Massenomics Podcast - Ep.71: Richard Aceves of Strongfit

Episode Date: August 14, 2017

     This week, Tyler hangs out with Richard Aceves of Strongfit after wrapping up the Coaches Week at CrossFit 1080 in Woodbury, MN. Richard tells the story of how he has navigated the waters of the CrossFit, Powerlifting, and Strongman world and how he came to train under and begin to work with Julien at Strongfit. Richard lives one of the most interesting lives imaginable, and travels the world full time without any home base. We learn some of the highs and lows of that lifestyle, and just how much fun a guy can really have when the whole world is your playground. This episode was a ton of fun to record, and Richard (a.k.a. The Mexican Johnny Bravo, a.k.a. The MexiKen Doll, a.k.a. Mexican Clark Kent) was a blast to spend the week with, so hopefully this isn't the last time we hear from him on The Massenomics Podcast., Check it out in stunning high-quality audio below,   Or you can watch it in full color video here. 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 2020.. 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. Absolutely. All right, I'm here.

You're here. Am I here? I am here. What did I do with my hands? You do everything with your hands. This is still not going to be like a smart, philosophical podcast at all. No, it is going to be a little bit different than the Julio podcast. I'm still sad we don't have like a whiskey or a beer.

I actually have all of the beer that I went to wisconsin to buy in my pickup right now right of like three cases but it's warm i don't think we can power through that i don't think so i think we're good is this just recording the uh this it's a super wide angle so we'll move hey ladies how you doing so hey ladies welcome to the ladies listening actually believe it or not we have probably i don't know how many more than just our moms though nice so we've got uh it's growing yeah actually i think of our itunes reviews like 80 of them are women are they nice i think it's the power of the pecs we got to get that on strong fit dude strong fit we're like at 95 male like this is the most women we've had at a coach's week that's i think

that's unusual yeah like we get i mean coach says you're not really famous until you have women followers and groupies he's not there yet it all just seems to be sweaty men i think uh we've got like at my crossfit gym what's our ratio i think we're like almost dead on 50 50 with members which is probably pretty close to what crossfit has yeah generally i i had about 80 20 women yeah i had a bunch more women than men and that i think the guys just get their ego bruised that's because of richard's hair so we are i don't know i was told by one of my my favorite clients she always said that i was intimidating that she didn't understand why women would come and sign up because i intimidate women really i don't know why i'm like okay well we are at this

point in the midst of the massonomics podcast oh we are okay we're totally in it um i am joined by richard aceves is that pronounced right you did it so when i when i nice when i pre-loaded this trip when i hyped it before i left i was like we're gonna go visit julian and then i was like and richard something i'll figure out the last name when we get there. I'll practice it. Aceves. That's correct. I didn't know if it was a hard cha.

No, that's Argentinian. What? Aceves. I don't even know. A soft cha? A soft cha. I've gotten Aceves. When I won the California gold, they were like, and Richard.

Aceves. So when I won the California gold, they were like, and Richard, uh, Seavies? I was like, ah, close enough. So Richard, tell the people what your role is with StrongFit per se. My goal is just kind of the how-to for Julian. So basically anything he wants to try and accomplish, I try and figure out how to make it happen. So you're the it guy. I'm the it guy. When he wants coffee, I go get him coffee. Yeah, I think I'm the it guy.

He has a lot of different visions, as you've noticed, this past week during the coaches week. So I'm really just the guy that i see his vision and i multiply it by 10 yeah and i just i always like to shoot up high so we try and take over the fitness world yeah well plus things actually have to have to happen yes you know he's very as you can tell this week he's very in his head and he loves to say a lot of things but sometimes it's a lot more work trying to implement them so he's always like oh let's go train i'm like dude like someone has to actually do the computer work yeah so let's focus on that like emails probably aren't his thing emails are definitely not his thing like

like large-scale marketing probably not marketing is not his thing at all he's like why aren't people here i was like coach you didn't tell anybody he's like no but i did i was like you mentioned it once like eight months ago in a live video yeah it's like 45 minutes in where people like the true diehards are listening everybody else is sewn out after like the first minute and a half so he's people he thinks everybody understands him and i try to make him understand that nobody understands him and that you know when i when we first started the seminar i was like coach you need to explain this like if someone just walked out of an office and has never lifted a weight and you need to explain to him how to get in shape and not get hurt he's like but i'm teaching coaches and i'm

like yeah but you know, we don't understand what level of coaching they're at yet. So we need to like simplify this as much as possible. And at first he didn't listen, but then it always with coach, I feel like we go with like a three month revolution of, I stick something in his ear and I kind of poke at it and poke at it and poke at it.

And he's like, Richard, I had this great idea. So we're going to do this coaches week where we take a week at it. And he's like, Richard, I have this great idea. So we're going to do this coaches week where we take a week-long workshop. And I'm like, that sounds awesome, Coach. Let's do it. It's kind of, it works really great. Or he'll come in and he'll have like this whole new system.

So I've basically, you know, he had his original system like the first six months that we did the seminar. six months that we did the seminar and then you know he just recently came up with some pretty cool stuff with the torque chains and the sympathetic parasympathetic system and the nervous system and so he'll just come in out of nowhere he just starts writing on the walls and i'm like what the fuck's going on and we just take that and i try to like funnel into something that's we saw applicable we saw that yesterday we were doing our thing and all of a sudden coach was outside training yeah and he just comes running in and takes over the whiteboard. Right. Yeah.

He does that a lot. And so I carry around, like, markers with me and chalk markers with me. And so anywhere we go, we always have, like, big windows, and we'll just start writing on the windows. That's really how we do most of our ideas. We just kind of start writing shit down. We just start talking back and forth. And, you know know we start to see

certain trends that happen here and there in different gyms different areas and so that's really where we start to zone in on what we want to try and accomplish yeah now i want to backtrack a little bit here because we went pretty in depth with coach last week in last week's episode it was yesterday but uh i want to go back to your maybe like your your training history as far as what it was like when you were training on your own how you kind of came up what you were doing and then how you maybe found your way to coach yeah so um i started you know with basically i was a power lifter when i was working in the kitchen. I was a chef before I actually got into the fitness world. And then I found CrossFit and rock climbing kind of at the same time.

I was a 240-pound big boy that used to work in the kitchen. And I used to go lift. And then I started rock climbing, and I fell in love with rock climbing. So I was like, I need to get smaller because you can't rock climb and be a big boy. I wouldn't be any good at rock climbing. It's difficult. I don't even like climbing stairs at this point. So I kind of started to shift things and so my uncle was training for a triathlon at the time and he turned me on to a Navy SEAL guy that was doing CrossFit and so I just started following main site and that's kind of how I

fell in love with with the CrossFit world doing the burpees and the puking and passing out and that whole horribleness. You were in all that where it was as intense as you could be. Oh, dude, I got kicked out of 24-hour fitness. Like, they exiled me from 24-hour fitness because that was back then when there weren't that many CrossFit gyms around. This was in 06, 07. And then I had a rock climbing accident. And so once I recovered from my rock climbing accident, it was just like CrossFit full on. And I feel like CrossFit has its own life cycle.

You start seeing it where you start your first CrossFit workout and you hate it and you feel horrible, but you love it at the same time. And then you kind of start going back like maybe three times a week. And then all of a sudden five times a week and then six times a week. Then you don't need a rest day because it feels so cool to just kill yourself in the gym. And then you ask your coach if you can do two a week and two a days. And you kind of go through that cycle. And then you find either powerlifting or strongman or weightlifting or gymnastics.

You find basically you're power biased, right? Like you're endurance biased, you're power biased, you're bunny biased, depending on what you like to do. And then you're like, I don't really need to be doing all this cardio stuff if I can just lift heavy. I need to get huge. Yeah. I just want to be strong, guys.

This whole six-pack thing is highly overrated. And so I started doing more of the power lifting stuff, but I still wanted to kind of keep on CrossFitting because i owned a crossfit gym um an affiliate and so there came a point where i just kept breaking man like my back would go out my shoulders would go out something would pop and i just it's that return to zero and start from nothing and build back up it's such a horrible struggle man I think I think we see it all the time now you had a little bit more of a you know issues that you were working through structurally with your accent you want to go in a little bit to what yeah you're rock climbing accident what what should coming back how that was like yeah so I was in a rock climbing accident where basically my hip was crushed and broken into around 30 pieces.

My pubis was basically uplifted a few inches. I've had a couple ulna transplants, so my forearms are definitely beat up to shit. And I've gone through about eight surgeries in the last, it's been nine, eight, nine years, nine years now. But the first couple years were like surgery every year because i never listened to the doctors yeah who does you know um and so the the struggle was always a trying to prove the doctors wrong that you can exercise and you can be better than you were before um and that was like a huge mental why for me like it didn't matter the pain that i was in like i just do stupid shit.

Like as soon as the first time the doctor told me I could walk without crutches, and it took me like a good 45 minutes to take my first step. It's the weirdest thing when your nerves and your muscles don't want to fire, but your body is trying to tell it to fire. You know, it's such a trippy experience. But I remember the day after that I went walking for like 10 miles just because, fuck it, I can walk without crutches. God damn it, I can't do it now. Yeah, I spent five months in bed after my accident.

So, you know, close to five months. And so it was a big upbringing. I did almost all of my own rehab. And I think that's really where i fell in love with the fitness industry as a whole um there's a lot of dark things that happen in the fitness industry as far as you know the quick sale on things yeah um but i really enjoyed being able to inspire people to tell people my story and the reason that you know if if i can do this then you sure as shit can push that sled and not walk tyler you know i didn't walk i think we should

we should go after here oh i gotta drive five hours i don't think that's a good idea um you know but it was really that like for me like my biggest why in training was why can't i do it yeah you know my my my why was why can't i and so i i basically proved to everybody that i can and i will and you know, this was all before meeting Julian, but there would get to a point where, you know, I'd be pulling 550 pounds off the ground and I'd go to 560 and I'd break. And I'm like, and that'd be like on the floor spasming. And, you know, it'd take me like three or four weeks to recover and have to build back up to that strength yeah um you know

like at the at the peak of my crossfit power lifting experience i was able to back squat 550 pounds and i still had a 212 220 227 was my time on the fran no shit you know and so i was very well rounded but i couldn't take it anywhere because i'd break any time and i would self sabotage myself and the anxiety of if i'm going to do a competition i'm going to try and be pr and before i go into the competition so i'd always pop every time yeah so there came a point where you know i was i needed to become an athlete and you can't be an athlete and the coach at the same time i'm sure lots of people have said it before me. But it takes kind of that rock bottom position to where you're like, yeah, I need a coach. And so I looked around at, you know, all the coaches.

And I had been talking with Julian back and forth. And something that I enjoyed about him is it wasn't, he didn't care about what he was going to program for me. His motto is, you know, if you ever get to do an assessment with him, he tells you what needs to get better, but he won't tell you what you need to do to get there. He'll tell you how you should try to get there. And it's up to you to be an adult and say, okay, I need to go this route, and this is what I'm going to do. And so that's really what intrigued me about going to train with him.

So that's kind of how I ended up with him. I just got tired of breaking. And you were training with him for a long time. Tell us about how you kind of transitioned from going there and working with him to or having him work, coach you. Right. To then deciding that you wanted to actually learn more about the system itself. Yeah. that you wanted to actually learn more about the system itself yeah um i mean i think like the first times that i really got to train with him it was mainly trying to figure out why is this guy

so fucking crazy you know because like the first time i went to go see him he's like yeah go work on your lats and you know go get this to fire go get that to work and you know i'd be driving home and i was like, the fuck is he telling me to go to the fucking global gym and go do bodybuilding? It's basically what he's saying. And, you know, I knew it was, for him, it's always a testing position. So it's, nothing's ever given, even if you pay him, you know, his hourly rate. It was come train with me and then I'll decide if I want to take you on as a client.

And so right from the beginning, I was like, test me all you want like i'm i'm here to suffer i will yeah i will die after you die because i'm going to make sure that i'm alive to laugh at you before i die type thing and and we kind of i mean i was his client but i was really like his training partner like i'd show up and we trained together and we would both die and then he'd tell me what i needed to get stronger in order for me to not break and i was like deal I'll go home and go work on that and after like four or five months I started to kind of understand I think my body started to get a connection as to what he was trying to do and accomplish and so things started to click a lot better when I go to my gym and go and go coach classes yeah so he helped me advance a lot as a coach and that's really what kind of helped me move forward and so I was like hey so

I mean I know I'm supposed to only come Tuesdays but what if I come Tuesdays and Saturdays and I just Saturdays like I'll just watch you coach yeah and I would show up like I would go you know I teach classes in the morning and I drive up for two hours I'd get there at 9 a.m. and i would show up like i would go you know i teach classes in the morning and i drive up for two hours i'd get there at 9 a.m and i would just watch him coach a couple classes and he'd have a couple clients then i would train and then i'd watch him coach a couple more and then i'd drive back down and go teach and so i think he just started seeing that i was just hungry always for more because i was always taking out my phone slightly putting it there just record everything he would say because he didn't have anything written down yeah and then I think it was like a year a year or two into it he said hey so the barbell shrug

guys are coming and do you want to be there and I was like yeah let's go do it and so I canceled all my classes I went up to go watch him do the barbell shrug podcast and and then he's like oh people are like writing me emails he's like you know i was like oh that's cool like they should be like the stuff you have is impressive so that's really where my ideas like i was like hmm this can be big yeah and so i just kind of hung out as much as i could with him like anytime he said i'm doing this i was like yeah i'll show up and nothing would happen like we went to go see like kids competition. And I mean, I just kind of stood there and hung out with him, but it was, it was me doing

my buy-in. Like even if I have to drive five hours to go buy in, you know, you hear that with all the great power lifters that are, you know, they're like, we used to drive six hours so we could all lift together on the weekends. Like nobody does that anymore. Everybody wants, I pay for it and I want, I want it here. You know, Amazon gives me Amazon prime for two dayday free shipping why can't everybody else do that you're like god dude it's it's not that easy send me a six-week program and fix me yeah that's and that's

that's really what all what everybody does out there is like oh well if you pay me 200 bucks i'll send you the programming it's not the programming so you have to understand where that person is mentally how how they're feeling. If they're not feeling good, why should they be doing that type of programming? Like, don't stick to that program. Maybe switch. Don't squat today. Go do bench press.

Go do some carries. Go do some low west stuff, easy stuff that doesn't require a lot of skill, and you can still move. And he's the only one that ever understood that. I mean, because I will break if you tell me that i need to break and so he was the one i was trying out for the grid he's like yeah your wrist is pop like just go home in the middle of the competition i was like dude go home i was like all right i'll go home then you know like he understands that he wants to keep you healthy he wants to make that's really what drew me to him and that's really what

got my wheel spinning as this is the change that the fitness world needs. We need to stop focusing on losing the weight, losing the inches, losing the pounds, looking good naked. Like all that stuff's awesome. But you ask anybody, they all wish they could be healthier when their kids are there, when you need to play with your kids, when you need to go run around,

when you need to pick your grandson up. Like that's the important stuff. and i think form will follow function anyways yes because you can't you can get hella jacked super fast and then fucking break over and over and over again and keep setting yourself back i mean i meet all these dudes that are jacked and they don't deadlift because their back's always hurting and this hurts and that hurts and you're like dude like isn't that more important? Like why, what's the necessity? Why,

why do you have to be so masochistic that you always have to be in pain? You know what I mean? And then like, yeah, it's, I, I think that part's really interesting. How,

how often we see that though, people run up against injury and they come back down. Or even in the last week, how many times have we seen somebody who looks fit is fit right is strong and then they we find out their pain yeah lots of it all the time but they justify it's always i used to just take me 45 minutes to get out of bed man yeah you know and you're like wow but today i'm gonna go deadlift 600 pounds so it's all worth it and you're like no maybe not we should we have to do this always anyways um especially

with people with power lifting history you have to now quantify your your iron credentials here we need some of your some of your top lifts we gotta lay it all out um for i think like meat prs i think my back squat was it i think my meat pr for back squat was 594. My bench was at 400 and something. And my deadlift was at 650. I never know numbers. Yeah. I literally just put weight on and lift. Yeah. And when I'm doing meets, like, I'll have Julian.

I'll have somebody. And they just tell me to go lift. And they do my numbers. Because I become a stress case. And I want to try and PR in the warm-up area. So I just, they always do my numbers for me. But, yeah, I think strength's always relative i know you deal with a bunch of people that all they care about are the numbers but it's all relative man

i mean i you know i try to be as strong as i can be now now my focus is being as strong as i can be and being able to maintain and not break afterwards you are as just i suppose it sounds like a little bit of just an experiment with the system here. You are doing a powerlifting meet in Europe? Yes, at the end of September. What drew you into deciding to do that? Was it just to have a target? Yeah, I think it was something to train for. I wanted to have something that I could train for and in a new way. So not the usual Ed Cohen program, not the usual starting strength,

or not have any sort of conventional weight lifting power lifting program so i'm not doing any everything that i'm training is based upon the principles that that julian has set out um and so i don't do barbell back squats i haven't done barbell back squats now in four weeks yeah um the deadlift i do sumos for singles and then i'll do my conventional is all for reps my bench press i'll go heavy every three weeks just to see if it's still there um and i went the last time i went heavy i hit a 185 for two without a problem but main of most of my that's kilos yeah kilos kilos yeah weak dude sorry yeah what's wrong with you you gotta train more say that shit into the microphone um so basically my bench is all volume work everything is volume work um

once i get closer probably like three weeks before the meet i'll start working on the skill of actually executing the standards of the bench press the deadlift the squat with the commands yeah um but yeah we'll see how it goes. I'm not going in it to get the numbers because I'm going to be in Europe, so I can't qualify for nationals. I can't break records, which sucks. Yeah. So for me, I want to go in there to be healthy

and being able to the next day not feel beat up like I usually do. I talk to so many powerlifters, and they take like three or four weeks off after their meet. You're like, there needs to be something changing there, changing there man yeah what are some of your target numbers you're thinking for that meet um my i'm really just focusing on the on the bench press yeah uh the back squat as as you should duh it's all about the pecs bro yeah always um i'll probably shoot should i say it in pounds or in kilos because iounds because I don't want to do any math. Okay, no math.

So pounds-wise, try and hit like a 575 to 600-pound back squat. Okay. My deadlift will be, if I can hit a 650 again, I'll be stoked. I'll probably try and go for something higher. But the bench press is the one I'm focusing on. I'd like to go for like a 445, 460. Yeah. We'll see how it plays out focusing on. I'd like to go for like a 445, 460. Yeah. We'll see how it plays out.

Yeah. I want to be healthy. Like for me, I've popped my shoulder a bunch of times, benching incorrectly and having all that shit. And I have structural issues from my accident. So for me, it's now being able to do that, you know, take podium. I'll be happy and go from there. Righteous.

Yeah, man. So what about now? So you guys kind of took the show on the road yes you're out and about you're able to well short of this next run but you've been able to bring your wife along with you yeah which is good you probably couldn't imagine the stress that would be it would probably be extremely horrible um yeah it's been it's been a blast man like we get to go travel everywhere we do the seminars the coaches week it's been awesome getting to network and just meet people all over the world um like julie and i get along great like it's just a super easy like work and personal relationship like we i know when he needs his time he knows when i need my space

like we try and do like once a week like he'll go take do yaya day and i'll go do day a day yeah and then we'll we'll leave them alone and we'll go do our day you know we can go talk about the business and talk about where we want to take strong fit and everything and so for me i've just i've really enjoyed seeing how small the world really is. Yeah. I get to see passionate coaches and passionate people about fitness all over the world. And they truly care about helping people. You know, it's been an awesome experience. Yeah.

Obviously, because you have a background as a chef. Yes. And since you are living just on the road all the time. Right. Maybe you don't have the expenses of a crippling mortgage and cars and stuff. So a guy can live with, we talked about your ridiculous shoe collection last week. Yes. It's a bit much. I get the sense that you also, you guys also take the food that you guys eat pretty seriously.

I take my food seriously. Do you? It's not the quantity it's the quality um i'm constantly looking up places we're not talking some stuffy grass fed shit we're talking quality like it's gotta be fucking oh dude it's fucking amazing my standards are high um you guys don't follow richard rare barracuda on instagram has some very, very enviable food pictures. It's either food or some sort of scenery or me making a stupid face and looking dumb. It's one or the other. Yeah, I really enjoy food.

I think that the experiences and the relationship that we have with food is very important. And I just, I like a good experience. Like if I'm going to go to a restaurant, if I'm going to a hole in the wall, like you said, like we were talking the other day, like if you're going to go, you'd find a dingy place. It's a hole in the wall. There's no reviews. It has shitty ratings, but the food is amazing. But you know what to expect. You want that experience.

So I love that experience of just going to food markets and just chowing down on crickets and anything that they bring my way. Um, and I also love the experience of, I'm going to sit here for four hours. I'm going to have 20 courses and they're going to be paired with wine and we're going to have a good conversation. And the phone is only out to take pictures because if you don't take a picture of it, it doesn't exist. Um, it never happened. It's, it's, it's so stupid. My wife laughs at me, but I literally take a picture of the food and I write down exactly what it is and I have it all cataloged really of every restaurant. Yes. Because I will reminisce of certain things and I'm like,

Oh, I have to go back to that experience. And I literally bring it up on my phone. I look at it and I like, I closed my eyes and I'm like'm like god that was so fucking delicious wasn't it i need to go back for some more so if you had to say well here's the other thing you've had some some fucking meals that look like they just are decorations yes i'm like i don't even know that you don't even know how to fork into it right or just like like do i just grab that with my hand and eat it like that so that's one of the biggest things, right? If you go to a restaurant and they're giving you food that looks like art, if the server does not explain to you how to eat it, it's game over.

You lose experience points right there. If I have to guess how to attack everything. I would feel like now there's this thing in between me and this food that I've got to figure out. So here's my attack and my approach to dealing with those foods. Whenever you get anything that's kind of fancy and has a lot of different components, you taste all the components differently. Okay. And you judge each component by itself, right? Because usually you have like a sweet, a salty.

Yeah. So it's all balanced out. So you taste everything separated. Then you have one bite where you mix everything together and you see if you have a mouth orgasm. You know, the one where you're like, that where it is that's where it's at that sounds a little more sophisticated than my my like my like cold five day old meat and rice and vegetables out of a tray five times a day yeah i was hungry at the seminar so i was like just go ask tyler for food man he has steak over he has pounds of steak he just eats with his hand it's cold who was i talking to the other day called him uh there's somebody here they called them uh it was like steak cookies steak cookies one we should try to make steak cookies actually sounds

really good but we had uh also so you guys have been traveling eating doing the whole deal the airbnb it everywhere obviously um as you probably if you're gonna spend a week week and a half two weeks somewhere a hotel gets to be never home no matter what it seems yeah hotels are difficult because a you have to get two of them and then it becomes a pain in the ass yeah so for me like i'm i get in charge of doing all the logistics for the travel so it's a lot of fun so i try and look at you know where the central happening place is where the gym is yeah and then like i try to see where we should be staying so that we can get to the gym on time and not be stuck in europe there's usually we don't rent a

car usually we take like uber or we walk um so we want something that's kind of central and that we can get to go sightseeing. But there's some cool places you can rent out, man. We have a good time. Give me the best Airbnb ever you stayed in. Oh. The one you still think about when you get to go back there. My favorite one has been the one in London.

We stayed in one in London. This was in our first tour and it was this like top house penthouse and one that we got and it had like two rooms and they had like an outdoor deck where you could see like the square but the best part was you went downstairs at night like we'd go have dinner if we were just lazy like we'd be upstairs and you go downstairs at night and this dude would bring you out this like delicious dessert white wine this ristling with a homemade chocolate mousse no shit oh dude and this guy was like french and he just loved us man he would just like

he literally just brings out this giant bowl and he's like like a big old spoonful of chocolate mousse yeah with the sweet wine. Oh, dude. Damn. That was heavenly. It was so good. That was probably my favorite Airbnb to date. Do you ever get into one where you walk into it and just Julie and ever go like, Jesus Christ, Richard, how much did you spend on this fucking thing? No, I feel bad if I spent too much.

Like I always try and like gauge the prices out. Like, you know, like you go to dubai for example where everything's ridiculous well you could i mean you're looking at places and you have the place that's like four grand a month and you have the place that's like thirty thousand dollars a day yeah you know you're like that looks kind of cool for one day but it's never gonna happen yeah you know uh so i try to like price it out so that it's cheaper than if we were to stay in hotel rooms. Yep.

But there always needs to be the three rules. There needs to be air conditioning. Yep. There needs to be air conditioning, good wifi cause wifi sucks. If the wifi sucks, nobody's happy in the house ever. Yeah.

And it needs to be like bright. Yeah. And at least two bathrooms, one bathroom is a no go. And ideally harsh laundry. Yeah. Hopefully washer dryer Europe, it gets kind of hectic with washer dryer. So if it's, if we're staying there for a long time, it's a must have at least a washer. Uh, and Europe usually don't get washer dryer.

No, like you go to London and there's no air conditioning. So, you know, that you're hoping for shit weather at least so it's like cool the last time we were there it was like the hottest weekend ever yeah and we went to movie theaters to try and cool down it was a fucking sauna in the movie theaters oh dude it's horrible when we were in europe we had i didn't even know what it was i thought it was a dishwasher because it was like adjacent to the kitchen yeah but it was just a washer yeah and i was like i don't what do you hang your clothes up what is this fucking 1910 you have to clean your clothes up dude yeah the the the washing situation in europe is trippy because then everything's in a different language and you're like trying to figure it out yeah and sometimes it just spins and you go and touch it like it's still dry it

still smells like fucking sweat damn it you have to start it all over Yeah. And sometimes it just spins and you go and touch it like it's still dry and still smells like fucking sweat. Damn it. You have to start it all over again. So you have to be careful. Which is why even the best advice I can give anybody living at home, if you need to buy, if you're going to go buy a wash machine, don't spend the money on all the other buttons and stuff. Because nope. There's like people use two things. Yeah.

Like maybe two. I don't even know two. Yeah. Like the 32 function washer dryer whatever it's on when my wife use it and that's only in cases of emergencies when i have to do it so yeah you know we that's always uh when we were in the we were in holland we stayed at the spot and it was the same deal but it was this wacky thing you couldn't differentiate the difference between that and a dishwasher right looking at it and then there's all the buttons and i was like and no joke we

found out which one worked by the button that had the most wear on it right i was like oh that's where you just like start spilling spin the dial until you start getting the that's the everyday button that's the no exceptions but if that works you're good yeah so what about the absolute worst airbnb oh you got to have some bad ones or where at least you like your expectations were the first time we stayed in sydney it wasn't bad like the place was nice but fuck me the bugs dude they're scary as shit and so then you become paranoid at night with the bugs and um we were staying in a nice part of town and the place looked okay and i go into my room and there's a fucking cockroach like that big and it starts like like moving and like scrawling all over the wall

and i'm like i grabbed my shoe and i smacked the shit out of it and it was like still crawling so i smacked it to like it was just like done i like, dude, what if he has family and there's retaliation tonight? That scares the shit out of me. I don't like bugs. Nobody likes bugs. I don't care who you are. You should not like bugs. That one was pretty bad.

There's been a couple that are – I mean, you can look at the pictures and I go off reviews. So there hasn't been like horrible, horrible ones. The bad ones are like the really old ones that are still like set in like 1910. And you have like little tiny hallways and you have a bathroom that's like you can't feel, you can't dry yourself. Like you have to go into your room to dry yourself. But I've enjoyed everywhere we stayed for the most part. As long as there's like a comfortable bed with a few pillows, I'm happy.

Yeah, righteous. What about adjusting to the living out of the suitcases thing? Were you fairly prepared for that when you got into it? Or once you start rolling on the road nonstop, traveling airports, did you have to change the way you packed, the way you lived? airports did you have to change the way you you packed the way you lived the way you yeah i mean like we started this thing in august of last year right end of july um and i literally started with like we had nothing so i was like well i'll just take workout clothes for the next five months i don't expect anything else um and then we slowly started buying shit um shoes um and shirts and you know

all the cool stuff um so we tried to like prioritize what you need and then what you want um but the the packing stuff like it sucks at the end of the week when you like finally made the room that you've moved into kind of homey yeah and you're like well time to pack everything back up so luckily we went back to california and i dropped off like an entire suitcase of things so now my suitcase doesn't have half a suitcase of just shoes um i love shoes man just a third the good leather shoes oh they're the best um yeah so now i i'm back down to one suitcase until the end of summer and then i'll go grab my winter stuff again from Dubai, and then we'll start back up on the road.

Like the packing, unpacking sucks. The worst is like airports because, like, I don't mind packing, unpacking if we're going to go on a train because you can just put everything in a suitcase and go. But when you're at the airport and you're, like, sweating it if you're going to make weight or not, oh, dude, it's the worst. Oh, yeah. And they're like, okay, you can't have that much weight on your suitcase you're like okay so you put on your carry-on like we need a way to carry on you can't have that much stuff on your carry-on

you're like so then why don't you just say that from the beginning and i'll pay the overweight fees or whatever i need to do but now your fucking check bag is gone it's gone yeah and so they start yelling at you and you're like yelling at you in yeah like in some language yeah like they start yelling at you and you're like yelling at you in some language yeah like they start getting mad at you you're like i'll buy another suitcase but like you told me to take weight out of my suitcase which i did and then after i did that you checked my suitcase you say that my carry-on's too heavy so i don't understand what you want me to do like i need to take this stuff with me to my next country at julian gets pissed off so i'm always like we've been traveling for a year it's been so hard and like usually i can charm people down julian's like what do you mean what the fuck do you mean

what i'm like so i try to get him to like check his stuff in first and like get him to move yeah like i can charm my way through a lot of stuff he just gets angry um and frustrated i'm like just like let's just move forward right so i'm like well i have my laptop and my ipad those weigh like five pounds so if i take those out and carry them they're like all right sounds good yeah if you smile enough you know i always approach security and the lady checking the bags in as in can you please help me get through this? And at least stressful. I really need you on this one.

Oh dude, here's the way I approach it. There's a lot of assholes out there. Yep. And so they always think they're going to be dealing with an asshole. So that they already put up the wall. Yep. So if you go there and you actually connect with them, you know, just like you should connect with anybody.

You're like, hey, how's it going? Hope your day hasn't been too stressful. You actually start having a conversation. Then they're usually really nice. Like even if you're slightly overweight, you're like, oh, is it going to make it? Do I need to take stuff off? And they're like, no, all right, we'll take it through. And then it's good.

But as soon as you're like, I need to get to my flight, like right now, it's game over, dude. They'll put up their wall super fast. You guys had like travel hangups, jam jam up any of the seminars at all no uh when we were in flying from the from the gold coast to sydney there was a huge storm and they're thinking of canceling the flight and i'm stressing out julian's playing chess not even noticing world around him and i'm like dude they may seriously cancel our flight like we have a seminar tomorrow 30 coaches there yeah no it was a sold out one dude it was like 57 coaches i'm like it's sold out i'm like dude they're saying they're gonna cancel like we're delayed for three hours right now i'm like i literally went to the

host i was like listen i understand that you don't can't give us too much information but i was like i cannot miss not being in sydney in 12 hours so do i need to rent a car and just cancel my flight here and just start driving to sydney because if i do that's what i'll need to do in australia yeah oh yeah so it wasn't too bad i don't know that you're gonna make that rich yeah you can't quite drive yeah no we're already in australia we're in uh brisbane gotcha and so we i there was a point of stress there but for the most part we've been good yeah it hasn't been too bad yeah i noticed it when i saw you guys were flying here was it friday was friday you guys flew here yes yeah i was like i don't know there's been some days i haven't even made it this far with no weather right yeah. Yeah, we got really late. It was actually a really smooth flight that we got from L.A. here.

We were, I think, a little late in L.A., but you're always late out of L.A. anyways. Let's see. We've covered your crazy Airbnbs. What about give me like your single most rewarding, memorable experience in another country like had you when you were looking at it now you're like i can't believe we got to do that or if yourself five years ago saw you in that situation you'd be like damn what a lucky dude oh dude every single one has been like that man i really like day like, why are you so fucking excited to like be walking in cobblestone streets?

I get super excited about stupid shit. And she always just laughs at me. I think like a super memorable moment was like in Thailand, we got to go play with the elephants. Yeah. Which I mean,

we did like the whole refugee thing. So you shouldn't be riding on the elephants because that's like the way they torture the elephants are super rude. So this one like, like it's fucked up what they do to the animals yeah to break them in so they're like

um they call them refugees and it's a it's a foundation they basically take all these elephants that have been poached and taken away from their families and you walk along with them and you had to bathe them and feed them and stuff and that was a really cool experience rescue elephants they're rescued elephants yeah so they take families that used to make money out of getting tourists to come and ride the elephants um and they're like you know this isn't the way that the elephants are happy and why don't we change the way that we do things people pay more money just to walk alongside with the elephants and feed them and so it's kind of that aspect that was really cool i think still my most badass moment was getting to spend the week in the maldives yeah um i got in a lot of trouble

that one for my wife too um she wasn't too happy that was the honeymoon though wasn't it it was a honeymoon she was like why don't you plan a trip to the for our honeymoon yeah because she didn't get to go to australia with us and i was like yeah let's go and so i got obsessive about it yeah and um you know it became a let's just go to the maldives like global warming is happening and uh you know why don't we just go to the maldives for a week that's good uh okay you're good no no you're good never hear it, I promise. That's what they always say. We had lawnmowers. We had weed whackers outside yesterday.

Nothing comes through in the mix, man. You're totally good. But, yeah, definitely Maldives is, if you ever get the experience to go there, dude, oh, man. It was just one of a kind. I know, having seen pictures of the place, like my wife, that's one of her bucket list places. I get on a place like that where it looks so cool, but anytime I travel, I get in a place like that and I go, wow, this looks neat. And then here I am. I get anxiety about just being in the place.

I'm like, well, now I'm looking at it all. Okay, so this is the small town, like the South Dakota version of this. Mount Rushmore, right? Right. Super wonderful marvel of whatever engineering. Put faces in a mountain for no fucking reason at all. Perfectly good mountain. Right. But people see it.

People travel from all over the place to go look at it. To see it, yeah. And I've been there. I mean, I grew up in South Dakota. I've been to Mount Rushmore like four times. Yeah. And every time you go there, it takes about 20 seconds to see all of the seeing that there is to see. And then you're like, oh, shit.

That's it. Like you literally could leave. Right. And granted, that's a situation where maybe there's not much more to absorb. Yeah, like it's the experience. Like we went to Niagara Falls. And I mean, it is breathtaking you're like fuck that's a ton of water but like i saw it and i was like super cool can i jump off of it no oh can i skydive you know can i do something extreme yeah yeah all right which is why like i'll go to like we'll go to like a vacation place with

a beach or something you get there and you're hanging out and then you're like, okay, well, now we just, do we party on this beach? Right. Like what do we do? How do we ramp this thing up? Yeah. Like how do you make your experience right? How do you make your, your memory last?

Um, yeah. Like the cool thing about the Maldives dude, let me tell you this. I can't let the Maldives sit on a fucking super sweet bench and look out into no matter how pretty it is for very long. I'd be like, this is cool. It's like,

Oh, let's just go sunbathe. So here's like the cool thing about the Maldives, right? You, I mean, it depends on which island, each island is like privately owned.

The one that we went to, it was basically like a private island with people just catering to you. Yeah. And I just wanted, like I told you, and I was like, I'm going to have half an hour on my phone every morning to answer emails whatever i need to do for work but after that like everything all technology is off yeah and so what i loved about it was once we left the room

you're fully disconnected from everything so time doesn't matter you're not worried about activities about making you know going to go see a show going to do this going to do that you just live and so like we would just go hang out and we're laying there and i'm like i'm just like yeah i'm like okay so should we go jump around should we go jump in should we do this should we do that and she's like i just wanted to sit here and relax and i was like okay and you hit a button and a dude comes running over he's like hello mr sevis what can i get you you're like i'll have a beer and a back and maybe like a margarita and they're like yes mr sevis and they come back and they give you the best margarita and the coldest beer you've ever had and you're like oh that's sweet yeah and then you're like i want to go try and swim with sharks so you just jump in the water you go try some with sharks whoa whoa they're just our sharks

and you get in well they're like little baby like okay yeah they don't bite they're like little puppies this isn't like a tour no i'll show you pictures like i mean there were bigger ones that i tried to like so off of my villa there was like i knew the timing so i would get up early just to go try and jump on the shark's back yeah because i hear they don't bite i mean probably jump on their back they might bite you but i'd be waiting for him, and he'd start swimming by, and I'd jump in. The fucker would take off. I was like, damn it.

But every day I'd try to catch him. But it was an experience in the sense that I could absolutely disconnect. It's something that not everybody in the world will get to experience. You know, you just get to kind of really connect with your partner so i got to connect with day a whole lot like i mean there's other people that you network with which is great networking because it's all people that are you know usually extremely wealthy and have connections and everything like we still become we became really good friends with a lot of them um but yeah you just get to connect with the person and there's no outside buzz you know it's it's not, let's check my iPhone and see if my Instagram followers went up,

which rare barracuda guys, Instagram. Um, see that little plug. Uh, you know, there's no MySpace, Facebook, like all that shit, dude. Like everything is just gone. Dude, I still have a MySpace. I haven't been on it forever, but I still have my MySpace. I should have to, I should look it up actually. Just make sure.

I have a video of me like three hours, four hours after my accident, and I'm like just fucking laying there. Really? Yeah, I can't figure out how to get off of MySpace. If anybody knows how, let me know,

because I can't find it anywhere else. I feel like I have to go back and remove anything that I put on the internet from like 2006 and sooner. Like your sweet background on MySpace with little artists

and the polka dots, polka dot background. You and the the unicorn i was just really into that so what do you guys got we talked a little bit yesterday about the next phase but what is it you know julian's thing is always kind of moving and growing. What's, where are you, what are you planning to do to make sure that all that's ready? I try to connect as much as the dots as I can business wise. Um, you know, like I think he would be the homeless guy that's still happy helping people. Yeah. And I'm like, let's, let's get you, let's, we need to, this needs to progress. So I'm really the how guy, like if you want something done,

I'm going to figure out a way to make it happen. I like to, I delegate a lot of the stuff within StrongFit and I try to find people that best suit the position. You know, I give them my vision of what StrongFit is and kind of where it needs to start heading into, um, you know,

in order for him to realize what the larger vision is. Sometimes he agrees with me. Sometimes he doesn't. And if he doesn't, I'll try and figure out another way to bring it. Yeah. Um, but yeah,

I mean, for me, like the biggest thing for, for strong fit right now is just making sure that it continues to grow organically. We've had over a thousand people attend the seminars. Um, you know,

like it's, it's growing slowly, but surely, which is the best way to do it. Like I always tell people, like people are like, well, where's the shiny pamphlet and where's this and where's that?

And I'm like, guys, like we literally started a year ago. Like, yeah, this, this is already growing way bigger than we thought it's, it was going to, not that it than we thought it's it was going to

not that it was going i knew it was going to be big but i was expecting like three years at least of kind of being able to fall into pieces like i'm constantly playing catch up and trying to be like this is going here so i need to bring trying to control things yeah um so they don't just sizzle away um so that's really what i'm trying to do with StrongFit is I want to make it something that's bigger than CrossFit and I believe it's going to revolutionize the way we train military, the way we train regular people, the way people train when they go train at the gym. We talked a little bit about this in the coaches week.

There's that progression of when you have like the old school strong men and you had Arnold Schwarzenegger come in and the bodybuilding came in and that changed the gym aspect. And then we had all these group classes with the Zumba, not Zumba, but like Taibo and jazzercise and everything. And then CrossFit came along and just fucking blew everything out of the water.

Cause now everybody could be an athlete. Everybody was performance based. And so I think now we're finally starting able to progress to the next scene which is kind of health-based yeah like i mean health in the sense of yeah sustainability like yeah you're you know you played high school football and that was your glory days and you want to come back and become a CrossFit all-star because you can still compete in it. But let's be real. Do you want to be broken at 40, man? Let's change that wheel. There comes a point where you just get frustrated.

So I think this is just really the next step. I beat the shit out of myself every day. And when I train, it's hard training, and there's a very strong purpose behind it but i don't wake up with achy joints yeah you know and i i know so many people that wake up and it's like oh the knees just not like if you're saying my shoulder's not feeling in my elbow my knee yeah and it's an actual joint pain we have something going on there that's not right if you say my pecos or the doms are setting in that's different right so that's that's really where i started to that's where i want to take training and the progression

i think in the next 10 years will be that and i think like the the joint stuff that we've been having that i i hear especially with crossfitters is you know i don't hear two days my quads are sore it's my knees my shoulders my back my is tight. The things we talked about with, you know, people, you know, women peeing and stuff like that. Right. All that stuff is like there's a solution to this. And like especially if someone's 20. Right. I mean, Jesus.

Yeah, dude, it's fucked up. If you're 20 and you're having trouble putting your arms overhead first thing in the morning. Right. I used to have high school football kids that would just graduate and they're like oh my glory days have passed i was like dude you're 19 like that should not be your glory day if so that's sad as shit yeah like you know it's not sad it's just the coaches fucked the kids up i had a freshman kid dude the kid could back squat 315 for 10 freshman year high school strong ass kid started playing football fucked up his knee four times he couldn't even play his senior year because his knee was blown

up he he literally had a fucking external fixator for his knee for the last two years of high school crazy that's football that's the sport that's the coach's fault i hate when coaches and trainers take the glory and the pride when their athletes or team do well and as soon as the team loses it's the team's fault it's the athlete's fault that pisses me off if the athlete gets hurt it's because he didn't listen to me and you know the thing that i've been seeing with like crossfit coaches is as some people are getting hurt in gyms or having aches having pains having issues that at least what I've been hearing is concern. Like, how do we fix this?

What do I got to do? How do I address this? Am I coaching wrong? And it's not. I guess it is, but it's not. It's because of the way they've been educated on a lot of it. But what I don't see in high school, in college sports, I see there's somewhat of a priority to like obviously they don't want their athletes getting hurt right what i don't see is a college age football or college football coach

or high school football coach taking any personal responsibility when kids are getting hurt you know yeah i mean that's a little bit frustrating because that happens all the time you look at the wasted potential of kids to get hurt in high school and doing high school sports and it's sad man i mean these kids have a bright future like men and women like boys and girls like volleyball players nobody ever talks about them they all have fucked up knees by the time they leave high school yeah like they don't know they're looking for guidance and the guidance isn't being provided for them yeah and then as soon as you try and do something about it the you sound elitist or you sound like you're being an asshole and the other coach the actual sports specific coach is scared of his position because

you're challenging him personally and he'll disprove you and who are you if you're playing a sport in high school who are you gonna listen to your high school coach or a guy that you pay at an offset gym because are you going to get playing time if you don't listen to your to your high school coach and an active lifestyle really in high school and college is you're playing a specific sport right and it's not about fitness right at all yeah so i mean i think as parents as you know coaches as trainers like we need just need to do a better job of educating our youth into what movement is and what health is like i think that those should be fundamental things that we teach our kids as they play

right and not get so caught up on you're going to play soccer because i want you to get a scholarship yeah like go have fun and play but we need to understand what movement is like definitely i think that's like the biggest thing that we get in like i need to do a better job of delivering a message julian gets mad at me because i'm very confrontational sometimes um i'm forward i feel like julian is also very confident yeah we try to change the way in which you approach things sometimes um we we should uh but you know it's we need to figure out a better way to deliver a message where people aren't feeling challenged and we're not trying to shut people down but

you know the things that we understand now like you know natalie from the coaches week and you were saying like all you did say is that you're cheating or you're not doing the right or i'm being extra hard on you guys because i know when you guys go home you guys have to try and understand it but dude like i spent years just experimenting like where are the coaches that spend an hour to a day, not doing the programming that someone sent to them, but actually just looking at a snatch or looking at a clean and dissecting it and seeing what it actually takes to do that movement.

Working on it. Yeah. And that's a super complex movement, but for sure, you know, like we were talking about bicep curls, because who doesn't love to curl? There's different ways to curl,

you know, and, and within those different ways to curls you get different results when you start curling the wrong way you're going to start getting tendonitis you can start getting elbow pain like how many guys do you see at the gym that have elbow pains from from doing curls because they're trying to do preacher curls for 12 to 18 when preacher curls is in the long head of the bicep it's an external torque movement they should be done in under five reps heavy under yeah heavy under five and then you go to hammer curls and you go for the burnout yeah swell the fuck oh dude and it works what like your long head of the bicep still grows yeah so it's just really trying to learn how to we understand things so much better now and i think it makes us sound elitist or makes us sound like we're challenging people but in in the contrary we want to try and help and educate people as much as

possible so that this stuff can be common knowledge and common sense when someone goes to the gym like we have people that come to the seminars and they're just regular people that are like i've tried everything and nothing has worked and so i'm here to see if it can work you know like the amount of emails that we get of thank you so much for making me understand how my body is working and I don't have shoulder pain anymore. And, you know, all of that, it's massive. So that's really kind of where we want to take this is we just want to make the understanding of how something works much more knowledgeable. The understanding of movement. Yeah. more knowledgeable, the understanding of movement. Yeah. Well,

it's getting out there. You guys got dates all over everywhere. Where can they find them at? Yeah. If you go to strong fit.com, uh, we have all the dates on Picatic. So you guys can see where we're at.

I think back in the States, we'll be back in early December down in San Diego at CrossFit Invictus. And then we're going to Chris Guerrero's gym in New York in early or late January. Right on. Yeah. Where can they find you at again? Rare Barracuda. Find the best hair and fitness, the Mexican Johnny Bravo.

Dude, I love it. Richard DeCevas. That's going to become a thing now. All right. I'm going to give the real quick rundown. First, I want to thank Tyler at CrossFit 1080 and Tork Barbell in Woodbury, Minnesota. Great spot, great people, exceptional coaching. So check that out if you're in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area.

Anyway, you can find me at Tyler F. and Stone on Instagram. That's Tyler E-F-F-I-N Stone. Tanner, he runs the Massanomics official page. That's at Massanomics. Make sure you go to Massanomics.com. There you're going to find our store. You can find shirts, hats, all Massanomics. Make sure you go to Massanomics.com. There you're going to find our store. You can find shirts, hats, all the good shit. Make sure you like us on Facebook.

Go to YouTube.com forward slash Massanomics. Click subscribe. I think I just burned through all of that. Click on the shop option on the website. There you can buy the shirts, the hats, everything. So that'll take care of it for today. Thanks a whole bunch, Richard. It's been an awesome week with you guys.

And everybody out there, we will talk to you next week. And stay strong. You just heard the Masanomics podcast. With your ears, you're welcome. Check us out on Facebook. Find us on Instagram at Masanomics. And make sure you visit Masanomics.com and buy some of that sweet Masanomics gear. From your friends at Masanomics Studio, home of the world's strongest podcast, stay strong.