The School of Greatness - 412 The Future of Fitness with CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman

Episode Date: November 28, 2016

"CrossFit is a fad just in the way the human genome is a fad." - Greg Glassman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/412

This is episode number 412 with CrossFit founder, Greg Glassman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Welcome everyone to episode number 412 of the School of Greatness podcast. Super pumped to have you here. And about five years ago, maybe it was a little more than five years ago,

might have been six years ago, maybe it was a little more than five years ago, might have been six years ago, I did my first CrossFit workout with my buddy Graham Holmberg, who ended up winning the CrossFit Games. That's why I got into it a number of years ago. I played football with him in college. He was actually one of the first episodes I had on of the School of Greatness podcast. I believe in the first five episodes for being the fittest man in the world. And CrossFit really transformed my life, my habits, my body for a number of years. And it helped me develop an incredible community. There were some incredible things that happened to me because of CrossFit. Now, a couple of years ago, I actually ended up transitioning out of CrossFit workouts, per se, going to the CrossFit boxes and doing the actual workouts

that they have there because I was doing more USA handball stuff and I needed some different strength training. I needed different plyometric training. I was playing a lot more basketball. I was just doing other things, long distance running as well to build up my endurance. And I decided to move away from it a little bit. Now, I still go back from time to time and I'll do a workout here and there. But I love the idea of CrossFit. I do my own high intensity interval training workouts, which are very similar to the CrossFit style as well. So I love the style. I love the community. I love what they stand for. And I wanted to bring on the founder, Greg Glassman, to really talk to him about fitness in general and how he started this, how he built a movement, how he cultivated such incredible raving fans from all over the world.

We talk about his business model. We talk about if Greg's worried about CrossFit dying out or not. We talk about how masculinity in the gym has been affected by having men and women work out together because it's co-eds who everyone works out together. We talked about why having less customers rather than more can actually be a good thing. The marketing power behind having raving fans who get results, why it's so important to do functional movement workouts despite the risk of injury. We talk about, you know, a lot of things are, you know, so many CrossFitters get injured and they're constantly going to the chiropractor or getting

massage therapy or getting physical therapy because they get injured so much. So I asked him, you know, are you afraid of that when you hear these stories about all these injuries that people have? And he had a pretty good response for me about the injuries that happen in CrossFit and why everyone should be doing these type of functional movements despite the risk of injury. We also talked about why CrossFit is so effective at helping women have great body image and confidence. I was fascinated with his response when I said, what's the thing you're most proud of? Of all the things that CrossFit has done, what's the number one thing? And he talked about something in terms of women. I won't spoil the surprise for you, but I thought it was extremely inspiring to

hear. So we talked about a lot of things, guys, and I think you're going to love this, especially if you're anyone that likes to work out or likes to stay fit or anyone that has a business that evolves around building raving fans or anyone that wants to learn about how to build an incredible brand that's taken over the world. Really, I mean, this is a huge brand that's taken over the world. You guys are in for a treat because we cover it all in this episode.

Make sure to share this out with your friends. lewishouse.com slash 412. We got the full video interview on the show notes. We got a bunch of images there, links where you can learn more about how to connect with Greg and learn more about CrossFit and everything else. Also subscribe to our YouTube channel, YouTube slash Lewis Howes, where you can watch the full video and all the interviews that we've done with the incredible leaders in the world

on the School of Greatness podcast. But without further ado, guys, this is going to be a very powerful one. Again, make sure to share it with your friends. Click the share button right now on your podcast app if you're listening so your friends can listen along. Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only, Greg Glassman. Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness podcast. We've got the CEO and founder of CrossFit in the House, Greg Glassman. Good to see you, sir. Good to see you, Lewis. Thank you so much for coming on.

Thanks for having me. I want to share a story about how I got into CrossFit and heard about it for the first time. All right. I used to play professional football, arena football. And as I was getting out of the sport, I got injured, I broke my wrist, and I was trying to figure out how to get back in shape. I gained about 30 pounds and my college football teammate, Graham Holmberg was a trainer at the time in Columbus, Ohio and started working me out and doing these different types of workouts that I'd never really done before. And then he told me one day, I'm going to go do this competition thing.

And then he told me one day, I'm going to go do this competition thing. I did it last year, and I got top 20 in the country for this obscure thing, and I'm going to go back next couple weeks, and my goal is to get top five. And now a month or two goes by, and I see Graham afterwards, and I'm like, dude, what happened with that competition thing that I had no clue what it was? And he goes, oh, I actually won. And I was like, what? What do you mean you won? And that's when I really started to learn about CrossFit was diving in to see like how my buddy like did with this event. And such a cool experience to really dive in and ended up being, you know, a huge CrossFit fan and

going to the games to watch multiple times. It's been an amazing journey to see what you've built and to see how many human beings have benefited from your brain, your creation. So congrats on everything. Thank you. I appreciate that. And just to be clear, I'll take credit for the Genesis, the Spark,, but this is largely been a spontaneously developing community. Yes. The CrossFit Journal, which was fundamentally a newsletter that I soloed for the first two, three years, wrote every article.

It was like starting a magazine and writing every article, which I wouldn't recommend anyone ever do. a magazine and writing every article, which I wouldn't recommend anyone to ever do. But that was a client's idea. And the first affiliate, the second CrossFit gym, the first affiliate, was the idea of Dave Warner and Rob Wolf that called and asked to do it. And our best ideas have largely been other people's ideas demanded by the community. Staff and I are more the stewards of a natural resource than we are the architects of a... Nobody could have

foreseen this and designed it and built it. Not me nor anyone else. So would you say you're really good at listening to what the audience wants and you build something around that? I don't know how good I am. But, you know, I define a good idea as something that has an inevitable nature to it, you know, and what you usually lack is a champion in energy resources, right? Yeah.

But there's some things that people say, you know, the games, you should have masters and kids. Of course we should. But every idea has a price tag. Yeah. And it's maybe not just dollars. It could be energy. In fact, I'd put it in this order. The hard things to get the champion.

Second hardest would be the time. You mean champion the person leading the... That's right. Yeah. A guy who goes to bed worried about it, wakes up worried about it. Because you don't have the time to do 30 new things. I'm championing all I can. Exactly. And crushed by it. Yeah. And we're that way about three, four levels,

three or four layers of really talented people up to their... You got one nostril above the water line. Yeah. And so people tell us, you know, you got one nostril above the waterline. And so, and there's people tell us, you know what you should do? And sometimes it's just financial. Like the year the guy says, it's crazy. We don't fly all the athletes out to the games first class.

You know, I mean, it's the games, the games, the games is not a profitable property. Right. You know, it's a. Does it break even or does it make some more? I think it did this year. I think we broke even. Yeah. But I thought we did last year and it cost us $4 million.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. Even with the sponsors and all the ticket sales and the TV rights, it's still. Yeah. And know this, the thing's driven by thousands of volunteers. I mean, this is really, we owe a lot of people a lot. But it's not a business in any sense that I would recognize as a business. I'm doing my first big event this week coming up and we're in the hole and I'm just like, what am I doing of this year of planning and all these volunteers? So it's a very small scale

compared to what you created, but I understand on a small level. It starts and then it takes off. And sometimes the problems begin when the success starts. You know, what are you going to do with this thing? But it's all been wonderful. I don't have complaints. But I do find it delightful when I see people imitating the competition space. Sure. Which visions are getting rich.

Or what was it, the grid or something? Yeah. Any of these other startups? Is that even around anymore? Yeah, something's going on. Sure. Something's going on. Sure. Something's going on. You know, of all the ways to get rich, starting a brand new sport would really be low on my list of smart ways to make money. How many, I guess, athletes are doing CrossFit around the world right now?

Can you calculate or is there a way? Athletes are doing CrossFit around the world right now. Can you calculate or is there a way? That's a million-dollar question, and it's come up with a handful of really kind of cool partners. You know, like we've had a long-term kind of interesting exploratory relationship with Microsoft. They wanted to know. Our friends at YouTube and Google have been interested, and we were always interested ourselves, too. And, of course, media always asks how many CrossFitters are there.

The problem starts in defining a CrossFitter. So I got a guy that's doing CrossFit-like workouts but says he doesn't do CrossFit. So what do you do? And it's, well, then you hear it. It reminds me of the gym where you see the rings and the rower and the kettlebells and the barbells and the ropes and pull-up bars and, like, we don't do CrossFit. I was like, oh, really? Show me what you do with that stuff. I'd like to see it.

Because if it didn't look like what we did, you'd have to, like, do maybe the same thing every day or you'd have a schedule. Mondays we do this, Tuesdays that. Or maybe the pace is so slow that there's not a cardiorespiratory. It's not timed or, yeah. Yeah, but they just don't want to call it CrossFit, so it's not CrossFit. They don't want to pay the fee. That's for sure.

They don't want to pay the fee. And I'm totally cool with that. You know, I never thought this was protectable, you know. It's like a blueberry muffin recipe, not a piece of software. Yeah, you can't. Unfortunately. You can't patent doing kettlebell swings, right? Nope.

And maybe that's. But you can protect the brand. We can protect the brand. You can protect the brand. You can protect the brand. Yeah. And the namings of workouts, I'm assuming, or something like that, right? Yep. That's cool.

That's very cool. Well, I guess how many registered members of gyms maybe or – Well, you know – Do you know that? But we talk about those in the wild. That's the CrossFitters that aren't in the boxes. Right. And what is that number?

But let me just answer your question and tell you that we also do not know. I don't believe, if God had the answer and were willing to give it to me, I would be willing to sit here and bet a large amount of money that it's not less than $2 million. I would also bet with this same omniscient entity, the deity that's going to tell us how many there are, that it isn't over four. And what's interesting, I mentioned our partners, they've come to the same numbers, but by some methods just full of flaws. So I don't know, maybe my method's not right. Here's what we did. I took a stab at the financial ecosystem, and I have a pretty good sense of how big we are, how big Rogue is, and all the players. And so you make a list of 30 businesses that are at the heart of this movement, the movers and shakers, and make an estimate of their size. And then you have to figure out how many people are spending that much money.

And at $2 million, they're spending a boatload of money. And at $4 million, significantly less. Sure. And so it gets to the point where I just don't think people are spending that much money to create this much business. So less than two. But what's fascinating is that actually, this is all very different than the kind of Kim Kardashian social media mindset. The market value of my audience is actually more valuable with a smaller number,

because they're spending more. And so if you have, if you have, if you can have a chance of dealing with, with 4 million people spending 4 billion or 2 million spending for you, take the two. Yeah. Why?

Less headache or something? No, it's, no, it's a super affluent demographic. You know, anyone, anyone in business is proud to get the rich people.

Don't accuse me of any kind of rigorous economic mindset, but I'm kind of a trickle-down guy. I believe that you want to create a revolution, get the rich people on board. It comes up in a cultural revolution. I get them involved and it will filter down. You're not going to get cars for poor people before rich people can have them. I'm not going to get people in homes with no means if you can't do it for people with means. And what happens is that upper niches is satisfied the natural tendencies to start moving into other markets.

This is why we just sat with Google talking about their help and helping us reach a billion Indians. Wow. And what's cool is that it's going to cost me a lot of money to do that and a lot of effort, but we're doing it because it's the right thing to do. And I don't have a sense that there's a market there for us. I'll give you another example that's where we're going today, the 44th Congressional District here in California. This includes Compton and Watts. It's a hard hit area. There's a lot of underserved people, a lot of black people, a lot of brown people.

There are 800,000 residents and I only got 12 gyms there. And it bothers me. And the bother isn't, like we got 14,000 gyms. I don't, I'm not looking at my black brothers and brown sisters and saying I'm not getting any of their money. It's not that. It's just that we have a solution, an elegant solution, maybe an optimal solution to the world's most vexing problem, and that's chronic disease. And that community is hit harder than any other. It's the least healthy place in California.

It only got 12 gyms. It's the least healthy place in California. It only got 12 gyms. Now, globally, we've got one. Nationally, we have a gym for every 50,000 people. Okay. In the U.S.? Yeah, in the U.S. And I've got a, globally, that figure is 100,000.

It's 100,000 folks teach box. That's amazing. I'm under the global standards in that district, you know? Sure, sure. And I'd like to reach them. But that's kind of a luxury given that we're here in the States where the average gym membership we understand from really reliable sources is 5X the national gym average. Wow. And so who's going to the boxes?

Rich people. Rich people. And a lot of them don't. I mean, I trained at the Brick here. Yes. It's $200, $250 a month. It's not cheap. Yeah.

You go to Gold's for $35 a month. Exactly. So these are high-end gyms. They're high-end gyms. But I do have people of modest means that spend disproportionate of their income because they're not committed. So we've got a lot of fanaticism too. Exactly. But I would imagine a lot of gyms are doing what I did in that I had several billionaire clients that made it easy for me to say no to anyone that just touched me. You know, I've never, and like I can say this now because I used to live in fear of it getting out. I used to tell people, I'm going to put you on a scholarship, and if you tell anyone, you're going to lose it.

Right. Tell one soul, and you know what? No one ever did. Yeah. Well, you want someone to keep a secret? Put a paycheck on it, you know? Yeah, exactly. Not pay them, but take from them if they tell, and no one ever shared.

But I'll bet a quarter of the people in my gym were not paying. And maybe another chunk, their boss was paying, the billionaire that was taking care of them. Sure. And I was really grateful for the support of the wealthy. the support of the wealthy. I had a friend and client, Sonia Khan, loaned me $50,000 to expand my gym. And I tried to pay it back when she says, no, no, you pay that back when you're rich. And I tried a couple of years ago again, she says, you're not rich yet. I don't think she's ever going to let me pay it back. That's hilarious. And what was I able to do with that? Everything. Everything. Work with kids and athletes and

people in the community that, you know, people that I would identify out in the street had a profound need. Come into my box. They don't have two dimes they can rub together. It's okay. I got you, you know. And I've got that same attitude on the global level now. So I'm interested in India. I'm interested in Brazil. Yeah, I was just down there in Rio for the Olympics. There's a lot of CrossFit fanatics down there too. I mean, it's starting to blow up there. It's a great market for us.

Yeah, yeah. It's a great market. So when was the first time you said, okay, this is CrossFit, this is a thing, this is the gym? Was it a moment? Was it an overtime type of thing? Yeah, I knew as a teenager that what was going on in the commercial gym facility was ridiculous. That's because I was a gymnast.

And, you know, the lateral raises and the curls and the leg extension and reading the paper on the bike. It's not athletic movements. No, no. And so many athletes, as you know, don't like going to the gym because the dry land training, the gym part, it was not why you liked football. And that's not what I liked about gymnastics.

Gymnastics didn't have that problem. There wasn't a training, dry land training effort outside of the sport itself. But people don't appreciate, I think, in the public that the gymnastics

routine is a max heart rate event. That is extremely demanding in the cardiorespiratory sense, but you can't show it. You can't pant. You can't open your mouth wide. You've got to be able to smile. You've got to be here. You look them right in the face and salute, walk off, and then, you know, but inside you're

dying. And when the season comes along, it's not as bad, but early in the season, it's devastating. It's Fran-like. And that was the impetus for developing that routine. I was trying to elicit the cardiorespiratory demands of a gymnastics routine without doing the movements, this is in my own garage where a parallel bar routine or a ring routine is an impossibility for a 16-year-old kid. Sure, sure. And I nailed it. I had those Voigt pull-up bars that you twisted into the doorway.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'd figured out if you took the rubber caps off and just kept opening it, you could drive it into the jam and actually get something safe. Wow. kept opening it. You could drive it into the jam and actually get something safe. The people I know that fractured their skulls, hurt their necks, or broke their arms swinging on these bars trying to have a high bar at home, right? It's crazy. We used to do dismounts off those things.

And every once in a while, I wanted to just cut them right off. Oh my gosh. But I had a Voight pull-up bar and I had the Sears Ted Williams $19.95, 110-pound weight set. And just that very first day when it came out of the box, I was like, let's do 21 pull-ups and 21 of these things. And then 15 and 15, 9 and 9. And so that it feels extra shitty, which is what I'm looking for.

Let's use the clock and just do it as fast as I can. How old were you then? 16. Yeah. And, man, it worked. I threw up. Yeah. Th's use the clock and just do it as fast as I can. How old were you then? 16. Yeah. And, man, it worked. I threw up. Yeah. Threw up.

Went across the street, got my buddy, brought him over, and he threw up. And we're like, that's it because that's what happens. See, in the season, early in the season, you're developing tricks. So you know things you want to be able to do in a routine. There's a season approach that's now got to stitch them all together. And what a completely different thing that is. To stitch them together than to do them in solo, to do them one after another in transition at max heart rate, as opposed to coming up fresh, doing it and getting off. Completely different world. And you couldn't be dialed into that process and buy into something

like there are exercises that are cardio and others that aren't. Like I'm going to say, if your heart rate is high, it's cardio, isn't it? Sure. And so in the fitness world, it was bike, run, swim were the three cardios. And then everything else was strength training. And I'm like, yeah, but you do these thrusters with 95 pounds in these pull-ups and you're going to get a whole lot stronger. Time. Yeah.

And there's cardio. Yeah, exactly. And what the exercise community's response to notions like that was that that blended adaptation was an impossibility. Well, they had it wrong. The experts were dead wrong. The segmented training develops a segmented capacity. develops a segmented capacity. So if you work strength Monday, Wednesday, and Friday,

and you work cardio on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, if I get my hands on you, I can set up a little circuit of a cardio stimulus for which you have low regard and a strength stimulus for which you have low regard and ask for three to five rounds of this, and you'll find that you're not strong enough and you don't have enough wind. And it's almost as if you had done no strength training and had never had any kind of cardio stimulus.

The blended demands out of the blended stimulus is a unique beast. Do you think that's why – I mean, you've created, people call it a cult or a tribe or whatever you want to call it. Do you think that these movements or the type of workouts that people are going through is what's created that

or do you think it's more of the culture or is it more of the people? Is it more of the brand? I don't think we can separate them, but I will say the brand symbolizes the net effect and was, you know, the charm and allure of the brand didn't draw people in. Didn't draw people in. No.

And I don't think it does still really. Right, right. What draws people in is the young lady or the young man or that grandma or grandpa that's gotten results and won't shut up about CrossFit. Right. And that's where the marketing happens. And those people drag people in. They bring them by the arm. They bring them by the ear.

You know, they beg them. They're relentless in their pursuit of the next customer. And there's a lot of magic there. It's almost like a gym doesn't have to do any marketing. Just get 10 people in there and it'll build on its own. You know, we've regularly had to define some terms. It often happens when a term that everyone uses, you have to ask, do we all mean something different when we say it? And some things like that, fitness, everyone's got a different mindset and we all use it.

Marketing was one of those things. But for me, marketing is any effort that is designed to improve the bottom line, effective or not, but that's the hope. It's going to improve the bottom line. And it isn't a direct tinkering of the product or service. So you're not improving the product or service. You found another way to get people in the door. I'm not really impressed with that, but there is a level at which it happens and it's essential and it is that testimony of the end user. That person is marketing. They're not improving the product or service, but they're sure the hell out there. Now,

advertising would be that way. Putting hot pink flyers under the windshield wipers at the cars, the malls, Groupon, all those things are marketing efforts. A lot of advertising is of that kind of thing. My advice would be to engage in none of that and anything like that. And that's just me. That's my bias. And if you've got any energy, resources, time, money, talents, whatever,

throw that back into improving your product or service. Get back to that relationship with the person coming through the door. Do such a good job with them that they go home and become one of those annoying people that won't shut up about CrossFit.

And I think that's happening everywhere. We've seen a few gyms lose it all to Groupon. Just, you know, they get a whole bunch of people that chase out the people paying full price. They don't stick around and you're not making any money. But it's actually been the death of a couple of boxes. Never do anything like that. And so I never had to do any of that.

But, you know, where was I? I was 100% in the presence with the client, you know, whether it was one, five, or ten of them. They were everything to me. And nothing else mattered. And they took care of me. I didn't have to ever ask anyone to come into the gym. Right.

Ever. They would spread the word. They were bringing people. If you were going to give them your full attention and energy during that hour session, they were going to go tell people afterwards. Of course. I just had the best workout of my life. You should come in.

The transformation, I feel amazing. And Lewis has always talked to orthodontists and lawyers and accountants and same with them. Same thing. No one advertised. You know, there's always that Jacobian Myers kind of thing, you know, that's a little off the beat. You know, the dentist with billboards on every corner. And I think we all, a lot of us would be wise to be suspicious of that.

Sure, sure. I have a problem with a lawyer who's got a commercial on every channel three times a day. You know, I don't think that's the lawyer I'd be looking for necessarily. But the consummate professional has great relationships with the people they serve, and they're the source of the new people. Exactly. Great testimonials as well. Yeah. was looking to build a movement, whether it be in the fitness world or any world, any industry, what would you say are the key ingredients that they would need based on what you've

done, I guess, to replicate it at CrossFit in their industry? Some of the answer might come in what I see business as today, my definition of business. And we got some pretty good traction with this at Harvard Business School and two appearances. It was really appealing to the students, and so that really appealed to me too. Because I think if – I'm not sure if the definition is anything other than my own bias.

And then to find that kids at Harvard MBA program really liked it. So, OK, maybe it is more than just, you know, my take on things. But I believe the business is the art and science of creating uniquely attractive opportunities for other people. iteratively, sustainably over five years or more, create an opportunity of any sort, whether it's a product or service, that is uniquely attractive. And what the evidence of that is, they buy it, they avail themselves of it. But if you can provide a uniquely attractive opportunity for other people, you're going to have a successful organization or a successful business. And for me, a business is an organization, and importantly so. Money is to a business like jet fuel is to an airline. The goal of the airline is to get people from A to B safely, comfortably, right,

and cost-effect comfortably, right? And cost effectively, right? So for them and you. And if you're successful, to the extent you're successful, you're going to find that you're going to be burning more gas. Right. But for anyone to look and say, well, the goal here is to burn gas, you're mixing, you're confusing the dependent variable for the independent variable.

And it doesn't work at all. And so all those people that think that money is about making, business is about making money, that's not the kind of business I'm interested in. And it may be that kind of money is a different kind of organization. And it might somewhat be kind of an East Coast, West Coast thing. And I say that because I talk about business, not being about making money and people point some Goldman Sachs asshole out or a whole bunch of them in or out of the current administration and the past one. But that's not what's going on in Silicon Valley. Not really.

And I can say that because I've had some super successful household name clients from the Silicon Valley. And to think that they got where they were because they were trying to get rich would be a profound misunderstanding. Right. What were they trying to do? The case of one, it's not that it's more noble than making money, but I got a buddy that if he can write code that works better than yours, he's smarter and better than you. And he just like, that gets him

off. You find success for that in San Jose, and it's going to rain money. But it isn't about the money. It really isn't about the money. Because he'd do it for free, and he did and does. It's about the craft. Yeah. He can't help but do it. If you took all his stuff away, two ways away,

and locked him in a cell somewhere, he'd do that still. He'd still be writing code. He's one of those guys. And that's kind of refreshing, really. It was for me. It was for me. What it meant is because I do this thing where I make an X and I show you are here,

right? And then I got a dollar sign up here and over here I have an E for excellence. And I say, from here, people just, I want money. And the universe doesn't care if you want money. Nobody cares that you want money. And markets are somewhat unknowable. And you go to chase the money and you miss the mark. A lot of people end up behind bars, lost, broke, just trying to get rich. But if you pursue excellence, it's like a beacon. It's a lighthouse. You can see it.

There's easy agreement and easy recognition of something outstanding. I don't know anything about orthodontic practices other than I had an orthodontist as a kid. I got a buddy in Prescott, Arizona that has an orthodontic practice. And you go in there and it's just visually amazing, right? He's got 15 chairs with this view of the mountains and a pretty girl at each one doing the work and music's going and it's well appointed and it's a factory, you know? Sure. And he's standing there with his arms folded and a big smile on his face and it's just really cool. And the spirit in there is neat.

And I go, holy cow, doc, this is amazing. You know, I mean, he's just, he's doing orthodontia brilliantly. Yeah. is amazing. I mean, he's doing orthodontia brilliantly. I've seen it in hair salons and restaurants. And the same thing, you go to a place and it's dirty and you can just feel no right away. Feel the energy, yeah. Yeah. And so the excellence shines bright and it's obvious to everyone.

It's so non-elusive and you can every day work towards that E, towards that excellence, and you know that you're making steps, progress towards it. You can metric it. You feel it. You know when you're making it better. What do you do tomorrow? I'm going to make it better. And how about the next day?

I'm going to make it even better. You keep looking for things to make it better. And there's nothing like that on the money. So here's what happens. Those that will stay committed and really want the E, not the cash, they get there. Here's what markets do. The markets move the money to the excellence and almost always by a path that you wouldn't have figured out. Couldn't have figured out.

And so another big part of the Silicon Valley story is the guy trying to get from here to there. And along the way, the target shifts a little. And it's excellent, but not that excellent, but this one. And then here comes money from a different angle. But the people that have repurposed startups with large number of employees and just abandoned the technology to pick a new one quick because you got to do something right we got you know a buddy of mine had a technology that he thought was the sure thing in a deal with

Sprint and turned out that they had been given the business to throw off from the other cell phone people the fact that they knew this technology was dead and they just made the investment to and anyways so my buddy was kind of a pawn in a in a in a game of misleading at&t and horizon right and so you had to come up with something

because what they wanted to do can't be done and they thought it could and the people that hired them to do it knew it couldn't be done too. And so they had to come up with something brand new overnight and did. And just to save everyone's jobs and the business. But it's cool. Wow. Do you feel like you've made any big mistakes that you wish you could take back over the years in either building the brand or how things have run with the business?

It's got some smart-ass answers. I've been so disappointed by the behavior out of the weightlifting community sometimes that I wish I hadn't salvaged their dying sport. But I'm being flippant there. Sure. Now, is there any regrets you've had in building the brand or the way you've run the games or boxes or anything? If I was starting over, I would devalue the kipping pull-up and let it occur naturally.

People that can't do strict pull-ups trying to kip is wrong. The kip comes ineluctable. You go from 20 pull-ups to 40 pull-ups to 60 pull-ups. You're going to KIP. You're going to learn. Yeah. And it's kind of a time under tension thing. There's a, the, I can, I can, you can show me a videotape of, of five of five pull-ups,

five of 10, five of 20 or five of a hundred, and I'll know which it is. And if it's five of a hundred, that first 5, they're really fast. Yeah. Right? Sure, sure. And if it's 5 for 5, it's slow. And the kip comes naturally as a whole body movement out of that whole thing. And it's not a gymnastics move because it's not taught in gymnastics.

That's not the kip. It's how gymnasts train pull-ups. And gymnasts need to have 100 pull-ups. You're not going to get 100 pull- That's not the kip. It's how gymnasts train pull-ups. And gymnasts need to have 100 pull-ups. You're not going to get 100 pull-ups unless you can kip. But it's not used in anything. You know, it's just an artifact of training. Who created the kipping pull-up? Nobody.

It's what happens when you keep adding pull-ups. Got you. They have to. They go faster and faster and faster. Now, the butterfly kept a little different. That was someone got a little clever there. You know, that's pretty cool. Yeah.

But, you know, it's just one example. Yeah. Do you feel like you've structured the business in the way that you wanted to or if you could look back and you – how many boxes do you have now? 14,000 something. 14,000. And how – does it continue to grow or have you seen a decline? It's still growing.

There's some markets leveling off and others exploding. China is huge. Brazil is huge. In the D.C. where we have the greatest density in the United States, it's tapered. Some fall off. Others just keep growing bigger. The best of them will continue to expand, continue to grow, it seems. There's people talking about, I think, with any new gym or any new fitness thing,

that it's a fad or at some point it will have its time or some point it will be whatever. Do you have that fear with CrossFit that 10, 20, 30 years, it's going to start to taper? Here's what threatens us in that respect. The community is driven by the wonders of the entrepreneur and capitalism and the free market individually owned and operated, that's a miracle. That's a pillar. The other piece is that the stimulus of constantly varied high-intensity functional movement leveraged against a diet of meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, is a really, really good match for the needs of the species and a billion years of evolution.

There's things that we're doing that are at the heart of all mammalian species. So go back a billion years. Sure, sure. And I'll just give you one of those would be respect for the insulin glucagon axis. The first proto-shrew had a pan pancreas, and so do we. The abuse of that pancreas is a modern thing, and we can blame the CDC and the NIH for that, amongst others, and down at our level, at the grunt level, the NSCA and the ACSM,

still promoting deadly diets, by the way. And so CrossFit is the fad that brought a stimulus back to the shrew a billion years ago. It's that kind of fad. Now, the non-CrossFit stuff was the fad. And I knew that. What do you mean? The lateral raises and curls. We're going to do cardio distinct from strength training.

We're going to be on machines with pins. You can deadlift if you want to be a big, ugly power, fat power lifter. And you run if you want to have cardio. But nobody should ever do both. And certainly not in the same workout ever. Right. And I knew that was horse shit. Yeah.

Just obvious crap. But you couldn't be an athlete and not know that. Not know that. Sure, sure. Yeah. And imagine the notion of nobody needs to be strong at high heart rate. Like, really? Yeah, yeah.

You don't have to have a big imagination to see what's wrong with that, right? Sure. Absolutely. The challenge is, you know, I've heard some interviews where people ask you this question about injuries. And as a competitor myself, it's really hard to taper back and hold back in gym. Yeah. It's hard to not compete against my own time, not compete against everyone else at the same time.

Yeah. And if I don't have the self-awareness of how my body's feeling, you know, I've tweaked my back many times. I've gotten little injuries here and there from CrossFit. And I'm responsible for it because I'm the one who pushes the boundaries. Let me share something with you. You can do everything absolutely perfect. You're still going to get hurt.

Yeah. I can tell you this too. You're going to be much more injured by driving the workout injury to zero. And what will happen is now comes the specter of chronic disease. Look, a couple of million people are going to die this year from chronic disease. And what is the figure? I think it's 2.8 million. Might be making that up.

It's a lot. I do know this. The 70% of the population will die from chronic disease. know this, that 70% of the population will die from chronic disease. It has the two-headed hydra of a cause in sedentarism, holding still, and malnutrition, the crappy diet. And the worst of that would be the eating way too much of everything, but in every case, it involves too much carbohydrate, specifically high-glycemic carbohydrate, specifically sugar. And that lifestyle is the deadliest thing on the planet. It takes 70% of lives, and we're exporting it now so that this number is holding true, even in places that are ravaged by infectious disease, they're rapidly approaching a 70% rate on chronic disease. And so, you know, the number of people that die from chronic disease

is twice the number that die from all other causes combined. And that's what happens when you watch TV and eat the way the Center for Disease Control wants you to eat. Right. And so as soon as you get off the couch, it's dangerous. Yeah. And it is because, you know what, I'm going to tell you that sitting there watching TV, there's a much less chance of acute injury. Like, say, picket, ACL tear, break a wrist, I don't care, any

of these sprains and strains, bruises, bumps, even things that might require surgical repair. As soon as you get up off the couch, those numbers insert themselves. So you say, hey, I'm going to go to the gym. And so you get in your car where the risk just got compounded. You still have the risk of being sedentary, but now you're out in public. Ride your bike to the gym and the risks are even greater. Look in this beautiful city here of LA. I was doing the stats once.

I pulled down some LADPD reports of car versus bicycle. It's horrifying. Every few minutes, someone gets whacked on a bike to where an ambulance is needed. Every couple of minutes, every day in the city. And so that's some really dangerous shit, right? Right. And then once you get into the gym, I've still, all those risks go up. But what is in free fall now is the risk of chronic disease. And so we trade the sprains and strains to avoid the heart attacks, the strokes, the cancers, the diabetes.

And so, someone says, you know, I got a buddy that got hurt doing CrossFit. You know, isn't it dangerous? It's dangerous sitting on your couch all day. Two million buddies died not doing CrossFit. Right, right. And chronic disease fundamentally is a lack of CrossFit in your life. You know, so you don't like the – Functional movement. You don't like the – right, right, right So you don't like the… Functional movement.

Right, right, right. Moving. Functional movement. Functional movement. You need to be able to pick things up off the ground, get your ass out of the chair. You know? Those aren't exercises. Nobody invented the deadlift.

Nobody invented the clean. Nobody invented the pull-up. Whoever says, hey, check this out. Can you believe this? Look, check that out. I made that up. No, you didn't, dude. Everyone's been standing up for a long time. You're full of shit.

But someone says they invented the – somewhere, someone invented the lateral raise. Because there's someone that was holding something doing this. The guy says, what the hell are you doing? He goes, it's an exercise. It wasn't – the functional movements, it wasn't, you know, the functional movements, it's obvious what you're doing to value. You know, the hyenas are chasing you, jumping a tree. You know, you didn't invent the pull up. You pull up and-

Right. You're getting away, you know, and throwing a rock. You know, that's not, no one invented that. It's been there since time immemorial. It's built in, baked into who and what we are. And the first exercise physiologist, I can't remember his name when you look him up when I'm talking, but he's a guy, a Brit that observed that the ticket takers on the double-decker buses had a fraction of the heart attack rate that the drivers did. And they're making the same pay and you'd get the job and they just assign you to one or the other. But one of them was dying in large numbers and the other wasn't. And in his 99th year, this genius observed that this is the first time in history

where people have to deliberately exercise to find health. And so the subject is the fad. And so the subject is the fad. Yeah, CrossFit's a fad just in the way that the human genome is a fad. And it's as stable as that genome is, which is pretty damn stable. And so people would say to me, you still like the zone diet? And I was like, yeah, I do. And they go, wow, it's been a long time.

Yeah, well, you know, balance of the insulin, glucagon axes, adequate essential fatty acid intake. I mean, these things go back a ways. Would the Zone Diet have worked on people in pre-Columbian time? Of course it would. You know? Sure. Of course it would.

Sure. Sears and Glassman and a bunch of others, we've designed for our perception of the physiological need. That was the goal. It wasn't to make money. It wasn't to sell a book. It wasn't to, you know, we were addressing a riddle, you know, a scientific question.

And something like that is very, very much not likely to be a fad. Now, may people not CrossFit in the future? Well, sure. But I don't, that wouldn't make it a fad to me either.

You know, a lot of, a lot of good things have been lost. Sure. I'm doing a, I'm doing some research about masculinity for a new book that I'm writing. Now, it's interesting. It's interesting.

The book's called The Mask of Masculinity. I've been interviewing former professional athletes to female psychologists to men, women, everyone. how CrossFit has either shaped or reinvented or evolved masculinity or what type of energy you see in a gym around both men and women coming together, doing these type of primal workouts to the max every day. Does that evolve someone's, I guess, masculinity? Does it make them more loving and vulnerable? Does it make them harder? Does it make them more loving and vulnerable? Does it make them harder? Does it make them able to connect with individuals because there's community?

What's your thoughts? I'm grinning here because my focus has been the women because there's something, you know, if you kind of rephrase the whole thing around the ladies and what's going on there, and I will come to that because now I love to hear it. I kind of went there. And the guy thing I haven't thought about so much, I haven't seen it, but I can offer a few things. I think this is maybe the vainest population to ever walk the earth.

But I don't see it as a bad thing. Everyone's shirtless. Everyone's taking photos. But you know what? They look so good. They maybe ought to. I mean, it's like I know what? They look so good. They maybe ought to. I mean, it's like, I get it. They look good naked.

Yeah, yeah. So it's not a false vanity, you know? They look really great and they know it and they're proud of it. That's all cool. But there's an enormous amount of testosterone and no fights. Never had a fight at a CrossFit event. It's a lot of brotherly love. It's crazy because I would think you can't

even do that. You can't do that in the Marine Corps. You can't do it in a football team. CrossFitters don't fight. There's none of that going on. We've never had a security... We've had people show up that weren't supposed to

be at an event kind of security event, but there's no one that had too much to drink. Police manage large venue events by getting hourly reports on the gate and the alcohol consumption. I don't know if you know that or not, but if you have a stadium, there's a guy running the thing who will every hour. It was our Andy Rios, he knows how many beers have been poured, you know, and when more beers come in, and they have the right to cut it off, and they've got some magic numbers where you work beyond so many people and so many beers and so much time, and that's when the violence starts, and so they trim back the beer. And CrossFit, we run a pretty drunken event because none of those rules apply.

Right. And so the beer just flows all day long, and we don't have people throwing up on each other or fist fighting or stealing stuff. Every year at the games, someone loses something, and I always tell the security people, I want to know when someone's misplaced a wall of a person. If there's any way for me

to come by them, I want to go because I want to be there and look them in the eyes. I want to tell them, you're going to get your wall and purse back. Right. Someone's got to be honest. And what's typically done at StubHub Center is if you want, you can start checking the trash cans. And hopefully they'll take in the cash and throw in your picture of your kids

and that kind of stuff in the garbage. There's no need to do that here. Someone is going to turn it in and it's going to get back to you and it'll be sometime at the end of the day, maybe into the evening, but you're going to get it. And I was telling a reporter that along with our agent from William Morris, Gabby Morgerman. I was telling her the story.

And it wasn't a half hour later that, where's my purse? And an hour later, her assistant calls her and says, some guy has found your bag. He went through everything in it. And he found my phone number on an envelope and called. And he's waiting for you. And this guy's standing there with her purse. She'd left it outside, you know? And like, of course, that's what happens. And I think I can tell you the why of it, too.

And I don't know even how this has to do with masculinity, but it's related to testosterone in men and the things men do when they get them in large numbers, and we don't do those things. Why? CrossFit's really, really hard, and a lot of shitty behaviors come out of people looking for shortcuts for the easy way. And the CrossFitters, we both select for and train that all good things come out of sacrifice, commitment, hard work, not finding a purse.

Or a shortcut. Yeah, a shortcut. Stealing. And so that brings a layer of decency on the whole thing. But I think there's enough confidence in who you are physically that makes that. You know, I wrote an article years ago. I think it might have been published in the Santa Cruz paper or some paper, but it was published somewhere. And I was saying that the martial arts community, in terms of its physical training, they're, you know, this is the MMA was just starting.

The Gracies were coming around and all. I'm watching the UFC and early days loved it. It was great. Still an amazing property. But I said, these guys are training on two of eight cylinders. Their fitness is woefully lacking. And you try athletes just in case you think that just is bad, if not worse. And I got a crazy response from it.

I got hate, death threats, death threats from the triathlon community, death threats, phone numbers, threatened to kill, rape, murder my wife, disguised voices, emails, the craziest stuff. And the martial arts community, what happened is some of the, many of the world's best martial artists came to me and said, sir, would you please help me with my training? I'd love to see what it is you have to offer. Now, what makes a skinny little twerp in a Speedo with a number on his arm think he's going to kick my ass? And where the guy at the martial artist was, it's their confidence. And they're just beyond that, beyond it.

The martial arts community has just been a joy to work with, just a joy. Really like those kids. All of them. Less ego. Less ego in a UFC competitor than a tennis player. In general. Yeah. Throw them all under the rug.

Hey, you know, in the UFC, you don't get a paycheck unless you talk a load of shit. And they get trained in that. Then you get a big paycheck. Yep. And you can get a check bigger than your talents if your of shit. Yeah. And they get trained in that. Then you get a big paycheck. Yep. And you can get a check bigger than your talents if your mouth's big enough. Exactly. And so they got to do that. I was close to BJ when they made him talk a lot of crap, and he's not a crap talker.

Yeah. He's got none of that in him. It's like a reality show. None of that in him. Yeah. And so there was a lot of that. That's the P.T. Barnum kind of angle that the fight world has going with it. You know, that's the P.T. Barnum kind of angle that the fight world has going with it.

I mean, how does having women and men then both in the gym, with women, how has this been affected with masculinity with women? Because you were grinning before about saying something. The old style of P.T. where, you know, there were movements we did, the snatch, muscle up. The powers that be in the fitness industry rejected those things. And even in the military community initially, things were too complicated that you'd get hurt. It basically was unknown. But ultimately, without them even knowing it, what they were bristling at is that there was a neurological component. It required coordination. It required accuracy. It required accuracy. It required

agility, and it required balance. And that's not macho stuff. That's the stuff of gymnastics. But it is well within the province of a lot of what women do and the way that they are. And that stuff came very naturally to them for a couple of reasons. One is they don't have the contractile potential. They're just not as strong, and so they have to be effective. The other thing is that a gal has no problem going, I don't know how to do that. Would you show me? And a guy comes in and goes, I know how to do that. I do it all the time when he's never done it at all.

I used to watch at Gold's. I'd watch a guy try a 400-pound deadlift and miss and then come up and say, yeah, I got 450 today. I'm like, oh, dude, we were all watching. You failed at four. You know, we were right here watching. So, the guys would lie about what they do and a chick would stand there and, you know, curling and go, I can't do this. It's too heavy. And like, so, the women are, their egos are such that they didn't have full appreciation of their capacity. And the guys had this ego that actually had, I think some of those guys that came up and said they did 450 when it was four, didn't know they were lying. And so our sense of self is so inflated compared to theirs that it makes them easier to train and it makes it easier

for them to learn some of this stuff. You know, you can see a guy seething being taught something he doesn't know how to do some of that. Why is that? Macho idiots, just masculinity. I don't know, ego. But you feel like people are retrained through CrossFit and they evolve then? Maybe. Or we're selecting. I don't know. But I tell you what, there are some super athletes in this community that started off as bodybuilders. And their first exposure was a tough thing for them emotionally, intellectually, physically. They couldn't do it the way they wanted to. Yeah, yeah. And it was just really stressful.

I don't want to get his name wrong. He's a good dude. Don't feel bad. But there was a great example of that, someone that might come back to it. So the modern PT prior to CrossFit had removed all of that coordination, actually agility, and balance. So there's no cleaning. There's no snatching.

There's no handstands. We're not hand walking. What are we doing? Well, it's, you know, jumping jack, sit up, run, you know, lather, rinse, repeat kind of thing. It was dumbed down. We call it dumbed down PT where you remove the neurological elements. dumbed down, what I call dumbed down PT, where you move the neurological elements, that radically exaggerates the difference in physical capacities between men and women and dumbed down PT.

One advantage we have physically over women is pretty significant, is contractile potential. You know, just how, with what force can the muscle shorten? Guys are a lot better than that at girls. When you add a neurological component to it and you make it, so the CrossFit definition of strength, it's not just contractile potential, but it's productive application of force. And if the goal becomes to get above the rings is your productive application of force or to stay balanced under an overhead squat is your

productive application of force, the differences shrink significantly. And so we stacked the deck against the ladies when we went to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday cardio, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday doing lateral raises and curls and leg extensions. And you bring it into the CrossFit space and all of a sudden what we have is the 110-pound gal mentoring the kid that played football and just can't seem to get the overhead squat right. We used to make a show of that with Nicole versus the big guy in the certs.

I don't know if you've seen any of that. Sure, yeah. And it was a 95-pound load and 50 overhead squats. And what I'd do is look for the buffest, biggest dude in the gym whose overhead was kind of like this. So he's 15 degrees forward. Put your hands where they are. Put them overhead.

And then here's how he gets some overhead. Leans back until the arms are straight. But I still don't have an open shoulder. And so will that beast, and I don't care if he's got a 500-pound bench press, what's going to happen at 95-pound overhead squat and 50 reps? Nicole will get to 50. He will not. You just can't.

You can't. If that's where overhead is, you're sunk. Same for holding a handstand. And so it's all been really empowering. Add to that. And so I'm on the subject of ladies now. You add to that our meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, and a lot of the insanity around body image just disappears. It's gone, long gone.

We don't have any eating disorder people. We got a lot of young ladies that have come from that problem, but it's long gone now. And so, you know, does jeans make my butt look fat? I mean, our girls know their butt looks good. And your opinion doesn't matter. And they're not afraid to out-eat you at the table and brag about it. And their confidence, it's so beautiful. And in the end, what has happened is that we now have, there are enough of them, of us, a new aesthetic has emerged.

It's a new look. A new look. And it's created a new aesthetic. And it's as strong as a new beautiful, right? Yeah, it's a functional aesthetic. It's a functional aesthetic. And it frees women of the tyranny of an arbitrary aesthetic. And when it's arbitrary, look at what we've seen.

Stretch necks, elongated necks in Africa, binding feet in Asia, heroin anorexia chic in the West. And all of these things are debilitating, devastating, unhealthy, and supposed to be pretty. What they also do is reduce a woman's ability to resist you. And I find the whole thing disgusting. Disgusting. I think it's a cultural adoption of a rape culture. And why do we have to impair our women for them to be beautiful? It bothers the hell out of me. And so I'm really, really proud of the CrossFit girls because they're strong.

And in every sense of the word, every sense, it's just strength. It's just strength. It's wonderfully empowering. Do you think they lack vulnerability? No. No. Do you think the men that train in CrossFit consistently lack vulnerability? Or emotional?

Maybe I don't know. Maybe I don't know. But I don't. I think they train themselves so much that they're unable to express themselves. Really? Does that happen? I've noticed there's a bit of a dry personality around the top games competitors. That's what I want to get into. Sure.

I've been seated at the table before with a table full of champions. It's dry, huh? Yo, man, you're hearing the clinking of forks. Really? Yeah. What do you think would happen if it was just – Have you noticed that? You know what I'm talking about?

I think they're just very serious. They're so focused. Their whole life is this. I don't know. The NFL is full of focused guys, and they're going out at night committing felonies and having a blast. That's true. I don't know. The NFL is full of focused guys, and they're going out at night committing felonies and having a blast. That's true. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, maybe there's more – you're more part of a team in football. Yeah. So you're able to joke and play and play games on each other. But it's more of like – obviously, you train together, and you have some partner stuff, but it's more lone wolf type of energy. I would just tell you, you get put on the athlete bus on the way somewhere. Silence. Crickets. You might want to get on one of the other buses. Exactly.

The volunteers are way more fun. I'm sure, yeah. No stress on them. I get that. They're focused. I mean, when you guys traveled, were you having a blast? We were having a blast. It was almost too crazy. Yeah, okay. That's my sense of it. Especially at arena football, it's like

Bull Durham. It's like – Dude, a bus full of gymnasts is like – it's the monkey bus. And they're coming out the windows and trying to get on top. You never want to know the stories that happened with football players after the games in the bus. It was nuts. It was almost like get me out of here. It was a little crazy. Good.

That's what I was hoping it would be like. What do you think it would be like if it was just all men training and all women training? Do you think there'd be a different dynamic or different energy in these boxes? If it was just like men only or women only? The only exposure I have to a male-only environment is as a youngster, I had a brief stint at the Hughes Aircraft Company because my father and mother and grandparents and uncles and aunts and everyone that knew worked there. So I had to do a little job there.

And it was almost all male. And it was horrible. I mean, I couldn't stand it. But I wouldn't want that. The women have been role models in our gyms. Role models. I always ask what, you know. I love getting coached by a woman at the gym.

Yeah, it's fun. I feel like they're a better technique, alignment, you know. Hey, let me share this with you. I've had a dozen bosses in my life. I've always really enjoyed the women that I worked for. They were fantastic bosses. And check this out, the better I did and the better I made them look, the more they liked me and the more success we all enjoyed. I've had male bosses that become increasingly uncomfortable with the quality of your work. The better it gets, a lot of them, the more they don't like you.

Interesting. Yeah. And they're more afraid of being outshined than being made to look good. But you get a lady telling you to do a job and you do just a perfect job of it, you'll make her really happy. And there's guys that are just like, oh, shit, uh-oh. That's funny. It is. Have you noticed it?

I've never had a boss. You ever seen that? Yeah. Yeah. How about you? Yeah. Yeah. I hope that's okay to do, hit the peanut gallery.

Yeah, of course. Of course. A couple of final questions for you. This has has been fascinating so thank you for opening up is there any question that you wish people would ask you that they never do that you could that you could answer yeah and i can't think of what it is now but i have thought about before i'm sorry it's all good yeah if i i'll come back to you send it to you too late but i i you know i've done that yeah what's what's something then you're you're're most proud of that most people don't know about you? Our impact on the women in our community, just what we were on.

It's a current hot button for me. I'm just fascinated by it. I'm amazed too at how much it's gone unnoticed. I tried to communicate this to the people at Vogue, and then it ended up with that spread they did on Annie Thorisdottir. I think they were more tripping on her than fully appreciating that this was liberation from a devastating, deadly culture that they were kind of at the heart of. It might have been the wrong audience, the wrong magazine to make that point.

have been the wrong audience, the wrong magazine to make that point. And the other thing is, look, I'll just tell you where the current leadership is at CrossFit, at HQ, and it relates to pride and things I'd like to be asked and wish the world knew. We have an elegant, marked by simplicity and efficacy, we have an elegant solution to the world's greatest problem, and that's chronic disease. And our team, the HQ team, has recommitted, we're doubling down to change the world's perception of what happens in the box. And I explain to staff, by the world, I mean all those people that are never going to go to a gym and die from chronic disease. I would like them to know that we have something in our boxes. The people that are currently going to the gym, I'd like them to know.

The people that are going to the box, going to the CrossFit, already CrossFitters, they need to know. You're not just getting fit. You're saving your life. And I need the people that train them to know it and the affiliates themselves to know it and those of us at HQ. train them to know it and the affiliates themselves to know it and those of us at HQ. So literally everyone in the world, I would like them to be increasingly aware of what it is that's happening in the box and its health.

That's what's happening in the box. It's way more significant than the fitness. Yes. The fitness is a Trojan horse delivering wellness, delivering wellness. And, you know, sometimes you wish people knew and there's a little regret. No, it's our job now to get that message out. So I get to come places like this and share that with you because I think it's really, really important. You know, it's not good to save a life and not know you're doing it, you know? You ought to know. And you know, we'll never see the heart attacks that don't happen. We won't see the Alzheimer's that doesn't develop. You only see it when people get sick. But look, let's go with the 4 million figure. about 2.8 million people that were going to die from that growing list of cancers that we believe come from metabolic

syndrome. Those things we know do the diabetes, the stroke, the heart disease, the Alzheimer's. They've gotten a pass on it. The metrics that would suggest that those things are in your future, They've got a pass on it. The metrics that would suggest that those things are in your future, HDL, triglyceride, glycated hemoglobin, blood pressure, the elements of body comp. For every CrossFitter, whether you're coming one day a week or five, those things are moving in the right direction, which means that you are sneaking out the door from chronic disease. And that may easily be 2.8 million saved lives in the current community. They're still going to die, but not prematurely and needlessly. And that awareness is something we need to share. And it's that.

So it's 2.8 million lives that you have to weigh the ACL tears and the sprains and the strains. But I'll tell you, you know, it's a little weird to be sitting in the orthopedic surgeon's office with your badass studly injury you got from your sport and to see some fat dude who got the same thing getting out of his pickup truck. Right. You know? Yeah, yeah. Fell out of bed in the morning, and you're going to be in the same hospital room. Exactly. Everybody gets hurt. Yeah, yeah.

Everybody gets hurt. That being said, we are dramatically safer than that jumping jack, push-up, sit-up, run, lather, rinse, repeat PT that was going on everywhere, especially in military and law enforcement training in schools. And we know this because we are the in-house fitness program for maybe 100 military and law enforcement training programs. We've been at Colorado State Patrol for now like 15 years, 16 years. And we know the injury rates. And let me tell you what I tell them about their injury rates.

I look at it and I go, you need to get more people hurt. You do. It's too low. Too safe. Yeah, make them fitter. When I strive to bring the injury down to zero, I'm pulling the plug on the efficacy. Yeah.

And you need some tolerance, you know. I said, Jimmy, you're a gymnast. Yes. Oh, did you ever get hurt? Never. I'm like, okay. You know, I know what kind of gymnast you were. Right, right.

Yeah. You know, your mom took you five times kind of gymnast. You can't be, you can't stay in that sport without injury. It's true of football too. There's no uninjured. Many injured seasons. Yeah. Play through it too. They play injured. Yeah. I used to see all the greats from the

Raiders over at Gold's and I remember seeing Todd Christensen with a bruise from ribs to knee. And it would be like, it would just be this horrible thing that would expand and then contract in the space of a week. And getting ready for the next week. It's crazy.

Yeah, it was just amazing. What is something that you're most grateful for recently in your life? Oh, my babies. I got seven kids. Seven kids? Yeah. And they're just amazing. something that you're most grateful for recently in your life all my babies you know i got i got seven kids and seven kids yeah and they're just amazing and i that's the easy answer now because i'm i'm uh two weeks away from them right now you know and i'm gonna go see them tonight or tomorrow depending on my energy levels for the drive our planes down so i'm i'm driving it and uh just the little ones are amazing you get such insights into into the world and humanity and seeing how an empty little head fills and

i crazy yeah i love that my little one said uh of course they're dangerous that's why they call them murder cycles it's like i mean that's just rich, right? Right. Very cool. Yeah. This is a question I ask all my guests at the end. It's called the three truths question. So if this was the last day for you many, many years from now, and you achieved everything you wanted to achieve, and you got to write down on a piece of paper three things you know to be true about all of your experience in life that you would pass on three lessons to your friends, your family, the world. What were those three? And Lewis will give me 20 seconds to think of them.

Exactly. Off the spot. As the plane's going down. Exactly. Here's a pencil and paper. Just kind of first thing that comes to you. It doesn't have to be perfect. You know, Check the ego.

Be honest. I can give it to you. This isn't going to be succinct, but it is an important lesson. It applies to, I think, everything we do. I routinely come across someone who's extended themselves for someone and it backfired. He's either someone to get vantage or wouldn't take advantage, but you're like, God, look what I did for you, and then look what you did for it, and I'm all bent out of shape. And I've come to see that the spirit of the charity has to be that it's up to them.

And you can't invest of yourself so much that you're disappointed in the give if it doesn't come out right. And it's not a truly charitable thing if it's not just that honest that, I don't know what you're going to do with this. And I got my hopes, but I don't want to i don't want to be let's say disappointed if it doesn't work out because i don't want that to discourage me from you know you don't ever want the lesson to your chair to be that i'm never going to do that again for anybody right right of course you know and so you have to you have to get you have to be willing to

get burned and and repeatedly to find that special person. And it's probably true in love, employees, and I'm not wrecking your court. I think that's really important. I think it's really important because I see that a lot in people. In the training floor, I had to be very careful. Maybe it was my problem, but I had to be careful. Things got weird when I wanted more for people than they wanted for themselves. And it stresses relationships.

And so as a trainer, I was always kind of trying to figure out what you want and what you're really willing to give. And I needed to be close to that. I'd like to be a little bit in front of you maybe, but I didn't want to be like, you're not living up to your potential. God damn it. It doesn't work for anybody. Yeah. And that is, believe it or not, for me somehow in my head related to that giving and being willing to see it not come out ideally and don't take the lesson from it to not give again. Yeah.

Very cool. Very cool. How can we support you? What's the main thing you want people to take action on and try, look at? Yeah. I'll tell you something that's dear to us right now. I've got a gripe with the soda people and it's three-pronged. The first is this stuff's toxic, but you know what? So is meth.

So is alcohol. I mean, there's a lot of toxic things in the world that don't support health, but I don't see them having had a corrupting influence on the health sciences, and soda has. on the health sciences, and so it has. Their impact at NIH and at CDC and USDA and FDA and the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Static Disorder Association, it's been a national shame and a tragedy

of unprecedented proportion that we've exported. So I've got the toxicity, the corruption of the sciences, and then the third, these people have stood up some 501c3s and proxies that have lobbied and legislated against our affiliates. And that's the unforgivable one. You know, it was always poison. And I always suspected the corruption. But we weren't bothered by it because we were doing our own thing.

And here's how I deal with soda. Meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar. And it's done. And I got 4 million people that don't drink the shit. But to find that I've got 22 pieces of legislation in eight states over nine years with my training and its crosshairs, when I find that Coca-Cola has spent a fortune to be the leading player in the chronic disease space and the training of trainers to fight this chronic disease to make sure that it's known that you never talk about food, something's got to change. And so now it's a war.

Now it's a war. So it's those three things, the toxicity, the corruption of the health sciences, and then trying to stop us from just doing our own thing. We weren't bothering anybody. My affront to Soda Pop was the new gym that opens every two hours and 24 minutes somewhere around the world is going to have 200 or 300 members that won't drink their shit eventually. That's all we were doing.

I didn't try to make what they do illegal, and they did, and they're denying it too. But we went to the Podesta Group, and it's like my favorite lobbying firm on earth. We went to them and retained them to help us find out just where this stuff had come from. One of these licensure bills actually passed in D.C. and we're getting it repealed, which is a miracle. I mean, it was a page two Wall Street Journal story that CrossFit was the only eighth time in 40 years that a piece of occupational licensure had been repealed. And two of the times it's happened, it got put back. But we hired them to help us figure out where this came from.

And the language was big chunks of language identical. And so there's a fingerprint on this. Who wrote it? Who sponsored it? And why? And it's traced back to organizations that have no visible means of support outside of soda. Wow.

And so that's a- What can we do to support? Well, the awareness is everything. Awareness is everything. And so I- Don't drink pop we do to support? Well, you know, the awareness is everything. Yeah. Awareness is everything. And so I – Don't drink pop. That's how we can support. You know, it's – look, that's already handled in our – we have our consumptive reduction program.

None of us – that's not the goal. I want to drive them out of the health sciences so they get them out of the fitness space. Sure. And at first, I just want them out of the fitness space. But I realized that the fix was in it with the docs, and we'll never find freedom if they're sold, if they've been paid off, if they've been silenced. Gotcha. And so, I'm going to have to fix medicine to fix fitness, and we definitely have a problem. found that the head of preventative nutrition research or some damn thing at the National Cancer Institute sat on a big soda's payroll at the International Life Sciences Institute.

Sounds good, right? And it's a bunch of soda heads collecting soda salaries to corrupt science. But you can imagine, he did this until his death. And can you imagine being in charge of nutrition research at the National Cancer Institute while taking a check from Coca-Cola? And what you'd expect to come of that is these organizations would be incapable of pointing to sugar as a culprit in the diet. Guess what?

They've been unable to do that. So I go to the CDC's website, and what do I see? What do they want to do to avoid chronic disease? Reduce saturated fat and salt intake. Let me share something with you. You know that 2.8 million people are going to die? That wouldn't have saved a one of them. Not a one of them.

You want to have a profound impact on someone's life, take their sugar away. Absolutely. Thank you for this. Yeah, you're welcome. You've been a great interviewer. Yeah, life, take their sugar away. Absolutely. Thank you for this. Yeah, you're welcome. You've been a great interviewer. Yeah. I've got one final question for you. Yes, sir.

And before I ask, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for your incredible drive and for being a catalyst for saving so many people's lives and transforming health in so many people. It's unbelievable to see what you've built and what the community has built with you. Thank you. And how people have rallied behind this idea of eating better and moving functionally.

And you've been leading the charge, so I want to acknowledge you, Greg, for that. I warmly appreciate that. But I have to let you know I'm a little uncomfortable. It's just part humility and part just honesty. I got a lot of people that put a lot of energy into what I'm doing and done. And going back to my first partner, Lauren Glassman, to all the people that support me today, and including a whole coterie of folks that worked for free for years before there was a job.

Worked for free for years before there was a job. And once that happens, it's hard to me or I anything. It's we. Sure, sure, sure. You know, we did this. Right. Well, I appreciate you being the catalyst. Thank you.

To inspire people. I tell people I threw a lit cigarette out the window and it started a forest fire. There you go. I'm not the god of the sun. Sure, sure. Final question for you. Yes, sir. What's your definition of greatness?

Definition of greatness. I don't know. I don't have one. It's weak, but nothing coming to mind. You know what's interesting? Greatness is one of those things that's like end point. I'm a process guy. I'm not so much about achievement as I am about process.

You stay committed to process, and that's where achievement comes from. There are things that we set out to do, There are things that we set out to do, and I don't have a sense of whether it's going to take 18 months or 50 years. And I don't care either because we're going to do the right thing for the right people for the right reason. It's always paid off sooner than I would have thought, but I never started with that in mind. It's kind of like, and I use the example of a fight too. I've been in a lot of fights of all sorts, but I've never picked one because I was sure I'd win it. It was like

it's time to do this. This person or concept needs their ass beat. It may not work, but it's needed and I'm going to give it a whirl. You know? Hold my beer. Watch this. Sure. I don't have a definition of greatness.

Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Thank you. There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this powerful, insightful interview with Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit. Again, if you haven't shared this out yet, make sure to click on the share button on your podcast app. If you're on your phone or if

you're on the website at lewishouse.com slash 412, share that out with your friends on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Tag me at Lewis House and let me know what you thought of this interview. If you thought something was powerful, if you thought you wish I would have asked something different, let me know. I want to know so I can make this better for you in the future. Again, check out the full show notes to hear all the things that we talked about

and cover all the things we talked about at lewishouse.com slash 412 to learn more. I love you guys. I appreciate you so very much. We've got some incredible guests coming up. Oh, I'm so pumped for you guys or what we're about to bring on the School of Greatness podcast.

So thank you for all you do to be a part of this incredible community of greatness and for spreading the message to all your friends. I love you and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Great. Outro Music