxes and a bunch of like, it was very complicated. So, you know, I was on the hook for, um, you know, five times the amount that I was just three years prior to that. Um, and so that financial pressure came concurrent with all this other stuff that, you know, that you would, as a human, just like to be able to take a moment and just go, okay, I'm going to, I'm going to, I'm going to sit with this. I'm going to be with this. I'm going to go

through this. And it got to the point where I was just starting to simply compartmentalize it. Our listeners will remember when Chris Moore died. That was, you know, he was, I think, like, if I were to put it on the numerics, I think he was like, you know, death seven or whatever. And it's just sort of like, and at that point, somewhere in there is where I started going numb to people dying.

And that's when I started to kind of go, and just after Chrisris the next person that passed i was just sort of like i'm not i'm i'm actually not feeling it and i get these calls so-and-so died it's like and there was a numbness i'm like fuck i'm not i'm a passionate caring loving person through like through through my years and this is very foreign to me to not feel pain. It's just like, oh, this is an event and I'm putting it over here.

And in that, with that awareness and as I come out of that, I'm like, fuck, man, I got to go back and... I can't outrun this. I can't out-energy this. I can't out-think this. I can't outrun this yeah I can't out energy this I can't out think this I can't out any of the positive self-talk or any of that stuff it's like it it's irrelevant you as a as a being you need to process this shit yeah period and you know i i just got in a habit of being able to like

move through stuff and so that although that was a great habit to be successful in a variety of areas of my life it wasn't the thing that helps me deal with it and confront it head on yeah well i think part of why we all kind of get into this fitness space too is like if you follow me on my journey you can get to this fit place where you're going to be like bulletproof or whatever and nature finds its way to find this weakness and expose all the pieces that you probably never thought about in this felt fitness realm and there's a piece of the pieces that you probably never thought about in this fitness realm. And there's a piece of the ego that says, I'm the owner, follow my lead. And you're going to be a better person by following this lead.

Life happens. Right. 13 deaths later, the family farm, all of these things. And now you have to go back and stand in front of these people and act like the leader, yet you're broken on the inside. So where do you start to build the Kenny Kane back up, and how does that message change? Like what was fitness before, and then you go through these two years,

and now the messaging is Oak Park, which is a completely different message, I assume, than three years ago. Yeah, I think the biggest shift is this idealized mythology of I'm the leader and, you know, trying to do things out of like it's a false concept of perfectionism versus something that's a little bit different. It's like, you know, it's more about how you process the difficulties. And then the other thing is owning the pain that is rather than trying to dismiss that and compartmentalize that and put that into a section that you can't.

How do I say like, if you go through some hard stuff and then you, you think that you got to get back to quote being yourself, like this is the, these things are happening to you. You're changed irrevocably from them. So your choice is to like, what, like not own that and go back to whatever lane you used to be in. If you try to do that, which I did, it feels false. It doesn't have integrity. It feels disingenuous. It doesn't feel connected. But if I go into the other lane going, yeah, I used to be a positive motherfucker who had a lot of joy generally about stuff, but I am walking through life with some serious lashes on my back

right now. And when my shirt's off those lashes are real and the pain from that is legit and i'm and i'm simply trying to like find how that goes into how i interface with things as they happen yeah and so that's like you know when you when you're trying to run a business it makes it very hard especially in fitness where it's like hey come and join we're going to do the thing and you're going to get a business, it makes it very hard, especially in fitness where it's like, hey, come and join me. We're going to do the thing and you're going to get fit. Give me your money. Yeah. And it's like it's based on like energy and pep and like we do thrusters and you get jacked and lean and you're ready for summer.

Yeah. And it's like, oh, fucking what bullshit, you know? And for me, the journey of what we're going through or park has to be like, look, we are going to go through this stuff. So when you do, how much psycho-emotional capacity do you when that inevitable punch from life is going to happen? Or punches in my situation, like there were several in a row. But I'm not exempt. That's just nature doing its thing. Death is going to happen.

And so a natural fire is going to happen. A natural disaster. These things are going to happen. So there has to be some sort of durability within that. And so it was this weird andrew's going through this like i i don't know how to describe it like on one hand i had this like amazing tenacity that i that i do look back at myself fondly and kind of go every day i woke up and i feel like i was up against a giant that had a bat and had a laser gun from the future and had like you know like

one billion chinese troops that were just taking me out and i was a guy in a ditch with a water pistol you know and and somehow i was able to like get up off of my knee and try to shoot water back at least like i had that fight day in and day out and what i realized recently when i was reading jordan peterson's work, he's done so much work on purpose. And he just goes, man, this idea of happiness is just like we've got to really reconsider that and start to think about this idea of purpose. Because when you have purpose, you will go through just about anything. If it's about happiness, you will let go of it really quick.

I think that's's like one of the that's like the theme of man's search for meaning is it frankl frank victor frankl yeah um in the concentration camp and the consequence exactly you can endure anyhow when there's a why or something absolutely those lines martin seligman he he one of was one of like the leading ed positive psychologists in his book which which is called Flourish. He says basically that happiness, and I don't think he likes that term so much, but we'll use it for this conversation, really comes down to three things. It's positive emotions, meaning, and quality relationships. It's really a function of those three things,

which makes people feel good about their lives. So even if your positive emotions are kind of low, if you have high meaning and quality relationships, you're not like laughing your ass off all day long and smiling all day long you can still feel like you had a great life at the end of your life right you had a fulfilling life more so than a happy life yeah and interestingly that's like what we're trying to build the business model off of is human connection like and that's that's why we're anchoring our business decisions on high touch, low volume. Because in that environment, you have more of an opportunity to actually connect with people. If there's too many people, making that depth of connection is really, really difficult.

And so that's interesting. I haven't read that book yet yet i'd like to i'd like to read that but most people i know as they get older tend to want to have higher quality relationships with fewer people yeah but people that are close to them they want to get closer yeah and they don't just want to have you know a thousand acquaintances to look cool anymore they want to have those deep connections with the people that actually matter yeah so i think the high touch thing i think will well and that's and that and so like now we start to look at okay evolutionary biology and what's happening and how do we get here and how are we going to survive and the one thing that seems to be missing to me in this whole fitness

conversation is this human connection piece and if we look at the obvious success of CrossFit, the one thing that has happened is we, again, back to the beginnings of this conversation, there's this concept of suffering, right? You can kind of come together. And that is, and if there's a purpose to the suffering, then it makes a little bit more sense. If we give that some depth by our connectivity and the overall purpose of it, then we can kind of deepen that even further. And that's an interesting sort of, you know, I don't think that that can be done in super voluminous experiences.

It just can't. You're just not going to feel. You're going to feel more anonymous. What the hell happens when someone walks in your gym? I mean, in all honesty, like – Well, we start with an FMS and then we move to a body fat test. Yeah, like there has to be some sort of process because you walk in and there's barbells and pull-up rigs. So then there's the simplicity of that, right?

Yeah, there's the assumption that I'm walking into a gym. Great question. Am I really coming to buy personal development or do I just want to fucking sweat? Oh, man. So that is, what a great question, Anders. We are really, really trying to address that head on in our coaches' development

because we're doing such complex things with our coaches' development. Meaning, like, we're doing all this, like, you know, psychoanalytical work. We're doing the disc stuff. We're doing the market for stuff. All the coaches are going through that. So when somebody walks in.

Just to even go back a little bit, the responsibility of an athlete, do you let them know that when they walk in the door? So here's where we failed on the transition. If going from Crossfit la to oak park the value proposition used to be forging elite fitness that's what we used to do for i don't know 12 13 years that was the that was the thing and now it's more about sustainable growth and that growth is intended to be able to support the bigger things in life with quality. And when you say sustainable growth, it's not purely about your business.

It's about the people in the business and the growth of that person, right? So you're talking from the client perspective. So we're talking about the growth of the student or the athlete. Gotcha, yes. And so we have to look at that from a depth of perspective. So what that means is when they come in, like one of the first things, I'll try to interface with some of the new people as they come in and say, hey, I'm going to try to simplify this very complex thing.

But in the end, what we're interested in, in our environment, as we bring new people in, is people capable of holding paradox so that means that one day you need to show up and be able to slay dragons the next day you need to plant flowers because that's the human experience do you have the capability of that metaphorically now we can start to like investigate that physically and what and what that might mean now at the beginning of the show we were talking about like you know skill development versus work capacity stuff so that's a that's a that's a general dissection of that conversation but then it goes more broad and we have a lot of ways that we can kind of individualize the conversation for somebody once they come in

some people you can direct it towards like a raw metric of fitness we can do like the baseline test which we wrote 15 years ago which is really straightforward what's a measure of your fitness thousand meter row uh 40 squats uh 30 sit-ups 20 push-ups 10 pull-ups can you do that if so how long does it take you that's really straightforward for a lot of people who would come in and go okay i'm a i'm a you're talking complex, paradox, and suffering, and pain. What's all this stuff? You know, metaphor, man. Well, I don't know.

Let's just fucking do that. Okay, you do that. Then we can. CrossFit LA Benchmark, probably the most done workout ever. Yeah, I would say you might not be wrong about that, actually. So it also uses a baseline for thousands of gyms yeah too bad you guys didn't coin that i wish we had yeah dollar a piece i owe you a couple a couple thousand bucks really good trademark um so then so then you know the the next phase would be okay somebody

else might come in and go look i'm looking for like a better relationship with myself and here's the deal if people are coming in just for the sweat portion of it we live in southern california like right it is it's the mecca of fitness period like you can like there are so many great spots to get your sweat on and not think about this and not have the responsibility or the burden of all this other stuff and and have an extraordinary experience doing so what we're after is just a couple of hundred people that want to have a deeper conversation yeah we want people who go oh okay this is a little bit more of a journey this is my physical practice is an expression of myself in the world what what is what is that all about i want the people who are coming in and it's not many we again we don't need many it's just it's

it's a small just a handful of people who want to go yeah yeah, you know what? I'm going to pay you to help guide me through this process. And it's not just about the workout. Because in the end, it's not. Yeah. Like the greatest thing, coaches always go. And coming back to what I thought the value of coaching was, when I was at my mom's funeral, there was 1,000 people. And I'm like, there was coaches, there was international coaches that came from all over the

world from different sports to speak at our funeral with a professional soccer coach a professional basketball coach like people like in addition to all the swimming stuff like there's people from all over and i'm like my mom hit eight generations of people your Your experience, though, if I'm a 25-year-old fitness coach, I've literally had, like, I mean, I wake up and I train and I eat and I try and chase chicks on the weekend and I want to go train at the best gym in the world

and I go to Oak Park, but I've never really, like, overcome adversity. And I've never really, like, been faced with these really difficult stories. And all I really know is I want to work for Kenny Kane and I want to learn about these things. Is it mandatory that we have to go through this suffering? Do we have to go through it before we can coach it?

Can I... I personally believe that suffering happens on a scale of 1 to 10. And we all have had a 10. Your 10 is just different than my 10. And we've all had ones where it's just I'm hanging out with my friends talking on a microphone and life is fucking good. Finding and recognizing where your 10 is and overcoming that becomes your story. And that is like your hero's journey to being able to communicate with people and bring out the best in them.

How are you able to bring that out in your coaches and therefore create communicators that can help clients bring that out in themselves? Because that really is like the biggest paradigm of the whole thing is, well, to me is like getting people to recognize that their life is special that the suffering makes them the hero of their own story but they need a coach or they have to want to go on that journey themselves and if somebody walks into your gym and they're 25 years old like i would have never been able to have had this conversation with you right without recognizing my own suffering as when i was a 10 but it was never even close to the the story you went through so how do you take a coach and develop develop this this thing i call it falling off a

bike you gotta fall off a bike a few times in life to understand what falling off a bike feels like. And, yeah, there are degrees of suffering. But, you know, the amount of – the average of our coaching years on the team is 11 years per coach. So it's a little bit above – it's probably above average. You know, and with that, the downside is that you're missing youthful coaches. And probably youthful clients. And youthful clients. No, totally.

Totally. That is a thing for us. Having said that, I've also noticed in some of our younger coaches, you know, and where they make – there's an authenticity gap. If you try to speak contextually about, all right, guys, today we're going to dive deeper into ourselves. We're going to seek some significant discomfort. And the way that we're going to do that is we're going to hit the first part of the run as hard as you can.

And then you're going to come in and you have X, Y, and Z after. And when you come in, that's going to feel different than if you were to control the run now you can get an older coach or somebody who's fallen off a bike to say that those same words and have it land with impact and efficacy for the students versus somebody younger who's saying that and it's just like yeah save me the rah-rah kid it's it's cool you look good and you have lots of shiny muscles like and sometimes that's okay too to be the physical example the youthful physical example it's a different it's a different thing um and you know i'm not trying to be ageist in the answer but i am saying that there is that there's a reason why it takes a long time to be a great coach. And it's a craft that's never finished. And it's a craft that requires constant attention,

constant work, and constant replanting of the experiences that you've had in life. Anybody's greatest coach has usually been through something and they're able to speak about that, you've had in life the greatest anybody's greatest coach has usually been through something and they're able to speak about that something deeper about whatever it is your whether it's your sport your fitness or whatever there's something in your coach that has a depth and authenticity where you'll you'll do anything for them and there's that connection there that's so real but that doesn't always come like as as readily i think from youth so the the two ways you really

progress and the owning a gym if you will is you can scale up open another gym you can try to get more members in things like that you've very consciously and explained now over the last whatever hour you went the opposite direction which is you'd rather communicate with less people and do it at a higher context and what you're calling high touch, right? So is this the idea behind the Craftsman Workshop? And what is that? Why are you doing that? Yeah. Well, see, I see a lot of coach development programs.

And, you know, as much as like the content out there for coaches development these days is extraordinary. I mean, there are, I mean. Isn't that crazy to think about like we learned everything and now with kids? I'm just like, fuck, man. They're so awesome. I feel happy being the old man to get to say that. I'm like, yeah, it's awesome. There's so many great resources for coaches' development.

But I think in the end, if we're looking at it from from a craftsman's perspective and not everybody wants to do that. So like our workshop is not for people who are in high volume businesses without a whole lot of interaction. Our workshop is for people who have like a dedicated crew and they want the connectivity to be as deep as they can possibly make it. I've said this before, I think on our show at length, but I'll give you the quick version. With the way that AI and everything else is going, this is without question what I think to be the highest value thing that you can do to make yourself stand out as a coach in the next generation

is to have this physical human connection skill. I agree. This is what's going to make you a out as a coach in the next generation is to have this physical human connection skill. I agree. This is what's going to make you a millionaire or whatever, a thousandaire relative to the other things, because everyone's going to be able to online coach. Everyone's going to be able to make amazing video content cheaper and cheaper. This is the piece where go the opposite direction to really develop that.

Like, wow, I just love to be around that girl or that guy or whatever it is. That's what's going to make you like, that's the jam's the guy i i i think so too and again like i prefer the process like i don't enjoy the process i enjoy like a one-on-one like nathan is here like there's just there's time to kind of like work through things and develop a relationship and start to understand like what their problems are at their gym and what ours are. The other thing is that you're not selling perfection. Like coaching is – like when in the history of coaching –

like we can talk limited about a gym. When was running a gym perfect, let alone running a program of any kind? And when is coaching perfect? Like has anybody had a perfect experience? I mean, it's a laughable question to me. So with this workshop, people pay $35. They get to come in and spend three weeks with Kenny. Three weeks with Kenny.

You get to sleep in his bed. Yep. With Char and the boys. You make all their meals for them, and then you give them all your programming and everything. And free coconut water. Yeah, excellent. Free holy socks for everybody.

The problem is the high touch is very touchy. Really touchy. Really. Kenny would do this for free, but he wants to eat tacos that week. And if you can't afford the $35, he will pay you $85 because he wants someone in that band with his wife.

Oh, wow. Wow. There we go. That's so good. She won't listen. It's fine. She won't. She won't.

Hopefully none of our wives listen to that. Yeah, it's just better. Yeah, it's just better. Because then I'd land in a group text and we'd be in real trouble. Yeah, totally. Totally. That was totally Doug who said that, by the way. Doug Larson, father of three.

Yeah, man, I agree. Look, if we look at what is value, value, like people will pay others for either their experience or their knowledge. And if we can combine those things, you know, and now because there's so much information like i was i was having this conversation with somebody yesterday at the art of breath seminar that we held at oak park like trainers are answering questions in 2018 that doctors were answering in 2008 like it's just a different because the access to that information is legitimately there. And it's not that a trainer is as smart or as well educated as a doctor. It's just the understanding.

It's possible for somebody to understand really complex things if they do their time. And in this type of situation, like you can keep somebody really, really healthy. And health does seem to be one of the biggest industries on the planet and one of the greatest concerns of our planet at our time. So the need for this is, I don't know if it's ever been more profound or explicit. It's profound how much ill health there is on all levels and simultaneously there seems to be a population of people who are willing to help fight this now how we market how that exists in the marketplace is the thing that's going to be compelling i'm gambling on small tribes small groups of coaches and trainers being able to help this larger health issue.

Because there's a connectivity piece that we all fundamentally, that most fundamentally need. What you are offering, though, you can actually tell the real numbers here, whatever it is, but they come in for, what do they get, two weeks or they get two weeks coming coming for yeah yeah ten days to two weeks and it's a hangout yeah kind of all day at the end they have to actually coach one of your classes right no several so what they do is they come in they the first four or five days they're doing their disc profiles they're doing the programmatic piece so we have a programming tool that allows any coach to program from any sort of perspective that you want.

It's an organizing tool, effectively. Then we have an hour of context coaching. So we've got four hours of programming, one hour of context stuff. We've got two hours of disprofiling and work with our mindset coach. On top of that, then they shadow for, know you know 10-15 hours the first half of the um the workshop and then the second half they start coaching several classes per day is this part of your shadow right are you shattering right now yeah oh what a bad day you picked what's that yes these these these technically would be ours and so it's funny because nate

nate's nate's wondering okay. So I got him up. I'm like, hey, man, we're going to do Shrug this morning. He's like, okay. And so, you know, these are some of the cool things, too. He's like, oh, whoa, that's cool. It's Barbell Shrug, guys. Really, he was hoping to hang out at Venice Beach all day. And I was like, fuck, I've got to go stand and listen to these guys talk.

So now I came to California, bro. Summertime in California. Let's go hang out in a gym and listen to poor dudes talk. There's chicks and thongs literally like three miles that way. Oh, God. Endless. I think the biggest piece of the workshop is that the coach has to give critical feedback of me and the rest of the team. What do we do well?

What do we do not so well, given with what we're trying to do? So that allows the participant to really analyze and get in, study, try to understand what it is we're doing and break down what we're doing and then take that back to whatever environment they're going back to with a week and a half, two weeks, versus, like, a weekend for the same price, but with, like, only the hits being played. Like, yeah, you've got to come in and see the warts of the thing. Like, it's so far from perfect, yet you need to be able to see that

so then you can identify, oh, these are their problem lanes. Like, I know how to identify that when I go back to my situation, and I'm going to critique Kenny and his go back to my situation and I'm going to critique Kenny and his team based on that. And here are areas that they can improve. And that process of critique alone and that feedback helps everybody. Like if you're thinking critically in the same language of the parties that you're trying to help,

that that is a very healthy way to improve on both ends. And so, and again, that's a craftsman's practice what do craftspeople do well they don't i don't i don't i don't view craftspeople it's like well see here's my seminar and i'm a craftsman and you pay me and there's 40 of you at a time yeah you may get to email me once a week at this rate like okay that's our way to do it and our way is like look one at a time like this is not and if there's if there's like thousands of people like doing this in different environments go to and work with go

go with and work with people that you look up to and develop a craftsman's work relationship with them we were talking to bmack yesterday and just kind of there's like this like general vibe in the fitness world that like behavioral health is kind of turning into the next big thing and you're implementing all these things and you're in the lab where in the world do these things start to intersect with like behavioral health and maybe you walking into a gym and talking about meditation versus fran times and you being in the lab and studying i know you're doing muscle biopsy and stuff but what is it how do we connect the two pieces if we can kind of mutually agree that behavioral health is like a big piece of the future is it possible to like where where in the middle do these two sort of intersect?

Are you asking that of Andy? Kind of. Well, I would actually say this is not the tipping point yet, but the momentum, the wave is building clearly. If you pay attention to, for example, even Twitter, it is a hotbed for this exact thing with the vast majority of scientists a huge portion of scientists that i'd say classically like me where it's like i just do muscle in that example this is becoming so prominent with that and it's shocking because some of these people that are that i'm referring to are people even two or three years ago i've been like no way would this dude do a

study that combines muscle and mindset or muscle and mindfulness, things like that. Like, no way, this is such pseudoscience or this is garbage, this is hippy-dippy-yah shit. And now it's happening and it's happening so prominently. I think this is one of the reasons why Kenny and I connected so well and why our other project did it is because that is the exact thing we see coming. And a lot of the stuff or things I would have said were pseudoscience or coaching things, but now with what Kenny's done and what Brian has done, I have actually ventured into a lot of that research, and there actually is a mountain of evidence in these things. You mentioned in the first half of the show, Kenny, things about the wave,

with the high intensity being at the high end and the recovery sort of being at the low. There's actually tremendous, and I mean dozens of studies that have looked at things like those athletes who can get parasympathetic as fast as possible post-exercise have the best adaptation.

And you're like, whoa, I would have said that's complete garbage. Pokulski. Years ago, yeah. Absolutely. Nice, nice, Andrews. A ton of those things, so there is actually a lot of that,, I would have said that's complete garbage. Pekulski. Years ago, yeah, absolutely. Nice, nice, Andrews. A ton of those things. So there is actually a lot of that. And I would say a lot of labs and even NIH is funding a lot of work in that area, saying now you have to get there.

With the current project that we're working on with Cody at NASA, and I can't reveal too much of this, but this is now in the second round of reviews, so we have a very good chance of getting funding on this. Basically, NASA has said, we're no longer paying for siloed studies. You have to involve the entire human experience in your muscle study. It has to account for stress. It has to account for motivation.

It has to account for all these things. They're just not interested in silo anymore. So if you go at them with a project proposal that is like, hey, we're going to do this exercise thing and nutrition, blah, blah, blah, they're like, ah, gone. And so NASA is very much on this board with these things. And NIH will follow all these things. So the days of being a siloed research thing are just really, really over at the macro level. When we went and interviewed Paul Cech, too, he was talking a lot about just the way you think, maybe your religious your spiritual beliefs being kind of the software that drives the hardware and it sounds like it's a lot of where

it kind of intersects in that we have to be able to handle the behavioral stuff before we can even start to talk about tissues let's just let's just let's just tag onto what andy's talking about he's talking about sympathetic parasympathetic so like with using the disc profiles like we described earlier with our ceo clients so we've got ceos at the gym that are like titans of their respective industries just absolute dragons they're not lions they're dragons yeah problem is they are on all the time so sympathetic sympathetic sympathetic sympathetic there is no downtime so their perception of threat is ongoing everything is a threat so what do we see and this is like now

10 years in to me working with this population specifically like the the the archetype is almost identical. It doesn't matter what business they're in. But 41, 42, 43 to about 55, there becomes this drop of a lot of things in life that also, if you're looking at their biometrics, the things in their biometrics start to drop as well. But then so much of that, to me, comes from their inability to actually shut down at any point. It's only hard charge with everything. So if you're not able to rest after the kill, it's only the next kill.

And we are in a culture, and if our physical environment is a place where we're adding the stress to that becomes a complicating thing because yes we may be creating positive physiology physiological adaptation but could we also be putting this person further down that stressed out state and the answer is yeah yeah if you're a gym owner and that's what you're doing you need to ask yourself that question i'm putting my people in harm so if you understand the nervous system on a basic level, stimulate, stimulate, stimulate. Okay. Well, it's also challenging because Mickey talked about,

like Galvin talks about, just muscle growth. But it's also, like rest and digest is two very powerful words that we can just say together, and they kind of rhyme. And it's like, oh, yeah, parasympathetic, rest and digest. No, no, no, Like slow the fuck down. You can't talking to Pekulski when he was talking about like people worry about like, oh,

what nutrition plan are you on? Why don't you worry about, are you digesting your food? There's a much deeper conversation than just here's the macros. Am I getting my vitamins and minerals? But are you actually, you're putting the food in, but you're probably just shitting it out.

It's not actually getting into your body because you can't digest because you just stay sympathetic all the time. Sure, and the enzymes are different. Yeah. Man, a couple years ago I went and did Jill Miller, Yoga Tune-Up. She's been on the show a couple times. She was hanging out yesterday. Oh, yeah.

She's got a seminar called Breath and Bliss. Yeah. That shit was one of the hardest, easiest things I've ever done. Because it's two days of all this stuff, and it was so hard for me because I have never done anything like that. And I was so bored half the time, but then I was like, no, like, this is the whole sort of point. But it was also, like, because you're not doing really anything besides learning to do all this parasympathetic shit right so it's so hard but so easy for me the whole time i'm like oh god but then of course i'm like i feel fucking tremendous yeah i felt tremendous afterwards it was amazing ironically jill and i just talked about we were on a podcast together recently and we just talked about because she's been through a lot the last couple years. That's what we kind of talked about on the show.

And it's funny because she and I both have big tool sets to deal with a lot of stress. And here we are talking to people about not being stressed out. And we are, like, falling apart. Zinged out, yeah. Because of, you know, the things that are, you know, the way that we've been responding to all this stuff. Yeah. Really interesting. I love her stuff.

When you guys biopsy muscle fibers and stuff like that, are you able to see, like, have you gone in, is it just weightlifters? Or have you gone in and taken muscle fibers out of a yogi? No yogi. Yeah, it's like, man, you are super chill. Look at this. The problem is they don't have muscle. That was a very sympathetic comment of you. That was so aggressive is what that was.

No, there's some. There's actually a guy here in Long Beach I want to get. But, no, we haven't done anything like that. It's too hard to characterize them as being homogeneous. So the population is all over the board. You couldn't make any conclusions. In other words, like, what one person, their physical practices, they also do yoga

etc but they may do a thousand other things so that it would be a nightmare scientifically i i think i think anders to kind of go back like what you were talking about um earlier is how to integrate these things definitely within your physical practice so why not do a like a hard workout with a balanced sort of um you know sort of parasympathetic breath technique afterwards or you know in the following days like why not have that be part of your coaching practice and the student integration that's why we take breath so seriously at the gym is that like that's the anchor to all of it i think the other thing on the coaching side though like i i noticed it when i started to implement a lot of the breathing techniques into just the group class structure is

the majority of times you can just run a warm-up and it's some stock warm-up and then all of a sudden we're back squatting and no one has really created the space between work rush hour traffic got to the gym got changed warm-up now i'm back squatting and i have to hit a certain set of numbers but if we can get them laying on their back with their legs up a wall all of a sudden we just created like a tiny bit of space where we get to influence a conversation significantly better than rushing people to a barbell or rushing people to the squat rack and three minutes if coaches just took three minutes and got people to chill out and just breathe a little bit it's not going to be perfect but there's little pieces that you

can integrate into that conversation in which you're just you're able to just talk to people a little bit easier and i think that there's a practice that doesn't have to be maybe oak park and going full behavioral health but there's small things that coaches can do to kind of i don't want to say hack the system but maybe slowly integrate the conversation or slowly integrate these practices into their daily classes so that it it opens up a little bit of space where you can just start to talk to people about what's happening. Because if you come in on day one, and I'm sure you've had this problem where it's like, hey, we're going to get into this parasympathetic right away, and we're going to get into behavioral health, and people are like, dude, I just want to work out, settle down.

Well, I take three minutes of your time, and we just start a class breathing. We start a class by chilling out instead of amping people up. Now all of a sudden you own that space and you own that little piece of their brain to start to have a better conversation about what fitness is versus we have to go back squat. This is on the board and we've got to crush it today. It has to be the most intense thing ever. Maybe today we're going to go back squat. This is on the board, and we've got to crush it today. It has to be the most intense thing ever. Maybe today we're going to go slow, but how do you get there? And there has to be some way to slowly integrate,

and the breathwork piece just really facilitates that very easily by creating space. It's been very helpful for us. It's very imperfect in its deployment, let's just say, because acceptance of it is a whole other thing. So you're going to have two-thirds of the class go, yeah, I dig this. Another third of the class go, no, I'm here for the thing. I've got a back squat. I've got to hit the number or whatever.

And they can't get – like it's very difficult just as a practice. That's why the conversation – I think if you can start, so this is what I'm coaching our coaches to do now is to have them start the conversations with the end in mind, which means that somebody coming in has to know that the relationship will probably end. And if during the process they can agree to be coachable, then you're going to set them up to do the thing. But if it's more narrowly defined, hey, this thing is back squats and thrusters only at X, Y, and Z percentages, and you can guarantee on the physical intensity and it's just that limited, then you've just, at the very beginning of the relationship, boxed yourself in to an uncoachable relationship

that will probably not have much teeth over time. So when you introduce things like breath of that, you don't have coaching leverage. But if you can start the conversation by going, hey, odds are it's going to be, there may be an end point. We've got a couple of tools to deal with that when we get there.

In the meantime, I've got to be able to coach you. And along the way, I need you to stay open to that. You up for that? That's a lot different. That's a very different way of then going, hey, here's what it is only and having that be limited in range. How hard is it for you to find coaches? It's so hard.

I mean, we've had, let's see, Matt and Nick just made it through. So they're two successes out of 40 failures and then and then i mean why as a coach you wouldn't want to go through this stupid process dude it's like as you like as you say that it's exhausted me like i like and i don't know like i don't know what to do from here to be totally honest like i don't like our coaches development program as is right now is very robust you got a business to run and part of that business is like a coach running a class is an expense. But you're also developing this culture and this whole thing. And if you have to run a business and knowing that there has to be –

this guy just dedicated a year to learning your craft and honing his message, and now he's got 15 people in a class to talk to, and here's your $25 to $40 an hour. Where do you create a career out of this for coaches? Yeah, no, we have a different sort of business model. More to just the dollar per hour thing but like creating a career out of learning these things and

when there's so many easier options that why investing the time into your system is a huge thing for a coach to say I'd like to do that and make that decision versus, I'm just going to be a CrossFit coach, fuck it.

Totally. Totally. Look, again, like specifically in our, like we're in Southern California. There's a million opportunities. Yeah. Like ours, like our demands are just a little bit different, a little bit harder. And the people that have come out of there, like Logan,

he runs the same really miserable process of becoming a coach at his gym. Totally. And, you know, that's been part of our culture since day one. It's not like – there's no – Yeah, because Logan spent six years with you or something like that? Yeah, he was there about five. You guys had to, like, force him to open the gym. No, no, no.

Like, they started – 2009, and then, you know, they were on the bluffs for a minute, and then they got over to Lincoln, and, you know, it took a minute for them to develop that whole thing. And now they've got a really robust coaches development program. You know what I mean? And it's just like, yeah, and then there's been, you know, other gyms have come through, and they didn't implement the same rigorousness to it. And that also shows in how the businesses are doing.

Like, I think there is something to that. If you have a strong coaches program, it's going to make a significant difference. Because you basically have to take the same process that you would take with your athletes, with your coaches, and say, like, hey, we could hand you 20 classes and burn you out in the next two years or we can learn some skills and we can slow this process down and make you an intern yeah and then six months from now we can bump you up to having the ability to have some personal training clients it's a very imperfect process um and it's not there's no like we have hard design on it. Like there's different lengths of time for the apprenticeship. Um, you know, experienced people have a generally shorter timeline. Um, but there has to be a cultural buy-in too, which is often a really challenging

match. Um, it just, it just takes time. Yeah. It just takes time. Not everybody has that time. So, and I've learned that a lot. Like lot. Again, the math on that is very real. 40 interviews to two successful coaches at this point. I mean, that's a brutal... Numerically, that's just not a lot of... Really sold that program. Sign me up. So I'm not going to get a job

5% good but that's also I look at these guys and I look at the work they're doing and it's just they're doing

they're doing the job they are life altering for the people that they lead period like if you ask any of their people if you ask Nick

or Matt's people like how are your people doing and you ask their people they if you ask Nick or Matt's people, like, how are your people doing? And you ask their people, they don't say, Nick and Matt changed my life. But they went through the thing. Word. I think we got it. Word. We got anything else, dude?

No. I mean, I feel like you guys need a nap, so let's wrap it, dude. No, we don't have to go anywhere. No, no. We're good. There's more down the road for sure. Yeah. I like your learning process.

Yeah. Where can people find you? You know. Fucking love that. You know. Here's the thing. If anything was compelling, just email me directly. No, definitely get at the Kenny Kane.

He will check it once this month. If Kenny Kane likes your Instagram post, it's a fucking good one. You hit it. Absolutely. Or he had a long dump. Yes. He had a long dump. My best work.

Wow, that was really clever. Yeah, my legs are numb. Yes. Yeah, you can email me at Kenny at Oak Park LA. You can also check out the Craftsman Workshop at oakparkla.com backslash craft. As well,

if you haven't heard the body of knowledge with Dr. Galpin and Josh Embry and myself, I do highly recommend anybody in the strength and conditioning world or CrossFit world check out that podcast. Is there a new season coming out with you guys? There is. Season three? It is. We're yet to record it, but, yeah, we're very excited about piecing that together.

It's all on psychedelics and chakras. Yes. I fucking love it. It's all Andy does all day. Galpin's specialties. You know what's funny is if you wanted to biopsy a really high-level athlete's muscle fibers, that's also as parasympathetic as you can get. I met one last night.

That also could explain the universe to you. I don't think regional CrossFit qualifies as high-level athlete. Oh, snap. Damn. Hold on a second. Podcast just started back over. Tell me about that. That was a dig.

You break a world record in something? I'm interested. You went to CrossFit regionals? Get it, Galvin. In 2011. Cool, bro. Wow. Bro, let's not get twisted.

You're a better athlete than me, but you're not world class. Well, man, that's unfortunate. twisted. You're a better athlete than me, but you're not world class. Sorry, man. Man, that's unfortunate. I used to fucking think that. Sorry, man. I'm elite. No. There's real people out there.

Yeah, when you, the first time. A medium-sized fish in a very small pond. An NFL player walks in your facility and touches you, then you know what elite athlete means. Yeah. That is a big, big difference. When it's like Ben was talking about yesterday. It's like you watch that person and you're like, oh, that's an athlete.

This other shit because you did pull-ups a little bit faster. No, nope. They're different. No way. Now, before we leave, I'm sure there are some people that compete in CrossFit that are legit close to professional, or I'm sure there's a few that are elite. Dude, before, now that we have you, what are you learning in the lab these days? Since we're here on the microphones, and we just let Kenny fucking ruin the whole two hours.

Dude, welcome to my podcast. This is all it is. Kenny just talks the whole time. Can we let the smart guy talk that actually studies something? Lots of stuff, man. We got a lot of stuff coming. We are submitting the weightlifting paper very soon. Very cool.

So we'll have to come back and talk about that. I had a blast in the lab with you guys, by the way. Good. Go up and do it again. Did you have an equal blast in my freezer? I did. It was great. Yeah. It was great. Yeah. It was fun.

I think I'm kind of excited I missed that. You know what the thing is, Doug? It turns out it's still fucking cold, and it's still in my house. Freezers are universal, so if you wanted to get a freezer at your house, it would very much be similar to his freezer at his house. I got to just fill it up. Easy. And then jump in.

Anytime. Have you gotten in the freezer? Not Andy's freezer, but I've done cold adaptation cycles. Next weekend we're going to get in the freezer. We will. A freezer. We will. Of some sort. Where are you guys going?

Up to Laird and Gabby's. Oh, that's right. That's right, yeah. Yeah, well, just whatever, no matter how it feels, just tell them that it was easier than when you went to mine. Okay. That should go well. You want to get some good shit on Laird on camera.

Tell him, like, this is cool and all, but, like, it's not that cold. Galpin's was colder. And Andy's was way harder. Galpin's so much colder than yours. He's just, like, yeah. Laird's funny because he gets so competitive. Oh, my God. He goes like this.

He has it like a, he goes... It's a very specific maneuver. He goes... And his head tilts. 100%. And then his, like, little crystal blue eye looks at you, and he kind of, like, squints the other one, and you kind of go... There's, like, a wire that twitches. Yeah.

That motherfucker, I was playing... It's super subtle, but it's, like, when he does that, you're like, here we go. I was playing cornhole against him, and we were up, like... Fuck, whatever. We were playing 11, I think, and we were up like, fuck, whatever. We were playing 11, I think, and we were up like 8-1 or something. And I made the critical mistake of talking a little trash. That thing went,

dude, and it was like seven in a row. Just tanked. Tanked. Tanked. Just sunk them. Sunk them, suck them. They come back, beat us 12-10 or whatever. And I was like, but that same thing. Because we're on the beach, we're hanging out, and all of a sudden it was like, uh-oh. Uh-oh. There motherfucker's here to play. There's fucking red in his eyes right now.

Look out. You're 50-something, dude. Did not want me to win at his house. Game over. I'm like, all right. That's what it takes to ride 100-foot waves. I get it. When we were up there, they were doing all kinds of experiments.

Is it Kristen? Killer KO? I only know her Instagram name. No, Kira. Kira. Oh, you want to know something fun about Kira? Yeah. I don't know the details here, but she came into my office a couple of months ago or something and was like,

beating around the bush about something and I could tell she was really nervous to ask something. She's like, so, I kind of got casted in this show with The Rock. I'm like, what? She's off any time now flying out to go do some two-month

film on some new TV show with The Rock. Baller. Yeah. She doesn't know hardly any of the details because they're like, you're gone for eight weeks, sign this waiver and et cetera. So I don't even know what really it is or what she is or something, but I hope she wins it. How long does it take for the results of this whatever?

I think she was doing something on like menstrual cycles and training volumes. Yeah, well, because now she's gone for two months, that's going to push it back a whole lot. Is she still able to do it? Yeah, we just she's gone for two months, that's going to push it back a whole lot. Is she still able to do it? Yeah, we just have to wait for two months. Yeah, because it takes a while for the... Because, well, we can't do much without her. Well, we can, but she's sort of running.

So that probably won't be out until mid-next year. We just published the twin paper, though. And so I'll have that stuff out. Can you talk about the results have that stuff out. Wait. Can you talk about the results of that? Yeah. Yeah. That sounds awesome.

But I feel like that deserves some unpacking. Yeah, that's a show. There's a bunch of cool shit. So, you know, we can do that later. Cool. Next time Doug just happens to be in SoCal and here all the time. Next weekend when he comes back. We really are going to Tahoe.

We're going to talk about Tahoe right now. When are we doing Tahoe? Shrugged Strength Summit. End of September. Three S's. Hey, you know what? Turns out my schedule just got open into September. Sweet.

Yeah, we were going to do the UFC, or not UFC, but combat sports, and then we got to go to Spartan World Championships. Yeah, that week is the 21st, 22nd in Vegas. I can just drive out to Vegas, though. We don't have to have, like, a big fucking thing. You won a plane ticket away, bro. I really want to go to that. I've been wanting to go to that for a while.

I don't even know anything about fighting whatsoever, but I think it would be interesting to go check out what they're talking about. Dolce's going to be there. Matt Brown's going to be there. That guy's a monster. It's going to be really cool. Matt Brown's going to be getting an awesome talk. Didn't he come and do classes with you?

Yeah, he came down and taught one of my classes. So my students show up one day. You know what's cool is you say that. Bledsoe told us yesterday in the car that you invited him to teach some classes. So I thought that it would be such an honor to teach. I invited Mike Bledsoe to teach a class? That's what was told yesterday. Oh, he's so full of shit.

Oh. He said there was Bledsoe pictures plastered all over the walls of Fullerton. I would never let that guy in. That's fucking hysterical. No, no, no. I actually had him come up years ago. Yeah. Like 2012 or something. I don't remember what this was.

13 something. No, but I did this really cool thing where I held this open forum to anybody on campus and I called it What Can I Do With My Degree? And so what I would do is bring No, but I would bring people in that had the same degree

but had job descriptions way outside the norm. And so the idea was sort of like, okay, you have a degree in kinesiology. I want you to realize that that doesn't mean you can either then be a personal trainer or a physical therapist. And so every semester I would bring in a new speaker that had this exact same degree but was doing something in the field, if you will, but not just in those veins. So obviously Bledsoe was a perfect example of that.

And now I should have him come back and really talk about what he does. That would be even more entertaining. No, he came up several times and talked. You came up a couple times, right, Doug? Yeah. And came in class. I think Chris Moore even came up one time and he Skyped in. That was awesome.

Oh, now thinking back, I'm pretty sure he was really high when he was Skyping my class too. Could have happened. Very possible. It was awesome, though. Yeah, I had a bunch of people this summer in my class. Sarah Snyder talked to my class, who's the nutritionist for the Detroit Lions, or the dietician. I pretty much...

Did Pekulski end up coming out? He did, but I wasn't supposed to call you and let you know. Fucked up. I probably wasn't doing anything, either. Don't tell Anders I'm here. Actually, very specifically, he said that several times. And every time I grabbed my phone to check an email or text, he was like, you're not telling Anders, are you?

It's typical. No, he didn't come out. Don't worry. It's all right. He's kind of my favorite dude right now. Is he? I lift weights like him a lot now. He's kind of like, I've got to go try his thing out.

Real slow. I think he's stoned most of the time. He's got a good point on a lot of his stuff, though. It actually really honestly goes back to a lot of the core principles that Kenny were talking about

earlier, too. If you think about what the ultimate goal of the exercise is, and you really have a truer understanding of what that goal is, you lose interest in a lot of these if you think about what the ultimate goal of exercise is and you really have a truer understanding of what that goal is you lose interest in a lot of the details that people worry about because that's just noise in the conversation and ben of course his aspect is really muscle growth but it doesn't matter what that is and the way he words it right you're trying to create an internal stimulus that causes a reaction so it doesn't matter what the external

source is you focus on maximizing the internal signal. So then you just change the goal out, and it's very true. Ben Bruno talked about the same thing yesterday. We're just using this as a tool to do something to our physical body. So don't worry about that other stuff as long as it's getting the right internal signal or stress that you're trying to get on, which is extremely universal. So whether you're talking about growing muscle, getting better at a thing,

working on developing, using exercise as a way to challenge your ability to calm down, that's the same thing, right? So now it's like, okay, we're practicing relaxing. Okay, great. Well, now you've gotten pretty good at that. Now let's introduce the ice. Now practice relaxing in the front of this. Or now practice relaxing when you front of this. Or now

practice relaxing when you're trying to also get the best score you can in this physical challenge. But the goal is practicing relaxing. Or the goal of this exact same workout could be improving mitochondrial density. Well, that depends on the goal, what the focus of it is, right? So it's really universal with how he goes about all those things. And it always comes back to the very beginning question, though, is... Actually, I just did this with Hot Sauce, a UFC fighter. He's got his next

fight scheduled 13 weeks from now. We go down, and I basically say, you get 13 points. Come back to me next week and tell me how you want to allocate those 13 points total. Because what I want you to do is have a weekly, daily, and exercise very specific focus. So Monday mornings or Monday afternoons workout session, the goal is to do what? And you get one thing you get to say here.

Like this is it. You build that out for the next day of the morning, the whole week, et cetera, and he has 13 weeks, so he gets 13 points. What do you want to allocate to what? You only get to make one of these choices to one very clear goal, but that way he knows, okay, in this boxing session I go to do Monday afternoon, the goal is to get better at

countering that right hand this guy's going to throw. It's extremely clear with him and his coaches what, now they're going to do other things, all that stuff's going on, but he knows, or the point is, with the exact same workout, it's developing speed on my punches. Okay, great. great like all the other noise then falls away and he walks out of that session going i got faster at punching today or

i got better at seeing that combination as opposed to then getting lost in like okay let's do another round or getting hyped up and okay now let's throw it harder and you're like fuck i end up kind of losing what the point of the thing is like yeah what josh emory says all the time like the thing becomes the thing right and you're all of a sudden you're like, shit, I got done, and now all of a sudden I'm fighting with my mom about, like, what? What happened here? How did I get here?

I was trying to get, oh, shit. And you get to the end and six weeks have gone by and you're like, shit, I don't punch any faster. You know, that's what I was trying to focus on the whole time because I kept getting lost up in the thing that became the thing that was the thing. So anyways, yeah, that's the show. Do you think training the UFC guys is much more interesting to you, like,

than the consequences of getting that one wrong are very, very difficult? Well, here's what I can tell you. You screw up a hockey game and you lose. I slept for, like, two hours last night because, you know, Dennis lost last night in his third straight split decision. Had nothing to do with me, of course. Ever does. But I'm like, man, it just fucking eats at you.

It eats at you so bad. And I was legitimately like, today, I'm like, that's it. I'm done. Like, I'm going to finish these last guys off and I'm not working with fighters ever again. And I'm like, that might actually happen. Because I'm really, because it's fucking hard. Like, it's one thing when somebody beats you in the CrossFit event. It's so arbitrary sometimes.

The scoring in these other types of sports, and it's so arbitrary, all the other stuff that goes into it. And the payoff is so... Fuck, dude, it really eats at you, especially when you spend the time, and you know what he did or she did and worked into it. And you're like, God damn, it is so hard to work with. Yeah, it's just like, I don't want to do this anymore.

It's fucking hard. Yeah. Unless you have the emotional bandwidth. And right now I'm like, I just don't know anymore. Been a lot of those. And then, of course, you know, this is like in golf or whatever. And you're like, I'm done playing. There's three straight.

I'm going to take ten on four straight holes. Like, I'm fucking never playing again. And then you hit the T or hit your drive in the next hole, and all of a sudden you put it right down the middle, and you're like, okay, fuck, maybe I'm back. Maybe I'm back. Yeah. I thought you did a lot of the nutrition stuff with it.

Yeah, I do. But you're also doing, like, a lot of the coaching and the mindset piece then. If you're kind of in the realm of saying, like, we've got one thing to focus on, and we've got 13 weeks to build up to a fight i would call that some sort of mindset well with all my fighters i try to get them a lot of them work with lanny weirsman who was on the show whatever recently uh because he is you know he's got a phd in sports psych and he's a head sports psych for a lot of pro teams pro sports he's goes

the olympics every year with things like that So I get them a real coach for actual mindset stuff. What I'm referring to in that stuff is a thoughtfully, it's strength conditioning. It is that we have got 12-week training block. Let's have a very specific purpose with each week. And so the purpose is not to show up, train my ass off every day. Like that just doesn't work.

And honestly, it's the exact same thing that we did with football. You watch tape, You think, okay, I have a playbook of 800 plays, but because of this opponent, I'm going to whittle that down to, here are the five plays I'm going to do here, here are the three plays I'm going to do there. And so you walk into Sunday, actually

this is counterintuitive, but you walk illfully into the fight with way less tools than you have. You want a very specific, fast thing, like when I go here, and this is how football works. If you just tried to have every play at your play and you walked in Sunday, you would never get a play called in the 10 seconds you have,

and you would be fuck-out. On defense, you'd be so screwed. You actually have to reduce all those options to the minimum possible so you are looking at all the things that are moving at that level of speed and go, when he turns left, I automatically know I do this. There is no other option. And coach at halftime or whatever can say, okay,

now when he turns left, I actually want you to do something different. And that's fine. That's easy to adjust. But you don't want to have to be making decisions at that speed. Same thing in a fight. You want to know when he goes to do this thing, this is what I'm going to do. I know in my skill set I have four or five different defenses I like, but right now because of this and this this thing, this is what I'm going to do. I know in my skill set I have four or five different defenses I like, but right now because of this and this and this, this is going to be my shot.

Well, it's the same thing with planning out their thing. So he has to go to his coaches, his skill coaches, and come back, and he has to say, okay, what I have him do is I book in the front end. Best case scenario, what happens? What skills do you need? Worst case scenario, what happens? What skills do you need? But this is between you and your skill coaches. Best case scenario, what happens? What skills do you need? Worst case scenario, what happens? What skills do you need?

But this is between you and your skill coaches. And then out of these 13 points, okay, maybe you decide, I need to spend eight of these 13 points on takedown defense. Okay, well, I can't control that conversation, but I can help you then structure the rest of the time and those 13 weeks so that you don't blow yourself up physically.

Because I do know that space very well. Or it's like, you know what? hey, it's three-point skill, but this guy's really strong. I need to put six weeks into strength. Okay, now you're really getting in my wheelhouse, and now I can really help you gear that to get stronger, whatever it happens to be. Or maybe you decide, I think I'm equal physically,

but I need 13 points on skill. Okay, great. Well, I can still help you build those weeks so you don't burn yourself out physically. I don't know. I can't tell you what to do, like do in your workouts to build that skill set. But that's basic strength conditioning. It's the same shit.

It's no different. Change out the variable. It's programming CrossFit. It's programming for anything. No, it's great. But that's really – I get asked this question all the time, actually. I would say the number one thing I do with athletes is help them make better decisions.

Like, that's it. I try, because I'm very good at handling all the variables on the table and going, okay, with that. I don't do nutrition. I don't do, like, any of these things specifically. I just help them try to make a decision with the collective in mind. Yeah. Which is something very, very difficult for someone on the inside or someone who's like, oh, I'm just a... I'm a nutrition specialist.

Okay, great. Well, then somebody still has to see all the pieces and put that together. So I just help them make better decisions. And then they lose three in a row. It's fucking hard, man. It's rough. It's a fucking hard thing.

Split decisions. Yeah. Three losses in a row, all split decisions is rough as fuck. Because if you get a split decision, there's a very good chance you feel like you won the fight. Every time. Every time.

Every time. You would come back the next time because you thought you won the last one. Especially when all three of them, Dana White was like, dude, you trashed him every time. Now three times in a row you got half your paycheck. When all the media, everyone in the building, the whole building erupts in boos when they announce, like, the winner and all that stuff.

Your boss, the owner, is like, you totally won that fight. And he's like, yeah, well, still, guess what? I get half the pay. Yep. So, awesome. And your face fucking hurts. Yeah. So, it's tough, man.

Anyways. This is phenomenal, bro. I was to eat some lunch phenomenal bro I was up here dude bro if anybody wants to know what we talk about when we hang out yeah you might as well

just taking these recorders off and just let it go because that's what it probably would have been DrAndyGalpin.com just AndyGalpin.com go to the

55 minute biz I got a fun little thing I looked this morning actually and I am approaching 10,000 followers on Twitter baller kill it which I never think of and thing. I looked this morning, actually, and I am approaching 10,000 followers on Twitter. Baller. Kill it.

Which I never think of. And so what I'm doing is for the person who follows me that is number 10,000, I am giving them $10,000. Let me get on Twitter real quick. Everyone's like, oh, God. I'm about to make this. I actually don't know how many I have. Taking out of Kenny's bank account. Absolutely.

To get that payment email, Kenny at OakPark.com. He will send you the check. That is so good. I love that he had Anders for a second. I was like, that's really – Wait a second. I didn't know that a college prof could do that. If you knew my social media skills, you would be like,

no way would he think about something like that. I enjoy them. You posted about the hyponatremia, and the whole fucking world lit up this week. Yeah, that kind of blew up pretty good. I like when you slap people's hands when they laugh at that. Man, okay. That's not that funny. Sorry.

You're a dick. I'm going to do one more CrossFit hate. Uh-oh. Here we go. Again, for the record, I don't have any problem with CrossFit. Some of it I find fucking awesome, actually. A lot of it. But a lot of it, man, just

irritates me. So I posted that thing about hyponatremia. So for those that are not in the know, hyponatremia is when you drink too much water and there's all kinds of problems, right? So overhydrated. So I posted this thing about this ufc fighter having this issue with weight cut being hyponatremic etc somebody gets on there was like

bro glassman's been talking about this for years and i'm like what and he has a link and he's like check it out minute 85 this interview or something like this and i'm like and i responded something like greg glassman did not fucking invent Hyper-Tribune. Are you kidding me? Like, what are you talking about? And then he launches, he's like, launches into the tirade about,

he's like, that's why he's spending millions of dollars going after Gatorade, blah, blah, blah. And I was like, here we go. This is my favorite response ever is,

I don't know if any of you guys know what this means, but I'm going to say it. So I responded with my classic, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like the play? So good. You guys know what that saying, but I'm going to say it. So I responded with my classic, other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how'd you like to play? You guys know what that saying means? So it's the very classic, I don't think this actually happened, but according to legend,

right after Lincoln was assassinated, a reporter turned to his wife because he was out of play and was like, well, other than that, how'd you like to play? It's like, you couldn't be more off topic right now? So I responded to that but i was like what first of all you're backwards here because gatorade would actually be the thing that would save you from hyponatremia and then second what in the flying fuck are you like what yeah

well just because somebody else is talking about something doesn't mean you can't talk about it what it's a basic concept yeah yeah yeah like why why is he even being brought into it i have no but it was also like not even remotely not even not even close to the universe of what we're talking about. Just found a way to plug Greg Glassman in there. I'm like, awesome. Does Glassman even talk anymore? I have no idea. I don't know anything about it.

And he has a great talk about this specifically. But it's funny that somebody would point, like, take the time. What does he talk about now um when he gets interviewed i mean he's still getting interviewed about like the the crossfit stuff um you know andy had him on his podcast some some time ago well that's cool i think he has tremendous merit talking about the giant international company that he built yeah for sure he has anybody that you've like in your lifetime had that same effect on fitness? No way. Not mine.

Not mine. It's crazy. I think you can make an argument against that. Who? Because the weeders are still in our lifetime. They way crushed them across this time. No, no, no. They started this thing over 30 years ago, didn't they?

Oh, yeah. More than that. Yeah, so that was pre-me. But they're still alive in your lifetime. No, I know, but I didn't watch? Oh, yeah. More than that. Yeah, so that was pre-me. But they're still alive in your lifetime. No, I know, but I didn't watch it grow. Gotcha. Copy that. I didn't see...

I guess you need to rephrase... Like, the question warrants... Started in your lifetime. Yeah. But I don't think there's any question... There's no argument with what you just said. Yeah. Without that.

I mean, not even close. Yeah. It's crazy. Yeah. Which is stunningly awesome. But the timing of it is... the timing is perfect, too. Oh, yeah? Open journal, the way that information can be exchanged.

I think, like, Dana White, I remember the first, like, UFC stuff that came out. It was, like, the most brutal, weird sport of all time. People breaking arms and the weirdest shit ever. Like, I remember getting thehs tapes with my bros and we'd like watch it as if it was like faces of death yeah like watch these guys fucking kill each other doug you remember when all of a sudden it was like a real sport i think it was when hoist fought chemo you know what i'm talking about yeah ufc i i was just c three or five something like that i can't remember but i actually watched it like two weeks ago.

Really? I watched it very recently. Yeah, yeah. So go ahead. Well, I was just like, that always makes me think of that because that was the one when he was just holding him by his hair. He was holding him by his hair. And repeatedly punching him in the nuts.

And it's funny because as he's holding his hair, the announcer's like, man, he's grabbing a handful of hair. What a great strategy by Hoist Gracie. He really has a great handle on him. It's really funny to listen to. Unbelievable, yeah. Yeah, I remember the VHS tapes, and they'd be like, breaking an arm is a good way to win a fight.

And I'd be like, man, that's really fucking aggressive. Like, I didn't know this happened. Like, I didn't know that. They got this new announcer. I don't know why he does some of the play-by-play stuff. I guess when John Anik's not there or something. So he was calling the fights last night, and he's so obviously not into martial arts.

And I was like, it offended me so much because in 2000, I get it. No one knew what any of this shit is. But now what he was just like, I can't remember what he said, but he did some shit. Somebody didn't move. And he was like, oh, and he's trying to, looks like he's pushing his legs or something to get out of the way. And we're like, what?

He just kept saying things. We're like, wow, where the fuck did this guy come from? He's so uneducated. No, no clue. I hate when I hear generalizations made. You can tell when someone actually knows the tactical aspects of the fight where they're like, no, he can't be moving to that side because he's moving right into his power.

He had three setups before, and really he's going to throw the head cook if he does that again, blah, blah, blah. They know what's going on. And then there's one announcer who obviously doesn't know what's going on going, man, that guy is throwing lightning bolts at the other fighter. He's just using buzzwords to try to make it sound exciting, but he has no idea what's happening. It's like you calling the drone race you were telling us about yesterday.

Like, wow, that kid is really working the remote control. The blue guy's fast. Tune in to next week's Drone League where some kid sits in a chair. We'll see how Red does. Thanks for tuning in. Andy Galvin.com. Douglas E. Larson. What's your website going to be?

Doug Larson Fitness. Fucking crushing it. Fancy. I'm at Anders Varner. Hey, when's the show going to come out, you think? Before or after our clinic? When do you want it? When's your clinic again?

Your clinic. Oh, the Travis Mash thing? Yeah. Before that. Okay, well then plug it. Then, because it's been coming out before. Why am I the only one selling this, Doug? I know, right?

Twice in a row now. When I do the show intro, look at this, now we're doing business. Tell me these things so I can put them at the beginning of the show. We've been putting all this stuff in pre-recorded reads instead of doing them live on the show since we have so many shows in the bank right now. Sorry. But, yes, we can put them in the pre-show read. Hopefully you already heard that by now.

But if you didn't for some reason, me and Andy are doing a weightlifting seminar with Travis Mast, one of the best weightlifting coaches in the country by far. It's going to be at the MASH compound in, I always forget. Is it North Carolina or South Carolina? North Carolina. North Carolina. Yeah, it's got a farm out there.

We're going to barbecue and stuff. And that's the place where I'll give out the $10,000. So you're there. Cash in pennies. Yeah, it's going to be cool. Go to MASHlead.com and click on seminars. It's called Comp Camp with Andy Galpin and Doug Larson. Killer.

It's going to be dope. I'm at Anders Varner. Get into the Shrug Collective. Five shows a week on the podcast. Four shows a week on YouTube. Bunch of cool shit coming out. Proof. I'm going to talk to Andy Galpin.

Yeah, proof. Proof. Proof is killing it. Dude, we're 20,000 views in two shows. That's pretty good. That's good. Viv is lighting it up. Viviana Smith. Yeah. The female face of the Shrug Coll shows. That's pretty good. That's good. Viv is lighting it up. Viviana Smith.

Yeah. The female face of the Shrug Collective. That's right. She's just Viviana. We're trying to get a flyer. She goes by about one name. Viviana. Viviana.

Like Rihanna. If you've never heard of it, give them like the 10 second, what is Proof? Proof is a much more practical. So we spend a lot of time talking on podcasts and nobody actually gets to see the best coaches in the country coach and what they're actually very good at. So instead of listening on your way to work, you can turn on the TV and actually see the practical side of what the coaches that we interview on the podcast are actually doing in their gyms and in their day-to-day practice. And Viv has little to no coaching experience and is kind of coming in with a very beginner's mindset on just what is out in the strength and conditioning world.

And it's very cool because... So you get to track her learning. Yeah, and we go see you. I've been in an ice bath before. She's never even heard of this stuff. Like, we go to Breckin Trares, and we actually get to watch him coach hip thrusters. Talking to Mobility with Max Schenck.

Just really intelligent people that we have on the show, and we get to listen to the theory behind everything, but we don't get the practical side of it. So it's a cool thing. And crazy. People have dug it. And she has quite the aptitude for YouTube. Yeah. Her face is not for radio, you could say. But it's super cool.

And the Real Talk vlog is on Tuesdays. Technique WOD's back. Smashing. Back on Sundays. A lot of fun. We've got program vault as well get into the program ball all of our programs are now on one big membership site you don't have to just buy musk and challenge or just flight weightlifting or just boulders for shoulders you can get all the programs we have for one low monthly membership since it's all in one

membership site it's way less work on our end and so we're able to offer it for much cheaper because it's just way less work involved so it's a totally new business model so it's way less work on our end, and so we're able to offer it for much cheaper because it's just way less work involved. So it's a totally new business model, so it's way more value for any of the athletes, and it's way less work for us. It's totally win-win, so it's like half the price, which is totally awesome. It's only $47 a month. You get access to all of our programs. So check that out.

Go to shruggedcollective.com backslash vault and check out all of those programs. It's a gangster deal. Do you have any more worksman shop openings so we just we just take them as uh as people uh apply for them and we just take them one at a time and we vet people before they come it's typically for experienced coaches like it's just it's not going to make sense for somebody who's just starting gotcha if you've listened to all what two plus hours of this fun podcast, have we hit the two-hour mark? No.

Oh, let's keep going. What are we at? You've got a minute and a half. Oh, fuck around. If you've been paying attention to the full show here, the background noise has changed from a really aggressive rap undertone to vacuums on a Sunday, which means

we may have overstayed our welcome at CrossFit Chalk here. Ryan Fisher's in Canada. Everyone's gone except the cleaning crew. And we refuse to leave. We're fucking staying here. We've got Jess LeGrucero coming up here in a second.

Right on, team. We'll see you guys next Wednesday.