Massenomics Podcast - Ep.37: Mike Bledsoe & Doug Larson Of Barbell Shrugged

Episode Date: December 19, 2016

This week, we're honored to bring Mike Bledsoe and Doug Larson onto the Massenomics Podcast. I found the Barbell Shrugged Podcast around the time I started doing fitness things, and it basically dominated my podcast app for about 6 months. In addition to the wildly successful, weekly podcast, they put out super-high-quality technique videos with their TechniqueWOD series, all of which I watched at an embarrassingly fast pace. In this episode, we talk about the origins of the Shrugged podcast, Mike and Doug's fitness and coaching backgrounds, what their plan was from the beginning, and where they plan on going from here. Aaaaand for the sake of clickbait, Mike makes a special you-heard-it-here-first Massenomics Exclusive Announcement regarding his newest upcoming project. I was a little unprepared in the video department, but we put together a few of the highlights from my sometimes-shaky GoPro footage for you. But don't worry, you can still listen to the full audio version. Watch some video highlights from the episode below   Or check out the super-high quality full audio version below.. Make sure you LIKE the Massenomics Facebook page... If you don't already have a closet full of Massenomics gear, go to the MASSENOMICS STORE and load up on swag... Also, please CLICK THIS LINK TO GIVE US A 5 STAR RATING ON ITUNES... Click this text to follow Massenomics on Instagram... Vote Massenomics for President in 2016... Have your barber shave our logo into the side of your head.. Maybe get a Massenomics tattoo while you're at it.    Or you could sign up for our email newsletter at the bottom of this page. Stay Strong, M

M-M-M-M-M-M-M-Massanomics Welcome to Massanomics, the world's strongest podcast. Find us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter at Massanomics. Make sure you go visit massanomics.com. There you'll find the rest of our powerful content. While you're there, check out our store and buy yourself some of that sweet Massanomics gear. I'm going to go and get all the stuff that gets every time I pull it out of the bag. You're feeling it.

It shouldn't change, and it does. It's like, I didn't touch any fucking buttons, and I put it back together just the way I left it, and it's different. Like, from week to week, from week to week, I'll come. Because normally we're set up in my basement. We'll have, like, lighting set up down there, and it's all set up on a table. But week to week, I'll come down. normally we're set up in my basement. We'll have lighting set up down there. And it's all set up on a table.

But week to week, I'll come down. For some reason, I'll still spend 10 minutes fucking with the thing before. I went on John North's podcast way back in the day. And they pulled their bag out and everything was still plugged in. They never broke it down. Yeah, it looked like a rat's nest. And they just pulled it out and put on table yeah and when i was there one like one or two things got unplugged somehow

hours nobody knew how to put it back no one knew anything and they were like mike maybe you could help out and i'm over there looking i'm like i have no idea what the fuck your system is like like this is way you you guys have made this way too complicated we can uh let's uh let's let's roll with that right now i'm gonna leave that as an intro this is uh welcome to the massonomics podcast um i'm here joined very happily joined here by uh mike bledsoe and doug larson of barbell shrugged how's it going today guys it's good man it's good to be here. Beautiful Saturday. Yeah, thanks for having me. It is 60 degrees warmer here than it is back home.

And not a cloud in the sky. I have no complaints. I got up this morning and walked on the beach and I was like, I don't understand why everybody doesn't live here. Don't tell anyone man. I know, I'm trying to keep the secret out. Don't tell them where we are. We're somewhere very nice. Move to Los Angeles. Yeah, everyone go to Los Angeles. Stay away from where we are. You're wondering why everyone's up there. It's because everyone lives down here.

It's telling people, yeah, LA is the spot. Yeah, that's where you should be. Don't come ruin my place. But, no, it's been a heck of a trip down here. I'm going to give our listeners here a little bit of background. You guys are co-hosts of Barbell Shrugged, owners of Barbell Shrugged, Barbell Business Podcast as well. Jesus, what else?

Those are definitely our two main shows at the moment. We've done a few other things, uh to keep it simple yeah barbershop and barbell business are definitely the two main yeah we don't want to go into the other stuff yeah yeah we got a bunch of rabbit holes we can go down but we'll keep it simple for the moment maybe we'll get into some of that stuff yeah your guys is uh your guys's background you guys both come from some sort of uh sports science training or education is that correct oh yeah i was super lucky that i started doing kind of crossfit style training when i was super young i did i started gymnastics when i was like four and did that for for quite a while and then started

doing olympic weightlifting when i was like 14 uh and had a you know a heavy interest in fitness in general and then i was really fortunate that i uh had a strength coach who you know was an awesome guy still a very good friend of mine to this day who you know he was a power lifter who learned olympic weightlifting and and kettlebells and and had a you know a private home gym that where he had a lake awaits and and you know like gymnastics gymnastics rings not even like the the ones you see across the gyms but like the ones straight out of actual gymnastics facilities like like the nice ones and uh you know he was he was very very good to me and taught me anything i would ever want to learn and then and then yeah to answer your question eventually he kind of

encouraged me since i had such an interest and in such a background in in training in general to go to college to get my bachelor's and then eventually he actually flew me to an nsa conference and introduced me to a couple of professors and got me into graduate school as well. Or helped me get into graduate school by introducing me to what turned out to be Dr. Andy Fry, who was one of the main guys at the University of Memphis. And so that's actually where I went to graduate school. And that's where I met Mike. And then we ended up starting a gym together and kind of the rest is history from there. But it was really good for me, I think, to have the training background and then the academic background and

then it just made sense once crossfit got big to to you know be a part of that world because it's it's essentially what i've done my whole life yeah yeah and what about you mike uh man i uh did a lot i was i started training when I was about 15, like on my 15th, 15th, 15th, 15th birthday, my 15th birthday. Um, yeah, I'd become interested in training prior to that. And I had been picking up, uh, magazines and all that kind of stuff at the grocery store. And my parents wouldn't let me lift weights till I was 15 because it might stunt my growth. I don't know. You're talking like dirty magazines?

You're talking like fitness magazines? Or dirty fitness magazines? Dirty fitness magazines. It was quite the niche. You like fitness and dirty magazines? All right. You know me so well. I trained on my own.

Looking back, I didn't really have – I had some people showing me how to train in my youth, but not really well. It was like everything was kind of out of a book or a magazine, and nobody was classically trained or had a big background. It was like strength coaches for baseball and stuff that it was just kind of like, all right, you ride the airdyne for 10 minutes to warm up and bench press and squat, which is not terrible. I mean, it wasn't like terrible things going on, but very little direction for me. I'd say the first decade of my training was more of just kind of like looking in magazines and looking online for information. And then, um, and I was in the Navy, uh, during that time, but I did a lot of research on my own prior to going to school. Uh, and then that's when I went to university of

Memphis and discovered that there's an entire degree program dedicated to, you know, sports science, exercise science, whatever you want to call it. And once I found out that was a real thing, I jumped right into that. And that was really, it was really cool to be there and to have people to introduce me to things like Olympic weightlifting and to be exposed to people who had, to real strength coaches and people who could really give me direction. So that was, I spent a few years at university in Memphis and on the weightlifting team. And I think,

I think there was a, most of what I learned about at the university in Memphis was probably in the weight room, not necessarily in the classroom. And the classroom was nice, but it was in the weight room where we were all having our conversations. You know, people were

either phds or working on their masters and everyone's working in uh research and the conversations you know as you're lifting in between sets is about whatever it is that the research going on at the school right now whatever uh research came out of another school at the time or who wrote a really cool blog on elite fitness or T Nation or something like that. So it was – I'm really fortunate to have spent at least a couple years in that weight room. And I think that's where a lot of my more accurate foundational information came from, yeah. When you were able to crawl out of the bro science stuff?

Before the internet became as... There's a lot of really good information out there now. I think eventually the bad information is going to be universally known to be bullshit. I think.

It's getting washed why I mean it's getting lost over time and and yeah they're the cream rises to the top I think and I think that's uh that's an interesting because before before you had access to all of those things you were really only knew like this guy told me creatine is gonna give you cancer and and that's what is just will run through an entire high school locker room in no time. And it's really interesting how fast bad information used to spread. I think I was actually fortunate in not being exposed to too much bad information because I didn't go to school when I was first training. I didn't go to high school, so I was homeschooled.

The majority of my information was from books and magazines, which isn't exactly the best place all the time because you don't know what's what. It's not like I had guidance. I'm like, this book is good. Maybe you shouldn't pay attention to this one. But at least it was people who dedicated enough time to write about it. More accurate than word of mouth. Yeah, not my friend who's a year older than me in the weight room and say, you know, feeding me, you know, a line of shit about whatever. So I kind of, that, that kind of, as you were saying, I was like, yeah, I really didn't have that interaction with people. I was kind of isolated and doing the book thing. And even when I was in the Navy, um, I think I

kind of started understanding thing. I was kind of nerded out early, so I knew more than other people a lot of times when I was getting in conversations. So that was helpful. And I was reading NSCA textbooks when I was in the Navy, and I had no idea that NSCA was even like, like I just thought, okay, these guys do personal training certifications, so I'll get those books. I was also reading research online about endocrinology, but I didn't know. It was so fragmented. All the information I was gathering was super fragmented until I went to school, and it really narrowed it down for me.

The public came together. Yeah. Actually, I really agree with that. I feel like a lot of people that don't have, even though we're not the biggest proponents for going to college and graduate school, if you want to be a fitness professional, you definitely don't have to do those things. I know many people that are amazing coaches and whatnot that never went to school. a more comprehensive knowledge base, kind of like you just said, where people that they don't have any, any comprehensive academic background, they, they read a piece here, they read a piece there, and they, they, they know a little bit about one thing, but then they have massive holes in their, in their knowledge where, you know, in nutrition training or what have you. And certainly, you know,

if you study really, really hard for, for 10, 15, 20 years, then you'll fill those gaps. But I know a lot of coaches that they're pretty good coaches. Then you get talking to them and they know one or two things really well. And then you get just barely off topic. And all of a sudden, like the things they're saying are way off base. You're like, whoa. All of a sudden, you're in really deep water. Yeah, you can tell that they haven't, they really haven't studied the whole topic that you're discussing comprehensively and that they just read an article or a blog about one piece of it and they know that piece.

But then they don't know something that's just barely different than that. Which is pretty much exactly where I'm at. If I'm having a conversation with somebody, I'll know something. I read this thing and that was neat. That was interesting. And if I get asked more than maybe one follow-up question, I'm like, oh, fuck, I don't know anything. I don't know.

I feel like I had all this fragment of information. It was kind of floating out there. It came into school. It got narrowed down and then I got out of school and it's like expanding back out. Yeah, it's like now I'm off into some rabbit holes left and right where I find myself having like dangerous amounts of information yeah about something very specific and then

the moment we get yeah we we have a conversation it's like well i read these two books and i listened to these three podcasts about this subject but i start talking to somebody who's actually an expert in that field and and then they start using terminology. I'm like, wow, that wasn't in that book. So I don't know what the hell this guy's talking about. It's like, can you break this down for me, please? Yeah. Yeah. They didn't, they didn't, Joe Rogan didn't ask any questions more than that.

So I don't know the answer. That's right. After that, you guys, you guys went out, went and opened up a gym, correct? Yeah. Was that kind of your, the first business venture out of college? of college was that so so mike technically opened the gym and he we're roommates at the time uh i was i was about to finish up with graduate school mike was in graduate school and he comes to me and says hey do you want to open a gym and i go nope i don't i was actually moving to australia uh after graduate school for a little while and uh didn't 100 know

if i was going to come back or not. If I enjoyed it over there and I wanted to stay, I was just going to stay. And so I told Mike I did not want to open a gym, but he went ahead and did it without me. I'll turn it over to you at this point. Yeah, because if I want to do something, I'm going to do it. Does what he wants. Don't be damned. That's right. I'm actually not, not so much anymore. But yeah, open up a facility.

I opened up with one of our other business partners. His name's Rob. He usually stays behind the scenes, which I think he's happy about. And Rob's still with us to this day. Rob's awesome. Yes. And yeah,

I, I discovered CrossFit. Well, the deal was, I was actually considering, I don't think I was going around telling everybody I was going to do this. But I was in my head, I was thinking about opening a weightlifting gym. And then I had a friend, one of my Navy buddies came in town for a couple weeks, and he introduced us to CrossFit. And this was back in 06. And when he was doing it, it didn't really click for me when he was doing it. And I was so focused on weightlifting, I really didn't pay much attention to it.

Six months later, I decided just to go to the website. Doug and I had been doing MMA and jiu-jitsu training. I decided just to go to the website. Doug and I had been doing MMA and jiu-jitsu training. And I didn't have a weightlifting competition coming up for a while. I was like, well, you know what? That CrossFit stuff, that might be good for jiu-jitsu. I'll give it a shot.

And I did a workout with my friend Rob. And I realized how much fun it was. And it was after the first workout I did, the first CrossFit workout I did, I realized that opening a weightlifting gym would be dumb. Yeah. Well, it wouldn't be dumb. It would just be a bad way to make a living for sure, right? An impossible way to make a living, especially in 2007 in Memphis, Tennessee.

It's like if you're on the West Coast and you're associated with a university and so on and so forth, you could probably pull it off. And weightlifting in 07 was not what it is now. CrossFit is largely responsible for how popular weightlifting is now. So it was something I just loved weightlifting, so I was going to do it. I had started some projects prior to that that I like doing the thing.

I thought I could make some money. So I did it and they failed. And it was just like one was like a computer repair business or something. And it was I had no idea what I was doing. I just did. I just thought, oh, you just do the thing and you make money doing it. And I didn't. That's as far as my consideration went.

And the same thing was happening with the weightlifting gym. I wasn't thinking about it as a career thing. However, the first time I did a CrossFit workout, I go, holy shit, this is really fun. And people are going to want to do this. So I'm going to do this. I'm going to open up a CrossFit gym. And we'll have weightlifting and powerlifting inside the facility because we like that stuff too. And, you know, we're going to do that because people because people like i just remember thinking this is gonna be big this is like gonna be really really popular

and i'm really fortunate to have found it when i did and having a weight lifting background and in 07 it's like a huge leg up in crossfit as a coach you know just having, um, I would say the majority of CrossFit gyms, maybe even to this day are being opened up with people that don't have the background that, that, um, the Doug had that I have. And it like, we had a really, yeah, we had this unfair advantage in some ways. Yeah. We were just really fortunate, right place, right time. It's been really nice. Any level of business experience at that time no not really we're again both just getting out of out of graduate school so uh we i had not ever tried to run a company before or and i mean i've we've of course worked a few jobs and whatnot but i had no real

business running a business so to speak we just happen to be uh very lucky that cross it was this this new emerging market and we had zero competition and so we we had the ability to make a lot of mistakes and really not pay any steep price for it uh and then on the other side of things like the fact that the barrier to entry for running across the gym was just so low. Like that you don't need a lot of money to start. Aside from your two day cert, you don't need any, any particular degrees or anything. It's,

it's relatively unregulated overall. So all we need to do is just find, you know, an old shitty rundown warehouse and throw some equipment in it and call it a gym. And it's a gym. Yeah. That's exactly what we did.

I mean, nowadays a guy guy can a guy can spend a lot of money on equipment but still even spending a lot of money on equipment for a crossfit gym go into like a regular globo gym and start pricing out with that equipment cost and you're fucking not even you could buy brand new rogue everything and you would still be spending less than five percent by treadmill. Oh, yeah. I mean the treadmills we had when I was at University of Memphis were like $12,000 a piece. Yeah.

People start talking about the cost of equipment. That bar is $250 versus $200. I'm like, all right. Throw them away. Go buy something that's like $500 to $700. They have – yeah, that's like 500 to 700 they have uh yeah that's the truth i was in a i don't remember where it was but in texas somewhere i went into one of them gyms about nearest to my hotel and i go in and jesus christ 20 000 square foot probably 80 treadmills 40

ellipticals and just fucking machines just tons and you know and those machines are you know a heavy standalone peck deck is not a cheap thing oh yeah like a couple grand a piece it serves one purpose right so when people geez opening a crossfit gym is expensive now well it still isn't really nah try opening a fucking you know frozen yogurt place that could that's going to cost more than a damn crossfit gym yeah the build out the crossfit gym model is interesting because yeah you're talking about walking into a gym 20,000 square feet it's got hundreds of thousand dollars hundreds of thousands of dollars of equipment most of which is leased um and uh and a membership costs ten dollars a month and they sell thousands of them with hopes that you'll never show up because if everyone showed up at the same time they'd be fucked and so the uh what's crossfit on one side of it what

what's happened is we've traded out uh shiny equipment for good training so having a coach there to help you do that and so uh because we're now train like changing out fancy equipment for good movement, what happens with that is people are actually going to use it and show up. Yeah. And because they're actually showing up and using it, it's going to cost a higher price because you can only fit some when some when people are actually showing up, you can only fit so much, so many people in one space. And so that's where I think there's been a little bit of confusion in the market overall, and regard to pricing is because it is, it's a paradigm shift. And, you know, there's a certain percentage of population that they see it

and go, this makes sense. And the 90% of everyone else goes, this doesn't make any sense to me. This is counter to what I've experienced before. And so I'm really enjoying watching the shift occur because I think in five years, it'll be, people will laugh if a gym membership, a CrossFit gym membership is under $200. I think people will, I think it'll be kind of comical and we'll look back and go, I can't believe we were charging so little because it's just so new and people have no idea what they're doing. And on the business side of the house, and that's okay. I mean, if you have no experience, of course you're not going to know. We didn't know either. We charged too little. We did.

There's so many like basic business principles that we put in place one at a time until now we're like, Oh, oh this is it all makes sense now we can see the full picture which is nice so which is why we do barbell business now is because we want to teach gym owners you know like look this is what we figured out you don't have to like piece it together like we did you don't have to starve you don't dude we lived in our gym yeah i have i have a family member who was looking to join a crossfit gym in you know in in her area and they're really the only one near her there's only there's only the one she said well how much it costs i pulled it up and i said you know it's

a hundred and thirty five dollars a month and she goes that's expensive doesn't that that seems expensive doesn't it and i i said well compared to what and that's the key is what what are you comparing it to I would like to see you know the numbers if if you look at what the actual how many people own a gym membership that will not show up in a month yeah like what that rate is for a conventional gym and then I want to know how many CrossFit gyms out there how many people actually pay for a membership and don't walk through the doors once in a month yeah and that number is very low in a CrossFit gym I assume yeah compared to a big box gym it's definitely got to be lower my guess would be there's probably like 20 percent that don't show up in a given month at

any random CrossFit gym the total just out of the dark. But I bet you at a big Lobo gym, I bet you it's at least over half. It's not more. It might be the opposite. It's like 80% of the people go to the CrossFit gym that they're a member of and 80% of the people don't go to the gym they're a member of, like the big box gym. And just thinking about value, I remember I posted my morning smoothie. I did like a morning smoothie video and posted it on YouTube

and I had all these supplements and, uh, and, uh, the, the interesting thing is all my supplements that are my morning smoothie, I purchased them myself. So people think I get it for free and I'm like, no, that's, I, I do get some supplements for free, but I don't consistently get things from these brands all the time. Um, and, uh, and people and people were like oh that's 16 bucks a smoothie like loading it up with like the highest quality stuff that's you know that's what that's almost five or six thousand dollars a year and uh and and smoothies that's ridiculous so i just responded with what do you spend on gross you know what do you spend on oh i didn't say groceries i said what do you spend it on food in a year you? No response because they have no idea for one.

And then the other thing is just like, you know, when you think about something like that, is that food or what's happening? I know when I go to a restaurant, I spend more than $16 on a meal. So between like groceries and eating high quality food and going to a restaurant. So when people start asking, when they start seeing things, I think it's the lack of ability to see the entire picture. When it comes to kind of like looking at what is value and what is the monetary representation of that value. And people start complaining about the price of this or that. And it's like, well, in the grand scheme of things things if we look at your entire life is it really that expensive and a lot of times you know a $200 gym membership where you're getting really great training and you're moving I mean are you healthier like are you is your quality of life improved is

that worth $200 so and the same thing with a lot of food is, you know, people are like, oh, I don't want to spend this much on the food because, you know, I can't believe the grass fed costs this much more. Or if I'm going to drink this type of milk, you know, over this other milk, it's going to be that much more. And for me, my quality of life has a lot to do with just how I feel day to day. And I know when I eat or certain things or I'm exposed to certain environments and do certain things, it's totally worth it in the end. And like, I think, Doug, I think you said this in one of your last episodes that like, you know, 200 bucks a month to have your fitness, your programming and most of your social life locked down is really not that big of a deal.

Yeah, if you silo across the gym as just fitness, I still think it's worth it. But if you look at the other things that it also provides, like having an active social life and building a community and you've got relationships, and then if you have a community and you have a tribe, then there's probably someone there that is going to be the person who cuts your hair, and there's probably someone there that's going to be your dentist, and there's probably someone there that is going to be the person who cuts your hair. There's probably someone there that's going to be your dentist. There's probably someone there that has really good business knowledge that you can go to to get advice for your business.

There's so many benefits to being a part of a community that I think a lot of people when they're first coming into CrossFit, they don't really consider because they're still of the mindset that I'm just getting a gym membership. It's going to be just like the 24-hour fitness membership that I had, which 24-hour fitness is cool. It's a great gym. You can go get a good workout in there, but you're probably not going to have a community kind of built in as a part of your membership. You're not going to walk in and everyone's going to be like,

Doug, what are you doing? What's up, man? Nice to meet you. I'm Bill. No one's going to do that. They're all going to have their headphones on. They're going to be doing their own thing, and you're probably going to be doing your own thing,

and you're going to walk out of there with no friendships unless you really are pushing to actively meet people you're not a crossfit gym that's just not the case you're gonna walk in and you're going to meet people it's a very social environment so if you think about like the money you spend to you know to you know to find friends basically like people people they go do things out in with groups of people whether you're going to the bar whether you're going to a baseball game or whatever, like with the hopes that, you know, occasionally you're going to meet someone that you're going to think is cool and you're going to get another friend. And at CrossFit Gym, you're just guaranteed to get a group of people that already know each other and they're probably going to be your friends. Unless you're an asshole.

Yeah, unless you're just a total jerk. I mean, $135, like you mentioned, like that's nothing. But yeah, I mean, $135, like you mentioned, that's nothing. That's not that much money if it's taking care of fitness and your social life, like all in one. That's dirt cheap, my opinion. So the gym starts. You guys have the ups, the downs, the learning process, all that. You guys eventually got that figured out.

During that process, is that when you guys launched the podcast yeah we always wait until we got something completely locked down before we start new projects we had it all figured out okay so so the gym the gym was falling apart you guys were barely hanging on and you said we should do something different do more stuff yeah uh you know uh jim was doing well when we started the gym, the gym, uh, it was doing fine. Yeah. The gym was doing well. Uh, one of the things I have learned over time is to create, uh, very, uh, specific benchmarks and like metrics of success, uh, before moving on a new project. So, um, I don't think it would have changed how, uh, like when we launched the podcast, but we would probably would have been a little more clear on what needed to happen as we were taking on more projects. But yeah, I mean,

the gym was doing well and I, I think once I start feeling like, I wouldn't say, I don't know if bored is the right word, but if I do the same thing too many times in a row, I get bored. And then I want to do a new thing. Sometimes there's just the pull of the new. You know what I mean? Whatever it is, something new is pretty appealing.

Yeah, new stuff's fun. Exciting. And Doug actually started doing TechniqueWad videos, I don't know, six months, a year before. About six months. Six months before we started doing the podcast that was before the podcast yeah a lot of those yeah yeah and uh he was doing that and and that was going well and then um yeah we started to start doing the podcast and a lot of it had to do with there's quite a few motivations i was getting a lot of calls and spending time on the phone with

people talking about in the area you know other, other CrossFit gyms in there talking about training. I'd done gone and traveled and done a couple of weightlifting seminars. Yeah, and I thought to myself, you know, instead of being on the phone multiple hours a week answering people's questions and essentially doing free consulting. I was like, yeah, we should just start a show. And part of that was I'd been listening to Rob Wolf, his podcast was the first one I'd listened to. Our friend CTP, who is interning at the gym suggested we look, listen to Joe Rogan. And CTP actually really pushed like he's like, hey, you guys should do a show. And it was after I heard Joe Rogan that I was in acceptance of that.

I go, oh. Because when I was listening to Rob Wolf, there was this super content rich, pretty dry. Unless you really nerd out about nutrition and chemistry, you're like, ah. But then I heard Joe Rogan. I was like, well, you can make it. You can just hang out. You can do whatever the fuck you want. Because he's talking about aliens and mushrooms and Sasquatch. And I was like, dude, if he could do this and he could talk about that, I can talk about training.

This will be easy. Yeah. So you guys started with what was the goal in mind just to do it, something to do, something to put out there? Did you have any larger picture goals when you had started the podcast uh i think for me uh anytime i start anything it has uh there's two things that it has to be and one is fun and two is usually what what draws me into it is i see a gap in the market. It's like, oh, nobody's doing that thing. I can see where a thing is not happening that should exist, and I think I could fill it. And so that's how I get started.

That's where my perspective when starting new projects. In regard to exactly how we're going to fund it or how it's going to make money. Like when we, when I start getting into the details of how it's going to generate revenue, that's more of a Doug department. Yeah. And in my case, when we started barbell shrug,

so we started barbell shrug right around the beginning of 2012. Like they, Mike and, and Chris Moore, CDP were, were doing some, um, some recordings at the end of 2011

and you know kind of trial running what the show could be and whatnot it was called chit chat with mike for a while chit chat with mike that's a joke we should have kept that name we would have been huge did you imagine all the t-shirt sales you'd have had it'd be insane we got to bring it back we need to chat with mike shirts at least one shirt. At least one limited edition. Our graphic was made in Microsoft Paint. So back in like 2010, me and Dr. Andy Galpin, we did a presentation at NSCA in Orlando for strength and conditioning for mixed martial arts fighters.

I was fighting MMA at the time, and I thought that could be a good niche. I didn't know anyone that was really putting out a lot of really good strength conditioning information for MMA fighters specifically and that's something that I've had a passion about my whole entire life. I love MMA. I still compete in jujitsu and whatnot to this day. And so one of the original ideas was how, on my end like, how can I create enough content to where I can get kind of a global audience and then I can, I can, you know, monetize by selling digital information products, online

training programs and things like that. And so the first thing we ever recorded and put together was a strength and conditioning for, for MMA course. And the plan was, was to to when i started technique wad fourth of july 2011 now that video was an easy medium because i had gotten my first smartphone at that point so i had hd video on my phone and not being like super tech savvy like it was so easy to just have my phone record a video and then just upload it straight to youtube from my phone yeah and i'm not a writer i never was into blogging me might have tried blogging before. We just don't do it consistently. I've started blogging at least a dozen times.

Yeah. This is not my thing. Build a website. Make it all fancy. Time to write. Blog entry number one. Six weeks later, I should really do number two. To write consistently is a huge obligation.

Oh, for sure. So, yeah. To write consistently is a huge obligation for sure. So the original idea on my end was, and this was before we were a team and we had this whole crew to do the work with. I was just doing it on my own. I was making Techniquad videos on my own. And then I had Techniquad.com where I was uploading them with a short little blurb below each video. And I was kind of accruing an email list of customers or potential future customers and then we had recorded at the gym this MMA strength conditioning course which we never ended up selling. If you go back to like Barbell Shrug episode 12 and whatnot, we talk about it a little

bit. We never actually sold it. So the original idea on my end was have free video content and then make online training programs for CrossFitters, but then also for mixed martial arts fighters. And so that was doing something. But then when Mike and CTP and Chris Moore came up with this idea to do Barbell Strug, this show, it was very obvious within a couple months that this show was going to be way more popular than doing Technique WOD videos on my own. So we ended up pushing them together

where we had Barbell Strug and then Technique WOD was like the practical how-to little commercial kind of in the middle of the show. We kind of merged them together. And then since our audience was primarily CrossFitters, we never launched the MMA product and then we started making

other digital information products which was one of the first ways that we were going to monetize the show. That way we could start doing cooler stuff. We could start traveling more. We knew that Memphis, Tennessee was not going to be like this amazing hub for finding fitness experts. We started off interviewing a lot of our

friends and whatnot but we knew we were going to have to travel. We were doing it all in person. We didn't want to do Skype interviews. we just thought that was just not it was not what we want to do at all being in person it's so much cooler for so many reasons yeah like in the distances the audio quality and just the the dynamic between the group being so much easier and it just sounds more more authentic and just it's a more fun conversation to listen to because you get that kind of in-person real-time broadband connection so to speak where there's no there's no lag between people talking like you like you'd have over skype we decided to do it all in person and if that was the case we would need to travel

and if we're going to travel a lot with four or five people then we're going to need some cash flow and so that that was kind of the original idea and it's it man it's it's evolved so many ways beyond that that i never would have thought of and it's turned into a much bigger thing but that was like the original idea on my end it is interesting your guys's decision to go with that you guys have talked about that before to do the the no skype interview thing um is one of the main reasons why we kind of dug our heels in on that too it was like especially you know we live in the middle of nowhere, so it is very difficult. You know, it takes, we have to travel to do anything. And, you know, for us, it would be so easy for me to get Skype interviews. But God, you've heard podcasts with Skype interviews.

And I, what, 30% of them are fucking terrible. There's always some, you know, data connection issue. You know, if you're going to interview somebody and take their time and it starts cutting out and you're asking them to repeat the same point three times, four times in a row. Yeah, it's a bummer. It's getting better. To me, it was a necessity to not do Skype

because I remember in 2012, when we started doing this show, I was listening to multiple podcasts. I started doing my research and I noticed that when I was listening to a podcast that had poor audio, I would just switch to another show. I couldn't because in the beginning, all their audio was shitty. So you just dealt with it. And then as shows emerged where they were really going with higher quality audio,

it's like, oh, we now have a choice. And so recognizing that was the case, we made an investment in getting good audio equipment traveling to people to do it i think now i do a lot of skype interviews i actually think uh you know as it goes as technology moves on it would get easier and easier but like i'm a nice interview guest if i'm being if i'm doing it because i pull out my nice microphone uh-huh and you know I might even record on my side or something like just send it over and that's super helpful and most guests will never do that yeah so the only reason I do is because I know because I've been doing it yeah there's there's actually a cool app out there's kind of a side tangent I

just discovered called Zen caster and uh zen caster what it does is um is it uh automatically records your site and their side of the conversation and it's just through a simple web app and so uh if say your skype cuts out it won't show up on your show so there's a lot of things emerging like that i I still think we're maybe a year away from being locked in. I did a Skype interview last week. We had to restart it four times. Ouch. Yeah, and it made it really difficult to get in a rhythm.

Yeah. And it's tough because it's not anybody's fault. Right. But sometimes you have to. But I don't know. The other thing is the experience of going and meeting somebody. It is an uncomfortable process showing up, meeting somebody, going into their space. It's something we've done now an awful lot with this podcast,

but I just figure it makes you better for having done it. Absolutely. And it's a much more valuable experience for sure. That was actually a benefit that I didn't anticipate. And then it was something that I recognize. I think Doug didn't anticipate it either, but it was after we had done, you know,

50 shows, we realized that we actually had built relationships with our guests versus other podcasters who don't travel. You know, they hop on for Skype for an hour and you know you're in and out and you don't see each other face to face the connection is not as as tight and so once you have that connection in person it's a lot easier to reach out to that person in the future and have a conversation there's just so many benefits it's unreal yeah it's counterintuitive in a way

where you'd think it'd be so much it's so much faster, so much cheaper, so much more convenient to do something like a Skype call. There's the downsides we already mentioned about connectivity issues and whatnot. But you would think that even though the connectivity issues can be an issue and sometimes the audio quality isn't as good, still, you're going to save tens of thousands of dollars and you're not gonna have to travel nearly as much and and if you want to get a really popular guest who's super busy like it's just easier to like not have to like be in town where like you gotta spend like half the day with them you know you can just get them for 45 minutes on audio call and then you're done and so you would think that given that that's the case it would be so much easier to do skype calls and whatnot that that would be like the preferred method and why wouldn't you choose that but i suspect if had we chosen to do skype calls that we would have done 20 30 episodes and been like this is kind of

boring like it's not as cool we're kind of over it but doing it in person it's so much more fun it's way more fun to like travel to a new place and meet someone in person, train with them, grab a meal and then podcast in person after you kind of got to know each other a little bit. And then you walk away as, as real friends. Kind of like Mike was just saying, like we actually know our podcast guests. Like, like we just met you. I just met you this morning.

And so if we just got on a Skype call and we talked for 30 minutes, like, and then we saw each other at a conference, I feel like I never met you before yeah like oh that's right yeah yeah i think i think i did i do a lot of podcasts but i think i remember you you know i mean like it's like i emailed you once you remember that you know we get that stuff i mean mike someone reached out to mike just recently and he goes you know this guy and i was like oh um oh yeah yeah i did a podcast with that guy like two years ago i think i remember that guy but it was a skype call and so i i barely remember him and if he walked up to me on the street i probably wouldn't it'd take me a minute to even to remember the whole situation because i've never

seen him in real life before and so uh i think doing it in person was like even though we didn't really know at the time was like like the big decision that was made that that really made it possible for us to continue to do this for a long period of time it's so much more sustainable because it's fun even though it's more time consuming and even though it's more expensive like the fact that it's in person we can build those relationships was absolutely key to us continuing to do you know the show for years and it kind of makes you have some skin in the game too i mean if you're gonna pack up your shit and you're gonna go somewhere like it had better be important to you and it probably you know what i mean you you know that you're not going to go through all that shit for for a casual conversation investment there's so many things that are unseen benefits

so that's right so things kind of things kind of grew um i gradually i mean it's been four and a half years now yeah i think it was gradual i i there wasn't this big huge moment where you know just everything's no i kept waiting for it to happen. Still waiting. Yeah. It's like the moment you get in shape or the moment you – now you're strong. That moment never comes. Yeah. That's the truth. Man, we even – we had even set some goals. We were like, all right, when we do this, you know, when we get audiences this size

or we make this amount of money in a month, we'll do this or that. We'll celebrate. We'll celebrate. We'll go to Vegas. We never do. We just keep doing the that. We'll celebrate. We'll celebrate. We'll go to Vegas. We never do. We just keep doing the thing. That's good. We enjoy doing the thing.

So a lot of times I feel like our work trips are more fun than like celebrating our wins. Oh, for sure. Just going to Vegas and like just to go to Vegas versus like going to Vegas and doing a bunch of shows and like meeting a bunch of people and going on traincation while we're there and then doing some of the Vegas-y things while we happen to be there sounds like a cooler trip than just doing the party stuff no doubt yeah because Mike's like no I don't know what you're talking about you haven't been to Vegas with me lately hard rock pool party oh yeah I do like to party um So things are gradually building up. You guys decide to launch Barbell Business.

When was that? Where was that in the – That's probably three years ago. Something like that. That was a year and a half into Barbell Shrug. We decided to do a show for gym owners where we were going to answer some questions. And then during the show, we decided that we'd going to answer some questions and then during the show we decided that we'll we'd go ahead and launch another podcast why not have one more obligation why not

that's right one more commitment to to add to the under committed individual we didn't have a lot of big aspirations for barbell business when we started that's what i was going to say when you started that was that something where you're like, okay, we're going to do this. We're going to do it consistently. We're going to turn this into a thing because now I think that's a pretty, from what I see, you have quite a bit going on with that end now.

Yeah. Yeah, we do. Again, like that project was started for the same reason that I wanted to start Barbell Shrug and that was obvious gap in the market and I personally, I think Doug as well at that point had learned enough about business to where we had kind of graduated from the, we're kind of

figuring this out to, we know we're, we're actually grasped these larger principles. And then we, we understand enough tactical stuff where we could pass it down to gym owners. And so we had kind of gotten to a certain level of knowledge we were comfortable sharing it um and then yeah and then i just saw the gap and it seemed like fun thing to do and i actually really what's interesting is uh when i first started going to school i started with a business degree which i switched to exercise science after the first semester halfway through the semester I switched because business was boring because I was taking taking a an accounting class that really like my impression of business back then was different than what my impression of business is now and so back then your impression of business was only

one accounting class mostly exactly. Exactly. Counting the money. That's business. It was only that easy. So there's that. You can hire that out. How am I going to count all this money? Yeah, and so my impression of what doing business was was completely different when I was younger.

And then after I learned more about it and understood that it was a game, it became really interesting to me. So talking about that on a podcast actually was a lot of fun. So again, it was fun, saw a gap in the market, so we did it with the idea of, yes, we will also, you know, it'll be funded and we will monetize it

and we're really big fans of in business of, uh, not coming up with a product and then trying to figure out how to sell it. Yeah. And so we do it the other way around, which is we go out to the world, we present ourselves, we talk about what we like to talk about and we get people to, to engage with us. And then we asked them, what kind of stuff do you want?

What kind of stuff would you like to see that we might be able to help you with? And then we send out surveys and we do things like that. And they tell us, they go, Oh, this is what we'd like to see. And when we create that product or service and then it sells like hotcakes.

And so it's super, um, and there's not that fear of trying to move a commodity without any demand right you know it's just we're just and so uh both with barbell shark and barbell business we actually didn't know what we were going to sell in the beginning you know it wasn't we weren't like oh what are we going to get out of this i mean you know if you approach any situation with what am i going to get out of it you're going to get fucked yeah um and what you're going to do to yourself but the uh that can be fun so uh not demonize it 100

now you look like you're daydreaming yeah my, my wife's out of town right now, so this is an accurate statement. Like, huh, yeah, he's kind of right. What were we talking about? Yeah, so like when we started Barbell Business, I kind of went into it with the confidence that something good would come out of it and it's okay if I don't know what it is right now. And now you guys have an awful lot of gyms now on that program that I mean the the impact you started you thought it was probably just going to be a podcast and you'd figure out the rest later but I mean how many gyms do you have that you're working with with barbell business

at least with let's say specifically say with logic where where you're involved in their operation. I think we're probably sitting around 170. Yeah, we're about 160, 170 right now with Logic. Yeah. We're kind of like, ah, about because every day it changes. So we're gaining a lot of – we're bringing in new customers. Yeah, I'll just throw out the number. I think we're pulling in about 20 a month. Okay. So 20 new customers a month coming in. Um, it's moving nice and steady. And so we're around one 70 getting 20 a month. And, uh, it's actually,

we're, we're seeing a lot more people coming in more quickly. Yeah. And, uh, and part of that is because if you go to the website, if you just go to barbellbusiness.com, go learn about, you know, click to automate your gym or barbell logic button. And you'll see there's testimonials of people who've had it for close to a year now or longer, you know, I think we've been selling a little bit over a year and their testimonials are phenomenal. Yeah. You know, double, it's not rare for someone to double the membership in their facility um and then uh and then also we make suggestions on how they could you know improve their model a little bit so that it's now sustainable and makes good money and everyone in the gym is having a better experience so um we're really excited to sell that specifically yeah yeah if you don't listen to barbell business you might wonder what the hell we're really excited to sell that specifically. Yeah.

Yeah, if you don't listen to Barbell Business, you might wonder what the hell we're talking about. Barbell Logics is the kind of comprehensive inbound marketing platform that we have designed specifically for CrossFit gyms where we essentially rebuild your entire website in a very marketing savvy fashion where it's a beautiful site and then we have all your backend automation and workflows, workflows your sops so to speak for marketing built in where you have kind of ultimate follow-up

with anyone that's ever ever come to your gym or has ever been in your system where you it's almost impossible for you to not follow up with with the people that come into your gym it's a really common problem with people that run across the gyms where someone comes in, they, they might email, they might have a phone call that might drop in. And then those people are just simply forgotten about. They never get called back.

They never get emailed back or, or it's like once. And they said, you know, Hey, when do you want to come in? And then the person never replies and then they just are forgotten about. So as it's an enormous problem.

And so, so we, we, we built this, this platform where, um, the followup is a hundred percent automated. And so nobody falls through the cracks. And so, built this platform where the follow-up is 100% automated. So nobody falls through the cracks.

And so everyone that's interested in your gym has the highest likelihood to actually become a member. And then we pair that with business coaching where if you are a brand new gym owner or you just want to be better at running your company, we have coaches, business coaches that help you. Number one, kind of just figure out what you want out of your business in general. And then, and then number two, um, help you, um, get a hundred percent usage out of the platform that we're providing. And the interesting thing that I, you know, I don't, I don't own a gym. Um, but the, I, I found myself listening to the podcast and the interesting thing that I really, really found about it was a lot of these things relate to just generally the way dealing with customers just is, you know what I mean? Like you need to set expectation and you need to deliver. And a lot

of businesses have the same problem, which is how do I get people to show up? How do I get them to become my customer? And then how do I keep them and that was the thing that I found it that I enjoy as a non-gym owner who listens to barbell business is that a lot of those things apply to the way that I interact with my customers at my regular job you know yeah the I think one of the things I pride myself on and all everything that we do is it's very principle based so we're not necessarily selling a method of like, Oh, this is how this worked for me.

You should do it too. It's more of a, this is, if you can understand these concepts about business, then the individual tactical things are interchangeable and it allows you to be creative in a way. So if you're not a gym owner, the information is still really good because it's principle-based.

It's like powerlifting and weightlifting. At face value, they look different. But you start getting into the principles of training, and it's like, oh, wow. The ways to get stronger and faster are the same in a lot of ways. ways to get stronger and faster are the same in a lot of ways you want, you know, there's, you know, load and time and retention and all these concepts and, and rep schemes and so on and so forth. And, but the expression of that looks very different. And that's the same thing that we offer is we're not selling, you know, business in a sense that all we're selling is, you know, this is exactly how you

do this one thing. And this is how we did it. And you should follow our system no matter what. It's more of a educational deal for us. Yeah, I had an acquaintance of mine a while back who was also a strength coach for mixed martial arts fighters. He said his job isn't to make you a better fighter. His job is to make you a better athlete. And so some of what Mike is saying, like that particular guy, he could take an MMA fighter to make you a better fighter his job is to make you a better athlete and so some of what mike is saying like that particular guy he could take an mma fighter and make them a better athlete and then they would be a better mma fighter or he could take a better he could take a basketball player and make them a better athlete and then they would be a better basketball player so he's not teaching them how to play basketball he's not teaching them how to fight mmas teaching them the the fundamentals of business in this analogy where if you're a good

business coach or you know a lot about business then it doesn't matter if you run a plumbing a plumbing company or you sell software as a service like the fundamentals of business are are the same in in many respects yes there's there's many differences between those industries and the details like there's way there's a lot of details that are different between basketball and mma fighting there's a lot of details between plumbing and selling software as a service but the business principles are the same just like the movement principles and the strength conditioning performance principles are the same between between basketball and and mixed martial arts fighting even though there's there's a few key differences 80 of it is going to cross over now i want to segue into kind of our our last point here um What I, to rewind,

about a year ago before we started this project, I had contacted Mike and Chris and Chris had helped me with, you know, back and forth email about some things

that I had done with my previous blog. At that time, it was kind of funny because I had, you know, kind of thanked him for the things that you guys were doing here

and it was, you know, helpful, really, really good information. If you're listening to this, make sure you know helpful really really good information um if if you're listening to this make sure you go and check out um barbell shrugged as well as the technique wad stuff because for me like when i just had first started crossfit you can go in and you can do your class for an hour but you don't know a fucking thing you know what i mean so to learn about the movements and all those things it was really valuable to have really good quality

information available um and so that stuff was was exceptional I'd you know was talking to Chris about you know the podcast all these things of course that was exactly at this time last year which was then when you guys had kind of took your break and handed the show over and so we had the other guys were hosting for for the last year of course then we scheduled this trip I come down and sure enough it was two days ago i think was when um you guys had announced that you guys are now back hosting the show um what the hell's going on it's a secret is it no not so much so you know we are we're back on the show which we're we're thrilled about um you know the the guys that took over for the last year and and were hosts on the

show did a phenomenal job and and man we have we have so much gratitude towards those guys for for taking something that is kind of our baby and doing such a good job with it especially when they had um you know pretty big shoes to fill really like having never done it before and then being thrown in as as the host of a show that was really popular there they have some high expectations and they they they really exceeded our expectations with a lot of pressure i would assume at that point yeah because nobody saw that coming either so it's kind of a situation where like like here you go everybody's watching right and don't they had a little bit of prep but uh but not much they had prep the audience didn't but um but they did they did a great job a really good job what what was that like for you guys

as far as during that time you know i you guys had i suppose after at that time what was it how many years were you guys in at that we were uh four years in when we decided to take a break so four years in and you know doing something that consistently is can it can be difficult it can be draining plus what the hell you're going to talk about at least that's that's the thing that I think a lot of people find with podcasts is like, what are we, what are we going to do this week, guys? I don't find it difficult to come up with topics to talk about necessarily. Um, when, when the correct space is given. And I think that over time doing it every single week, uh, it was, it was the coming up with 52 topics a year that is the challenge. And, yeah, I think that there was just things weren't lining up specific,

like just in the right way, and it became a really big challenge. So it was one of those things where we could keep pushing through and just keep pushing and watch it degrade over time. It would be a lot of friction, I suppose, if you just keep grinding through that. Yeah, or we could take a break. It's like training. If you train for the Olympics for four years and then you just went straight back into training the day after the Olympics, you're going to be a destroyed athlete. and training the day after the Olympics,

you're going to be a destroyed athlete. Every athlete has to take more than a day or two off every once in a while. It's good for athletes to take off weeks or months sometimes. Especially podcast athletes. It's rigorous. Not only did I stop doing podcasts, but I also stopped training. No, I'm just kidding.

If you can see the video, Mike is fat as shit. It's been a rough year. He's drinking a 40 right now. Uh, no, there was a, the space allowed us to have a lot of expansion, I think, and not having to think of what to talk about next for a while was really refreshing for us. So we're really excited to come back on the show and bring new perspectives. Yeah. We got Kenny Kane and Andy Galpin who will be our occasional co-host. They won't be on every single show. They're,

they're, they're busy dudes, but they'll be on the show as our, as our co-host. And then we'll be getting all kinds of new guests, of course. But the old crew, they'll, they're still around. So those guys might be coming on the show here and there. So if you were listening to the show over the last year and, and, you know, you liked what

you're listening to, those guys, they're not necessarily never going to be on the show again, for the record. Gotcha. Gotcha. So what, I mean, what, what is next big picture for you guys what is what is what do you guys want to do with all of this you know I mean you you said you you're not going to just stay at this level and continue to do things what do you really want to do with both barbell business barbell shrugged what's your what's the next big thing for you guys or where do you plan on taking it? In regard to Barbell Shrugged, we are picking up where we left off in a way. And over the past year, our perspectives on a lot of things have changed and grown. And I think that people are probably going to recognize that in the first couple months back. They'll see there's been a little bit of a leap forward in just how we approach things.

I would say more holistically. So being able to see the bigger picture better. I think some of that space allowed us to see that. We are looking to bring in a very balanced series of shows between interviewing great coaches, athletes, scientists, shows between interviewing great coaches, athletes, scientists, and really, yeah, our goal is to keep it very balanced and also doing a lot of things that are cutting edge. So covering the fundamentals with more depth is really important. I think the more experience we have, the more we see that the fundamentals tend to be overlooked. And we actually, for me personally, like getting more depth in those fundamentals is actually really fulfilling for me. I know it is for Doug as well. So we're going to be doing that. But I think one of the things

I'm excited about is a lot of the connections we've made with researchers and people who are doing cutting-edge things. So I think over the next year, people are going to see, like, there's some things in the market that have been kind of the same for a while, and I think we're going to shake it up a little bit with what's happening with Barbell Shrugged Introducing. You know, new ideas around nutrition, supplementation, movement, just everything that we normally talk about. I know I personally made a bunch of new discoveries that are new for me,

and if they're new for me, they're probably new for the audience as well. And so in regard to barbell business, we're really enjoying that. We see barbell businesses a really big opportunity to impact the industry in a big way because what we see is a lot of gym owners struggling. And when the gym owner is struggling, the athletes aren't being served. And what we want to do is create a very solid support structure for gym owners and coaches because if the gym owner can provide, if we can support them, they can support their coaches and the coaches can support their

athletes much better. So we really see, you know, barbell shrug is, um, a great way for us to reach a lot of people. And I see barbell business when we're doing with logic and with the coaching as a way of creating a lot of stability and good information for really the entire planet. So, uh, much broader impact and it's, it's a much, it's a much more, um, focused influence on the people we want to have influence with. And that is the average person that is, you know, suffering from being sedentary and not eating a great diet. And if we can create a really good support structure for the gym owners, and good marketing, because with what we do, we can get more people doing CrossFit, we can get more people walking into the gym total,

which if you look at especially the American population, we need more of that. So if we can have 1,000 gyms using our systems, that means that those gyms are going to be highly successful pulling more people in, and that's how we're making an impact and trying to change the industry a bit. So we could do a lot of different things. We could choose to launch a supplement line we could choose to you know and we are choosing to we do training programs for athletes online with barbell shrug we are still choosing to do those things and we're looking for opportunities the question that that runs through my mind is in the way that we the filter we run

um our our decisions through is what's the biggest impact we can make with the time and resources and our skill sets possible. And so I could, you know, I could pick up personal training and train someone one-on-one and I could charge a high dollar amount and it would be fun and that would be fulfilling too. Or I could say, look, I want to look at the big picture. How do we make the biggest change possible? And it might not mean that I go personal train someone when I want to be, because I have this skillset and I have this team where we can, um, impact thousands of gyms that impact thousands of people and on a much deeper level than even doing a podcast. And so like we're, the podcast is something we love doing and it actually helps

push us to learn more. I've learned more doing podcasts than anything I've ever done before, I think. And, uh, and that's like the foundation of, of how we show up in the world, but down in the roots, it's with the gyms. I see. Yeah. Yeah. Mike and I both have a, you know, a passion for the industry and, and have a, have been very fortunate to have kind of a deep background in training. And then we have the academic side of things. And so, um, having, having been doing it my whole life, I've just been very fortunate to, in my opinion, have a kind of a more professional look at the industry. Again, having the academic side of things and the training side of things together, which a lot of people, they simply don't have.

And so one of the things that we really want to do with the show is to raise people's expectations for how knowledgeable they should be about being a coach or being a business owner and or how much they should care about their athletes and the quality of their gym for the training and then also for just like the overall client experience. I think professionalizing the fitness industry and what that means to me is that if you look at the medical community, if you're a doctor or a nurse, people have a certain assumption about how much you know and about how professional you are and about what your background is and how much you know about the human body and physiology and histology and on and on. Um, if you compare kind of the, the average base assumption of how smart a doctor is compared to how smart a personal trainer is, most people are going to be like, well, obviously the doctor knows way more about the human body than the personal trainer does. And that very, very well may be true in the vast majority of cases, but I don't think

it has to be true. It doesn't necessarily need to be the case in every case. You could, you could have a doctor that just did whatever he could to get through medical school. Now he can call himself a doctor and just did whatever he could to get through medical school. Now he can call himself a doctor and he gets the status and then he never studies anything the rest of his life except for what he absolutely has to. That could be the case. And then you could get a personal trainer that never went to school at all and just

studies his ass off every day because he loves it and has an amazing, amazing depth of knowledge about, about the human body that, that, that rivals, you know, the other doctor that I just mentioned in that example. body that rivals the other doctor that I just mentioned in that example. But on average, the doctor probably has a more thorough education because he basically has to. He has to go through medical school and he has to go through residency and whatnot. Whether he can apply all that knowledge in every case is up in the air. But the level of education required to be a doctor is very, very high.

This is not making the case that we should have to go through a four-year medical style school to be a doctor is very, very high. This is not making the case that we should have to go through a four-year medical style school to be a coach or a personal trainer. But what I would like to see happen is that personal trainers, coaches, they raise their expectations about how much they should know about coaching and about physiology and about anatomy. And it's not okay to just know how to lift weights. Like you should know all of these other areas to be the best coach you can possibly be. So with what we know about training

and with having the platform that we have, I'd like to professionalize the fitness industry to the point where eventually people kind of view fitness coaches and the wellness community in a similar light that they view the medical community, realizing that they serve vastly different functions in society where the medical community primarily is to take somebody from a state of disease to kind of a state of normality, whereas the fitness or the wellness community takes someone from roughly normal and to the best,

healthiest version that they could possibly be. It's the same human body in both cases. And so one's just trying to get awesome. Yeah yeah one's trying to be the best they can be and one's trying to pull themselves out of a state of disease and so um in my mind that and actually alan cosgrove said this really really well like to to emphasize my point like if you look if you look at any tv sitcom and like the doctor on the show is like in a suit and he's very professional and he gets a lot of respect and then like the the personal trainer comes in TV sitcom and like the doctor on the show is like in a suit and he's very professional and he gets a lot of respect. And then like the, the, the personal trainer comes in the room and on the same sitcom and he's got like a backwards hat and like cut off t-shirt. And he's kind of just like, what the up guys. And like, he's got, he's kind of a doofus,

right? Like he's, he's like the bro that everyone likes to make, make fun of when they're talking about like bro science and whatnot. Like, you know, the, the assumption being like bro science, like he doesn't actually know what the hell he's talking about. He just happens to be athletic. And so I don't think that's not what a real strength coach is like. There's many strength coaches that are truly amazing in this world. But that's the stereotype. And I'd like to kind of world and people that, that work

in this, in this fitness, strength, conditioning community, like we need to all raise our expectations of ourselves and, and be the most knowledgeable, most dedicated, you know, just the best that we can possibly be. And then if that's the case, then eventually that stereotype will kind of go away. Well, guys, I think that's all I had for today. Yeah, yeah. what he said um is there anything else you guys want to get out there any big announcements nothing major um the biggest announcements uh if you if you don't listen to barbell shrug then i highly recommend that you

listen to barbell shrug you know we we do it every week we put a lot of effort into it and a lot of people enjoy that show so if you're if you're an athlete or a coach, powerlifting, weightlifting, CrossFit, or anything in the world of strength and conditioning, then it's a great show to listen to. If you're a business owner or a CrossFit gym owner or just you're in the fitness industry at all and you want to learn more about business, then Barbell Business is also one of our shows.

It's video-based. You can watch it on YouTube, or it's podcast-based where you can listen to the audio on iTunes or Stitcher. So you kind of got both sides of the equation there. We got the business side for the fitness world. And then we got the training and performance side for the athletes. So Barbell Business and Barbell Shrugged. And I've said it before. If you're not listening to Barbell Shrugged, you're fucking up.

So I agree. We need to make t-shirts so say that um guys how can people find you out there on social media mike uh instagram mike underscore bledsoe twitter is michael bledsoe people still use twitter how fast is that falling off uh yeah i don't really i don't really use it i only have so i only have so many so many things that I can click and check. For sure. And Twitter's gone. I don't use it very much.

I probably average three or four posts a week. Facebook.com slash Bloodsopia. For me, you can go Instagram. It's just Douglas E. Larson. D-O-U-G-L-A-S-E-L-A-R-S-O-N on Instagram. Follow me there. You reminded me, Mike. Speaking of blood sopia, is that never coming back, the blood sopia podcast?

Yeah, it died. Was that another one that we had too many tentacles? There was a – you know what? I'd have to investigate my own mind further to find out exactly what happened. But I'm actually, I'm starting my own show starting in January. Big announcement. And that's going to be called, that's the Bledsoe Show. Gotcha.

So I'll be, if you're following me on social media, I'll be letting you know. That's posting. I think you'll enjoy it. heard it here first guys um actually i think this podcast i think you're right they did hear here first we haven't told anybody i got the exclusive lead so um breaking news that's right so well thanks a lot for listening everybody um don't forget go to massonomics.com scroll to the bottom of the page, you can sign up for our newsletter. Also there,

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and I'm Tyler. You can find me on Instagram at Tyler F. and Stone. Thanks a lot for listening everybody and stay strong. Thanks Tyler. And I'm Tyler. You can find me on Instagram at Tyler F. and Stone. Thanks a lot for listening, everybody, and stay strong. Thanks, Tyler.

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