Couple Things with Shawn and Andrew - 178 | NINJA SPECIAL: Caleb and Ashley Bergstrom on ANW finals, babies, marriage

Episode Date: September 6, 2023

Today we sat down with the first ever couple to make it to the American Ninja Warrior Finale in Las Vegas- Caleb & Ashley Bergstrom! They’re not only extremely fit and talented on the ninja course, but they’re also the sweetest couple, soon-to-be parents and run a business together as husband and wife! Andrew was especially pumped for this interview after his run on American Ninja Warrior and by the end of our conversation we felt like we were all friends :)  Follow My Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/ShawnJohnson Follow My TikTok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@shawnjohnson Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/ShawnJohnson Follow Andrew’s Instagram ▶ https://www.instagram.com/AndrewDEast Andrew’s Tik Tok ▶ https://www.tiktok.com/@andrewdeast?lang=en Like the Facebook page! ▶ https://www.facebook.com/AndrewDEast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by Defender. With a towing capacity of 3,500 kilograms and a waiting depth of 900 millimeters, the Defender 110 pushes what's possible. Learn more at landrover.ca. The first couple to debut your story on American Engine Warrior, which is pretty fun. I have a lot of tips to learn. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, would you ever do it, babe?

I'm currently seven months pregnant, so my current answer would be no. What's up, everybody? Welcome back to a couple things. With Sean and Andrew. A podcast all about couples. And the things they go through. Today we have a treat. The first ever couple to compete in the finals together.

Caleb and Ashley Bergstrom, aka the Ninja Family. Yes. We don't talk about this nearly as much as we should. I've been on American Ninja Warrior now three times. I've been humbled three times You've won I've won Zero times

Your You won my heart Yeah thank you But today we sit down with two people Who are extremely talented at this sport Caleb and Ashley And Caleb has been just Dominating this season

If you haven't watched You can look them up on YouTube Also it's on NBC They just have Ninja on all the time It seems like and I love it And I also love that their entire love story revolves around Ninja. They met in Ninja, trained in Ninja, competed in Ninja,

and now we're expecting a baby. That's right. It's so exciting. We are really excited to bring you this interview with Caleb and Ashley. They're young. They've only been married two years. They tell us all about how they met. They tell us about their training strategies for those who are interested in Ninja.

They tell us about why they love Ninja for those of you who don't know anything about the sport and so much more. So it was really fun to kind of speak to these young guns, as we say. I feel like a lot of the people we talked to have been married like 15 years now at this point. And so it was almost like a reflective process for me. I will say if you have never watched American Ninja Warrior on NBC, you should go watch now. All of the archive footage, all of the footage from this season. We will link some of their runs down below.

But it's really, really cool. It's a great conversation. Thank you to Caleb and Ashley for joining us. They get to NBC for lining this up, and go watch them. Without further ado, we bring you Caleb and Ashley Bergstrom. Caleb and Ashley, good morning. How are you? Good, how are you?

We're good. Pump to meet you guys. Congrats on everything. Thank you. Appreciate it. The first couple to debut your story on American Ninja Warrior, which is pretty fun. And make it to the finals. I know.

What? What's it like, babe? I don't know what it's like to make it to the finals of American Ninja. I've never made it that far. How long have you guys been doing this? About six years. Yeah, I think I've been training seven years and actually joined us, I think, a year after I started. Yeah.

Awesome. How did you guys meet? So I did gymnastics, and I was up in, like, the area where he lived at a rock climbing gym with some friends, because we just wanted to go to climbing, and that was the closest gym to where we lived. And his dad saw me there, and he was like, you'll be. look really strong like you should try ninja and I was like oh I love the show but I've never like thought about trying it before and so he invited me to a competition like the next weekend where Caleb was competing so he met there and I started training in their backyard with them after I would

do gymnastics practice and then yeah the rest is the mystery wait did you you competed in the in the next weekend event yeah it was just like a small local competition that wasn't like the show Dang. If you don't mind me asking, how old are you guys? I'm 23, he's 24. Yeah. And are you still doing gymnastics? No, I stopped when I was 18 to do Ninja instead.

So you guys met back when you were 17. Okay. Yeah, she was driving like an hour and a half to get to gymnastics. And then my house was an extra half hour farther. So she drove a lot just to come and train and do what she needed to do. Yeah. And then how long did you guys train before you got into the American Ninja Warrior world? I think it was about two years of ninja training for me.

Yeah, so two or three years for me as well before we actually got on the show. Yeah. How did you get into it, Caleb? So a funny story is my grandma actually was bedridden. And so she stayed with us and we would time our like taking care of her. Like we feed her and stuff like that. And we timed that with watching the shows that she liked to watch. And one of those was American Ninja Warrior.

So my mom was like, you know, you guys should just make a course in the backyard and see what happens. So we built some obstacles. We built a salmon ladder and such. And we started practicing on it. And we would invite people over. And we'd do pancakes and ninja on Saturday morning. And we would get like 50 people coming out to come train. And like we had like a ton of different things.

We do sled pulls through the street and stuff like that. And we just had a great time. man i was so pleasantly surprised i'm not gonna lie i didn't watch the show too much like i wasn't like a diehard um when i applied to be on it the first time and the community in the ninja world is so awesome there's like the side of people who don't compete but love it and then like and they're diehard supporters but then the people who actually do compete like the the support and the excitement and the energy and like the buy-in it's such an interesting group i honestly I'm, you know, the football background, it's a bunch of kind of like meatheads.

And then you go into the ninja world and there's all these people from way different backgrounds that all kind of ended up doing ninja. And I didn't really understand, like, wow, people train for this and specifically for ninja. And then you start to do it. And it's so much fun. It never gets old. There's always like a puzzle to figure out almost. and I learned so many physical skills

doing ninja that I'd never even I mean, I don't have a gymnastics background and I would love, would you ever do it, babe? With Amex Platinum, access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot track side. So being a fan for life turns into the trip of a lifetime.

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conditions i'm currently seven months pregnant so my current answer would be no i would take you seven months pregnant better better at ninja than me right now anyway um you guys are also expecting right yeah oh my gosh congratulations so pretty early oh so exciting you have the morning sickness nope i didn't have any morning sickness and ever feel nauseous so i got very lucky gosh within your guys's relationship and training regimen i'm curious i want to come back to baby because i'm living this life and i'm very excited but within your guys's dynamic how did meeting dating, being married, and now being full-time competitors, how does the training work with you guys? Do you train together? Do you train each other? Do you have different coaches?

You want to mean? I can answer that probably. We were actually really cautious, like, getting into dating because at least I think both of us knew that if we dated and it didn't work out, it'd make training really tough, especially since Ashley trains with my sister. and we kind of have a very tight training group together. It was going to be really difficult if things didn't work out. So whenever it came to dating, we spent a lot of time praying about it and deciding if it was going to be the right decision just to date each other in the first place. Because we knew if we dated, we didn't want it to be like high stakes.

We wanted to be enjoyable that we were dating each other. But at the same time, we knew that if things didn't really work out, it would be really tough for us to train together after that. So we wanted to make sure it was the right decision for us. before we stepped into it, which is why it took us, like, how long? Did we even know each other before we dated? It was like two years, I think. It was like three or four.

Actually, it was counting the day. Wow. Wouldn't you know, when'd you know it was like good to go? Like, yeah, we should do this. I don't know. It was just like I had, we both hadn't really been praying a lot about it. Because we over the years, it was like, oh, we'd like talk a lot and text a lot. And then we would just stop and not really flirt or anything like that.

But then I guess we both just started praying. without really like talking to each other about it and we both just felt a lot of peace from god to move forward with it so yeah we just decided to do it how long did you did you guys date before you got engaged about a year yeah maybe a year and a half yeah yeah it was a little over a year and a half before you got married tell us the engagement story is it does it involve ninja you should talk because you planned it okay um it kind of involves ninja but not really so I had actually a student of mine who they owned a yacht. So actually it wasn't a yacht.

It was just a little boat. But we planned this whole thing where they invited us over for dinner. It was supposed to be like a thank you for Caleb coaching him because he had just won American and Joyer Jr. That's right. So it was like this big plan about like Max wanted us to come over and his parents wanted to thank us for Caleb being such a good coach. Yeah.

So we, the week before I, I had bragged to her that I was over there and they let me drive their boat. Just like, I said that offhandedly, so that way whenever they offered for us to take their boat out, she wouldn't be like super suspicious. And my family then went to an island beforehand, and they set up like a whole, like, will you marry me, Arch, and stuff like that. And there was a blanket and flowers out there. And my family just put on a bunch of hats and pretend they were fishing. And we did not recognize them.

So then we voted to this island and I proposed her right there. It's pretty awesome. That is pretty awesome. That's amazing. I love the family with the hats being fishermen. Yeah, disguise. Oh, man. Dude, Caleb, I've got to say, been watching you on this season of Ninja.

And all of you guys are just incredibly talented at this. Is that, do you credit that more to, like, the community that you've built and your training partners? or is it like the luck of the draw with the obstacles or how do you like when you have success are you like dang um I was ready for it or I lucked out you know I've had some like tough years competing on the show and I think a lot of what I can credit success to is the community we do have at the gym um whenever we started doing ninja in Tampa Bay like no one did it There were two other people who did it with us. And now there's so many people who do it and people who come from different states and live here now,

like my brother-in-law David, used to live in Texas. So I have a great amount of people to train with, and the people who are there training with us are really great at what they do. We also spend a lot of time researching what proper training should look like. We research with climbing scientists and people who have done maybe similar things before, because ninja is so new. There's not a whole lot of science behind it. so we're trying to do our best to be smart with how we train and be as prepared as possible

and then there is some luck involved because you don't know exactly what you're going to expect or what obstacles you're going to see but we're just trying to see what we can do and training a bunch of different things to get ready for the show and being as strong as possible how do you guys support each other with ninja i think the runway when you're talking about your year can be so short because by the time you get to the show if you make one small mistake within the first five seconds your year's done

and you're working on the next year and that's not even a guarantee so in supporting each other down this road and journey what is your guys's like plan when the year turns over of how do you make a living

how do you train how do you plan out your year with such high expectations on a lucky performance sometimes Right. Well, I think, like, obviously we train to do really well. We want to compete and, like, have the best performance that we can have. But at the same time, we always remind each other that this is not the most important thing in our lives. And so if something goes wrong, like, obviously we're going to be upset about it, but it's okay. Like, our lives are so much more than just ninja. And I think knowing how to encourage each other in the moment is important, too, because we're both, like, very different about how we handle things emotionally and what we want after like something goes wrong. So just knowing how to communicate in the moment is really important. But also just like reminding each other before competition that like our purpose in going there isn't just to do well. Like our purpose is

to connect with people and to make other people feel really encouraged and to just like be a light wherever we go. So at the end of the day, I think if we have the mindset that we're here for a greater purpose, then it's really helpful at the end of the day when something doesn't go well. when you guys were qualifying this season I would be so I'm just so curious who went first it was you yeah yeah Ashley ran first both times whenever we competed

does that like heighten your expectation and pressure on yourself Caleb to match her or do better or if she makes a mistake and she falls or vice versa is is the weight of each other's pressure does it affect you guys do you watch each other compete hmm i would say it realistically i never want to fall like or actually you know i mean i never want to fall on obstacle that that she cleared at the same time i

don't think it's relevant whenever you run the course whenever you get on the the stage, your brain is focused on what you're doing. I don't think it's in the back of my mind where Ashley made it to whenever I'm running the obstacles. I think it's more of a confidence boost seeing her on the course and be like, okay, like she got through that, that and that means not easy, but that means that it's possible and we can go out there and get it done type of thing. It's such a hard sport, dude. It's so hard. And the margin fair is so small and you don't know what you're getting into until you walk up on that stage and I like in football the range and deviation of expected outcomes like maybe my body doesn't feel good that day but still like I know I'll be

able to run just maybe not as fast or like you know maybe the competitor is super big and it affects how I play but like with ninja the expected outcomes it could be like feast or famine like you could show up and crush it you could show up and not do well at all and it's like it's it's so uh wide of of potential outcomes i found it really hard and spoiler alert i've you know i've done it three times so much fun i will continue to do it for as long as they invite me back um this year my most recent time do you want to tell a story well no no just the whole lead up to it i'll summarize this past year his run was at midnight and by the way i'm not good so this is this is no excuse i know i'm already bad this is just the background he had the worst case of food poisoning i've ever

seen and he was literally when i when i got to set and i got to see him he was laying on concrete in one of the tents asleep just like like a zombie and i was like babe you're up and like two people and you were you had the worst food poisoning the whole morning the whole morning I was throwing up and like on the toilet just wrecked for like 10 hours and I was like I don't know if I could show I don't know if I could do this spoiler I popped some Advil didn't go well hey eat don't spoil don't spoil I'm proud of my performance kind of going off of that though it I apologize baby it doesn't compare but within this season you guys both did so well so well but i will say with ashley you had a couple of stumbles didn't make it quite as far as

your husband i can imagine the emotional like impact that has on you because you want to be there side by side you probably want to beat your husband i want to beat my husband all the time um how do you deal with that and Caleb how do you support her and still progressing even further to represent you both in the finals? Well, competing in Vegas this year was like a little different because I had injured my ankle really bad a few weeks before competing. So even going into it, I didn't have very high expectations of how I was going to do. So I kind of just knew that I was just going to try to be there for Caleb, like as best

I could because I knew he had the potential to do very, very well this year on the show. And I never really tried to like stay in the most. moment if something goes wrong, especially when I'm in front of so many people. Like, I don't want to just mope in a corner while, like, all my friends are still competing. Um, so at any competition, if I don't do well, I try to like give myself like five to ten minutes to just think about it and like let it process through me. And then I just get back out there and start cheering for people again. I think another thing that's important is that we don't just have each other. Um, and we, we rely on that a lot. So if Ashley's feeling really sad about,

her performance or if I'm feeling sad about our performance and we know the other person has to compete like I know Ash just saw us to go at a competition perhaps I would go and talk to my brother David my brother-in-law instead of her because I would know hey I need to help Ash to stay focused right now it's not really fair for me in these in this emotional time to just go to her and say hey I need you right now when you're getting ready to compete and we've already kind of agreed on that before going into competition that we have other people will go to with our emotion and then after the whole event is done we can come back together and kind of finalize everything that way we're not feeling like we're responsible for the

other person's good or bad performance if that makes sense because i don't want to tell actually how i feel and how much i hate what just happened and then have her fall on the same thing because i just told her and all of that what are you guys expectations when you're at that start line on the starting platform do you have expectations like i'm going to hit the buzzer or Or is it something different? Yeah, I mean, I try to go into it the mindset that I can clear every obstacle. And then I visualize myself clearing everything before I run. Some courses, it's harder to do that, especially when you see so many people going down on the same obstacle,

then it like freaks you out a little bit. And you're like, oh, gosh, like maybe I just have to get to that obstacle as fast as I can and then take it one obstacle at a time after that. But for the most part, you always want to go into it with the most confident mindset you can have and just tell yourself that you're capable of doing every obstacle. Yeah, I would say, I would say I have a pretty strict set of expectations for myself, but none of them are really based on, like, how I'm going to do. Like I have a set warm-up I do, I have a set hand-eye coordination set I do,

and then I have a set way of approaching the obstacles, and I always expect myself to do that the same. If I don't do the obstacle right after that, that's okay. So long as I approach the obstacle the same every time or approach the course the same, I feel like I'm setting myself up for success the best way I can, but I don't ever run a course expecting to clear. Even though I know I probably could, I don't say, oh, I'm going to clear this course. I love that. It's like a, it's a subtle difference, but it's controlling what you can control or controlling, you know, the controllables is, is probably like a good way to, no matter of the outcome, feel confident and proud of yourself.

my expectations I was always I was always kind of expecting to hit the water I was my goal was the fifth obstacle just because I feel like in qualifying that's kind of the the make or break point but actually I know you hit the water that obstacle you dropped on was so hard but tell us what goes through your mind like as you're navigating that and then when you hit the water what that's like I was pretty happy when I made it to the fifth obstacle and I was excited to do that one because that was like a movement that I really love to do. I think it being really cold outside definitely played a lot into it because my fingertips were so frozen that by the time I like made it to the second Rubik's Cube, I like couldn't even feel my fingertips anymore.

They were just numb. So by the time I was throwing for the last move, I was like, I know I'm not going to get this. So yeah, I knew I was going to fall right there. But it was still exciting because I think making it to the fifth obstacle, especially for a female, is still a pretty big deal and it's still something that's really celebrated in the sport. So I was pretty excited too. Love that. Okay. So you guys have been married, how long now? Almost two years. It'll be two years in November. Okay. So I feel like with everything going on, you are still, to a certain extent, newlyweds. you are making history as the first couple who's been a part of the show and making names for yourself now you have a baby on the way are you guys what went through your mind when you found out you're

pregnant so i found out when i was by myself and i was like very excited and stressed and nervous and felt like every emotion on the spectrum i like paced around the house for like two hours just try to comprehend that my life is about to change. And I was, I'm of course very excited to be a mom, but at the same time, there is like a little bit of sadness realizing that you're not going to be able to train as much with your friends anymore, and you're going to have to like be more of a background character for at least a little bit and whatever like athletic thing you do when you're pregnant and like about to become a mom.

But we were very excited. We knew we wanted to wait about two years after getting married. to start having a family. So this is almost the timeline that we had in our heads. Yeah. A little before, I think, what we dreamed. But at the same time, we're super excited. And obviously, it's going to change our lives.

We have no clue exactly how it's going to change everything. Someone told us that basically you can keep you in the same stuff, but all the fluff gets burned away. You just have to basically do what's necessary in the moment and you don't get to sleep at all. So we're going to see how that goes. A lot of your friends have kids? Not really.

Yeah, not none of our friends who are the same age as us, but we have a lot of friends who are parents in our community and who are a bit older than us, but have wisdom to offer us, which is nice. And Caleb's sister is pregnant right now, his sister Kylie, and she's like six and a half weeks ahead of me. So it's been really fun, like, getting to go through everything with her because it's her first baby, too. Oh, that's awesome.

That's really helpful to have someone to go alongside you. are you guys have you talked through what the next season will look like for you guys considering baby will be here by then yes yeah so we're not really sure when they're filming again since they filmed two seasons this year we think there's going to be a little bit more of a break between filming so if there is and I'm like ready to compete again then I'll definitely try to compete again but I think I'll do ninja for as long as I can just because it's such a fun way to stay active, and I've never not done anything active. So, yeah, I definitely want to keep training for as long as I can

and see if I can bounce back after giving birth, but we'll see. Caleb, you're one of nine kids. Is that right? That's right. Yep. Where are you in that order? I am the very youngest in that order. Oh, nice. Do you think you want nine kids between you? No, I think we're okay. Yeah.

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community. It's the fact that you can unite over something and the sport is so brutal. It doesn't allow for too much ego to come into play because usually when that happens, you just fall. And I think that's a beautiful thing, honestly. I think the difficulty of the sport is wonderful because it pushes people together instead of apart. And I'm just, I just always feel so blessed that I get to go into a gym and hang out with friends and yet train so hard with them because we're all passionate about what we do.

And it feels like I'm able to stay in shape so much easier than if I trained in a normal gym or even did a different sport because I'm so passionate about it and I have people around me who are like-minded in that. And it's awesome. That's great. Yeah, I would say the community too.

And I think because like falling is so, common in the sport, it almost makes it easier to go through that when it happens because nobody's looking at you like, oh my gosh, you just fell on the first off school, like, you're the worst ninja in the world. Like, everyone understands that it happens. Like, sometimes mistakes happen and that's part of the sport. And it's just so different having that expectation, like knowing that falling is such a high possibility because it makes everyone just so much more encouraging of somebody who does clear

the course or if someone who falls on the first obstacle, everyone has been through. it. They know that it's not a great feeling and so they'll go to cheer people on and cheer people up. And I think that's just the coolest thing. Yeah, the dynamic is definitely more the competitors versus the obstacle course or the obstacles instead of competitors versus competitors, which I think does foster a good sense of community. Caleb, you mentioned that you like you look into the climbing science and the best way to train. What have you found? in your research there what's the best way to train for ninja well there's a lot you know that we could go over um i listen to guys there's a guy named erichurst uh he's a climbing

scientist i also follow camp four which is like a climbing uh guide and of course the best way to train for ninja is just to do ninja right is to get good at the skill itself um another thing that's helpful though is to develop small adaptations in your finger tendons and make sure that they are capable of handling your body weight. But tendons take time to build strength in, so you have to be patient with them. Otherwise, you'll injure them. So, like, just to basically brush on it, you just want to make sure that you have a consistent regimen of building your upper body strength and supporting your weight and making sure your shoulders can support that so that whenever you go on the course, you can be fit enough to do the obstacles. And then the

second thing I think is way more important than all that is ninja is adaptation. You have to go on to a course that you have not practiced the thing you're doing. So you need to adapt as soon as you try it and be willing to throw away your game plan or alter your game plan while you're in the movement of what you're doing. And I think that's wonderful that an athlete has to adapt their movement while doing the movement itself. I think that's very unique. Yeah.

Well, you said adaptations in your tendons? Yeah. So what I mean by that is like human beings just grow in general. You see kids grow up, and it happens very slowly over time. Their tendons grow, and you actually, as a kid, have a lot of pain whenever you're going through growing. At least for a lot of kids, I had growing pains a lot. And your fingers will do the same thing because your fingers don't have, like, muscle in them, but you support so much of your weight on your fingers whenever you do ninja or climbing.

So you have to really, really slowly build strength in those areas, because you can get your forearm strong fast, and your crushing grip will get strong really fast. but your ability to hang and support yourself over time it just takes so long to develop in a sport unless you're like really young and doing it it'll develop a little bit faster but as an adult you have to allow yourself to be a little bit more patient with how you train

it's so funny we were just with a bunch of Olympic male gymnasts who massive upper bodies very small like lower bodies compared to what I'm used to in football and like they would intentionally walk on their heels instead of their toes so that their calves wouldn't get strong like little things like this whereas my whole life it's like heavy squats you're doing calf raises you're doing sprints and your lower body just gets blown up which probably doesn't help that I'm 220

220 pounds and most of it's in my lower body but uh I did find it like the the training for ninja was difficult because you can hurt your tendon like if you try to do too quickly you can do damage your fingertips and so it's like it's a very fine long process to to grow that strength in that area which i loved but anyway uh i'm curious as we close out if anybody was interested in like starting from zero and going towards american ninja warrior where would you advise them to start and do you guys have any like advice for them that's that depends on what zero is, I would say. Whenever it comes to ninja training, I do believe that there is ability for anyone to try it, but you probably, like if you are pretty out of

shape, you probably won't be able to try any of the actual obstacles you've seen on American Ninja Warrior for a while. And I would say the best thing to do is practice going from obstacles to ground and from ground to obstacles. So I mean by that is if you want to learn how to do a salmon ladder or a lachet where you swing off of a bar, you should practice going from a bar to the ground instead of from a bar to a bar. And you should practice going from the ground and jumping up to bars and jumping up to things. Basically, parkour, basically learning how to fall and move in a way that does not put direct impact joint to joint instead you're using your whole body to direct the impact. That's the safest way to learn, in my opinion, because you're not

going to go up and injure yourself doing a smaller shade of the ground, at least hopefully, versus whenever I see people building up big swing as their first learning and just throwing for wherever they can go, a lot of the time you'll see people fall in their back or even land on their arms in awkward ways and maybe spraying their wrist. So I would just say, take it small, be willing to go from the ground and then back to the ground as quickly as possible because endurance grows pretty slowly. Dang, I wish y'all were my coaches. And you do coach. Tell us about your gym and what you guys do there. Yeah, so a lot of Caleb's family works at the gym.

His parents own the gym. We have classes starting as young as, like, two and a half years old, and I think our oldest is like 64 years old. But yeah, we both coach kids. I primarily coached 7 to 8-year-olds, and then we have a leveled program at our gym where kids can decide to excel a little faster and do harder obstacles at a faster pace.

Yeah. And then I coached the traveling team because we have the National Ninja League and the Ninja Sport Network that are basically governing bodies in Ninja right now. So we travel to compete and go to different role championships and such. Fun. So cool. Okay. You're two years into it, but we asked this question to everybody. In your two years of marriage, what is the best advice that you've either been given or would give based off your experience? experience in marriage. That's a tough one. Are there something about, like, boundaries and communication? Oh. Hold on. We're thinking about it.

This is fun to look back on. I feel like there's a lot of things that, like, we were told to do and even talk to believe that maybe not all of those things were, like, 100% how we ended up interpreting it whenever we came into that situation. I don't know if there was any like one statement that would be something that we're like, oh yeah, that's something we live by. But I definitely think like learning how to communicate has been such a huge part about our marriage because for me personally, like I don't like talking about anything that makes

me upset or angry. So if I'm upset about something, then it's really hard for me to bring it up. and then I'm just, like, silently fuming and not saying anything. So I think Caleb learning how to get things out of me and me learning how to just, like, say when I'm upset about something and just work through it has been something that's been really important for us. Yeah, I think the biggest advice that I ever was given that wrong with me was stop expecting your partner to do things for you

and instead start believing that they can. And then whenever you believe that they can do things in your relationship, for example, if you come home expecting them to have wash the dishes, for example, or expecting it short to have been done. And it's not done. Your expectation is what's actually going to weigh on them versus if you just believe that they're capable of doing something, then you guys can actually, maybe not believe they're capable,

but you have this hope that you guys can grow together instead of this expectation that they're going to grow and become better whether or not you do. And so I didn't articulate that super well. But basically moving forward with hope instead of moving forward with expectation. I dig it. I thought you said it very well. Man, it was great to meet you guys.

I'm excited for all that you have going on. And I can't wait to see you continue crushing American Ninja Warrior. We'll have to come down and train with you at some point. I have a lot of tips to learn. Yeah. Hey, hey, hey, hey. Yes. yes but anyway good to meet you Caleb Ashley for those listening they want to learn more

and watch some of their runs on American Ninja Warrior will link that stuff in the description but good to meet you we'll be in touch thank you guys so much for having us of course