Mark Bell's Power Project - EP. 336 - Dave Castro

Episode Date: February 25, 2020

Navy SEAL Dave Castro is the Director of the CrossFit Games and the Co-Director of CrossFit Training. He hosted the very first CrossFit Games in 2007 at his family's ranch in Aromas, CA and has been a critical part of every CrossFit Games since. Subscribe to the Podcast on on Platforms! ➢ https://lnk.to/PowerProjectPodcast Visit our sponsors: ➢Icon Meals: http://iconmeals.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" for 10% off ➢Piedmontese Beef: https://www.piedmontese.com/ Use Code "POWERPROJECT" at checkout for 25% off your order plus FREE 2-Day Shipping on orders of $99 ➢Perfect Keto: http://perfectketo.com/powerproject Use Code "POWERPROJECT10" at checkout for $10 off $40 or more! ➢SHOP NOW: https://markbellslingshot.com/ Enter Discount code, "POWERPROJECT" at checkout and receive 15% off all Sling Shots Follow Mark Bell's Power Project Podcast ➢ Insta: https://www.instagram.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ https://www.facebook.com/markbellspowerproject ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mbpowerproject ➢ LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/powerproject/ ➢ YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/markbellspowerproject ➢TikTok: http://bit.ly/pptiktok FOLLOW Mark Bell ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksmellybell ➢ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MarkBellSuperTraining ➢ Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksmellybell ➢ Snapchat: marksmellybell ➢Mark Bell's Daily Workouts, Nutrition and More: https://www.markbell.com/ Follow Nsima Inyang ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/nsimainyang/ Podcast Produced by Andrew Zaragoza ➢ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamandrewz

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Maybe we can actually get this goddamn thing to work. Don't get your collagen in for the day as well maybe we can actually get this goddamn thing to work yeah don't say his name in vain oh jesus christ he's right here i'm sorry again we're going nowhere fast all right today's guest is uh dave castro and i'm super excited to have you here today this is going to be well i think it's going to be good. I hope it's going to be good. Thanks for having me. I'm excited. Yeah, you know, I think the strength community, I personally think that they've been confused

about what CrossFit has brought to the game. And they've been kind of confused about the impact that CrossFit has had. And I just wanted to personally thank you and Greg Glassman. I know he's not here today,

but I want to thank you guys because I really feel that you guys have elevated the game of fitness for everybody. And you have helped, you know, my company tremendously. You've helped companies like Rogue Fitness. And I think sometimes, you know, we take our strength training so seriously that whenever anybody else comes into the picture and anybody else does a deadlift, you know, that God forbid, right. And then we get, uh, offended and stuff, but really, really what's happened is, you know, you see companies like rogue fitness who have been built through a CrossFit and they have great synergy together. And then they're dumping money into the world's strongest man competitions. They're dumping money back into powerlifting. It's all just, uh just helping all of us tremendously. So appreciate that. Yeah, it's been a great ride to see everyone come up with it. You know, back in the day, all of these movements for so many people were intimidating and the

stuff that only big, strong guys like you do. And I think CrossFit helped break that down and made it accessible to everybody. Anyone could do it. And a lot of your best lifters, especially in weightlifting, maybe not so much in strongman and powerlifting, did come from CrossFit backgrounds and then made the transition over to kind of put CrossFit to the side and just dedicate themselves full time to these other strength pursuits. So it's been really cool watching. I've heard through the grapevine, but I don't know if it was true. I wasn't able to actually find anything. But I've heard that you've walked out on some podcasts before. So before we move forward, what would be some things that would make you walk out of here?

We'll find out if you ask it. I can't guarantee that I won't. What are some things that we can make sure that you stick around? Just let's have fun. Start shooting some guns? Yeah, exactly. Cool. How did this whole thing kind of get underway? Like how did you get involved in just CrossFit in general?

Well, I was deployed. I was in the Navy for 12 and a half years. And with my job and with what I did in the Navy, fitness was very important. And actually, even before I entered the Navy back in high school, when I made the decision, I was a SEAL. When I made the decision that I wanted to become a SEAL, I knew I had to get in shape. And so I wasn't, you know, I played football in high school. I didn't start. I started one game and then they benched me again. I was on the team though. I tried out for the basketball team, didn't get picked. That really hurt. I wasn't a star. I wasn't a star athlete. So then I decided, okay, I want to try to become a SEAL. And I knew I needed to get in shape. So there was this thing

online called the SEAL warning order. And it was a training protocol to train to go to BUDS, which is the SEAL training. And it involved a lot of running and a lot of body weight stuff. So I started following the protocol, started running and started doing all the pushups, pull-ups and sit-ups that it said to do. And it was a progressive program that increased the distances and the reps every week. And at that point, that's when I started taking an interest to training and mainly in that sort of realm, the running and the body weight stuff. I found out I was a good runner through training for running. And I wish I would have been on the cross country team in high school. I also had to start swimming. That wasn't where the cool kids were though. No, it was not where the cool kids were. I also started swimming and

I found out I was not a good swimmer. I knew how to swim, but I knew I needed to be a better swimmer if I wanted to be a SEAL. So I was doing all this training. I went into the Navy. When you go to boot camp, they ask, you know, does anyone want to be a SEAL? And they kind of say it jokingly. And I was like the only guy in my class to put my hand up. And they laugh at you.

And they say, okay, you have to check in to do a test. So you go through all these phases. Eventually, about six months into being in the Navy, I went to BUDS, Basic Underwater Demolition Seal Training, where you train to become a SEAL. And there, it's a beat down. And most of the training is running, swimming, obstacle course. There's no weightlifting. There's nothing like that at that stage. I went through that in one, you know, one push, which is actually kind of rare. I was a really young as a nine, 18 or 19. And, uh, most people, not most, but a lot of people get hurt and or performance rolled and set back. Luckily I didn't get hurt. And luckily I didn't get performance rolled. I almost, I was on the verge of getting performance rolled for my swim times.

We do every Friday, you do a two mile swim, two mile ocean swim. And my times were always on the cusp of just making it. On the running, every week you also did a four mile time run. My running was always good, but my swimming was not. But I was good enough to make it through. So I finished in one go. And then you go to a SEAL team. At a SEAL team, you have a lot more freedom. Once you get there, guys found their niche in things they wanted to do and they trained how they wanted to train. Some guys were big into bodybuilding and some guys were big

into... Those guys probably had a hard time. Well, you'd be surprised. I wasn't saying most SEALs look more like you guys than they do me, but that might be an extreme. Most guys are much, uh, they have pretty good amount of muscle mass. Yeah. More so than I do, especially back then. And, um, I kind of fell in the running realm. So I ran a lot,

stayed with that. And some guys ran a lot. And then there's the guys who got into the body weight stuff. You, and then the bodybuilding, a lot of people were doing that. You didn't see a lot of guys at that time, so 98, 99, 2000, doing functional movements, doing weightlifting, the actual lifts, doing powerlifting or doing strongman stuff. It was really, you know, there was a lot of, what are those machines? The hammer strength machines. A lot of that stuff was out there. and um but still fitness and training i was researching it and trying to learn what i could at that time and seeing what other guys were doing to help me be a better seal then 9-11 happened and uh guys started going to war and that kind of changed the perspective of training and kind of trained like okay we're doing this to look good and we're doing this to be fit and be in shape maybe some guys are doing it more to look good now Now we have to do this to perform in combat.

So how do we have to change things? And still at that point, a lot of these other movements weren't exposed to us. I was deploying. I was going to Afghanistan. And we would do these missions where we would leave our base. A helicopter would fly us to a location, set us here. You already have me petrified, by the way,

just a helicopter flying me somewhere. I would already crap my pants. I would already be thrown out of the helicopter. The helicopter, that's the worst point. You have no control over what's going to happen to you. Those were the times when I was most scared. Because you could get shot down.

You can crash and you have no control. When you're on the ground running around, you have control. You can make decisions. You can control your situation. But in a helicopter, you're just waiting to get shot down or crash. So, yes, the helicopter rides were the worst part of it. Anyway, so you'd fly in. They'd set you down.

They're generally a land feature, a mountain or something. Then we'd have to hike over the mountain to get to our target, do our stuff, and then we'd leave. Well, we'd have our gear and hiking over, I'd get winded, we'd get to the target. And then when you get to the target, you kind of have this long endurance effort. You get to the target and you have to go hard and fast. And I didn't feel like I was in the shape I could have been in. I felt like I could be in better shape. So I decided, okay, well, what do I need to do to be in better shape for these missions? I need to run more. So there was a base loop on the base we were at that was about four or five miles. And I was like,

okay, I need to run this twice now instead of running it once. Each day? Pretty much every other day or often, way too much. Way too much, I'll tell you, in hindsight. Okay. And so I started running more and still doing these type of missions. And it wasn't really translating. Came back from that deployment. I actually came to Yosemite on a climbing trip.

I was really big into rock climbing at that time. And we hired a climber, well-known climber named Mark Twight. And he was one of the best climbers in the world at the time for the type of climbing that I was really into. I really liked. And he also, he wrote a book on training for climbing. And in that book, all of his stuff was long, slow distance training, go for long runs, go for long bikes. So while we're on this climbing trip, I asked him to talk about that. And he goes, I don't do that anymore. I go, what do you mean you don't do that? He goes, I do something called CrossFit. And I go, well,

what's CrossFit? And he goes, it's all this short, really high intensity workouts using movements like the deadlift and using pull-ups and using clean and jerks. And I was looking at the guy and I'm small, but he's even smaller. And I'm like, I don't know if I buy this from this guy. Here he is. He was saying one thing about how to train, and now he's saying a completely different thing. I'm like, I'm not even going to explore this. But he planted the seed. So I did start exploring. I started researching CrossFit.

I went back to Virginia Beach. I was getting ready to deploy again. I was looking at all the videos, watching the main site in 2005. And I was like, this is intriguing, but it's actually also intimidating because, again, I didn't have a background with a lot of these lifts or these movements. And I didn't want to just dive in. Well, I ended up deploying again to Afghanistan, still was researching CrossFit. And I was sitting at a computer in our little computer lounge on deployment. And another guy, another team guy who

was really in good shape sat down next to me and I'm looking at the CrossFit site. And he's like, what are you looking at? I'm like, oh, this is CrossFit. He goes, what's that? I go, well, it's a high intensity workout. Check it out. You know, it gets you in the best shape of your life. And I'd never done CrossFit at this point. And he goes, all right, that's awesome. I'm going to try it. So while we're on deployment, he starts doing CrossFit and I'm not doing CrossFit. And he's, he doesn't know I'm not, he's checking in with me and telling me how great it's going and how strong he's getting and how much he likes it. And I just watched him and saw the results that he had with it. And he was kind of also the crazy fitness guy on the team. Like he would do the, the intent, the, the interval training and do stuff that everyone else wasn't doing.

So it was kind of a natural fit for him. Eventually, I left that deployment. We left that deployment and still hadn't done CrossFit. Then getting ready for the next deployment, decided, okay, I'm going to start trying CrossFit now. What year is this, by the way? This is late 4 and 05. Okay. Yep.

Then I started hitting CrossFit on deployment, and I saw the results right away. And I was doing CrossFit workouts a few hours before we went on missions and we'd go on these missions and we'd hike over and we'd hit the targets. And I felt like I was in great shape. And I was like, wow, this stuff really works. And for a couple of months I would do CrossFit pre, you know, the missions we were going on. And I was sold at that point. And I saw a lot of results myself and I had to learn all these movements and, you know, the missions we were going on and I was sold at that point. And I saw a lot of results in myself and I had to learn all these movements and, you know, I was watching videos. And back then the, really one of the few places to find the videos was on the CrossFit site. Now there's, you know, you can find tons of videos on all this stuff, but, um, and that's kind of how I

got involved in doing CrossFit. And the, the thing that hooked me was the results. And not the actual physical, but the performance results. My body changed too, but I was less concerned about that. I was more concerned with how I was actually going to perform as a machine out in the field. What did it cost you to learn about the training? Yeah, that's the best part. Nothing. It just cost me time.

I just had to research and study and, and, uh, and watch the videos and read the articles and consume the content that they were giving away for free at the time. You know, giving the workouts for free, giving the information for free on like how to do the exercises and all that stuff, I think is is huge. And I think that's what made it explode. But getting it on the Internet, any idea on like how Greg Glassman and Greg Glassman is not super young. How did Greg Glassman have the insight to get this up on the Internet in 2000? He had a client who said, hey, let's start putting your workout. This stuff you're doing is great. Let's start putting your workouts online. Let's build a website and we'll post a workout every day. And he said, yeah, let's do it.

And he did that. There was nothing like that before. No. And it kind of just started the – it laid the foundation for what it is now and where we are now. And it just slowly grew. And even to this day, people tell me CrossFit's a fad and it's going to go away. And I'm like, man, people have been telling me that for 15 years, you know? And, uh, but anyway, so it's about to run out tomorrow. Exactly. So, um, well, but every point that got us to this stage, it's all, there's all been other steps that helped us get here. And it's just been slow growth. This didn't happen overnight. There was definitely some boom and some big hot periods,

but it's been, well, for me and my involvement, about 15 years for him, over 20, 25, 30 years. Yeah, one of the things I find fascinating about CrossFit is the, I think Greg Glassman kind of originally said, show me someone that squats 600 pounds and I'll show you that someone that can't run a six minute mile or vice versa, you know? And like, I, I really, I really love that. You know, there, there's like a few people in the world that have since that, that time, there's

a couple of guys that have actually done that. But I mean, you know, first of all, to try to do it naturally would be pretty close to impossible. And it'd be really rare to be able to do that. But I love the goal. The goal is to be fit in more ways than one. And I love the way that the system came to be and how they find somebody in the middle of nowhere, Tennessee, as like the fittest guy in the world. It's strange the way it all kind of came to be. Well, even what I was saying in the beginning, how some of us gravitated towards different stuff, different training protocols in the Navy before CrossFit, it was kind of the death of the

specialist, meaning it just, you know, even now there's a lot of specialties and that's okay, but like CrossFit's the middle of all of that. We're going to be the best at everything we can be. We're not going to be the strongest, but we're going to be really strong. We're not going to be the fastest. The best at exercise. Yeah. I We're not going to be the strongest, but we're going to be really strong. We're not going to be the fastest, but we're going to be really fast. The best at exercise. Yeah. I actually,

I hate when people say, especially towards the CrossFit Games athletes, I'm not a big fan of people saying, you guys exercise for time, or it's, or it's, yeah, you're best at exercise.

Because, you know, it's a sport, and I, especially as the director of the sport, I have to view it that way. And, you know,

weightlifters aren't, weightlifting is exercise too, but they're not saying that about themselves. 100%. And I, especially as the director of the sport, I have to view it that way. And, you know, weightlifters aren't weightlifting is a, is exercise too, but they're not saying that about themselves and runners, same thing. Runners aren't saying that about themselves. So I, I try to bring us bodybuilding the best at posing. Like, yeah, exactly. Navy. Did you notice a lot of other Navy SEALs take that on? And through the years, is that something like, is CrossFit type workouts something that took hold of guys in the military or just you and a few people you know? No, at that point, so it was like the beginning of it happening across a big population of us. So, you know, it kind of spread like a wildfire. Once a few of us started doing it, others saw the results. And actually the growth of it within the teams is the same as the growth of it within society, meaning it happened because of word of mouth. And people nowadays, Greg's big, you know, we're not going to do advertising. And the way it grows is because people talk about it. And that same thing happened there. You know, I would start talking about it. Other guys would

start talking about their results and then others would give it a try. And then from there, others would give it a try and people would see that it works. That's how people come to gyms. That's how people get involved with it because they hear about it from their family members or a friend who sees results. So back then, to answer your question, yeah, more and more guys started doing it. There was a point where we did,

I eventually went to basic underwater demolition SEAL training as a BUDS instructor. So come full circle, I was teaching people how to become SEALs toition SEAL training. I was a BUDS instructor. So come full circle. I was teaching people how to become SEALs to go through the training. And we were doing seminars for large groups of SEALs then. So yeah, now more than ever, or there was phases

where, you know, it's pretty much become, I don't want to say the norm, but there's also different versions of it and bastardizations of it. And people say, oh, I'm not doing CrossFit, I'm doing this. But fundamentally it is, you know, CrossFit. So for someone who like, because I think whenever everybody thinks of CrossFit, they've probably seen CrossFit workouts, et cetera. But what fundamentally is CrossFit? Because some people would just think it's different barbell complexes, right? That's CrossFit for some people, but what would you define CrossFit as so the listeners know that is CrossFit? Well, the definition we use in the

course is constantly varied functional movement executed at high intensity. Really what we're doing is we're taking a variety of functional movements, combining them in patterns and combining them in unique patterns, usually low rep, sometimes mid rep, sometimes high rep, depending on what we're trying to get out of it. And we put the clock to it. So we have this component of work. So all of these movements combined together and these reps equal an amount of work. And whoever is able to complete that work faster is fitter than the other person.

You know, sometimes people will say, hey, it's just HIIT training or it's just interval training. And well, we do use intervals in some of our workouts, but it's not interval training alone. HIIT training or the old, some of the old programs where they do, well, yeah, let's just take HIIT training as an example. That stuff would use isolation movements for the most part. And so it's not really that. And the thing is, other people will say it's been around forever. A lot of say it's been around forever. A lot of these movements have been around forever, but what has not was how we combine them and how we put them together and how we, I'd say, dose them on an individual. So, you know, a workout could include 400 meter runs, deadlifts and pull-ups. And we'd say, let's do three rounds of

that. And you're going to do 15 pull-ups, 10 deadlifts and run the 400 and it's going to be for time. And the for time part takes it to this point of place of performance to where actually, okay, next time you can do it two weeks later or three weeks later or five months later. And if your time improved, that means you're improving and there's actually results. Also, the time component increases the intensity and that's, you know, as you guys know, and with your lifting, intensity is where the results are. The harder you go, oftentimes that's when you're going to push your body to break down barriers and to grow. I don't know if people understand how organized CrossFit really is.

Like, I think it might look like chaos to somebody. It might look like, you know, all hell's breaking loose. But, you know, I've been to the certification courses. I've taught some of the certification courses for powerlifting and CrossFit. And just in rubbing elbows with CrossFitters and people that own CrossFit boxes and then even seeing the back end of the website and seeing the questions being asked for people to keep their to renew their certifications and things like that is crazy.

Like there was like four or five of us sitting there scratching our heads like, I don't know the fucking answers to that one. We're trying to watch and judge specifically how someone's squatting. But I think you guys have done a great job of having like a real like protocol behind it all and real organization behind it all and i don't know if any i don't know there's definitely a method to the madness and there's a reason for doing everything we do and um you kind of you have to pay attention you have to want to know it's not as random as people want to think it is and there's there's a reason for most things that we do within the methodology within the program and and that's how you know even the games are kind of built around some of that method all all of the methodology, within the program. And that's how even the games are kind of built around some of that methodology,

all of the methodology, but built around the standards and some of the things that make sense to pursue and go down that route with. I've been in training for a long time. I've been lifting for 30 years, and I've never seen anything really like it before. And when I first saw it, I got to admit, I was like, this is dumb. People are going to get killed like what's going on you know and you're always taught that you can't mix these two things together like it doesn't make sense to do that and you know if you if you do that you're going to over train and you're not going to have gains and you're not

going to look good but look at how good some of these guys look yeah a lot of these athletes uh look amazing and i understand like they're surviving it and they're adapting to it and there's a bunch of things going on. But I would have never thought it was possible to even train like that. One of the big things that we preach is mechanics, consistency, and then intensity. And a lot of people, especially the critics who watch us and see what we're doing, don't hear or't see the mechanics and consistency, and they just see the intensity. And what we mean by that is with the mechanics and consistency, you got to learn the movements, you got to learn how to do them correctly, and you got to do them correctly for a good amount of time before you add intensity. So when you see guys out there, you know, clean and jerking 135, 30 times, and they're just

throwing it around, they have a foundation. I'd hope so. Oftentimes they need, they've had a foundation to get to that point. And that's the best application of CrossFit is a slow dosing of it. We need to build people up before you see them doing some of those things. And it's different for everybody. Some people might, their path to getting to that intensity stage might be a few weeks because of their background. Others, it might be months before they can do stuff like everyone else. And it just depends on the individual. And the great part about it is the workouts. Everyone can do them. So we take that run example, that run, the pull-up and deadlift. If I was going to do it, I'd probably, let's say

it was going to be 15 reps, I'd use 185 and maybe we'd do 15 pull-ups. And maybe for an older gentleman or an older lady, she's not going to do pull-ups. Maybe she'll just do some standing pulls over the bar and she deadlifts just the barbell and she runs 200 meters. So the stimulus is the same and we scale and we change the weights to keep everybody involved and make it entirely inclusive. And then if Matt Frazier was going to do it with me, he'd be deadlifting 315 pounds and he'd be doing 30 pull-ups. And that's another side of it that people are missing too is like someone like Matt Frazier who let's say he's not able to do a 700-pound deadlift. He's still going to crush someone who's really strong, someone who's really proficient at deadlifting.

As soon as you start mixing in, start mixing in other things. And then it's a variable that most people aren't, aren't ready for. Yep. I think also what you said, honestly, it's like, I remember back in what, 2015, 2016, when a lot of YouTube, I think in 14, when YouTube was like kind of going after CrossFit, you'd see people showing videos of CrossFitters like doing, you know, bad movements. But I feel like personal responsibility is not factored in there. Like they say, oh, this person doing this movement, this is what CrossFit is. Whereas when you see a power lifter doing a really crappy squat,

a really high squat, not to depth or just really bad form, we don't say that's power lifting. We say that's a bad power lifter. But instead, we were always like, Oh, that's not a bad CrossFitter. That's just CrossFit. And I don't know how exactly we came upon that, but that's what happened. I think a lot of people were just upset that we were becoming so popular. And so, so many people were doing CrossFit that, you know, a lot of the old guard in, in fitness, and I'm not pointing to you, I'm not a lot of the old guard in fitness, and I'm not pointing to you. I'm not saying you're the old guard. But I mean, I'm looking at you like, yeah.

No, I agree. Like, I've heard it all, and I understand it all. And I, you know, when I, as I mentioned earlier, when I first saw it, I was like, this is kind of crazy, like, what's going on? But then immediately I was like, wait a second. There's more people, like, weightlifting. There's more people powerlifting. Why in the hell would I ever be upset about that?

This seems great. Well, yeah, some old school weightlifters and some old school powerlifters weren't exactly happy what we were doing with their movements and how we were exposing it to the masses. And a lot of them became vocal. And some, I would say, joined us and grew with us. And others chose not to and chose to go in their own direction. And that's fine. But we weren't doing anything to hurt what they're doing. We're just supporting we're supporting all human movement, essentially exposing it to more people than than they would have without us. Is some of this just start by Greg Glassman coming up with some evil workouts and making people throw up?

Greg Glassman coming up with some evil workouts and making people throw up? Yeah. I mean, basically, he was experimenting with it for decades, even before 2001, and combining movements and different training protocols. And he used to be a trainer at Gold's Gym. So he has a lot of background and foundation in training. He was an elite gymnast. And he decided to start training, of some of the things he knew from weightlifting with some of the stuff he was doing for gymnastics and he was an avid cycler and he would take components and mix them up and play with them and and see the results and see the

stimulus and and it grew from there and it's just a lot of in the beginning from what i've heard from him he has just a lot of experimenting and um trying different things so who was his like guinea pig though because he's writing up all these programs this uh you know crazy workouts i mean i would hate to be yeah exactly back in the day some some of his old school clients still are around and they some of them work for crossfit and some of them were his guinea pigs and back in the day when he was also working at gold's gym in southern california he had a uh a lot of cops and firefighters he would train. And so those guys are good people to experiment this high-intensity stuff on because you got to do high-intensity stuff in those jobs, in that line of work. Was that like in the early 2000s too?

So I'd say that was even before. Oh, wow. Yeah. Because in the early 2000s, that's when he was in Santa Cruz and that's when he launched the website. So that was probably in the 90s, pre-website, pre-all of that. When I got invited to his house recently, he was like taking me around his house as if I was like a present that he wanted to show everybody. He just like unwrapped because he's like, this guy squats over a thousand pounds. He kept like, he was all pumped about it.

And I had an opportunity. Have you squatted a thousand? Yeah, I squatted a thousand eighty, kept like he was all pumped about it and i had an opportunity a thousand i yeah i squatted 1080 yeah damn when not recently okay let's uh yeah years ago um probably i don't know eight years ago was that around the bigger faster stronger period yeah yeah around that yeah around that time but um you know i found him to be a really uh really interesting guy and it's amazing the way that this all just exploded but in your in your eyes like what was kind of like a moment where you were like oh shit like this thing is gonna this thing is gonna like turn into a giant monster so when i i started working for him in 06 and it was really around the seminars and we were doing uh the crossfit level one seminar and we'd travel the country and we were doing you CrossFit Level 1 seminar. And we had traveled the country. And we were doing, you know, one seminar every two or three weeks.

And then that turned into one seminar every two weeks. And then that turned into one seminar every weekend. And then all of a sudden, he's like, okay, if we want this to grow, I need to step back and you guys need to grow this. And when he said you guys, he was talking to myself and Nicole Carroll, who to this day, her and I run the training department. And so we had to scale the program and we had to create more trainers to take the program on the road. And then we started having two, two a weekend. And then it was three, four, five a weekend. And then at that point, I was like, wow, we're doing five level ones a weekend. That's really when it was like, man, and it's still growing and there's still demand.

And so here we are 15 years later and this weekend, I think, and I still schedule and staff all of those seminars. That's my main role with CrossFit. People don't even realize that. People think I'm just the games guy, but my main role with CrossFit is the training department, scheduling and staffing and working all the components.

Wow, that's got to be a lot. Yeah. So this weekend, we'll probably have 15 level ones going on around the world and roughly eight or nine here and then the rest overseas. And we'll have probably eight to ten level two seminars. So we'll have about 25, 25 different courses going on this weekend around the world. And we do that every weekend. There's two weekends we don't do that. One is Christmas and New Year's. So there's only two weekends, even during the games, the weekend of the games, we have seminars. We have a lot less, but we still have seminars going on.

And so back then, that period was one period where I was like, wow, this is going to – and Greg at one point said, hey, we're going to be doing 20 of these a weekend. And I was like, I don't know if that's possible. Well, here we are. We've had many weekends where we've done 20. So that was a big moment for me. Another moment was the 2009 CrossFit Games. That was just – this is a different topic.

This is more about the games. But the seven games, the 2007 games were really small. We actually didn't even think, we thought we were not going to have the 2008 games. And then at the last minute, we decided, okay, we did that. We should do it again. So we did the 2008 games. But the 2009 games is the first moment where I was like, wow, this thing has the potential to be really big.

You know, there's thousands of people in Aromas at my parents' ranch on the hillside watching these guys on the floor do the CrossFit games. And it's like, okay, this is going to be something. There's something here. As far as the levels go, is it mainly level one, level two? Are there level three? There is a level three. There's level three and level four.

Okay. Yep. And so the CrossFit level one, it is a level three there's level three and level four okay yep and um so the crossfit level one it's a certificate course and so in the world of certification the actual um legit world of certification a certification only proves subject matter expertise through a test so a lot of people in fitness use certification incorrectly that word so you can't have a certification that's a course that is actually instructing. So level one is a certificate course. You go through it. It's a course. It has a test at the end. And it's certified by this organization called ANSI, American National

Standards Institute. Then the level two is a course that's not accredited, but it's still part of our pathway. And then there's level three, which is a certification. So the level three is a legit certification and you have to go to a testing center. You schedule it, you go to a testing center and you take a test that we created written and with videos. So there's some coaching or some spot the flaw type things you have to do on the videos. And if someone passes that, they're a level three trainer. And then we're going to have a level four certification, which again is not a course, but just a test.

And that one's going to be actual movement. So the coach will be evaluated actually training people. And you said you're going to have that or you guys have that currently? It's coming out very soon. It's coming out in the next couple of months. I've seen you guys get into it pretty good with some of the other people that have certifications and even seen some of your staff, I think, show up to some of these certifications and kind of get into arguments. And on top of that, even further, I remember Mark Ripito just absolutely got destroyed. I felt really sorry for him on ESPN by, I think, one of your –

Russell Berger. Russell Berger. destroyed i felt really sorry for him on espn by i think one of your russell burger russell burger just i was like oh i was like i feel so bad for mark ripoteau right now but mark was part of mark was part of the crew he was part of the uh he was coming up with us but then he had some we personally even had some uh disagreements and uh it didn't work out you know he we were he was part of the first crossfit games he was tasked with running the um cross out. He was part of the first CrossFit Games. He was tasked with running the CrossFit total. That was one of the events there. And at the time, I was still active duty Navy. So I was active duty Navy until 2010.

What a lot of people don't understand is I was running the seminar department and the CrossFit Games. The 2007, 2008, 2009 games, I was running while still active duty. And actually the 2009 games, I don't talk about this too often, I was running while still active duty. And actually, the 2009 games, I don't talk about this too often, I was deployed to Afghanistan and programming and working on the games from overseas. But anyway, so the 2007 games, Mark and I were supposed to work together on the CrossFit total. I was out doing SEAL training with students, and I was kind of off the grid for a while. So I was hard to get in contact. He was very needy. He had a lot of questions he wanted answered. He had a lot of demands and he wasn't able to get in touch with me. And so he got really unhappy about that. And we didn't have a good relationship after that. And then eventually his relationship

with CrossFit, he didn't like the way we were doing some things. So we parted ways. Does it kind of go from the top down? Is Greg Glassman very defensive of the company as well? And then everyone else kind of is that way as well to kind of protect the brand and protect what you guys feel is correct i think greg is very protective of the brand as he should be and i think um not everybody within the company um we they all don't have the same place to to um or the same platform to then replicate how he's how he handles things right so meaning some people he has a few people especially in the past like russell berger who would also defend the brand for him and but really you know he's not saying to the whole company hey you need to get out there and say this you need to stand up um he takes it on himself a lot to do that and um and someone like me i'm not i don't think i'm doing

it in regard uh necessarily to to just um mimic, but I'm doing it because I believe in the same thing and I'm doing it because he's not sitting there going, hey, Dave, you should go know all the everything that's gone through with it. But is there a difference of company intention nowadays than when CrossFit first started? Has there been a change in the overall goal? Or is the goal the same, but the way it's being done is different? You know, I think the goal of CrossFit is very similar to what it was in the very beginning. We're trying to improve people's lives, but what we're doing now is anybody, everybody, and we still are trying to do that, but what we're doing now is a little more focus on people who don't have access to training or who typically wouldn't go into a gym. So Greg's whole thing right now is we're focusing

more on elderly people and people who are overweight who you typically wouldn't find getting into a gym. And he wants to reach that crowd more. Now, through all the stage of CrossFit's development, those people have also been coming to CrossFit on their own for various reasons. It's not like those people never went to gyms or, you know, plenty of them have been going to gyms for the last 15 years. Now all we're doing is we're trying to tell that story more and trying to get more of those people to go into the gyms. In the beginning, it was almost like we focused a little more on the high level performance aspect of it and what, what, how people could perform at their best levels from it, highest possible points.

But now it's kind of changing on in that direction. Yeah, he's focused more on like fighting against like sugar and stuff like that, right? Well, yeah, but that's been there for a while. He's fighting corruption in science and fighting corruption and corruption against us. So he's a fighter and he's always going to be a fighter, and there's always going to be something to work on. Yeah, he's been on a low-carb kick for quite some time, and he and I got in some good conversation about it,

and we were throwing around some names from the mid-'90s on people that inspired us to switch over to, switch over to like a low carb lifestyle. And then is that what's communicated in the level one courses as well? Or do they teach nutrition in CrossFit? Yeah. So nutrition is a big component of CrossFit and nutrition is a big component because the performance aspect, you know, so much of performance is related to nutrition. And more so when you're talking about high intensity efforts that are longer than, you know, in powerlifting and weightlifting, stuff is really short.

So you guys can get away with eating a little shittier, I'll say. Yeah. And you guys do. And that's how you put size on. That's how a lot of guys put on size. But when you start talking about efforts that are, you know, 15, 20, 30 minutes long at really high intensity where you have to be strong and you have to be fast. You can't weigh 300 pounds. Yeah, exactly. And what you put in your body becomes very important. So early on,

the zone diet was something that Greg leaned on heavily. And we talked a lot about and we promote in our seminars. I wouldn't say promote. We recommend. And the reason we recommend it is not because of the ratio. That's a good starting point. But really, it's because the zone diet was about measuring and was about taking control and getting some input for what you're putting in your body, getting some understanding of how much the macronutrient distribution is that you're eating. And then from there, based on how you perform, you could make tweaks.

Maybe you needed to add more fat. Maybe you needed to add more protein. But what we all knew and what we all know and what we've all agreed on through this whole period of CrossFit's growth is carbs are pretty much bad. And more carbs are not good. Less carbs more often than not are very good. And especially when you're talking about health and people just trying to get healthy, reduced carbs and no processed carbs is the best route to go, especially no sugar. And so we are big, I don't want to say anti-carb, but we're very against. Yeah, I guess we are anti-carb. This is really interesting. I want to ask you this.

Now, with that being said, and I have no problem with what you said necessarily, but with the nature of the way top-level CrossFitters exercise, is this something that you guys are also trying to get your top-level athletes to take on? And have they been resistant to that? Because when you look at athletes like that, putting out that much output, they seem to really be like, F that. I want my carbs if I'm going to feel my performance. Most of the top level guys are eating. Here's the thing. They're eating carbs, but they're eating less carbs than, let's say, the mainstream diets and the mainstream prescriptions. They're eating carbs, but they also have a good amount of protein and probably way more fat. In our high athletes,

you see the ones who really pay attention to their diet, they get more calories or more food out of fat than they do some of the other macronutrients. And that's what they play with a lot. Now, there's been, you know, even within the athletes within the last five years, there's been little waves and there's been little themes and paleo was really big a few years ago. Uh, the keto kit kind of came around. Then you got some people who got on this like carb kick and, um,

but, but even with the carb kick, it was like the timing of the carbs and different amounts, but it still wasn't like, I wouldn't call their diets a high carb diet, but they're eating, uh, even more carbs than maybe say someone

who's eating keto or paleo like diet. And I really do get kind of, there's just so many names and all these different diets and it's just, you know, you get sucked into what's what and these little discussions. There's a lot of different ways to go about doing it from a nutrition standpoint. But the main thing is you guys are trying to teach in general, like let's get a hold of the carbohydrates because that's hugely problematic for most people. And when we're talking about those older populations, it's like, hey, let's just cut out sodas completely,

cut out breads, cut out refined carbohydrates, and let's start there. I've noticed specifically with the carnivore diet, which would be different than, you know, what a high-level CrossFitter might want to mess with. But with that style of diet, it just gets rid of snacks. You know, it eliminates snacks. And you think about, you know, what makes our population fat. It's just, we end up snacking on processed foods quite a bit. Get addicted to those foods. Yep. What are you eating right now? I eat mainly meat. Yeah. Yeah. Mainly just steak, eggs, some burgers here and there, some cheese, some milk here and there.

But yeah, how about for you? I've basically cut out processed carbs the last three months and I don't eat that many carbs at all right now. And just meat and protein and fat. Dave, I know that this is going to be – A lot of avocado. And I mean, fat. Dave, I know that this is going to be a lot of avocado. This is going to be an oddly specific question to answer.

And there's, I guess, there's no way to put a blanket idea on this, but I think there's a lot of performance athletes that are listening that are curious. What do you say they, your, your top level athletes, male and female, they still eat a good amount of carbohydrates, but much less than they were in the past. And I found that to be for myself too. Like the max for carbs that I'd go up to at this point is maybe 150 grams or 200 if it's a tough day of training of jujitsu and whatever, right? Not anywhere close to the 400 or whatever that I used to think I needed to consume. What does that number look like in a range for a top level CrossFitter in terms of carbs and grams? I know it's, it's such a general question, but it'd be hard to pinpoint because there's so many top level athletes that are doing so many different things. You know, you talk to Matt and he's like, Hey,

I'm eating a rich froning. I'm drinking chocolate milk every night or whatever. And other guys are not, the other guys are really hard on it and like, Hey, I'm doing very little. And you know, actually I think for most, it's going to vary anyways yeah yeah and even with you i'd say let's try experimenting try a week where you're doing 50 grams instead of 100 you know and that's the thing with all of these individuals we're all different but we all do know um in general with the carbs less is going to be beneficial to everybody and i'm not saying less to the point to where you're eating 20 because maybe there your performance is suboptimal. But maybe it's 75 grams.

But I think you can get away with eating even less than 100. But you'll – and you know what? It's a cop-out to say you'll know best. No, but you're right. It's a cop-out to say you'll know best because oftentimes a person will say, well, I'm just comfortable with this. I'm going to eat this. And they don't know less is actually better because they don't experiment and go there and try less and try to perform less. So now, so I haven't had, I'm not eating any carbs and I'm doing a lot of endurance stuff. I've even ran, you know, I just ran three miles in 19 minutes, 1958.

I was really happy about that. It's been a long time since I've ran that fast. And that's what basically eating very minimal carbs. I ran that fast. And that's what basically eating very minimal carbs. And, um, and I'm, you know, I'm not as strong, I'm not as strong as I used to be, but I'm choosing different things as priority. CrossFit went through a lot of changes. Uh, you guys have made a lot of, uh, adjustments.

Um, you know, you got the CrossFit games on like ESPN and, uh, it seemed like, uh, the CrossFit games was like a big highlight. It seemed like the CrossFit Games was like a big highlight. It seemed like the CrossFit Games was a huge thing and everyone was involved in the open and they were, you know, really competitive and keeping track of like where they were on the leaderboard and all those different things. And I personally think that that's what made CrossFit was the online competition where I could see where I'm ranked in Sacramento against somebody else. I think that's amazing.

And if anybody ever did that with like powerlifting or anything like that, I think it would be really powerful as well. But a lot of changes have been made. It's much harder. The competition level has skyrocketed. You guys got rid of some of the regional competitions that you had, and it disappointed a lot of people. I think a lot of people were really sad and upset. People were literally very, very upset.

What was that change like for you guys, and why the switch? Well, again, Greg wanted to go in a different direction. He wanted to stop focusing. He wanted the company to focus less on some of the competition and some of the things we were doing there. And therefore, you know, we got rid of our media team who did all that content. And he wanted to focus on the health aspect and some of the battles he wants to do. And so the change was quick and it happened like he decided, hey, I want to do this and I want to do it now. And so, you know, a lot of people were upset.

A lot of people internally were upset. A lot of the community was upset. But, you know, that's business. That's life. It is what it is. And, you know, the choice you have to make, and especially some of the people who still work for CrossFit, was, okay, do I go on? Do I get on board or do I do something else? And, you know, I chose to keep going and drive forward and go with the changes.

And for me personally, with a lot of these changes, you know, it's been still running the games. We have less events we're overall responsible for. So that's really cool. You know, I don't have to program the regionals for me. I programmed those two. That was a lot of work. The open announcements that I travel and do, that was a lot of work. So some of the things that I had to do, that was a lot of work. I'm able to focus on just the CrossFit Games now and the training, and I don't have the load of some of those things. So for me, it was great.

It was very normal, too, for big companies. A big company grows and grows and grows, and they go, ah, shit. They come back down to kind of their roots and kind of their original. it you know and they they come they come back down to kind of their roots and kind of their original was the crossfit games like uh was that a collaborative effort between uh you and greg glassman or like how did the crossfit games even come to be so in 2007 i took him to my parents ranch in aromas california and we walked the ranch and um at that time i was working for him just doing the training department the seminars and he and he liked the facility, he liked the location. He said, we should have an event out here.

And I go, okay, cool. He's like, yeah, let's do a little competition. Let's do the Woodstock of Fitness. And I said, okay, done. I go, when do you want to do it? He said, July. And so we started planning the first ever CrossFit Games. And that July, I think it was July 4th weekend, we did the games.

And I think 60 or 70 athletes showed up and about 100 spectators. And the people who showed up at the time, comments on CrossFit.com, that's where all the athletes would post their times for the workouts of the day. And the best guys who were posting the fastest times were the people we invited to come out to the competition and some local people. and the fastest times were the people we invited to come out to the competition and some local people. And, and from there, that's where it just started, you know, growing and changing. And eventually we went to the Home Depot Center in St. and Carson and, and now we're in Madison, Wisconsin and gone through a lot of, um, a lot of growth and a lot of change with it,

but it's been a wild ride. It's been fun. Kelly Surrett, like a judge at like the first CrossFit games. Yeah, he was the judge for the CrossFit total. He was one of the judges that Mark Ripito picked to judge it. He was sitting in a chair. If you look at some of the pictures of some of the athletes doing it, he's one of the judges.

And I think the first games, it came down to the final deadlift or something like that. So James Fitzgerald won, but Josh Everett had a chance to win it. I think it was 595. If he pulled 595, he would have won the games, but he missed that lift. I think he got 565 or something. I mean, that's a good deadlift for a guy who's as well-rounded as these guys are.

Oh, yeah. No, it's crazy. And the lifts that when you took it back to the ranch and they ran like a 4K on the ranch and then they were deadlifting afterwards. It was more than a 4K. It was, I think, a 7K. Yeah. Oh, fuck. Yeah, a 7K hike.

And then I think- These guys were not hiking. I hiked it. They were running. They were running. It was crazy. And it's really steep there. And then I think Brooke Wells did like a 425 deadlift or something on a deadlift ladder.

Yeah, on a deadlift ladder. Yeah. On a deadlift every 30 seconds. It just doesn't make any sense. Oh, yeah. Here we go. Yeah. That was the CrossFit total. And back then the athlete, the –

Didn't John Wellborn compete in this? He competed in the 2009 games. John Wellborn's like – Actually, the 2008 games. Like 6'5", five 330 pounds former professional football player this guy had the biggest squad i forgot what it was but it was a lot some that's definitely depth yeah people are going nuts yeah and then so some of the total for the top athletes was inside with platforms with these three judges and this is okay this is one of the issues we had with Mark.

So Mark wanted the total for all the athletes to be run like it was on the inside, one platform and three judges per platform. And to do that with the 70 athletes, we were never going to finish that day. I'm like, hey, we won't finish. We won't finish. Just have one judge. Yeah. So I said, hey, we're going to do half of it outside.

And for the guys lifting outside, they're going to have one judge. And it's fine. And it's okay. And he didn't like that. So the top 20 athletes were lifting inside with the official setup. And these guys, that's Nicole Carroll, were lifting. Oh, that's Russ Green. Were lifting inside.

You know, I'm curious about this. You said that CrossFit initially, it was very, you know, high performance athlete focused, I guess. Well, I wouldn't, I might've misstated that. I wouldn't say it was focused that that's a lot of the community, especially with the mill and LEO that were coming to it, but it was still a lot of, you go to CrossFit gyms, even in 2006 and seven, even now, a majority of the clientele is soccer moms and, you know, an average people. And that's where, that's where a lot of the, uh, the base is, but that, that high level

of, uh, individual SWAT team seals, they were doing it too. And that's what got a lot of people in, but sorry to interrupt. No, no, no. That's totally okay. It made me curious in terms of like, like you know regionals athletes weren't happy about regionals and stuff and you said that that was just like it happened fast and quick right was that was that necessary for being able to focus more on elderly and those types of individuals that you guys said that that's the new type of people you want to bring into crossfit was that

like a nest do you do you feel that that was an absolute necessary thing to do? For Greg, yes. For Greg, yes. Okay. In Greg's eyes, it was absolutely necessary to do. Got it. Okay. Yeah, you know, I think the problem he's trying to solve is really hard. You know, he was mentioning to me, he's like, we're losing this battle. You know, people are really sick and

people are really unhealthy. And I think that it's, I think it's smart for him to put his focus there because you need to get people healthy before you can even get them to start moving in the direction of losing weight. And I think a lot of people think that they're going to lose weight and get healthy, but I think you need to kind of get healthy first, almost from like a mental standpoint. And I think you do that through nutrition, through like walking, through just some type of movement. And then hopefully you can get those people to start to exercise a little bit more intensely and to do something different. I think people are understanding more so now than ever that, like you're saying, the foundation to even fitness is eating right and health especially. You can gain so much from just eating right without going to the gym.

Right. And people think they can go to the gym and out train shitty diets. And some can, but not really. There's only one Rich Froning, right? Yeah, exactly. Eating sleeves of Oreos. What's going on with these shooting competitions? I see you shoot all kinds of stuff on your Instagram.

Shooting is my thing. Shooting is like my release. I see you shoot all kinds of stuff on your Instagram. Shooting is my thing. Shooting is like my release. Shooting is what I do to kind of step away from CrossFit. And it's a good balance for me. I enjoy all types of shooting. I enjoy hunting now too. But I enjoy the process.

And so like I don't enjoy, you know, you asked me, hey, we should go shoot. And like to be honest, I don't enjoy shooting with bros. I enjoy going to the shooting range and I have an agenda and I'm going to do some training. And it's like you going to the gym. Yeah, you're honed in on it. Yeah, exactly. And so shooting for me with the enjoyment is about the preparation and the training and the goals that I set for myself and the competitions that I want to do. And I enjoy going to competitions and it's just really, it's a good outlet for me. And it's, you know, I have a good, especially for my time in the Navy, I have a decent foundation

for it. And then since then, I've just really enjoyed pursuing the shooting sports and the competition scene. Yeah. Some of them look like they're obstacle courses or something too. So this was like running around with a gun. There was a competition, a three-day competition I was training for with a friend. I spent all last year training for this competition, and it's in Georgia. And it's called the Mammoth Sniper Challenge. And the format is really cool. You spend three days in the field, actually two nights,

but you're in the field three days, and you hike with all your gear for the three days to each shooting event. So you rock and you have to run, you rock to a stage and then you shoot the stage and then you rock and you're supposed to be in the field for three days. So last year, my entire year was dedicated to training for that. And in terms of my training, I was doing a lot of rucking and I was doing CrossFit to support that sort of stuff. And in terms of my shooting, I was shooting all long range to prepare for this competition. Well, it was in early January and we went to it and I was so excited about the competition. And I told my partner, hey, I don't ever want to fucking do this one again because I don't want to have to train like this again. And I'm like, we're going to do this and we're going to be done. Well, we start the competition and like a couple hours into it, we're doing great. The first ruck we do, it's a partner competition. So your partner has to stay with you. We win the ruck.

No one's even close to us. We shoot the shooting stage. We do decent on that. Then we have to ruck to the next one. You ruck over 33 miles over the course of the three days. We ruck to the next one and he crushed everybody there. We're looking behind us and no one's even close. Then we shoot. Well, during the shooting, I hear my partner yell something and I look over and I don't know what's going on. On this shooting stage, one partner runs over here, another one's over here,

and we're separated by about 30 yards and we shoot targets. We yell to each other what to shoot. Well, it turns out he dropped his pistol when he got over there, and I didn't see that. And what that means in a competition like this is you're disqualified. No. Oh, no. So they walk over, and I spent the last year training for this.

And remember, even before I started, I told my buddy, I can't wait to finish this because I never want to do this again. And so they come over and they say, hey, you guys are disqualified. And they go, do you want to stay and help out or hang around? I'm like, no, I'm out of here. I'm like, no, fuck you guys. We're out. And my partner was devastated. And I was like, hey, it's not a big deal.

You know, it happens. I was, you know, I'm upset by it. You know, it sucks that it happened. I really wish we would have finished and done it. But it's okay. We're going to now train for it. So I'm going to spend this. I'm not training as hard right now.

But pretty soon, you know, after the games, probably September, I'll start ramping up really hard to train for that. And we're going to shoot it again. And we're going to do well. Just out in the woods and you're like you got to bring your own food and all that kind of stuff too? Yeah, food. The only thing you don't have to carry, and if you did have to carry this, it'd be a game changer, but it's water. If you had to carry water, I mean, that'd be way too much weight. They provide water at each of the stations.

But you have to carry your tent, your food, your stove, your warm clothes, all your ammo. And the stuff that makes that pack heavy is really the gun and the ammo. So that gun weighs about 15 pounds. And then the ammo for that gun, you know, you need 200 rounds. That weighs about eight or nine pounds. And then you have a pistol, which weighs around a pound, call it. And then the pistol ammo. So the sleeping stuff and the camping stuff, all of that, like from my background,

with being in the Navy and being a climber, you know, I was sourcing and finding the lightest weight stuff out there. I'm a real big gear guy. And so when we showed up, you know, our packs are custom made. Everything we had was the lightest gear. So when we started our, my pack weighed 51 pounds, which was a little heavier than I wanted. I actually wanted it to be, you know, about 48. But the thing is, as it goes on, you're shooting the ammo. So your pack's getting lighter, you're eating the food. So it's getting lighter. Um, and so I do a lot of ruck running and I'm actually a pretty good ruck runner. Yeah. All the, uh, is that kind of what you're doing over at a KUU? Like they make a ultra lightweight, like hunting gear and stuff

like that? Yeah, I like their stuff for hunting. And I actually wear their pants for, I wore their pants in that match because they have built-in knee pads. So I do like their gear a lot. Cool. Does someone like driving and watching? Because I'm just like, okay, somebody dropped a gun. It's really organized.

And so when you get to that shooting stage, there's what they're called range officers are people watching like rules, like safety guys. And so, so that's kind of the norm though. You do something like that, you gotta, you gotta take. And here's the,

let me just say this to you. And athletes, you know, athletes this last year, we had big cuts at the CrossFit Games and they complained, how could I show up

and I get cut and you know, I've trained all year for this. And I'm like, whatever. I fucking, I just went through the same thing. I'm not sitting here crying or bitching or complaining. So, like, I just got cut after three hours, too. It's just, it's sport.

It's how things work. Yeah, it just happens. Yeah. Going to mess with the hair this year for the CrossFit Games? Do you always kind of have, like, surprises? You had cornrows and frosted tips and, like, what was a bigger mistake, the cornrows or the frosted tips? I liked the cornrows a lot because it was so out there. It was so wild.

And here's the thing. I was, so the games were in Compton or Carson. Carson. Carson. Right next to Compton. Carson is right next to Compton. And I said, okay, while the games are here, one year I'm going to have cornrows. And we hired this lady from Compton and she came over and she put the cornrows in. And I was like okay, while the games are here, one year I'm going to have cornrows. And we hired this lady from Compton, and she came over, and she put the cornrows in.

And I was like, this is awesome. And the thing is – Yeah, there we go. Oh, man. I married someone with the cornrows. There was a wedding. Yeah, see, there I am in that picture right there. Oh, yeah.

People sometimes get married at the CrossFit Games, huh? Yeah. Wow. So I was probably 37 or 38. And basically what happened is I said said i need to do the cornrows now because we're in compton uh carson and uh and i'm 38 39 and when i turn 40 i don't want to look back 50 years from now and say when i was in my 40s i put cornrows in my head that'd be ridiculous but i can say i was in my 30s and I had cornrows. What difference does that make?

To me, it makes a huge difference. Being in my 30s and having cornrows, okay, that makes sense. You're cool. In your 40s, you're too old. So I'm in my 40s now, and I'm 42. And so for the last couple years, the hair stuff took a back seat. Do you have kids? Yeah, I have two girls.

Do they know about this haircut? Oh, yeah. So here's what's crazy. So that was only like three days. So it only goes in for the event. And then after the event, I took them out. And when I took them out, I got home and my hair was like, whoa. I got to find that picture. That looked wild.

And then I cut the hair. You had an afro for a few days. So I'm 40 years old now or 42. And so in my eyes, I'm too old to do anything like that. So I'm not doing anything crazy. I'm growing my hair right now. I'll probably cut it soon, but I'm in my eyes I'm too old to do anything like that so I'm not doing anything crazy I'm growing my hair right now I'll probably cut it soon but I'm not playing the hair games anymore but I used to play the hair games when I was in my 30s a long time ago so go ahead how's the um how's the crossfit games going to be different now I personally don't really know

so I'm just like this year the crossfit gamesFit Games, like, what's the problem? Well, last year was the first. That's funny. There's a lot of stuff like that. A lot of people were comparing me to female MMA fighters. Oh, God. They were like, this is what female MMA fighters do. They really do, though. Yeah, that was a really common one.

There's a lot of memes of me next to whoever. Well, so last year was the first big difference with the games from all the changes. The changes kind of happened last year year so the games are different then so this year it's the second year of it being a little different so it's not as different now because of that we did it once but you know there's we take 150 athletes now there's athletes from all around the world from different countries we take country champions where in the past we took the fittest people. And so the 40 people who showed up were all the fittest around the world. And there were a lot of – half of the field was from overseas.

But now you might have someone from – I don't want to sell a country out, but let's say Ecuador, who's their country champion, but they're actually not that high level of a CrossFitter. So it's way more inclusive. The format right now is way more inclusive. Okay. Andrew, you got to check your phone because I just sent you this epic Dave Castro,

one of a kind deadlift. Yes. So we were doing the CrossFit total in my house, Jason Kalipa and Dave Lipson, and a friend of ours was there filming it. when i lived in carlsbad and they um those guys are strong as horses and they're fucking motivating so i decided to try to hit i think it was a 450 or 455 deadlift and at the time it wasn't a pr pr it was 465 that i actually did in afghanistan and And so I got to the bar and I was at a seminar with Dave Tate a few years, a few months. I don't know when it was before that.

And Dave Tate had told me at that seminar, I deadlifted a bar and I got it to just above the knees and I dropped it. And he goes, if you ever pull the bar off the ground, you don't put it on the ground or you're a pussy. And so that's what he said to me. So that was in my head every time I deadlift. And that was in my head right here when I'm deadlifting. I guess it was 465. So you can put the sound on. It's got some music to it.

That's pretty epic. And so I picked the bar up and I was like, I hear Dave Tate and Josh Everett said something to me. And I'm like, I'm not putting the bar down. I'm not going to put it down. It's the longest deadlift of all time right here. I can't believe I didn't... Maybe a little more chalk? I can't believe I didn't get it.

Maybe some baby powder on the quads? 24 seconds. I've never seen anybody strain that long before on a lift. And I got tore up for that. That was impressive though. People still stuck. People still come at me about that. I think it's funny.

I didn't have any issue. That's a lot of weight though. It is a lot of weight. And I'm a little guy. Probably then 180, 185. Yeah, it's a huge deadlift. Why are we replaying it? Because it's epic.

I don't. But the thing is that people come at me really hard about it and I just, I don't care. I'm like, yeah, I've tried really hard. Let's see you try that.

You know, not you, but them. Yeah, well, and the form isn't bad either. No, and that's the thing.

People try to rip the form, but I'm like, I'm not rounded out. It's not perfect, but I'm not. Yeah, and that's why I laugh about it because people will try

to rip the form. I'm like, no, my back's, you see way worse deadlifts out there than that. That's just long. Who's the hardest person you ever trained with out of all these CrossFit maniacs over the years? Well, you know, that's a good question.

Has anybody just like absolutely just tried to kill you? Not kill me. So the thing – but you see people who kill themselves. I think like Rich Froning trains really hard. That guy does a lot. Jason Kalipa he trains like a machine like there's guys you jason such uh shuts his brain off and just goes yeah you know and now the thing is like i don't think they i don't train with them like that i see how they

train but i'm like hey i'm not doing that well a because i can't and b because like you know so so i don't i don't have that experience with these guys. I'm not trying to crush myself. I don't go into sessions. Even if you look at what someone like Matt's doing now, like a lot of these guys, they train really hard and do a lot of things. And a lot of things in one day. That's the biggest difference now at this point is some of these guys will train four or five hours. And it's not like they're doing four or five hours of just CrossFit workouts. will train four or five hours.

And it's not like they're doing four or five hours of just CrossFit workouts, but they'll get one good workout, then a lot of good, you know, mobility and then technique and then some strength. And those guys,

because they're basically professionals, can do it for that long, whereas other people can't. The problem is you see those guys do things like that and others think, okay, well, I don't have that time,

but I can squeeze it into an hour and get the same amount done. It's like, no, you can't. I think last year I saw Matt Frazier doing the open workout at Rogue Fitness. It was like week one or week two or whatever. And it was like, I just don't even really remember what he was lifting or whatever, but it was just insane. It was just absolutely insane to watch him lift.

He just kept doing clean after clean after clean. And he would do a couple reps, and then he would just like rest like he would just like lay on the ground and like rest in between and he'd just get back up and get back at it and there's just a giant like he had to move the bar because there's a giant puddle of sweat you know right where he was going i'm like i have i have never in my life seen anything like that and it wasn't like the weights were crazy but they were still heavy. Yeah. I mean,

he still had like three something on the bar and he was doing it for like 20 minutes straight with doing toes to bar in between or something like that. I was like, what is this? I'm like, what is this madness? Like this guy's an animal. Well,

and here's the thing though, even for all these guys, even to get to that point, there was a foundation that was laid for years prior to where they're able to train four or five hours or multiple sessions or that much weight for that long. You know, it took them a long time to get there. And a lot of people sometimes forget that, especially a lot of new aspiring athletes in this sport. They want to they just want it now. And sometimes you see that in people who go to CrossFit gyms.

They just want those results and those numbers too soon. And they don't want to be patient. And they don't, you know, you do jujitsu, so you know how patient you have to be to get to certain stages. What kind of drug testing standards do they have in CrossFit? We use a company called Drug Free Sport, and they do our testing for us. And at the games, we test all the podium finishers. At regionals, we used to test all the podium finishers.

We also test a lot of athletes out of season. So we basically have a list, like Matt Frazier. He'll get four or five random tests throughout the season. And there's a handful of other athletes. Sometimes we'll get like, hey, maybe you want to test this guy. And sometimes we'll send someone out to test. This guy's looking a little big. Let's check on him.

So, you know, it's not a perfect protocol, but it's really good. And it's the best we can do right now. And I think we're catching – we've caught plenty of people. And we catch people who cheat. And they get suspended for four years, generally speaking. And are we not catching people? For sure. But to catch everybody would be

cost prohibitive. There's a lot of athletes doing this and you don't always know who the best are. I wish we could test everyone at the games. We test some random people. Are the podium finishers clean? Yeah, I really believe it. I really believe, except for the ones we caught like Ricky Gerrard, but the ones that the other guys we two years ago two years ago we caught the uh second place got uh three years ago wow that was part of the documentary right yeah the the second place guy three years ago popped it's on netflix you should check it out he had a whole list he popped for a whole list of things yeah um that was a huge deal but so there the system worked and all these other guys frazier and froning, and a lot of these guys get accused of this stuff all the time. But I'm like, those guys get tested a lot.

And unless they're just perfect on – here's the other thing too. I don't think a lot of the designer drugs that are out there like Balco and some of these people, how they were all with the baseball team, that type of money isn't here yet. So a lot of that stuff isn't here yet. Is it maybe that we don't know about? Potentially, but I don't think there's enough money for enough people in the sport for that to be too prevalent. You know, it's such an interesting sport because of the way it's designed

and because of how difficult it is on so many different levels. I'm not saying that steroids uh they wouldn't help but you would you would really need to know what you're doing because and correct me if i'm wrong you know way more about steroids than i do but uh how would i know anything about them the biggest thing for these guys would be the recovery and uh so the games and the test really is a test of recovery and being able to go really hard in one event right and then come back two or three hours later and go really hard. And so I've been told steroids help oftentimes with recovery. It can certainly help.

I think it would hurt more than it would help, though, because I think that the athletes would be more likely to tear stuff. And I just don't think it would help as much as, I think if you were selective with what you took, like if you took like EPO and there's other things that you can take that would probably work better than a steroid because you need to just be able to breathe in CrossFit. And you know what else I think we're seeing now too is there's a recreational level of CrossFitter too

that is now using steroids for the- Instagram fame. Yeah, yeah, to look good so they can get followed. They're not like games-level athletes, but they're ripped and it helps them gain following and it helps them maybe with their sponsors. So I think we're seeing more of that where people are using drugs to just look good.

One games with drugs and one games without. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, like the drug that gerard got busted for is um it's cartering so it's a sarm so it's gw 5156 and that one just helps with your your endurance like it helps with cardio yeah yeah but again like what mark said like if you're all of a sudden now you have an extra like 20 reps in you it's like well shit maybe at that 15th one that's where you pop something but that's for for crossfit and a bunch of other like endurance sports that's where um that's what a lot of athletes tend to be getting

caught with lately is that one specific compound because it does help so much yeah okay but you know when you describe how these athletes train like you're just like we had rich on and he was talking about like how vast his training is during the day um and even like you know their athletic history it's all like i hear this even from like guys like rogan etc people are always gonna say oh the guys at the top are all doing drugs i feel like that is something that's never ever ever going to go away and there's no way there's no absolute possible way to convince anyone otherwise other than just continuing to perform so i just think i honestly just think it's a losing battle the people that are going to try to work like those athletes will try to

work like those athletes and see the type of results they can get and the people that think all the top athletes take drugs are always going to believe that the top athletes take drugs yeah someone like rogan should never talk about crossfit though because he doesn't know what he's talking about. It wasn't even specifically about CrossFit. He just said this in general about top sports. I'm saying that because I know in the past he has tried taking some jabs at CrossFit, and he doesn't understand CrossFit. I think you should get on his show.

I think it would be great. That would be awesome. He has never had a CrossFitter on his show. So he's talked about it, and he has mentioned it before, and he has said, he was like, I need to have a high level CrossFitter. He like doesn't, I don't think he has a good understanding of it. That's what I'm saying. He has no understanding of it. And I think that if he did, I think that he might appreciate it more for what it is.

He's never had any of the CrossFit top level athletes or any of the CrossFit subject matter experts or any of the crossfit you know trainers or people like us involved so i think he just doesn't um i think he doesn't like it maybe his on it thing whatever his association with on it is to uh stepping on you know on it does functional training too right so maybe he doesn't want to promote CrossFit or just even point any attention to it because of his financial obligations to Onnit. What's the worst CrossFit workout in your opinion? Like what's the most brutal? Like if you just wanted to annihilate somebody. It's Fran.

It's Fran. 21-15-9 of thrusters and pull-ups. And it's just because of what it does to your body. And it's, you know, the fastest guys do this workout in two minutes. And then average people, you know, I don't want to say five or six because it could be much longer than that. But it just crushes you. The thrusters, that movement alone,

if there's one movement for life that anyone could ever do, I'd say it'd be the thruster. You just squat and stand up and press a weight overhead and just do it over and over and over. And that movement has a unique ability to make you suffer. You're moving over a huge distance because you guys are requiring people to squat below parallel too, right? Squat below parallel. And then at the top, full extension with the weight.

So it's like a burpee with weight. 95 pounds. I've never thought of it as a burpee with weight. That's interesting. Yeah. That's horrible. Yeah, it is a horrible movement. Why was it named Fran, by the way?

Well, Greg, a lot of the workouts are named after girls. They're called benchmark workouts. And he said he kind of took that from the hurricane scene. You know how hurricanes are named? Hurricane Dora. I think it's- And he said these workouts are painful like a hurricane. But yes.

Yeah. Because, yeah, women are evil. Yeah. Women are evil. That's where I think it comes from. I think everyone can understand, hey, that workout's a real bitch. Yeah, exactly. I'm kidding, I'm kidding.

How do you come up with these workouts? I can picture you. You have like a wheel or something, and you pull this lever, and it just goes around, or you throw darts at the wall or all these workouts. So the first event at the CrossFit Games did come out from a hopper. Oh, there we go. We had a big peanut hopper and we had a bunch of – you know when you go to Chuck E. Cheese and they have those pits with the balls? Oh, yeah.

We had a bunch of those balls with different movements on them and we threw them in the hopper and we spun it and then we'd pull them out. And that's how we created the first workout at the CrossFit Games. The rest of the events and workout, I call them events or tests. I don't call them workouts because at that state you work out to get in shape, but there you do a test or an event. So, but the rest of the events or tests, I put a lot of time and a lot of thought. Yeah, that's the hopper right there. That's a peanut roaster that my neighbor had. And we put those in there, spun it and pulled them out to create the workout. We should do that again one year. We should bring it back. Well, anyway, so I'm very visual. I have a lot of whiteboard space. I write things down. I write movements down. I write events down. I play with them. One has to sync and talk to the rest. So the whole weekend, all of the events make sense.

If you look at one workout, one test from last year, there's a reason it's there. And it talks to the one before it and it makes sense with the others for the next day and the ones from the previous day. There has to be some cohesion and some dialogue between the events essentially. And so it's not random at all. And there's a lot of changes that go on and there's a lot of tweaks and a lot of the changes and tweaks happen through testing. So I have athletes who aren't going to the games, obviously I'll fly them out and we'll pay them and they'll test some of the workouts. And when they're testing them, the tests, I'll watch them and I'll see how it's affecting them. And I'll see what, if I'm getting the right stimulus or what I'm looking for, for this particular event,

I might have to, I might have to program one that's two minutes long and I just want them floored and on the ground afterwards. I'll have an athlete test it and he'll finish it at two minutes and he just stands there and walks around and goes, oh, that's a good one. And when he says that, I know it's not a good one because he's not laid out on the floor. So I change some things, maybe increase the reps, lower the weight or do whatever to get the right stimulus I need from that test or event. And so, you know, it's just a constant process of looking at them, thinking about them, modifying them, playing them against each other. And, you know, it's not all just so. So we've got to test. We've got to test long stuff. We've got to test mid range stuff. We've got to test short end power. We've got to test absolute power,

just strength. We've got to test this movement. We've got to test that movement. So there's a lot of different things that need to be hit to truly find what we're claiming is the fittest alive. That's a grand claim to say that we're titling the fittest man and woman alive. So it has to be an inclusive all-around test of fitness. The thing is, here's where there's some debate. People can say we're not testing fitness. And if someone says that, it all comes down to this, how you define fitness. And so we define fitness as work capacity across broad time and modal domains. That statement right there basically is the foundation of how I program. If you don't define fitness the same way I do, definition of

terms is so important. I actually learned this from Greg years ago. Definition of terms, so we're talking on the same plane, is so important. So you take someone who says, let's take Sports Illustrated. Oh, I don't know who it was this year, but LeBron James is the fittest man alive. And well, I'd say to them, how do you define fitness? Because obviously you're placing a premium on sport and dominance in sport and athleticism. So whenever someone claims that we're not really testing fitness, you have to take, I take it back to, well, what's your definition of fitness? Oftentimes they don't have a definition of fitness and we do. And it's that work capacity across broad time and all the domains.

So work capacity, your ability to work and get things done, work capacity across broad time. So we want to test short end and long end modal time and modal domains, modal being different things. And that's why we have a lot of different movements and a lot of different. We expose them to tons of functional efforts. Andrew, see if you can bring up a clip of lebron james squatting i don't know if you've ever seen that before but it's it's it's not very good you know what's that i mean he's yeah yeah yeah we got him it's tough yeah you know what's funny when you see like clips of lebron or even the rock or or some of these stars almost always you see rogue gear in there oh yeah And I think that's really cool.

It's amazing. Yeah, it's amazing because I remember at a seminar in I think 2007 or 2008, Bill walked up to me and he was taking the level one. Look, Rogue Gear. And he said,

hey, Dave, I'm starting this company called Rogue Fitness and we're making jump ropes and I'd really like to get into CrossFit. Can I give you one of my... That's funny. The internet killed him for this. Did they?

Oh, man. He's got quite the butt, though. Yeah, he does. Damn, he's big. And so he gave me a jump rope. And the jump rope was like one of the first things he was making. And to have worked with him

and watch him grow and see the company become what it is, it's been amazing that company's insane yeah it's wild it's wild it's absolutely nuts what they built and i think he didn't he start too with some rings right yeah he's like made a rings for his wife and then his wife won the crossfit games she won the 2008 crossfit games that's just like i yeah when they weren't married at the time yeah um but yeah she won the CrossFit Games. That's insane. She was also a Division I basketball player for Ohio State.

Right. What are a few – have you had anything not work? Like where you put a thing in motion in terms of an exercise or event and you were like, oh, shit. Like that really – maybe I should have tested that more. There's definitely been stuff where I've said I should have tested more. Most of it – there's not like it didn't work. There's some that are not less impactful in terms of – so there's a lot of different things to take into consideration with even one event. It's actually the test, the test of fitness and the visual and how it is as a spectator sport.

Right. And some of them sometimes fizzle on that. And like, that was a great test, but it wasn't necessarily the best, you know. And maybe it didn't look great on ESPN. Yeah, exactly. It wasn't the best viewed event. And that happens. And sometimes, though, I accept that. I say, OK, hey, this test and this needs to, this really needs to happen.

So we're going to sacrifice some of the beauty or the viewership or the race. I consider these guys in a horse race oftentimes. I think of them like, hey, these are horses racing down the court. And so when you look at a lot of the tests we do, they're laid out to tell a story, to tell a progression, so you can see who's winning. tell a progression so you can see who's winning is there a committee of any kind like where people are trying to uh maybe interject to make sure it's like competitive because i know sometimes the way that like froning has dominated you know he usually came on a little bit later or the way that frazier uh you know has been dominant you know where he's like he doesn't even need to do like the last day hardly is there

anything like you guys trying to or you just like hey that's just the way it works i just happens to kill everybody yeah no um that's just the nature of it these guys and people understand that and you know the thing with the the tests and the um programming is these guys uh sometimes a lot of athletes and a lot of spectators and a lot of coaches will complain and say oh well my athlete didn't do good because this came out or my athlete didn't do good because of that. Well, if you're saying that, you're not prepared because guys like Matt and Rich, those guys for four years each, they did it for four years. No matter what it was, they were all very different games. They came in and won.

And that's what we're looking for. They're well-rounded. And even Tia now, I think she's won three and two or three. And Annie won won two and the people who've won multiple games, they're coming in well-prepared and they're winning no matter what's thrown at them. And that's the type of athlete we're looking for, the level of fitness and the well-roundedness that is the fittest alive. alive. Awesome. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. When I was in college, um, I wanted to do CrossFit, but like I couldn't afford it. Um, but one thing I noticed was like at the time, uh, the athletes and even still the athlete, the athletes have a very similar body type. And I was just like, how can I be six foot two and do well at something like this? Is that, I mean, again, I haven't been paying that much attention, but has that changed at all?

Or is it still like you still see the general type of athlete you win? For the games and for the highest level of competition, yes, you see that that's the general type. But for the average person who does CrossFit, everybody can do it. There are some people who go to the games that are 6'1". I don't know if anyone nowadays is going to that 6'2", but they're on the fringe, right? And there's some really short guys, but they're on the fringe. Most of the normal body type it shakes out happens to be around 5'8 to 5'9, maybe 5'10.

And the highest performers are that height. And that has to do with a lot of the movements and the, the distance they have to travel their body and, you know, the distance they have to take a deadlift and, and how far, how deep they have to go and how far they have to stand up with a barbell on their back. In general, you're moving the distance, the weight much further distance than some of these than I would or some shorter guys. And so there are taller people that excel and make it there. But it's the fringe. Just like the NBA.

You know, there's guys that are 7'2", but they're not the norm. And there's guys that are 5'10", and 5'8", and they're not the norm. But they still make it to that level. And the NBA, because of the demands of the sport, also has its optimal average height. Just like a lot of sports have their optimal average size. And especially because we're not a weight class sport, that's what this lends to. If we were a weight class sport, you wouldn't have that problem. Would you ever think that that would be something?

Was that ever thought about? Not for the test of the fittest alive because we're going to find the fittest regardless of of your weight but i think there's a place eventually for for i don't want to say the games but a different competition or a different expression of yeah this is this is the top 205 pound guy you know got it when you're planning out the uh games i mean it's also multiple days right it's is it, is it five days or four days? It's been different. Typically last year was four days in a row. Most years before that, it was one day on Wednesday, Thursday off, and then three days on. And so it goes back and forth. One year we had five days straight. That's a little too much, but it depends.

And it's, it's pretty crazy like you're uh i believe there was one time where you guys woke everybody up like in the middle of the night and like brought them took them on a flight to aromas yeah yeah to the ranch and that's they had to compete like and just everyone's like waking up at like two in the morning or whatever time it was yep just trying to have an element of surprise in there. Yeah, just try to mess with them mentally. I like to play mental games, but not to the point to where it, there's a point in place where it's too much.

Right. You know, like there's a point where it's not necessary. That was okay. I like that mental, because here's what I mean by that. That's messing with them in the morning. It's kind of getting them out of routine. But then when they get there and they have to do the tests, okay, they're focused,

they can prepare, they can do what they need to do to do the test. It wasn't like, um, wake up right now, come out of your room and you're going to work out in the lobby. You know, it was a little more, what's one of the kind of cooler stories that you've heard or seen, you know, in CrossFit, one of the kind of cooler stories that you've heard or seen you know in crossfit you know something that you are just you know something that uh maybe like uh i don't know it's really called to you something like really inspirational or something motivational that you've seen you know so many of the transformation stories of people um losing a hundred pounds losing over a hundred pounds and changing their lives. People being able, the transformation stories even of, you know,

people being able to lift their children up who couldn't before. People doing things now that they couldn't do before finding CrossFit. Those are all great stories and all very rewarding to hear because to some degree we've been part of growing that and making it accessible to everybody so um it's the simple stories rather than like the competitive or the high high level athletes and what they get from it it's it's more about the average person and and how they're functioning and performing at a place they never thought possible just because they go to a crossfit gym did you ever envision CrossFit kind of being like where it is? Like, did you ever have the same, like, it seems like Greg Glassman seems like he's a visionary. Seems like he can like literally see

stuff that's not there quite yet. I don't know if any of us saw it where it is now. You know, even he'd say that. I don't think we saw it being this big, but we were prepared for it and we helped grow it and helped, you know, get it to this point and we'll help grow it bigger. And he doesn't have like five-year business plans or two-year business plans and he doesn't say this is my goal. He just lets it grow naturally and get to where it's going to go regardless of his assist or not. So, and that's what's happened. It's just, you know, it's got to this point and the last 15 years of it getting here have all been just a wild ride of, okay, this is the direction it's going. Let's, let's nurture that and help it, help it thrive.

Internationally, because like you were talking about, you know, athletes from Ecuador, the top person there coming to the games. Um. What do you see happening with CrossFit in like China and places like that? Like how is it expanding? Well, there's a couple hundred gyms in China. So CrossFit's, yeah, CrossFit's there. CrossFit's everywhere in the world basically. Because of the open source model and how we just give away the information, people have been exposed to it.

And because of the word of mouth and, you know, nowadays because of social media and it's, exposed to it. And because of the word of mouth and nowadays because of social media and everyone sees it. So if someone wants to open up a gym, there's easy access to our seminars because we're doing them around the world. We do a lot of seminars in China now too. Had to cancel a few because of the coronavirus. Oh. But yeah. Crazy. Yeah.

So it's just a matter of like so China, obviously a lot of potential. There's 200 gyms there. Here there's 5,000, 6,000. That country, we have 300 million people. They have 3 billion people. So there's a lot of potential for a lot of gyms there. Some areas have more potential for gyms than others. You look at places like Spain and Italy.

There's a lot of gyms there. The UK, London, that area, those surrounding cities, a lot of gyms. So maybe not as much growth in places like that at this stage, but places like China, for sure, a lot of opportunity. India, a lot of opportunity. What makes me surprised is that maybe I just don't know of it, but it seems like CrossFit is, you defined it, you know what CrossFit is. But it seems like CrossFit is, you know, you defined it. You know what CrossFit is. I'm surprised that no one's really tried to copy it.

And like really, I mean, it just it's a workout. You know, I feel like someone could make a box that's not a CrossFit box, try and copy the model. I know CrossFit's made it stamped. So nothing's ever going to be CrossFit. But has that happened? Has that ever been an issue? There's some people now who are trying to open up gyms and do CrossFit without giving us credit and do their little franchise thing. But they're so small. And most people who've been around know that, hey, they're just doing CrossFit and it's CrossFit principles.

You know, the methodology, it's obvious when you're doing CrossFit and when you're not. when you're doing CrossFit and when you're not. So no one at this stage is going to take us on and replace us because it is so, so big and has decades behind it. Gotcha. Kind of your background as you were sharing with us, you were playing football, made the team, but didn't get a chance to play and stuff like that. They feel good later on to have good athletic prowess,

like to be able to, you know, be a Navy seal and then to be fit and get yourself in shape. And I mean, now you're in very good shape. That was the thing. Like that was one of the things with the becoming a seal. So I was athletically not dominant in high school. And I thought, well, I wonder if I have what it takes to do this, because this is going to be much harder than being on the football team or being on the basketball team. And this is way more elite. And so this is going to take a mental

strength. Where'd that even come from? Like, that seems like absurd to like, I'll tell you exactly where it came from. The summer after I graduated high school, I went to the movie theater with my girlfriend at the time, and we watched The Rock with Sean Connery. And I'm watching that movie, and in that movie, there's a scene where the Navy SEALs come in on a helicopter, and they get in these little submarines, and they come through the water. I'm like, wow, that shit is cool. And then they come up and out of the gutter to fight these Marines, and the Marines shoot them and kill them all. But anyways, yeah. And how old are you?

27. Okay. So you probably didn't, yeah, you didn't see the movie because you're too young. Check out The Rock with Sean Connery. Okay. And Nicolas Cage. Cheesy movie. It's about San Francisco, but it's great.

And from that moment, I was like, man, those guys look cool. I went home and started reading all the books on SEAL, started watching all the movies that were out. And then I had this thought, I wonder if I can do that. And when I had that thought, that was it. I was like, I wonder if I can do that. I have to put everything I have into trying to become that. I was in college at the time, CSUMB in Monterey Bay. And I was, you know, I told my parents to go to college. Two months in, I drop out and I say, I'm enlisting in the Navy and I'm going to pursue this goal. They recommended, and a lot of friends did too. Everyone said, why don't you finish college and then decide? And I knew if I finished college, things would change and I'd maybe never pursue

that. And I didn't want to be 30, 40 years old going, well, you know, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL at one point. No, I'm like, I wanted to be a Navy SEAL at one point. No, I'm like, I need to find out now if I can do this. And so I went for it. And that's how it happened. Were your parents pretty supportive? Is that what kind of maybe gave you the idea that you could even do something like that? Yeah, my parents were very supportive of me. They weren't supportive of me dropping out of college and enlisting in the Navy. Once I did it, they were really proud and very supportive, but they always helped me and they weren't supportive of me dropping out of college and enlisting in the Navy. Once I did it, they were really, really proud and very supportive, but they always helped me and they, they always encouraged me to do things. So, um, but it was, it was more of just a personal, like, yeah, I don't know.

Um, I gotta, I gotta, I have to see that I have what it takes to, to make this happen. Has anything compared to, you know, doing that? Has anything compared to, uh know, doing that as anything compared to, uh, how difficult that was stuff later on in being a seal. Yes. Uh, there's definitely, you go through that training and you realize why that training so hard and

why they push you there because it's going to be hard and challenging when you're actually a seal and the things we have to do. So, um, I was definitely challenged all, all in that environment, way more than I ever expected from just buds. And that must help with a lot of problem solving just in life in general.

Yeah, for sure. You know, I would have done 20. I would have stayed in for 12 years. When you get out at 12, you didn't retire. You just got out. 20 is the retirement mark. Had it not been for the CrossFit opportunity, this provides much better for myself

and my family than the navy does so it was a good move to get out i also believe if i would have stayed in i'd be dead because yeah seriously just because of the deployments and like what we do and what was going on at the time when i got out um the helicopter stuff and like you know we've we've had whole teams die in helicopters. Yeah. So helicopter crashes. So it's pretty gnarly. It's pretty wild. So what was the original question?

Just the original. Well, it's just basically, you know, how you carry that in your life. Oh, yeah. So, yeah. So much of it, all of that is the foundation of who I am. And it's, you know, I'd be fooling myself and lying to everyone if I said I got the job with Greg and CrossFit because of my good looks and what I'm capable of I was really humble and I was able to say, OK, being a Navy SEAL got me an audience, got me my foot in the door, got me close to Greg. But now I got to do something with this and I got to be more than just a Navy SEAL. I got to be something else. I got to be someone who can contribute to this environment. I working with at CrossFit. So I was humble and I worked hard and I used a lot of the skills and the management and the leadership I learned from that community to be where I am now. And I still continue to lean on that stuff even to this day. Seems like leadership is one of the big qualities that come from just any military training. You

hear like Jocko Will willing talking about it a lot and i love listening to a lot of his things um i know you're big into books what are some uh what are some of your favorite books that you may have read in the last few years um i read a lot i read a lot of classics like les mis and even the count of monte cr. And, you know, last year I read 50 books or 45. The year before that I read 53. I'm on my fourth book right now for this year. And so... You read a wide array of books, it sounds like.

Yeah, and I read, like, let's see. That's pretty uncommon. Scarlet Letter. I read a lot of classics that like are not books that someone like me would typically war and peace you know i read books that someone like me typically wouldn't see reading and uh and i really enjoy that and i learn a lot from them and i actually avoid like leadership books and inspirational books and most modern books, because, you know, I just don't want to go down that route. I think I have more to learn from some of the classics. These books are classics for a reason, and they've stood the test of time for a reason. And, you know, even with fiction books, there's so much to learn because oftentimes they are historically based.

And I do enjoy history. So All the Pretty Horses I read recently was a McCormick book. There's a handful of his books I'm reading right now. I'm reading a book about Rich Froning recommended this book by a modern author. He's a hunter. It's called American. I think it's American Buffalo. And that's a fun. It's called American, I think it's American Buffalo. And it's a fun book.

But for the most part, it's classics. And I read in the morning. I read anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour. And then throughout the day, I'll read multiple little chunks. And then at night, I'll read anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour too.

And try to get about at least 50 pages in a day. Sometimes, sometimes more. Yeah. And you probably would never thought that when you dropped out of college, right? Yeah, exactly. And that's another reason I like to read a lot because I didn't have that classical education, the college education. So I kind of want to expose myself to a wide variety of literature. So, I mean, you mentioned you love classics now for a lot of listeners that don't read any classics at all, right?

Yeah. What are five you think that maybe they should start with that you were like, these are really good. Start here. I like all of most of Steinbeck's stuff. The Count of Monte Cristo. So that's a great book. Les Mis is a great book. But that's a thousand pages.

So it's very intimidating. East of Eden by Steinbeck was really good. But even if you wanted to start with something like some of Steinbeck's smaller stuff like Of Mice and Men, that's a great, great book. Old Man and the Sea by Hemingway, that's 100 pages. Those are both two small books that are great ways, a great intro into some of the classics. And what's another great? The Three Musketeers series. I enjoyed that. There's a handful.

There's a handful of good ones. Were you into that when you were a kid too? No. I was into reading, but not classics. I've always been an avid reader. Mostly nonfiction stuff and training guides and something i could learn in you think you're going to learn from some of these books in a classical sense but

um i decided recently to get into fiction and the classics cool what you got over there andrew uh this actually comes from our boy casey shorts he's uh like two doors down running the warehouse um so with your love of shooting your love love of CrossFit, do you think we would ever marry the two and have sort of like a tactical games type of CrossFit event or like a whole different like games even? We've done, we did one event for just media purposes about five or six years ago. It's called the CrossFit Firefight. You can pull that. If you Google that, you'll, you'd find it. and it was with froning and some top level shooters froning um i think took second and a top shooter who's also a crossfitter he won it

was a really fun event and most recently there's another event called the tactical games where they do some like crossfit stuff and shooting um i don't know if we'll ever do anything under the crossfit banner people get really fired up around the gun stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so this was, uh,

so we combined like thrusters, combined CrossFit work. That's one of the best shooters in the world. His name is JJ Rikaza. Um, so he won the competition and I think, yeah, Rich took second.

Damn. And so, so this was some of the stuff we did there, run the running and shooting and, you know, combined it with Fran and hope they don't show me doing Fran. I did it too. I think I was in third or fourth.

I should have done better. And so I guess like switching gears from that, like with all the changes that CrossFit went through, do you think CrossFit will ever be able to produce? Oh, on the two mile run, I think took second there you go go ahead do you think uh crossfit will be able to produce like big names like a rich froning or a matt frazier like from here on out just because like with the cutting back on the media it just seems like i don't know like maybe the excitement isn't at least in my perspective i could be way off but I also don't really follow CrossFit that much. But I just, I don't know, I'm just curious if you guys like are even considering that at all. Like, because I know CrossFit is so huge, it kind of doesn't need anything, but it is cool to have heroes in the sport.

They'll still continue to be heroes and there's still going to be media covering it and talking about these guys. Interestingly, when Froning retired or stopped competing as an individual, I should say, people were saying, oh, well, who's going to replace him? Aren't you worried about the next star? And the thing's so much bigger than one person, and there's going to be the next – and it was Frazier. Frazier was the next star. And when Frazier's done, there's going to be another, maybe not as dominant as those two, but there's going to be other stars and there's going to be other athletes to fill that top spot and to be the fan's hero. So I'm not worried about it at all. And you hear that in other sports too.

Oh, what happens when Tiger Woods stops playing golf? Well, guess what? There's a lot of other good golfers. Although maybe that's a bad example because he really does affect the numbers. When you look at golf, he really changes the numbers of an event where Tiger Woods is playing.

The viewership numbers are much higher. So maybe that's a bad example. But I'm not worried about it in regards to the sport of CrossFit. Can somebody beat Matt Frazier? Yeah, for sure. It's just a matter of time. If he keeps, depending on how greedy he gets,

depending on how long he wants to be the best, that's going to dictate when he gets beat. So let's say he's the favorite to win this year. He's going to win his fifth. Let's say he gets that. And even this year, I think it's going to be really tough for him to win. But let's say he wins that, and let's say he wants to go for a sixth. There's got to be a point

because, hey, age catches up with all the top athletes. There's got to be a point when he's going to say, I'm going to retire at the top or I'm going to keep going and I'm going to lose. And so, yeah, he might not be beatable now, but very shortly he will be. I remember watching Froning go

to one of the last games that he competed in and he was traveling with a baby or something. I was like, he's toast. And then, of course, he won again. It didn't make any difference what was going on in that guy's life. Well, Frazier's also doing – he's doing what someone who has a lot of success does. They're traveling a lot, doing a lot of other things. So I think this year for him is going to be really interesting.

He's traveling more than ever, I assume, just by seeing all these events he's going to and all this stuff he's going to. And that's not conducive to training and being at the highest level possible. I'm not worried about him in terms of he'll come in prepared, but that does affect you. And so it'll be interesting to see how he does. And there's a lot of hungry guys and a lot of people that are prepared to, a lot of people that want that top spot. So it's not going to be easy. Hey, it wasn't easy last year. He had a really hard run last year.

Going into the final day, on the final day, he was in second place. And he had to win like the last three workouts to win. And he was able to do that. So he didn't dominate last year. Yeah. I don't know if this is the right time. three workouts to win. And he was able to do that. So he didn't dominate last year. Yeah. I don't know if this is the right time, but do we have any?

Oh yeah, it might be. Poop stories? Oh man. Yeah, there's gotta be some. Long distance running, you probably had to take a dump somewhere. What is this? Is this like a thing with your kids? It is a thing.

It is a thing. There's always a poop story. just about i don't have one no not that i'm gonna share he's a navy seal okay i'm able i'm able to not answer questions one of the uh one of the guys we had on the show who was in the military um this guy alan thrall he like you know you have you only have a certain amount of time to do stuff in the military he got he got thrown out of a bathroom like while his pants were still down around his ankles and stuff he was that's bad yeah it was pretty gross yeah and then dj who's also in the military this guy goes on these long distance runs like every morning and he'll send us a picture and be like it happened again and he'll just like poop on the side of the road like send us a picture of his legitimate just a steaming poop

how long are his runs yeah i don't know how yeah how far are you going he goes like six seven miles sometimes sometimes longer that's not too long yeah you need to know that's not a lot here's the thing that's not long enough to justify having to stop that's not long enough to justify having to stop and shit that's not long enough to justify having to stop and shit i thought you were gonna say 15 or 20 miles then i could see him saying that means that there was a 15 to 20 mile run that justified well here's the deal i've run a couple marathons and when i did those marathons i didn't have to stop and and shit okay we're good to go yeah there you go all Well, where can people find you? I think you're back on Instagram. I think you went on and off there a couple times.

The Dave Castro, uh, or, uh, at the Dave Castro. I also have a hunting Instagram account. Ooh, cool.

It's at TDC hunts. And I have a dog account for my dog at Doug, the dogo. And I think, oh, and I have the CrossFit ranch for my gym, the ranch. I think CrossFit got rid of a lot of their social media, right? Yeah.

We just opened back up our CrossFit training Instagram. Oh, cool. Yep. And we just released our CrossFit Games Instagram. The CrossFit Games one, when we shut down, that kind of hurt because when we shut it down, it had like 2.5 million followers and we lost all those followers. So now it's kind of rebuilding. The CrossFit training Instagram, I don't know how they were shut down differently.

It's like a day of reckoning, huh? Like judgment day. Yeah. What the fuck happened? That one had 700,000 followers. And when we shut it down, however we shut that one down, it didn't lose the followers. So we restarted it, and we have 700,000 followers still. But the games one's in a rebuild mode.

Cool. Where can people find you, Andrew? You guys can hit me up on Instagram at IamAndrewZ. Make sure you're following the podcast at MarkBell'sPowerProject. That's also on Instagram at MBPowerProject on TikTok and Twitter. And a huge thanks to Perfect Keto for sponsoring this episode. You guys know we love the MCT oil powder, the birthday

cake bars, and Seema ate all of them. Head over to PerfectKeto.com slash PowerProject at checkout. Enter promo code PowerProject10 for $10 off any order, $40 or more. Or if your order is $100 or more, use promo code PowerProject Bundle. And Seema, where you at? And Seema Yinyyang on Instagram and YouTube.

And Nsema Inyang on TikTok and Twitter. Mark? Thanks for today, Dave. Appreciate it. Thank you. That was fun. Yeah, it was great. I enjoyed it.

I'm at Mark Smelly Bell on all the different platforms. Strength is never a weakness. Weakness is never a strength. Catch you all later. What up, Poopcast? Hope you guys enjoyed this episode with Dave Castro. Wanted to give a huge shout out and thank you to everybody that's been rating and reviewing the podcast. And for today's episode, because it came from Dave Castro and CrossFit, it's only right that we hit you guys with a review from a CrossFitter. Chuckster44,

this is awesome. He says, which of course is the air horn. Quote, hey, fellas, I've been a big fan of the show for years now. I started listening to the old podcast back in the day and transferred over here. I really enjoy everything Mark does for the strength community and is easy to relate, easy to digest, and easy to share. Personally, I've never had a weight problem. I'm more in the same boat with Andrew with being the skinny guy. But hearing all the advice you guys give makes it easy to relay tips, strategies, and people who just know a heck of a lot to the people looking to lose some weight and feel better. Me and my girlfriend both do CrossFit and love it,

but we love hearing how we can implement all of these other training methods to help us and everyone at the gym get stronger. My personal favorites are Mark's 10- minute walks where he just spits motivation and really makes you want to get after it. I also want to plug that I was a subscriber to the power magazine because I'm old school and I like to read things on paper. Plus I wanted to help you prove to the haters that you could have a printed magazine in this day and age. Thanks fellas. Keep up all the great work and I can't wait to see what's next. Chuckster44, thank you so much for that review, man. That seriously helps out the show.

I hope you dug today's episode. Being a CrossFitter, we had our man Dave Castro on of CrossFit. That was pretty cool. So it was really cool that, hey, by you leaving a review, you got to attach your name to Dave Castro in a really cool, awesome way. If you listen to the show right now, if you would like to hear your name and your review read on air, head over to iTunes right now, drop us a rating a review and you could hear your name on air

just like chuckster 44 did we'll catch you guys on the next one peace