The Sevan Podcast - #633 - Rickard Long, CrossFit Affiliate Owner Series

Episode Date: October 17, 2022

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It is a good morning. Bam, we're live. We're live. Beautiful. Good morning. You have 7 a.m. I have 4 p.m. full day behind me. When I went to bed last night we were texting. It was crazy because you were just getting up and I was going to sleep. Oh, do you have a YouTube window open? I think I'm hearing an echo maybe.

Yes, something went off, but it's turned off. Oh, you're the best. Thank you. There we go. Yeah, pretty cool to be on this show. I've been following many of these episodes, but you're creating more content than I can follow. Hey, you think that's a mistake? Do you think that's a mistake? No, I don't think so. think that's a mistake uh no i don't think so uh i don't think so either but sometimes i'll get into this debate with people and they think like hey you should only be making enough stuff that everyone can watch i'm like i don't know i think my consistency is more important i think so too i think um i mean everyone has different kind of uh let's say frequency and they have different

strategies and um i just think you will be able to touch much more people if you're very frequent in comparison to different. And I know you have different, let's say, topics, different kind of guests. So it would be different if you had only affiliate uh affiliate interviews uh every day uh but you're really jumping between all kind of characters i would say so um what if um do you remember when uh did you used to follow did you ever follow main site yes and and it would be three on one off right the workouts and i remember there was also that debate at CrossFit, like, well, hey, maybe we should give a workout every day and then people can figure out when to be three on and when to be their one day off.

And, but they never did that. And I think that was smart. Just keep it, just, hey, here it is. Keep it smooth. Keep it sailing. This is just the way it is. Just keep it, just, Hey, here it is. Keep it smooth. Keep it sailing. This is just the way it is.

Yeah. I mean, I think again, for the affiliates that were following main site, they were obviously, they had to create their own workouts and so on. I know some affiliates did, they did a pause for that day or a break um but uh yeah now we see like this new cap by by the guys there they they're programming every day because definitely obviously need something every day but what does cap stand for that's what um that's the austin maliolo james hobart yeah exactly uh well crossfit affiliate programming that would be my my guess you are smart yeah it's uh i think very hard you guys are staring at ricard long he is the owner of escapist crossfit in

berlin um i don't know if you guys need to see a map, but it's a little far away from me. He's a little far away from me. I'm a little far away from him. And, man, technology is absolutely nuts because completely somewhere else on the planet, on a third continent, is Caleb Beaver. I see a beaver yes three three continents three men yeah and he's in uh where middle east we please please record top secret please top secret okay Top secret, okay. Sorry, go ahead. Were you going to say something? No.

I just know I have the experience when I've been trying to find a way to have meetings with people on the West Coast. It's far more difficult than the East Coast. Like these extra three hours, they make it definitely harder, but I'm happy we could make, make it.

I don't, we've never had problems scheduling people with people in Europe, but you know where it gets squirrely is for some reason is Australia. Yeah. I think it's because we crossed the international date line or something. Something gets weird always in Australia. Yeah, I know.

Yeah. It's a, it's a difficult one. You're, you're nine hours ahead of me you said it's four there and it's seven here so let me do yeah nine hours is it a good life in berlin is berlin a good place to live is it a good life um so yes i would say yes and no berlin is uh this kind of uh poor and sexy city at the same time. So we have a lot of craziness going on.

But I always said to people, like, I've been living here now for 10, 11 years. I'm originally from Stockholm, from Sweden. So I moved here like a decade ago. And because this town is kind of untouched or has been untouched and has gone through so many different changes, like historically, it's nuts. And yeah, there I am. So basically what I've been experiencing here is like this transition that

i would say like new york and paris has been gone going through um where a lot of artists moved into the city because it was so cheap living here so they created a lot of art, like crazy clubs. And we have super, it's super liberal, right? Very open. We don't have any closing times for anything. So people tend to go for clubs here, maybe a Saturday night, 12 p.m. or 12 a.m. And they get home like a uh noon from those parties and uh so it's very liberal very much party uh party scene um and um what happens is that when when you have culture

developing in these kind of countries or sorry in these cities like uh in new york paris now berlin um well people with money also want to you know they want to spend their money so they go somewhere where they feel like oh there's still some kind of life left there there's uh culture here there's music there is art there is there's crazy apartments. So that's what's been happening now. Last, I would say, it's still happening. Like a lot of people moving in now that have more money and it's slowly upgrading the city. But it's still the most, yeah.

I hate to say it. It's the only hope any cities have. Yeah. I know some people are going to hate me for saying that, but if you don't, and I know gentrification is a bad word for many people, but if the people don't come in with money, it's the only hope.

It's the only hope. As he said, you're describing to me kind of like portland oregon it um you go 20 years ago that's a city we have here on the on on the west coast of the united states it's pretty far north so the weather's not that good but but it's beautiful up there uh gentrification the process process whereby the character of a poor urban area is changed by wealthier people moving in. The problem is I think poor is not the right word – is not the correct word. They're usually violent areas, and they're usually areas where no one would want to raise their kids, and they're usually areas where it's not safe to go out once the sun goes down if we want to be accurate yeah

i mean here it is pretty clear that the people that are pissed because of gentrification they are usually in this scene of uh partying and taking drugs right so they are they throw their needles on the ground yeah but yeah if we, but... If we're generalizing, if we're generalizing. Yeah, but this is kind of how it happens. So we have different parts of the city. One part of the city, which is called Prenzlauer Berg or Prenzlberg, used to have a lot of parties, a lot of bars, a lot of everything going on. And all the students moved in there after the the fall of the the wall um as students moved in there they were having sheep housing you know partying that's in eastern berlin that was eastern berlin

that was eastern berlin so entire eastern berlin you know when when the wall came down eastern came this gold mine of sheep apartments, crazy old century apartments, crazy looking good flats, but no water and no electricity in some parts. There you are. So people moved in there. They partied a lot. They had fun. And then suddenly, you know, they finished their studies. They met some dude or they met some girl. And suddenly they got kids. And now it's like the most populated or highly dense, I would say, most density of kids and families in that area.

And they, of course, don't want to have the party people there. So they kicked out all the bars and the clubs and whatever. And that's gentrification, right? The citizens matured. The citizens matured. They want the park for their kids to play, not a place to smoke dope. Exactly.

So that happened. And now it's happening in different other parts of the city. Like we had a new cologne or a new cologne, which is where David Bowie and Iggy Pop and all these like rock stars used to hang around in the seventies. This is like highly or was highly dense by Turkish minorities and Arabs and so on, still is. But because it is like that, housing is very cheap. So a lot of students have moved in there,

and now they're gentrifying those areas with, yeah, students. And they're partying, but they are slowly growing up. So now companies are moving in, startups are moving in. And yeah, so Berlin has like, you know, developed into this kind of startup hub too. So usually we talk about San Francisco, New York, London, and then Berlin as the like startup cities, which I think like Berlin is so far behind these other cities.

But anyways, there has been a lot of like startup commotion here, I would say, because it was so cheap with housing, cheap for companies to rent, cheap to get labor, everything. And when you get young kids in an area where it's affordable and they're innovative kids, you'll see some amazing things. I'm going to say some nice shit. Like that was the cool thing about Portland. There would be a shop there that only sold, let's say, pencils. No one else anywhere in the country could afford to do that because rent was so high. So you couldn't come up with these innovative ideas.

So you would go into a small store. It would be 600 square feet. And all they would sell were this wide variety of pencils and pencil sharpeners and maybe aprons that you would wear while you draw. And it would be like these – or it would be an experimental pizza place, right? Pizzas that you've never seen before made with a variety of doughs or a place that just serves whiskey. You would started seeing these really cool young people who are super highly motivated, who want to experiment with with their love or their craft. Unfortunately, when there's young people who don't have their hands kept busy, it descends into drugs and violence and crime. Yeah.

I've just been following Portland from a distance. So sad. So sad. I'm a frequent follower of Brett Weinstein and his wife, Heather. So they have been reporting pretty well what's happening over there i don't know if they moved speaking of brett weinstein um the the this just on a total side note the former general counsel of crossfit inc was dale saran and he's been on the show a couple times and on last monday he filmed he was on the Brett Weinstein show.

I don't think it has aired yet. We'll get Dale back on and talk to him about it. But Dale is the head counsel of a class action suit with 900 Coast Guard members, United States Coast Guard members, suing the United States government. And actually he's kicking ass, basically saying, hey, you gave us – you forced us to take an experimental drug. You mislabeled it. You called it a vaccine. It's not a vaccine. And it was experimental.

And you basically lied to these soldiers. And I think he's going to win. Okay. I think he's going to win. It's pretty crazy. They're already telling the Navy SEALs that they don't have to take the injection. I think that they're backpedaling, which is pretty cool. Did you see the video from the Dutch government there?

They were questioning the – was the CEO of Pfizer? Here's the thing with that here i i agree i agree with this is so bizarre for me to say this i don't know if i've said this in over a year but they they never did say that it stopped transmission i agree with them all these posts are saying they're backpedaling they're not backpedaling you weren't reading the fine print. They never said that they were sure that it stopped it. They were never sure that they said it stops transmission. Other people were saying it.

The president of the United States was saying it. Yeah, exactly. But they were not, people. They were very clear. They would say shit like, we hope. Oh, yeah, yeah. At least that's that and you can go back on my podcast and see the whole time i'm like guys they they don't they're not making

these claims that you're accusing them of making the claims it's it's the government officials yeah um that guy is great by the way where was that guy from that was from the netherlands the gray-haired distinguished gentleman yeah i i I don't know him. Some Dutch politician, yeah. And she didn't even hide it. She didn't even – she was just kind of laughing. Yeah. Well, she said, speed of science. Oh, that was bizarre.

That was bizarre. So, yeah, you can – I think whatever – they've been careful with what they've been saying and not. Are you familiar with the history of Germany, Ricard, pretty good? Somehow, yes. I mean, I'm interested in history, but I'm no expert. But I definitely have my brief overview of how everything works. And I said during the pandemic or during the lockdowns, rather, that... Thank you for that clarification, by the way.

That this gave me a good insight in how the GDR was built and how GDR was possible. What's GDR? Well, the old German, Eastern German part in German is DDR, but GDR, that's the, yeah, uh yeah the german republic uh the the mark works uh the mark sorry i can't talk today the yeah there we go democratic the republic there we go um and uh yeah it collapsed uh 89 and got reunited 1990 right but during that time uh that's where you had all these spies right all the spy stories happened in east berlin and west berlin um and uh my question was always like how is it it possible for like this communist country to keep everyone silent? You know, they were capturing people, torturing people.

Yeah. Kidnapping people. So how is it possible? Why didn't people stand up for that? Like, why did people just go with it? And I got very good insight on why and how effective that can be. variously theory point of view is just like when you have a big amount of people or in it's even a minority people very scared and also uh telling people that if you don't do something you don't care about other people so back then in the socialist, communist part of Germany, they said, you know, if you say anything bad about the decisions from the state, you're hurting the rest of the population because the state just wants the well of the citizens. So we need to protect the citizens from the people that are thinking different

or questioning the authorities. And if you are questioning the authorities, you're also questioning the rest of the people in this country and you're a threat. So obviously we saw this happening again. And I mean, people have been kind of hating on me because I'm saying that. But they're like, hey, you're exaggerating and so on. I'm like, I'm not exaggerating.

You're not allowed to go out. You're not going out. You're not meeting people. You're wearing a mask outside. The fact that they were hating on you for that is the proof of exactly what you're saying. You're saying, hey, people who are questioning the system are being shut down. And that's exactly what they wanted to do to you. You question and they're saying, no, they don't. Be quiet.

I mean, the irony in it. Yeah. Yeah. So and it's still, I would say it's still there. So, people are still scared about, you know, should I comply? Should I not? They're kind of like the government is obviously slowly backpedaling. government is obviously slowly backpedaling and um what i also also like always ask myself because when i was talking to east german people you know uh older ones younger ones and i was like how was

it in east germany you know because you were not allowed to you know do everything you were not allowed to travel you were not allowed to um buy anything you could you you know, do everything. You were not allowed to travel. You were not allowed to buy anything. You could, you know, Western music was illegal and whatever. But mostly people don't want to talk about it. Like the East, the Eastern Germans, they're like, oh yeah, well, it wasn't, it wasn't that bad. Like, you know, and then they just want to move on. And I can kind of see that happening now too. I'm like, you know and then they just want to move on and i can kind of see that happening now too i'm like you know i'm still a bit i'm very upset about what they've been doing here and still

are doing and but people are kind of just you know okay let's turn the page and let's go on and i'm i'm i can you know in one way agree with that, I don't want to spend more time on this shit. We need to move on and do something better now. But at the same time, like, there are some responsible people that should be, you know, at least confessing what they've been doing. And even though, you know, people make mistakes, then just say, I made a mistake and I'm it was you know people make mistakes then just say i made a mistake and i'm sorry you know so um there's this um another here's where i was going to go with that also by

the way is that the the nazi party came out of liberals who turned socialist who turn fascist and it's it's pretty obvious that those behaviors are happening right before our eyes in the united states of america at least um recently last week the governor of california signed into law that we're not allowed to get second opinions from doctors about covid so if you don't if a doctor tells you speaks anywhere off the script of what the state tells you the protocols are for taking care of um uh covid 19 the coronavirus that that doctor can have his license taken away yeah this is this is some really fucking bizarre shit i seriously never thought that that anything like this would happen in my lifetime and yet those are the same people who are saying that the people on the right um are the fascists and all of our violence is coming from the left also and when i say all of it i mean

all of it i'm talking 99 of all the violence in our cities is coming from the left and the socialist movement that is becoming more that is open that's openly racist but by the way for all of those people in gym in germany who are liberal our left hates you we hate all the left hates all of europe they hate you because of the color of your skin you have to know that well it's the same Well, it's the same. I mean, it's the same here. It's fucking bizarre. It's a trip. Yeah, no, it's the same here. So I would say it's a...

Our city, Portland, was filled with Black Lives Matter signs. Filled. And yet it's the least amount of people with melanated skin of any major city in the United States. Yeah. I mean, yeah. I like to refer to Sam Harris. He puts it very good. And it's, you know, bad idea.

Sam Harris was pro-vaccine, by the way, which is completely fucking undermines everything. It's the same thing with the guy, the stoic guy was pro-vaccine, by the way, which completely fucking undermines everything. It's the same thing with the guy, the stoic guy was pro-vaccine. Yeah. Which shows a lack of cognitive horsepower, which shows the ability to not think for yourself. I was pretty surprised with that with Sam Harris. But I also think it's, I think that is the good thing that it also shows that, you know, because I truly think Sam Harris is one of the best thinkers out there. But just because you're a good thinker, just like you and me or whatever, it doesn't mean that we have the answers on everything. Right.

So. That was hard for me to process. Hold on a second. Sevan, you don't have the answer for everything. Right. That was hard for me to process. Hold on a second. Sevan, you don't have the answer for everything. Okay. Fine. Caleb, you're going to have to walk me through that after the show is over. But yeah, basically that is the thing, right?

So I think he has a very good thing he says, and it's that bad ideas matter. Meaning, if you have bad ideas and you spread bad ideas, they can be very harmful. And even good ideas can be harmful because, again, we come down to this like um uh which is kind of the orwellian argument and everything is that you can you can do so much thing for the good that you start hurting people if that makes sense yeah so so you we need to get everyone training we need everyone to do crossfit right and uh if and we can go so so hard on that line that we start uh you know um hunting people that are not doing it because they need to take care about their health and uh yeah and then we start forcing people and then we throw them into camps if they don't follow

the crossfit rule whatever um so i would never i would never propose that we take obese people let's i'll be even more clear i would never take people that are addicted to refined carbohydrates and want to throw them all in jail and yet it would be so easy to argue that they're the biggest threat to human civilization. It would be so easy to argue that point. Yeah. Because, again, we're all good and bad at the same time. And that's why we always have to recalibrate where we are. And I know like if we take the pandemic when it started

or the lockdown started and before that, because I was following Sam Harris pretty much. And when he came out with this story about COVID and everything, I was like, okay, Sam Harris usually does his research very well. And he was out there very early. And I was like, okay, Sam Harris knows something I don't know. I didn't know anything. I didn't know any research, any stats, anything. So I'm

like, okay, Sam Harris is a good person. He usually knows everything he's talking about. And then you have to always reevaluate that. And in this case, like Sam Harris, I obviously came to the conclusion he's not having right on this point. And that's it. I don't have to throw in under the bus everything he said under the bus because it's just one point. And same thing here. He can also reevaluate and say something else maybe in maybe in one year and say like hey i was totally off did he ricard did he backpedal i don't know i thought i mean did he ask like like we had trump

and biden both in office and neither of those men said hey diet and exercise is your greatest fight against covid19 still to this day no one in a profound leadership position has said that a matter of fact, the leader of the UK said the exact opposite. It's too hard to change your diet and workout. Just get the shot. And I want to agree with you and I want to be compassionate, but there's this presupposition that so many people that I talk to build their whole thought process up when they look back at the history of what happened with the lockdowns. They say, well, nobody knew. And then from there, they build out their argument. Well,

that's not true. You're building now what you're going to spew on me for the whole next hours that no one knew because you're using that, not you, but you're using that to defend your ignorance. And my particular thing with Sam Harris that he said, and I don't follow him very closely, but he said it was irresponsible what Joe Rogan did. And by saying that, he was doing the same thing. He was being irresponsible. And it's just – but you're right. I think it's tricky.

I think if I'm hearing you right, you're saying we need to move forward. But I also feel like some things have been done that need to be undone someone someone needs to there needs to be the same way they stopped littering in the 50s in the united states they started a massive campaign in the united states there needs to be a massive campaign that says that you you can go to escapist crossfit in Berlin, and 92% of the reasons why people die in Germany, you can eliminate those things by attending Ricard Long's gym at Escapist CrossFit. There needs to be a movement that explains that. And those 92% of things are chronic disease that fall under this whole bucket. Yeah, exactly.

We don't have to force them, but the information needs to be there and screamed from the mountaintops. Exactly. If you care about the people. I mean, yeah, exactly. That was the one I posted back then. And, yeah, it was the elephant in the room kind of thing, everything, when it comes to health. And, yeah, it still is.

And it still is not being communicated, right? It is crazy that it's getting constantly forgotten in the debate. In the debate, like they should have basically every morning, like every time they open up the Senate and so on, they should open up with like, okay, what have we done with human health this week or, you know, today? What have we done with with human health this week or you know today what have we done to empower the people this week not not hey we're like we've ordered 250 000 pills in case we're in a nuclear war i mean it's like i don't know if you saw that but we recently did that in the united states yeah this government just bought 250 000 pills that supposedly helped you with radiation sickness. Yeah, I heard something about that, but I haven't been following that too much. But yeah, basically, it constantly gets ignored, forgotten.

I don't know, because it's like, okay, sure, we should exercise. We should have a better diet. But what about the diabetes medicine should we have uh is there any like magic pill that you can eat so you don't have to exercise oh look at this uh uh this is a way where you can lose weight without you know doing the work that that is being communicated more in the media than uh just you know front of every newspaper should have been during the lockdowns like go out and and move you know stop eating processed food what the german government did was uh was they hired an ad agency that made a campaign for millions

of euros and dollars, which the campaign was stay home. And in those ads, stay home on the couch. ads stay home on the couch and they showed this guy on on the couch eating nachos or chips burritos whatever you want to call them sounds like some cultural appropriation by you should not be serving nachos in germany and and drinking coke that was their message stay at home, watch movies, drink Coke, and eat chips, fried stuff. That was the message. Instead of like, go out, move, that should have been the message. If the sun's out, go outside. Yeah.

But yeah. The evolution of a CrossFitter is kind of the same as the city of Berlin. It's kind of interesting when you were saying that of that neighborhood. You find CrossFit for me. I was in my 30s. I was 34. But let's say someone finds it when they're 19 years old. And what a fun thing to do, right?

You get there. You get to go hard. You get to push yourself into a pain cave. You're in a group of other, with other people. Your body looks nicer. Every time you go home, you feel better. It's a safe way to get like endorphin rush and good chemical rush in the body. And you really are not doing it for, you don't feel the threat of life. The, the, the doom of death on your doorstep because you're 19, right? You're just doing it maybe to see pretty girls, to work out, to exercise. And I'm good with that. I love that.

I love that. Then you do CrossFit. And as you get older, you start doing it for different reasons. You start doing it so that you can think more clearly when you're at work. You do it because it's a good example for your kids. And then you get even a little older and you do it just so that you can squeak out a couple extra years of life. Yeah. Yeah. And I definitely know this. It's true on all those fronts, right? From that, from the super most superficial to, to the spiritual. Yeah. Yeah, no, definitely. to the spiritual. Yeah.

Yeah. No, definitely. and the company's kind of stuck because the leadership has to figure out a way to elevate all of those. Those all have to coexist. Yeah. Yeah. I was thinking about that.

I was thinking about that. Like the, um, now with like the, um, we have new leadership coming up or that has started with crossfit and so on and i'm um i was thinking about this you know a lot of affiliates are paying the affiliate fee and so on because you know in one way because you owe you owe it because you would not exist without this method or this

mythology uh and uh so many people are paying uh that affiliate fee for that reason because yeah we do we do metcons we do uh thrusters and we do everything and um on the other side you have the guys who are then saying like no you know we don't have to call it crossfit because we're just doing these movements and we don't owe anything to anyone and in one sense i was thinking uh today is that uh what crossfit has to do because in one sense i, I can understand you want to pay because you feel you kind of owe someone this. And one says, I would say, well, most people owe this to the creator of CrossFit, which would be Greg Glassman. But he doesn't work there anymore. He doesn't own it anymore. So should people just pay glassman this kind of guilt fee

and uh now it's up to uh crossfit to be delivering the value that is needed for you know is it a new evolution of um of whatever uh is in the level ones and level twos, or is it anything else? I don't know, but this was just thoughts going through my head. I think, obviously, there's no other brand that has so much impact, possibilities in the fitness industry as CrossFit has. in the fitness industry as CrossFit has. So I definitely would like to see, because it's always an open question too,

like the affiliate owners, well, what do you want to have more from the CrossFit and so on? And many of them think about like, yeah, we need more marketing. Many of them think about, yeah, we need more marketing. CrossFit is not doing any marketing in our area. There's no CrossFit games in Germany or in Europe. There are the semifinals and whatever. But yeah, there's no targeted marketing here. But yeah, there's no targeted marketing here.

That's something that some people say. And is that the assignment of CrossFit to just be the marketing engine for just like any franchise in one sense? Or is it to be developing the method? And I think it's kind of both. And that's where leadership comes in. You mentioned that. Somebody has to lead there. Somebody has to show the way where to go, even if it's the wrong path.

Because when you start walking somewhere somewhere you start discovering more so um i think that is um you know um crossfit has has to try and uh and from my point of view i'm i'm the biggest supporter uh because i i wanted to succeed so we can have more people taking care of themselves and discovering themselves. And you can see this also by the CrossFit affiliates that the common thread that I see amongst a lot of CrossFit affiliates and CrossFit owners. and then also it goes down to their membership basis and so on as just the the total enlightenment when it comes to um nutrition and exercise um you don't have that in any other let's say gym really so we are we are people. It's not only the education of nutrition and movement, but it's the social pressure. It's, it's, it's the same as going to church. You, you, you, you would hope that there's some social pressure.

You go to church every Sunday and, and, and you, you, the pressures from church might be like, don't cheat on your wife. Right. And the pressures from the CrossFit gym, which is the reason why we hang out with CrossFitters, is if you and I were all to go out to dinner, everyone would feel the social pressure to make sure that they made the right choices with their food. You know what I mean? And I've always enjoyed that. You don't go out with a bunch of CrossFitters and smoke cigarettes and drink Coke.

Yeah. Because there's a benevolent social pressure not to do those things yeah and um yeah and i think you know that's one part of it it's the social aspect of it um but again just the total insight of uh of uh nutrition and and exercise and health and all. I mean, I talk a lot about four different pillars that I preach in my gym. We have four different pillars. The pillars are exercise, nutrition, sleep, and community or social connections if we if you want and uh you want to have all of these on in balance but you also want to improve all of those because and this is uh i could take an

example so we can say if you're a bodybuilder for example you have you have an awesome exercise, right? Your physique is awesome. You sleep like a baby. Your nutrition is dialed in on the gram, you know? So you don't eat anything that you don't need and so on. But you have zero social connections. And this person is just going to be so unhappy he like his body's so happy but one of the biggest things in life is the social connection part um and how can we know that well there are obviously studies on looking at you know the denser network of people you have around you

uh the longer you live the less overweight you are and and so on but then also just the classical example of like looking into a prison if you're in the prison you would rather spend time with other like with people that are rapists um murderers and so on than being by yourself in solitude uh so that's how important it is to have other people even if you have the most murderous people around you you want to spend time rather with them than just being alone um so going back to this example of being this super fit bodybuilder we all know that these kind of guys or girls in the gym hanging out day and day and night in the gym to look good but it doesn't mean anything it doesn't give you self-confidence to look good only you need to have the social interactions to

to so you can grow on that uh in that space too and it doesn't have to be in the gym either always in that case but um well i as i as i tell people is like if you take these different pillars and then you basically give yourself a number so i can ask you this seven seven uh where would you give yourself on uh like an exercise on a scale from one to ten what would what would your score be uh to ten a ten and on your sleep uh seven and but but i will say this about my sleep i've i've started mixing in the last two weeks i've started mixing my beans every i mix my beans with decaf beans and regular beans and i've stopped drinking coffee uh coffee uh after the podcast and my sleep has skyrocketed because i'm in this crossfit community because i talk to people like you like now you've left an impact on me because you're one of my crossfit friends right and i'll be like fuck man ricard i'll walk away

being like ricard really puts an emphasis on sleep and i'll feel that and i'll be like, fuck, man, Ricard. I'll walk away being like, Ricard really puts an emphasis on sleep. And I'll feel that pressure. And I'll be like, I need to do that more. I need to put even more decaf. And since I've done that, I'm sleeping way better. Oh, crazy. Okay, so I get a 10. And I give myself a 10 on the exercise because I'm so committed. Maybe my exercise isn't the best, but my commitment level is a 15.

And that's fine. You don't have to be doing world records to have a 10 in exercise it's it's your perception of it and then i don't want to sleep that's the problem i want to i want to like to just do podcasts and kids it sucks i know how it is i feel like that's not wasting time sleeping but then then uh then you have the nutrition where are you on the nutrition. Where are you on the nutrition scale? Eight. Eight. And then the social scale? Oh, 75. I'm a fucking social god.

Okay. I'm at the top. I'm the apex social creature on the planet. Yeah. And so this is my hypothesis. Even though I hate people. So this is my hypothesis, right? this is my hypothesis right so if if you are then um unhappy in some way obviously we're going to start moving the the lowest number and try to fix that first i feel so much better when

because my sleep is getting better you're right yeah like it's like it's like so obvious i'm just calmer and nicer throughout the day yeah Yeah. And, and then, you know, we can come down to, uh, we say you are the bodybuilder guy and, um, you say social connections are good. Then I'll just ask you, but you're still feeling kind of miserable.

So I might ask you and I get into my Jordan Peterson shoes and ask you, um, so tell me how's your relationship with your parents oh and uh you do that with your clients uh i i do it sometimes i it's not that often i have to do it but uh definitely definitely sometimes we have to go there when people are, if they're open for it, you know. Yeah, I love that. That's a huge one. That's a huge one, your relationship with your parents.

That's a huge one. Yeah. And I've done this. You even have a relationship with your parents. I mean, right? Yeah. Because, and why do I ask that question is basically, well, most people, when they are crying about something, it always comes down to because my people don't even realize that until you ask them. And so many people are trying to fix the world in one sense before they fix those close relationships.

I think we could do so much or people would be much more happy if they were trying to fix those close relationships, you know, to begin with. Not to say that everything is fixable and doable, but you have to come to a close with those things. And when you do, you start to feel a relief and you can start focusing more on everything you want to focus on. Because as long as you have some kind of clouds there, they will take energy from you, whatever you're trying to pursue. You may have some sort of clouds there that will take energy from you. I always think of that as what you said right there is back in the day when everyone used to use PCs and you would get spyware on your PC, there would be these little programs running in the background. And your computer would just start really slowing down. And that's the metaphor for it, right? That's a great metaphor.

You have these thoughts running in your periphery and it might be frustration with your childhood and your parents or your wife and they basically bog down the whole system so but that's a great analogy you have you have brain viruses you have malware yeah malware in your brain um no awesome um i haven't thought about it from that way but this this is the this is the gift from social connections, right? You're sitting here, you know, 2,000 miles away, and we can exchange ideas. And that's the power of connections, power of social interactions. And they don't always have to be, you know, elevating in all directions. But, yeah, no, I just see that from, you know, that's what CrossFit has given me, you know.

It opened up my eyes to start developing in all these different areas. And I'm by no means like a perfect dude in in any of them but um at least you start to study stuff um and you start to notice um you know this momentum happening when it comes to your to your health well suddenly it starts to impact every part of your life, your career, your family, and all that stuff. And I like that part of when we look at exercise, just Peter Attia and Andrew Huberman and all these medical you know, medical experts and professors and so on. And they say, you know, there's no better drug for your brain than exercise.

There's no better drug for longevity than exercise. Like all the supplements you can think about and trying to do this, that and optimize, like the first question should be, do you even exercise that's the that's the most important thing not what you are supplementing or uh you know trying to have some certain special clothing or brands what would you consider do you think in a in a superficial sense um for me, when I think of exercising, I think of sweating as like – if I had to make this list of things to – like how do I know I exercise today? Well, because I sweat. So if I was in the backyard digging holes to plant fruit trees, it's not enough for me because I still have i'm still addicted to like some of the gym equipment you know i still want to be like in that space with the rubber floors and i want to do some

but as soon as i start sweating i think i've every day i've checked kind of that box do you what would you say is exercising um vigorous sweating too i'm not talking about one bead i'm talking about like holy shit my shirt stuck to me yeah exactly i think that that's a good uh litmus test i would say but uh if i would like to be more granular uh i would say it depends on the person we're talking about if it's somebody um that like we can take examples that i'm seeing now constantly after the lockdowns is that people are so broken they they come with broken backs they are they their their minds are broken and they are uh their bodies are so out of shape so for them training is really ours you really have seen an uptick in that like people walk in now let me

give this example there was a time when they would do fran at the l1s and the fastest times would be just anything under 10 minutes and it was like holy shit i can't believe people are now breaking the 10 minute barrier then all of a sudden you couldn't do a level one without someone doing a five minute fran then all of a sudden these fucking guys are setting world records at the l1 is it um is it did it go the opposite way for you during the pandemic before you used to come in and you your baseline workout for someone could be this and now it's like dude that would kill these new people um i would say yes are they they're all 20 pounds heavier on average the people who come in now than they did two years ago? Or what?

Give us something objective that you see. So objectively, yes. I mean, I speak to every guy that starts at our gym, starts with a consultation. They don't even start training because we have the experience now of what happens when people join training without having any kind of idea where they come from. So I have objective data on that. And the most common thing that people have been saying is that they've been adding about 20 pounds during the lockdowns. So 20 pounds, some people have added more some people maybe a bit less but 20 pounds has been like the uh 95 percent of everyone that joins the gym and um the difference has been now also what what we're just seeing not only from like new people coming but also from uh people that have been exercising and been doing stuff before they come back and they they just can't do as much like their their knees

their their their legs you know everything and especially like i said, with the back issues have just skyrocketed. So I have the feeling every second person is having a back issue right now. We used to be able to do a lot more, let's say, we have developed and we have become much better coaches due to that because we really have to take care of people when they start. Like, you know, they get so severe muscle soreness from lifting a 16-pound or 20-pound kettlebell 20 times. They get muscle soreness for a week. That's something new. But the good news is that we can see that we can change this within just a couple of weeks.

People quickly move up this health and sickness and wellness and health continuum. So we created something in our gym that we call the health and fitness map. And on this health and fitness map, we basically have four different things we are measuring so we have strength we have endurance we have gymnastics and we have holistic and what we can see is that like on if you're on the lowest levels on on this scale you're you're about to fall out of the wellness part of fitness and you will start you will be in the sickness continuum and what we can see is that people can move up this ladder so quickly and become like and get this kind of resilience when it comes to interior fitness and so on very quickly and so that's the good news like it doesn't take you years it takes you a couple of months and then you

just change so much of the outcome of what will happen and this is why i also like we created this map is to give people official uh confirmation of what they're actually doing because they don't understand like my friend time was 12 and now it's 10 they don't understand that but they understand like okay my health has improved this much now and um giving that's the good good news i would say we we have a lot of uh good news if people do do what they should be doing so coming back to your question what is exercise it comes down to are you noah olsen? Well, your exercising for you is going to be a totally different ballpark than someone like me or someone like my mom. Like for my mom, exercise is maybe some high intensity stuff two, three times a week and then the other days it is about like hitting 20 000 steps and doing some pharma carries and uh um yeah like my my mom follows as follows the protocol of doing

you know pass-throughs and and squats every day for every morning uh so exercise is going to look different for everyone but as soon as you start traveling up this health and fitness map, your exercise is also going to start to get more demanding. Like if you want to get into fitness, well, guess what? You will need to add more power to your workouts, more intensity to your workouts um more different domains of training too so but uh yeah let's see but the good litmus test is like have you been sweating this day and i think that's kalipa says that to his family right he's like we need to sweat once

a day i don't care what it is like if it's five minutes or 10 minutes or 15 we just need to sweat once a day. I don't care what it is. If it's five minutes or 10 minutes or 15, we just need to sweat once a day. Yeah. For me, it's the super metric. As my kids got... How old is your daughter? You have two daughters? Three. Three daughters?

Yeah. How old is your oldest daughter? She is eight. Does she sweat yet? Yeah. She's sweating. She's starting sweating, smelling. That's awesome. My oldest son has just turned eight, and he has just started sweating to where it drips off his head.

And I always celebrate that with him because as a child, I hated sweating. Yeah. But again, they're surrounded by this. So my daughters, they don't do any CrossFit or so yet. But like my daughter here, we're seeing this video here. She has been in the gym since she's very small and grew up with that. So she's asking me all the time, do I get muscles when I do this? Do I get strong when I do this?

Yeah, my kids do that too. I'm getting stronger, right? Yeah. And this video is the first time when she did snatches and cleaning jerks. She's never done that before. So she's obviously seen us do squats and everything. So she has some kind of idea. We have this steel container that I always put a gallon of water in when we leave the house.

And when I carry it, I'll ask the boys to carry it. Sometimes they'll be like it's too heavy and i'll be like okay good because i i know that when i i tell them when i carry that i get stronger yeah so thank you i want to get stronger today and then they take it from me they're like really you get stronger by carrying this i go oh yeah from the car to there you definitely get stronger and then they then they want to take turns carrying it. It's so easy to coach them. It's so easy. Yeah. I was thinking of creating my own Instagram, the three playing girls.

But it just has a different type of vibe when you have the playing girls in the title. Yeah. Right. Right. Good point. Good point. Good point. Very good point.

I have to figure out something else. Three exercising girls. Three healthy girls. Three healthy girls. Yeah. How long have you been an affiliate? We're turning six next month. And has the name always been Escapist CrossFit? That's your one and only gym? That's the one and only. And yeah, we were two founders. Do you still have a partner uh silently yes okay are you are you okay with that do you feel like you made a mistake uh no no

i wouldn't have the gym if uh it wouldn't be without him. So definitely not. And when you open it, it's in Berlin. It is in Berlin. And we're that's like, we're very central and very close to the shopping mile. We're like, let's say a hundred yards from the Apple store and stuff like that. Wow. Wow.

But it's very, I want to, I want to, I want to throw something out there, what he just said. So you guys don't understand what that means. On average, I don't know if this is exactly true, but bear with me, people on average, the Apple stores around the world make more money per square foot than almost any other store in the world by far. It is fucking nuts. And there was this area when i lived in

berkeley it was called fourth street promenade and it was two blocks and it was what used to be the fucking ghetto the dredges down by the railroad tracks and they started opening up these little boutiques down there like a coffee shop boutique a little sushi place a breakfast place and eventually it became these two blocks that were just in this fucking shithole not Not the ghetto in terms of like an active ghetto with like a lot of homes, but I'm talking about like where all the homeless people went to live by the homeless tracks. And it was these two blocks and the businesses did pretty well, but, but, but they would shift. You would see people would struggle there and not make it. Then they opened an Apple store down there and the foot traffic and the amount of people that then come what that

does to an ecosystem is supercharged the fuck out of it basically let's say you only used to have uh three thousand people visit your block uh on on any given day now on any given day it's six thousand people so the guy peddling coffee, everything, everyone's shit just doubles. Anyway, so I understand the profundity of what you're saying when you say you're near the Apple store. That means there's a shitload of foot traffic. Yeah, not on our street particularly, but... Don't ruin my story. Don't ruin my story. But we're very, yeah, that's a good restaurant. But it's very close to where everything is. So just a bunch of people living everywhere. But we're a very small gym. So if we would compare this, I think we're like 1,800 square feet,

something like that. So it's not huge. So we can't fit a bunch of people into the gym. And also one thing that most people don't recognize when you're very central, when you're very much inside the city is that people have also more options. So obviously we have a bunch of different gyms close to us we have the other affiliates close to us we have all kind of boutique stuff going on and so people are obviously getting constantly distracted in our area which is like the difference when i talk to affiliates let's say that are more rural

it's usually like well there's not really that much to do here so when people start doing crossfit they they start doing that every day because they don't have that many distractions and in the city when you're dead center well that's a lot of distractions. So people are like, yeah, I'm going to maybe do CrossFit once a week. And then I'm doing this and that and the other days. And so, yeah, it's different. But I would say our demographic, like in our gym, we're getting close to having like an average age of 45 to 50 wow and uh we do like a ton of personal training uh nutrition coaching and stuff like that so it's definitely like also developed a lot now during the uh during the last years.

I also work, I'm a mentor at Two Brain Business. So I work a lot with the other gyms here in Europe. And so I have a pretty good insight in what's happening within these communities over here. And like generally speaking, the communities are going, yeah, there we are. The communities are getting older. But yeah, in one sense, that's great. Like the best story I have this year is like a 78 year old woman who has been on

opiates for the last 15 years, hasn't been able to sleep for the last 10 years. And because of her chronic back pain. And after three months of training with us, she could get off the meds. How did she walk into the gym? She came via another member, her son. And her son trusted us enough to say like, hey, can you help out? Do you have any way? She has never done anything in her life she's never exercised uh and uh but it's the it's the simple methods of like what greg glassman has uh talked about is that there's uh there's no difference in the training really or like in the in the movements like a joint is a joint. It needs to be doing the same thing. It doesn't matter if you're five years old or if you're 50 or 100.

A joint is going to move in these directions, and you will need to be using them. And it's the same principles of core to extremity. And it's the functional movements that means just you know being able to pick something up uh put it on your shoulders and put it overhead so when yeah ricard when you get a 78 year old member i'm going to give you three choices are you like oh shit fuck this is going to take too many resources or B, okay, just get in line. It's just another client or C, oh, this is fucking awesome. I cannot, but I cannot, we are so lucky to have the opportunity to work with, with this woman. This is like, it's like if you're being

a cook and you got a new ingredient, it becomes a fruit comes in season and you're like, oh, it's here. Tomatoes are back in season, fresh in season and you're like oh it's here tomatoes are back in season fresh tomatoes and you're just so excited yeah i know that's definitely this the third option you really are right i mean i would think if you're a fucking world-class trainer you see someone who comes in who's 78 and you're just you can't even believe what you especially if they've been addicted to opiates for 15 years the worse the better right i mean you're looking for a big rock that you can start chiseling on and make your thinker.

I mean, yes. So from my perspective and the perspective of the coaches, is that, look, the best clients are the ones that we can make these life-changing stuff on. So they might be overweight or they're just very poor fitness, like they've gotten very old or they're very young. They need to start developing and moving with kids and so on. It's so exciting. It's crazy, right?

And I'm less excited about the ones who are like, yeah, they want to do a competition or something like that. I'm like, yeah, that's not our affiliate. And I'm very open with that. I'm just saying, like, if you want to do competitions or anything, this is not the gym. We simply don't focus on that. That would be a distraction from what we should be doing. How did your paths cross? For those of you who don't know, Caleb put up a picture of Chris Cooper. He's the owner of Two Brain Business. Boy, I know I speak in hyperbole, but Chris is truly one of the most generous, coolest people that I've got to hang out with. He is so, I don't know how to, he's almost angelic. He's a really

great dude. And he is also, I think the owner of the largest gym consulting business on planet earth on the rock that we're on. How did you, how did you end up meeting him? And so, so go ahead. So how did you end up meeting him? I i met him because i i also have a podcast and i when we opened up the gym the first thing what's the name of your podcast escapist corner okay it's in german right english oh it is okay yeah so we started out with uh the first thing we did when we opened the the gym was to start a podcast because I felt like, hey, I need to spread a message. And the first one we got on the podcast was Carl Pauli. And then I've had, you know, all these old, yeah, old timers like Kelly Starrett. And He's my man crush, by the way.

Very fair. And a lot of great people. It just gave me the best excuse to open up new doors. I reached out to Chris Cooper. That was 2018. So your gym was two years old at that time? Yeah, something like that. One and a half or so. I reached out to him and took him on the podcast. And we talked about what can gyms learn from other industries? And, you know, what can other industries learn from the gym industry and so on?

And then I met him a couple of months later in Stockholm at Coaches Congress. Why did you go to that? Why did you go to the Coaches Congress? Were you already a member of? Of Two Brain? No, no, no. I went there. Yeah, I know why I went there. I think it was because Greg Glassman is coming to Stockholm. Awesome. I need to go there. And our gym also had developed a lot, a lot thanks to Two Brain already. With the free stuff they gave out. Yeah.

Yeah. Like his books. So already there. And then after the coaches Congress, we made a, you know, the gym took a major change uh because of the impact of what you heard there yeah yeah um from the impact talking to other owners talking to uh chris

cooper uh talking to um uh yeah just the the the synergy of like minds, I would say. And I went there also for the purpose because I had my podcast. So I also wanted to bring some people on the podcast, which I did. I think Rory McKernan was on it. And Jim Kroll, who was back then, he was the CEO of OPEX and, you know, got these connections. And then I, you know, been in contact with Two Brain and everything since then. But it was not, yeah, let's say that's like the short story. yeah let's say that that's that's like the short story and um um yeah i can just uh say the same like uh since then getting to know uh coop uh better and better and and meeting him

obviously a couple of times and you and you work for them now you're a mentor i work for them now which is uh crazy it's a crazy honor because I can, you know, my impact has just changed dramatically. The impact you have on the community? On the community, yes. Because right now, what's happening, like my mind back then when we opened up the gym was to open up several gyms because I wanted to change the world. I still will. I still want to change the world. I still will. I still want to. You are.

And you are. And now I'm able to do that, you know, without opening my own gyms, but to help other people become better with theirs. And, you know, the last couple of years have not been easy on the gym industry. So, um, a lot of gyms are talking about, they want to close. They're on the verge of, you know, many have de-affiliated because they can't pay the fee for the affiliation. And, uh, it's just not right. And, and it's not right that the best thing we have for human health right now is about to close in many parts in these small towns and so on it's like no and uh many people think

like you know when it comes to two brain or so on is like either it's like we we don't want to follow anyone else's rules which i understand like we are crossfitters so we are disagreeable by nature so we don't want to have any rule books from anyone else um and we don't want to be a big franchise we want don't want to be that and that's uh and that's uh the same thing i think. And then they have the opposite. You might have gyms that are super successful already, but their definition of successful might be a bit off. So Two Brain obviously has like the and I don't know where Chris Cooper got this, but I think it comes a lot from his own mentors actually that has leveled up his thinking so much more to understand where you are as an entrepreneur and when it comes to the guys who are thinking about a franchise it is like yeah this is so far away from being a franchise because

it's all about the dna you put in into your gym and on top of that is uh the guys who are then being successful by the dna of your gym you mean the the culture of your gym the culture of your gym it is and whatever you think is important for your gym you know so whether it's to be a competition gym or a social gym or i guess like you were saying before these the the four metrics um you know you could you i mean this isn't a perfect fit but like is the culture gym exercise nutrition sleep or community or is it all of them or what culture are you going for is it competition is it yeah well is it is it crossfit is it yoga is it something else like whatever you want to put into it um it that's uh totally up to you and and it's totally up to you know you're you're baking the cake the only thing that um

that two brain or the only thing but a big thing that two brain gives to many gyms is for the the ones who are trying to bake a cake and they don't really have any ingredients that's one thing and then you have the guys who are baking cakes but they have no idea how many cakes they need to bake and they don't know when they've done baking or whatever so they um you have all these different people on different scales. But again, the true gift I have from this is just the great impact in the entire world and mostly for me than Europe. aligns with my purpose of why I opened up the gym and why I also want to these gyms to be successful because it's just going to change so many more lives essentially and yeah and coming back to the coaches congress thing is that since that had an impact on me i also decided to uh or decided i asked like hey can't we do this in germany too uh so we moved that to berlin and we're gonna have the first one

now in december uh congratulations yeah uh so uh i hope i can Sounds like a lot of work. Sounds like a lot of work. It is not too hard because, again, it is I do this by passion, but I also do it with knowing a lot. And thanks to Two Brain, I just know much more where I am at. where I am at. So for example, I don't want to take time from me being able to put my girls to bed and stuff like that. So I value my time that I need to have for my family a lot. And because I just know that's a core value that I have. And I wouldn't take the coaches Congress on top of that, if I didn't know that I have the time for it. So thanks to, thanks to mentoring and thanks to the work we've been doing there.

You know, I don't, I can choose much more what I want to do with my time. So I'm not locked into, you know, having to do anything if I don't want to do with my time so i'm not locked into you know having to do anything if i don't want to um yeah so that that's the the power of so now hopefully i can have even more impact by doing that and i'm not alone so uh that also helps uh i have two great partners that are

pulling that uh with us so that's that's great uh travis says from vindicate how has kelly not been on the show he has been on the show he has one of the first episodes i would say like he has been on the show episode is it go ahead episode seven or so wow wow look at that brain uh 18 wow um oh i i'm not sure what this is if you you were near Fort Wayne, Indiana this coming weekend, stop by the Masters Fitness Collective. I thought that was in December. I thought that was in December. I was talking to Jason Grubb. I wanted to have him on the show before that happens.

Ricard, if I recall correctly, Chris Cooper himself is no longer affiliated, his personal gym. I don't know if that's accurate, but I think it is. Why do you still stay affiliated? Why do you still pay your affiliate dues? I think I still do it because I don't see that we're doing anything else right now i mean yes we're doing a lot of stuff at our gym that are not maybe a typical crossfit gym but anyways we i still we think we we breathe in and eat a lot of like the crossfit stuff and um of course that's something i i always will continue to evaluate and you have to like you should be constantly looking into is this the right thing

i'm doing right uh is this uh am i getting value for, and so on? And I I can just maybe your values change, too. Right. Let's say you own a McDonald's and you love running your McDonald's. And then all of a sudden you realize that those those hamburgers you're selling actually hurt the environment, but you love hamburgers. And so you want to pivot to a business where it doesn't because now you have a core value where you want to make support sustainable farming. So you close your you change your McDonald's name and you change where you get your meat from. I mean, for example, right? So it could be just you change your values too, right? Yeah, definitely.

I think you pay your affiliate dues because I think, first of all, I don't think you know why. I'm totally open to being wrong. I'm just being aggressive here bear with me i don't think you know why and i think it has to do with something deep-seated in you that your parents gave you that um hovers around the word integrity it can be yeah but you you definitely yeah i mean it comes down to that right so right now we're we are thinking and doing crossfit we talk about crossfit all the time uh we're not so particularly like following and interested in maybe everything that goes on with like the crossfit games but uh again that's what we talk about and what about cap are you do you use cap uh we don't use cap but not because they're bad

uh i think we would definitely also use cap it was just uh i heard it's wonderful i heard it's wonderful but but some people other people are very dogmatic and they'll say hey you shouldn't open a gym unless you're unless you want to do your own programming so there's these but i've heard nothing but good things about the actual um uh product that they're offering yeah i think we would have been using cap by now if it wasn't that uh back when cap started my the the lore of of the gym wasn't me so uh i didn't get access to the programming at the beginning and because they gave out like six months of programming uh in the first yeah in the first six months when they started and back then we should have we would have probably just used it uh now we're using something uh that is called beyond rx uh and we did it also as an

experiment to see so the most important thing when it comes to coaching and so on is to is to see like is this like giving results and uh so we just did an experiment where we said, look, let's try how it is to do, you know, generic programming for a couple of months and see if it brings any results. And does anyone even notice that we're changing to a generic program, you know? And the answer is like, nobody cared. Nobody noted. And people are getting fit. And the answer is like, nobody cared. Nobody noted. And people are getting fit. Like they're constantly getting stronger and they're getting better endurance and so on.

And we still have like small tweaks and so on on the programming. And I have a good coach who's doing that. So I definitely think, and this is is uh again from my perspective and then more as a mentor looking at a lot of gyms like a gym owner who is who is not being able to see his kids because he he's overwhelmed with work or whatever it might be the first thing he should be doing is giving away the programming so he has more time to to grow the gym or spend time with the family like you uh i've seen this countless of times people putting way too much time into the programming and at the end of the

day you know those members don't care. It's not the programming that is, let's say, it's not the reason why people come into the gym because they have no idea about the programming when they start. Like many of the people that come to my gym, they don't even see the gym. They don't even ask what we're going to do. They're just curious, like, am I going to be able to lose weight that that's it yeah so some people are kind of amazed when when they ask when they ask me and they they ask me like but you show them the gym right i'm like actually i don't like many times uh new members that come in they never even see any of the weights they have never they haven't seen the workout room nothing and they sign a contract and they're ready to go when someone comes to you

and they say hey should i be like what let's say you're mentoring a gym and they say hey should i keep paying the affiliate fees do you walk them through some sort of like 10-step process to see if it's right for them are there questions for that is there a protocol for that uh not from not from the side of two brain but uh like we we don't put so much um emphasis on you know questioning if it's they should be doing crossfit or doing opex or whatever they might be doing. What we're looking at is more like, obviously, the metrics. And then it's up to you. You know, you have, we say, you might be in this kind of valley of doubt, let's say, and you come to me and you talk to me and I might just ask you,

so do you feel like you need to think about this? Yes. Okay. Then make evaluation if this is alongside your core values and so on, and then we can get on with it. And then when it comes to the financial part of it, like being able to pay the affiliate fee and so on, there's no two-brain gym really that has that kind of thought, let's say that kind of problem that,

Oh, I'm not going to be able to pay the affiliate fee because those, those, that money is not big money for, for the two brain gyms. I mean, some gyms, when they start with two brain,

for sure, they're like on the, on the brink of the, you know, some gyms, when they start with two brain, for sure, they are like on the brink of the closure. But very quickly, they are able to get out of that hole. And that's the beauty of it. And when it comes to the affiliate fee, this is like the thing, right? So they might sit there and they think about like, should I pay the affiliate fee? Should I stay committed and so on? And just asked them do you want to then they're like yes

okay cool but you could just ask crossfit if you could maybe postpone this for one month and you can pay it next month uh so you can stay affiliated but obviously you have a bigger fire to put out right now and this way you know just giving somebody the idea that they can actually just call call someone or email someone and just ask for you know for some time uh that could be also with the landlord or something else where they need to have some you know just to push like, well, call them, ask them. And then you have your answer. When I go to the store, I pay $10 and I walk away with a bag of apples. Let me go back just a little bit. There was a point towards the end there when Greg owned the company that I heard these words come out of his mouth that the affiliate fee was basically a brand loyalty payment which is which is which is a pretty wild thing to say

but i think that there might be some serious truth in it and um the same way like someone might donate money to like the sierra club that's like some group that like wants to save trees in the united states right like it's some it's somehow you feel like you're contributing to the to the betterment of some ideology or methodology that you believe in and you want to see you want to see better but then greg had to figure out well what's he going to do um in the most superficial way what's he going to do with all that money that comes in from the affiliates and he had these three things that he said he was going to do. He was going to educate, litigate, and legislate. And basically he was going to fight off and educate, continue to educate the trainers all around the world, whether CrossFit or not, and litigate. And not educate necessarily in a traditional sense like, hey, this is the better way to do the squat.

But hey, look, there's enemies over the horizon. Coca-Cola is spreading the the message of exercise is medicine and it may sound good to you but it's actually fucked up or this company over here in new zealand is trying to put a worldwide fee on all trainers and licensure get licensure for all trainers so he started doing that um and and i i think only and some of the stuff that he he did was incredible and it will impact the world forever in terms of protecting trainers but i don't think i only think a small percentage of the crossfit gyms know that he did that maybe probably less than five percent and i don't blame

them they're they're training people but i see this these new there's a there's a new team in town and and that's going to be a tough thing for them to grapple with because most of the world comes from, hey, I'm trying to sell you M&Ms or I'm trying to sell you a bag of apples or I'm trying to sell you my services to wash your car. And this thing that HQ is doing, collecting money from these affiliates, I mean it's an incredible brand it's so resilient it shit does not stick to this brand it is uh um and and the product but the products are greg put his arm around jason kleba after the 2008 crossfit games and he said this is the product and so it's a trip does anyone have their head wrapped around, you think, exactly the model that's being used here? I mean, it's fascinating. No, I don't think so.

But you touch a good point there. And I think, speaking of the future of CrossFit and so on, I think definitely this legal part is one thing that has to be. When you say legal, you mean people not opening gyms near you with the word CrossFit on it and not paying money? Is that what you mean by legal? Maybe that, but also the, let's say, what I mean, and I've talked to as a CrossFit legal about this too, is like, Hey, I think from a marketing point of view, it would be good for CrossFit to be able to just show and especially show the affiliates that we're actually doing this amount of work to help you to protect your brand, and from whatever you know there is so there

are so many companies trying to use the just the name and watering the brand basically and that becomes it right so when the point comes to where people are going to use crossfit as a generic term for something that is high intensity, then it's going to be super hard to defend that brand. Then they will need to let go and say, sorry, we can't defend that anymore. And then any gym will be able to use that. Do you see that happening anywhere?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, we've seen tendencies to that in in germany for sure and i guess other like european countries too but that would be the death blow to the company i mean it wouldn't be the death blow to crossfit but it would be the death blow to the company if they lost the trademark if it got uh if it became a generic trademark like football that would be the end of exactly and and like and people might ask what's the problem with that and so on and i i think oh it would not be good it does not it's not good it's basically there would be no caretakers anymore exactly and basically anything could be called that and that is obviously something that some people are saying is a concern and so on.

But already with like, hey, anyone can take an L1 and open affiliate and so on. And yes, that's true. But on the other side, it is a very stupid person that does an L1 and starts something CrossFit and doesn't do CrossFit. I like to spend that money, that effort, and to run an affiliate. To see it as a business rather than a passion and a business is just ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, basically, we see all these people with the passion, with their businesses and everything, and it's not easy work.

So it doesn't make any sense for anyone to do it and try to malevolently break crossfit and make make it make the world uh the word go bad so um you know that argument doesn't really hold but we um we will have to see what happens. But what I mean is like CrossFit has to, obviously in my opinion, where they can gain more trust is to show how much work they're doing behind the scenes on like taking down all these other brands that are trying to use it.

And that way the affiliates feel that there might be a bit, you know, protection around them. I would like to state, pat myself on the back. In 2018, before they fired the media team in 2017, 18, I was working directly, my team of a hundred people, the media team at CrossFit Inc was working directly with Marshall Brenner, who is one of the classiest human beings I've ever met in my life. He's the current general counsel for CrossFit Inc. And we would do weekly reports showing where we were bad, where we were taking people down all over the United States. That was something when there was a media team, we had just started doing

because we heard stuff like that from you, Ricard. We wanted to show at first we were like, okay, we're just going to keep our head down and work. But then we realized, okay, we need to show people we stopped five gyms over here from using CrossFit. We told them they couldn't put it on their shoes. That can be done. What you're saying is totally feasible. I just don't think they have the manpower for it anymore.

Yeah, it might be that. But just you don't have to do any creative in that sense. You don't have to do any like creative in that sense. You don't have to put out videos if you want to want to just send an email saying, this is what we've done. And then a pat on the back, maybe for on some affiliates that have been vocal helping out with that.

And that might, you know, encourage other ones to take more action too. But raising a kid, reward them for their good behaviors yeah exactly um but yeah uh i think i mean some people uh are also thinking about like yeah is this is the growth slowing down is it blah blah blah and you have to think of it in the big terms of how it really looks out there. I was thinking in these terms, to change the lives of 3% of the city, like in Berlin, just in my town, in my town to be able to change the life of three percent of the population in this city we would need at least 700 affiliates just in this town so so and right now we're like 20 25 which what you're saying is is that there's room for shit loads of growth yeah and we could have one in every block basically and uh and basically and this is how I see the evolution of it.

And somewhere, again, aligned with Chris Cooper and so on, is that we want to get the people into the gym and make it sticky so they stay for a couple of years. Because what's going to happen when they've been training for at least two, three years is that it becomes a routine. They got a lot of the education of like what movements to do. They get an idea of like how to do a Metcon by themselves. They get an idea of how to build strength. They also have an idea now how to eat better.

They get an idea of how to build strength. They also have an idea now how to eat better. And what's going to happen is that these people, if they quit my gym after three years, they will go and start training by themselves in their own gym at home. And they will start infecting other people with this. So there's just abundance of people in that sense that we can change so um again have getting the people inside the gym get them to stick for a couple of years and then it would be easier for people to have an idea how to do this by themselves i'm not saying that everyone is going to do abc like this some people will always need to have the gym um and what's most likely going to happen is rather that people that start the gym it gets sticky they will pull in their

family their friends they will start affecting them so they will start to go to a gym and um and this gym becomes you know one point of contact uh not anymore for losing 20 pounds of overweight but actually to have the social connections i talked about because right now people are mostly talking like this over uh phones and digitally and texting and whatever but they're never actually seeing anyone uh and i had a guy last week who was like that he was like i'm looking for a gym because i don't see anyone during the week i have no one i'm meeting so i want to be clear about something else too. It's okay for whatever reason you come into the gym.

If you're a 17 year old boy and you think you're never, and you were just like me and no girl's ever going to like you, it's perfectly okay to go to a CrossFit gym and start working out to get girls to like you. This is 100% valid. You were put on this fucking planet to fucking look beautiful be healthy and serve your fellow man and to procreate that's it that's it that's all i just summed it up for you and if you don't understand that there's a book called the bible you could read it that one helps seems to

help a lot of people that being said when someone like matt fraser who tells us he only came into this fucking game is to make fucking money, don't forget that it doesn't matter because Matt still was able to – one of his friends saw what Matt was doing and lost 100 pounds, and Matt will tell you that story. His dad changed his diet and maybe saved his dad's life. Matt maybe came in for the most superficial reasons, which are cool. I like it. I like drag racing. It's okay if a car, you can't go to the grocery store in it, but it can go 300 miles an hour. Cool. There's a place for everything.

But this program is so fucking potent that even if you came in for one reason, the value of it will spread like it did to Matt's friends. His friend lost 100 pounds. His dad saved his life by changing his nutrition. Matt didn't come to this program for that. He was trying to win weekend competitions for $500. That's how powerful this fucking thing is. Yeah. And as I said, when we started, is that everyone has different goals when they come in.

But many of them don't even know their real goal. Right. Right. Right. So, um, what I do is... I didn't know my goal. I, I, I, I'm 15. I'm still, I'm, it wasn't until I had kids that I understood my goal. I guess kind of my goal is I worked out so that I could eat. I was kind of in that camp. You know what I mean? Like if I ate something bad, I would work out a little more. Now it's just, I just need to be able to just not have a hurt back like you're saying so that i can drive my kids around and carry them and shit yeah exactly and it becomes um um and that's the thing with when you become a parent is like your number one priority uh becomes very clear and that's very helpful deadlifts irrelevant now it's fucking irrelevant yeah and and uh and

there's something uh super important with this and it comes down to this kind of goal setting and everything is that when you know an absolute priority it becomes easier to say what's my second and third and fourth and um and you can start saying no to stuff that are not in this priority list and you're right sometimes i do still even though i said deadlift's not a priority every six months it'll creep in and i'll be like maybe i should try to lift 225 for some reps and like some of the lower priorities you know climb back in i like that yeah yeah so so i think we we definitely need that and this is where i also see the importance of coaching like us from the affiliate part and from the coaches part is that your your mission as a coach and where you can really drive value as a coach is not

only by showing how somebody who how to coach and how to coach and how to squat and how to deadlift and how to eat less refined carbs or any refined carbs. The value you can really bring in coaching is also coaching people to understand their why. And when you do that, people get so much bought in. So, for example, somebody who is, like you said, doesn't have maybe kids, but is more there for the looks or might be there for their career. But when you start to map that out and you ask them,

so tell me what is the most important for you right now. Is it your career or is it your studies or whatever it is? for you right now? Is it your career or is it your studies or whatever it is? It's like, yeah, yeah. I want to become successful in a successful lawyer or something. Okay, cool. So do you think you will get there faster if you're fitter or if you're less fit? Which person will get there faster? Is it the fit one or is it the unhealthy, unfit one? Oh, you made a post about that, which was great. Yes. It showed two men next to each other.

And you said, which one do you think? Yeah. Which one will get there faster? Right. And everyone that I ask this question, they are like, well, I guess, yeah, get there faster. Right. And everyone that I ask this question, they are like, well, I guess, yeah, the fit one. Like, okay, so now you know why you need to exercise. The one that exercises better, eats better, sleeps better,

and has a better community around them of support. Yeah. Get there faster. Yeah. And so you will get to your goal. You will become a great lawyer. You will be the best boss, whatever you might be, caretaker. And when they understand that, they understand like, okay, so I exercise not to look good, not to lose weight, but it's to actually boost my career.

I don't want to, you know, I want to get there as quickly as possible. And sometimes it's like, okay, so where do you want to live? Do you want to, and they might say, I want to live in a house. I want to live at the beach. Okay. So what do you need to get to get there? Well, get a better job, blah, blah, blah. Okay. So do you think you will get a better job if you're slightly fitter or who is going to get there faster just fit one or the the the unhealthy and and uh overweight guy oh yeah becomes clear so um putting that into context people start to prioritize uh their exercise a bit more. And I think that's where the coach can help coaching those people. And again, we have the possibility,

we have the opportunity that almost nobody else has, and it's to see people on a regular basis. And we can, like Chris Cooper talks about, and we do this a lot in mentoring, it's like we call it the pringles method we take one pringles at a time and that's the greatest junk food ever made so it doesn't get any of the attention it deserves man those are crazy yeah so so you take one pringle at a time and you know you gain speed um and the same thing we can do when it comes to knowledge and affiliate is that we can spread and have this impact piece by piece.

I really love your, there's this sprinkling of everything you say shows that your appreciation of the position you're in and the reflectiveness of the impact you can have on that world. That last line you just said, there's a bunch of them in this podcast, but where you say, we get those people on a regular basis, and we can have influence on them to make their lives better. That's like a tremendous responsibility. No, it's better than that. It's a, what an honor, what a cool thing to be able to do and not squander. If you're a coach and you squander that, you'll look back in 10 years and be like, oh, fuck. It's kind of like when you'd be mean to like the best girlfriend you ever had. And you look back and you're like, God, I was an asshole.

It's like that. If you get to see the same 50 people every day, man, you could change the world. Yeah. Just reading like one quote to them or having them do something or leaving every person there with something where they go out with an extra smile. That's a magnifier of 50. Yeah. And there's not many places where people have that. And we have that. And that's why I'm so, you know, evangelical about it in one sense,

because I know the impact it has. And I also understand the true value of it is that people are underestimating the value of what we're doing so much. Like I'm saying this from both perspectives. So from the user, from our many clients are undervaluing what this is all about. But also a lot of the coaches for somebody that is over 30 is like $400 and upwards per month for your fitness. That doesn't mean that you have to have like a membership that is 400 bucks, but that might be like a $200 membership somewhere,

but then you have to add another 200 on your health and fitness, at least. We're talking about your health. We're talking about the most essential thing in your life and the thing that will make you the most money going forward no there's nothing else that will make you more money than being healthy yeah so and living a long time invest in that uh rather than you know whatever because we're investing in a lot of things like your your uh rent and cars and whatever people have but uh you know the thing that's going to move you the fastest is is you and and the the well-being of you so um i don't know i haven't really thought about like the metric of should it be a certain percentage of what you're uh what

you're earning uh slash your your age but i would say like most people are just undervaluing that sum and i think that for coaches point of perspective they should actually start questioning the people that are coming into the gym and asking them, are you investing enough in your health? Like, and start educating people like, you know, you probably should be investing 500 bucks a month in your health. It doesn't have to be a 500 bucks membership, but it has to be at least, you know, with the food, whatever things you're doing, that is at least going to sum up to 500 bucks. And now for some people, it might be exercise at the beginning, like invest 500 bucks in your training,

because that's where you're lacking the most in these four pillars, right? So you might need to level up there a bit faster at the beginning and then you can start to uh divide this uh pool of money to having better sleep or social connections or whatever it might be i'm so glad you brought this up that's really gonna upset some people but that's okay because you know why it's okay because the the point wasn't the number four hundred dollars the point was is that you need to think about that who cares like if you're writing in the youtube comments what a fucking uh elitist asshole four hundred dollars but it doesn't matter you you missed the point the point is that you need to be thinking about how much you're investing and where you prioritize

it um ricard i have to pee so bad i'm gonna pop but i have to ask you this question and take your time no pressure it's okay to pee in your pants tomorrow I'm going to have Don Fall on he seems remarkable special operations guy from the Marine Corps Marine Recon I think he completely understands

chain of command it was those military guys and that mindset that allowed Crossfit to grow so fast because we all trusted each other and we all believed in each other and we were all there culturally for the same reasons but we had a smooth operating machine and and um and it was pretty incredible and that all went away in 2018 when they tried to make it so that the company was flat it was it was a complete fucking disaster but that being said um he keeps talking about his goal he i think his exact words were something along the lines like i'm dogmatic

about one thing and that's growth and when i hear that i i really like when i hear that i i get a little it's a trigger word for me same with like marketing greg told us never market anything marketing is when i'm trying to sell you something i should always just be improving my product I get a little, it's a trigger word for me. Same with like marketing. Greg told us never market anything. Marketing is when I'm trying to sell you something. I should always just be improving my product. That's what we did in CrossFit. And when I hear Don say he wants growth, when I hear him explain it, I agree with him.

Yeah, it needs growth. And he talks about some of the things that needs to be done with that or how it can be done. But if you were in chargeo if you were to give don advice on how to grow crossfit do you have any thoughts on that on what he should do to help it grow or do you not even like that word um is that focusing on the wrong thing like hey instead of making the tree grow i should i should be making it healthy is that is it wrong mindset? I'm trying to understand. well, let's say measurable in one sense. I get this a lot, I mean, from the two brain point, but I think there just needs to be a clear vision, right? And that vision can be wrong,

but there has to be something we can test, you know, something that we can drill, something that we can put on under stress and see if that really holds right and if that vision is you know a number uh in in affiliates then that might be it but the question is like okay how do we get there what is the method that brings us there and you talked about like improving the product. Or the media. Scream from the mountaintops.

Continue Greg message. We have the cure for the world's most vexing problem. And the byproduct then would be growth. Yeah. So from my point of view. I think where. And this is where. All the affiliates are simply not. We're not the best uh media companies right

and this is where like so many of the videos that you did back in the day they changed a lot of the perception of what crossfit was um but all it spread the message because nobody like you could have the best product in the world. And this is where I think Greg didn't consider. But if you didn't have the media part in CrossFit Inc. back in the day when you started filming these grainy videos of girls doing pull-ups and so on, there would not be a big CrossFit today. You can have the greatest product, but if nobody knows about it, then obviously it's not going to spread.

And I understand from the point of view of an affiliate is that you don't need to have 5,000 clients. Your gym maybe needs 100 to 150 clients to be successful. And you don't need to focus on how many Facebook ads are you doing or how many whatever ads marketing-wise. What you have to focus on is actually talking to your members and and that's also marketing right you you're talking to your members you're creating the connections that is marketing but it's also uh obviously every day you have to deliver a good product yeah and um so from a filler point of view they need to to, of course, talk to their clients and do their affinity marketing. What's that word you used? Affinity marketing? What's that mean?

Well, affinity is basically the closest connections to your business, your members, uh and their families and so on and so that that is and that is what don said we need to get there needs to be more word of mouth and better media i think those were like his two things which is really going back to the old way that's what it was yeah i mean uh i think it was last no no, this year, this year in April, we had coaches Congress in Stockholm. And that was where Gary Gaines also said and announced like, okay, he was about to announce that Dave is back, but he had to kind of take that back, but he was about to announce that. But then he said, CrossFit is going back to the 100 words of fitness.

That's where we're going to go. And this is what we're going to weigh everything. Is this aligned with this? Right. So basically also how I understood that was also that like the contracts with Monster and so on or Coca-Cola, contracts with Monster and so on, or Coca-Cola, those contracts will not get extended because it doesn't align with the message in those 100 words of fitness.

And so that was a good surprise. Now, from my point of view, what should Don do and everything, I obviously don't have the insights that he has and so on. But yeah, I think what something needs to happen in all affiliates is we need to spread stories about what we're doing. And the more stories we get there, the more people can relate to these stories,

the more people we get there the more people can relate to these stories the more people will get curious and they also see that it's not only about uh the looks and and uh it's it's not another just gym program in that sense um so um it will will help and uh and uh open up the eyes for more and more people when we do that and uh again uh i would i would definitely say like when it comes to growth i i i like growth uh and if it's for the great a good reason why not uh again it's not growth because of the sense of growth but it's like okay why are we growing? Why is this then important? Well, important is because we saw now how we see how obesity is going up.

We see all these metrics going in the wrong way. And we're the counterweight to that. We're the guys who can make a difference to this but that also means we need to have more people on the ground more people more foots on the boots on the ground doing this job and how do we do that well create like support create more affiliates make it more accessible well how do we do that well we need to empower our coaches we need to give them um more tools make it maybe even easier educate them more um and then of course like from the part of um point of view from like

to brain is like yeah have sustainable businesses so the businesses don't don't close um because it's not sustainable to have you know an owner basically earning less than a tag cap driver for years and he is he's not going to be able to support his family and uh and so on no it has to be everyone needs to be thriving and they should because man you're changing the world you should be thriving you uh yeah and not be apologetic about it definitely not be apologetic about it um uh i would like to propose to crossfit uh inc for a hundred,000 a year you could pay me. Now would be a great time for me to push a button, and it plays a two-minute commercial promoting the L1 so I can pee and then come back and continue my conversation with Ricard.

But instead, I open that to any sponsor, even Coca-Cola, anyone who wants to, um, you can make a two minute commercial. I'd push a button and it would play right now. I would pee and I would come back, but instead, um, are you keeping, you have to pee too, Caleb? Uh, no. You're keeping your fingers crossed for what? Oh, for the money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, Ricard, thank you for coming on. You have a massive brain, and I feel your love and your intellectual horsepower and your passion. We have to do this again. I never even got to my notes. I would love to have you back on again.

It would be fantastic. I think we have so many, let's say, touch points that we uh dive into yeah yeah for sure um i'm grateful for for even being on on one so thank you all right awesome stay in touch you have my phone number uh escapist crossfit in berlin also a mentor at um chris cooper's two brain business uh i ricard didn't say this but feel free to reach out to this guy this guy cannot say no i he is he is a fucking just a teddy bear grab him and use him as a resource uh if you have any questions all right brother have a good one yeah stay well yep you too bye-bye wouldn't it be great if we had a commercial?

I could just hit, be like, commercial break. And then I just run out my dorm, pee in my backyard, and then come back. And we could keep talking. That'd be great. Also the $100,000. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Did I say $100,000? I mean $200,000.

Yeah, yeah. All right. All right, guys. I will, I have no idea.'m gonna text daniel brandon now see if we're doing the show tonight um i also want to do a live call-in show tonight i'm pretty prepared for tomorrow's podcast tomorrow morning with don fall super excited about that and either way we'll see all of you guys soon spiegel thank you suzy tell thank you vindicate er Weiss, Jeremy Eat World, Spiegel. Yes.

Always coughing up the change. You the man. You the gal. I mean, you the girl, Danny. Thank you, Danny. Bye-bye.