The Sevan Podcast - #659 - Matt Shindeldecker, CrossFit Affiliates Series

Episode Date: November 4, 2022

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I'm excited every morning to wake up and jump in my office. I'm like, another podcast. I'm just pumped. Bam, we're live. Nice shirt. I've got that on, too. Oh, good. Just under this.

It's a healthy shirt to have on uh in the comments already uh travis from vindicate you won't want to miss this one i met matt uh-oh shindledecker i met matt shindledecker i'm not good with words that have more than two syllables uh you won't you won't want to miss this one. I met Matt Schindeldecker at the Masters Fitness Collective, and he is an amazing human being. That's a kind individual. I was at the beach in Santa Cruz, California the other day just hanging out with my kids, and Craig Howard texted me and said, hey, I'm in town. Do you want to hang out. So of course I invited him down to the beach. And, uh, as we talked, um, he started talking about a man named Matt Schindeldecker and kept telling me, dude, you've got to get him on your podcast. You've got to get them on your podcast. And I barely scratched the surface and, uh, Craig was right. And, uh, Travis is right. And a few other people, uh, Brian friend

told me I had to get you on. I'm glad to finally meet you. We haven't met before, right? No, sir. Nope. We have not. What an incredible facility you have behind you. Yep. This is our home, little sweet home we have here. CrossFit Crave, Salina, Ohio. Yeah, that's a beautiful shot too. I appreciate the effort you put into getting that. That's nice yes sir um i want to start the show by sharing this off of your instagram uh in in 2016 um greg started uh pulling the team together and saying you know what i'm not sure if the hundred thousand people who've taken their level one know that they have the cure for the world's most vaccine problem i think that they think that they only create people, you know, tip of the spear people, and they don't realize that, hey, there's a tsunami of chronic disease that we're living in, and they actually have the cure for it. So when I see affiliates have things written like this, it just tickles my fancy,

whatever that means. We sit collectively in possession of a uniquely elegant solution to chronic disease. Each affiliate is a lifeboat in what is a surging tsunami of a raging epidemic. Greg Glassman. And the follow-up to this is go to Google and type in five buckets of death and watch that, and you will find not a more potent video that sort of explains to you the power of these affiliates. I played that video for our director of health in our county when COVID hit. When I invited them to the gym, we talked about what we do here. We talked about that, you know, they call it, of course, you know, tracing or tracking. We call it, you know, protecting our athletes because we've done that for 10 years.

We track and monitor everything that comes in the door. And, um, so we just talked about what CrossFit's all about. And I played that video and he looked at me, he says, can you send that? And I said, absolutely. I can send it to you. Um, and we opened our doors early the very next day. And he says, listen, I have no problems. Why don't you reopen? Like, okay. Oh, I would love to hear more details of that story what what year was that so that's when we uh we were closed or the state of ohio was closed for gosh i think we were shut down for 11 weeks um and right away uh we had a relationship with our local health director excuse me matt you were closed because there was a

because of the covid there was a wuhan virus and it was circling the planet and people and the whole planet was in this kind of this panic shut down that's right okay yeah panic shut down we you know we closed right away when the governor of the state of ohio came out and said hey you know effective seven o'clock this evening all businesses must come come to a, you know, to a halt, so to speak. And we were one of those, like the hairdressers, the hair salons and all of that. We were categorized as one. What do you know about hair salons? I don't. Okay. Just checking. I like my barber though. Um, so, you know, we, we shut down and we'd followed the minions like everyone else did at that point in time.

And, um, we got probably three quarter of the way through it and then talking with our members and, you know, we, this gym was completely empty. We, we loaned every bit of a piece of equipment out. Um, we kept some equipment here for our coaches. Um, we didn't lose a member. We gained members through the process. And like I said, about three quarter of the way through, we were like, this is enough. Three quarters of the way through the 11th round?

Yeah. Okay. I called, we got in contact, my business partner, Debbie Wagner and I got in contact with our county health director and invited him in and said, Hey, let's, can we just walk you through what we do here and why we do what we do and why we feel we're essential. And he spent, gosh, I think he spent like 45 minutes with us. And a part of that, we watched that Greg Glassman video. And he turned around and he says, Hey, when you guys opening your doors? And I said, tomorrow morning at 5 AM. And that was was a a friday morning and he's like okay great and the police never showed up no um it's an interesting video because it explains

it's it's really big picture but someone who um might be dogmatic in their beliefs of what was being pushed to us through the media might might take offense to it even even though there is nothing to take offense to wow wow i can't wait to tell greg this he is going to be tickled that just even one jim was able to use that and talk sense into someone yeah yeah for those of you who are not familiar with this video you have to see it it's called five buckets of death and it basically uh it's it's um it's a perfect description of why everyone on the planet should do crossfit yeah did you ever get discouraged um you know greg would say hey we're not going to be able to save everyone we're not even going to be able to save most people these are just lifeboats and uh and we can't force people to get on board. Yeah. I think there's, there's a lot to, to that statement. Um, based on the

program that I think you'll want to talk about, um, we've gone through, uh, we've created myself, uh, Dr. Aaron Kuhn created a, a trauma sensitive athlete centered coaches training, right? created a trauma-sensitive athlete-centered coaches training, right? Available January 20… 21st? I'd have to look at the date. 2023 in Columbus, Ohio. Yeah, at Rogue. We're hosting it at Rogue. And that's live on CrossFit's website.

We can send that link out. But so based on like my personal trauma and what we've been through and what we've developed to help coaches kind of work through, 70% of adults around the world have suffered some type of a traumatic event in their life, whether they want to admit it or not, they're walking around with some type of trauma. So can we save everyone? We'd like to say, absolutely. We can save everyone if you just walk through the door. But we know based on the trauma background of someone like somebody that's extreme, there's extreme obesity, walking out of their house is a terror. It's a threat. It's not that they don't want to come to the gym. They don't want to walk out of their house, right? Because of something that's happened in their past. And we know that we would love to reach those individuals, but it takes a certain mentality. It takes a certain temperament. It's not walking the door and say, hey, let's get ready for class. It's let's sit down on the

couch and have a conversation. Level, proximal, calm. Where are you at? How do you feel? So we'd love to say we can reach everyone, but some traumas just eliminate that possibility because we can't get them out of the house, right? And step one is let's go for a walk. And some people are so identified with their trauma. I would say most people, I'm open to being wrong, that they don't even want to give it up because there's a compounded fear there. If you give up your trauma, you'll also lose who you are. No question. Right? Yeah, you'll also lose who you are. No question.

Right? Yeah, absolutely. I feel that every day. It would be like if my parents said, hey, you're not really Armenian. We're Irish. Yeah. You know, a lot of people might be like, well, who cares? But I was raised for 50 years with this like little piece of my identity of saying I'm Armenian. I mean just the whole thing is i mean it's the um it's

the flat earth rounder thing too um those of us who believe the earth is round we immediately we should look at ourselves when people say the earth is flat because we immediately start calling them names oh they're fucking idiots well the reason why we say that is we're terrified of even that one little thing being off because we don don't know. Yeah, because yeah. We don't know what their reality is. And depending on when the trauma happens in your life, like if you're young, right? And you're in that juvenile state or even younger, you know, I know your kids are younger.

If there's something traumatic that happens in that age timeframe, a lot of people stop developing. The brain literally stops developing in that age. So you may have someone that's a drug user at the age of 13 or 14. They've used for three or four years. Now they're 35 and they still have that 18-year-old mentality. Well, that's not just because they're trying to be cool or they're just acting young. That's because that's literally where their mind development

stopped. So that's why it takes them longer to um for you and i to say hey this is reality no it's not reality for them the good news is i mean there's a lot of good news is that it it's it's textbook right once you start seeing an expert like you or someone who's worked with this community for a long time you start to see the patterns yeah and uh And, uh, and there is a, uh, there is a tried and true method that's very successful in helping people pass through that. Yep. And I'm, I'm no expert. I'm a novice at best. Um, I just love helping people. So, you know, you learn as you go, just like everyone else does. Um, give me an example of what trauma you're talking about. Are you talking about, um, you were molested or you were raped talking about are you talking about um you were molested or you

were raped or are you talking about like your parents getting a divorce or there's so many levels yeah you know like when you're 17 there's things you would say i i i hate that person for what they did right for sure when but when you finally have kids and you think of the horrors that could happen to your kids it's nothing compared to that person you said when you were 18 and you actually love that person. You're like, oh, actually, I would go have a beer with that person relative to someone who hurt my kids. It's all relative to the depth of your value of life. Your experience. Yeah.

Yeah, to the depth of your experience, right? Yeah, depth of your experience. Thank you. Yeah, I mean, my trauma is trauma is is different than than most. My mother went to prison when I was 11. She shot and killed my bus driver in an attempt to murder, attempted kidnap of myself. And, you know, I saw all that unfold. It happened. Your real mom, the lady who birthed you. Yes, ma'am. Yep. My mom. Her name was Shirley Schindeldecker. And so, you know, through that process,

there was a lot of things that happened prior to that. That wasn't the start, nor was it nearly the finish of what I went through. And, you know, that's a bottled up, not a secret necessarily, but a bottled up trauma event that I pushed down for, I'm 48 for the better part of my entire life. And, you know, through that process, I've learned that that bottling that trauma can really result in a lot of other bad things happening in your life. So, you know, at a young age, drugs and alcohol was, that was the cure to that. And I did that through, oh gosh, until I was probably, yeah, there you go, until I was probably mid-20s. And alcohol was a major thing for me. That's what helped push all of that trauma that happened before and happened that day. And that was my, so that's my traumatic

experience. And that's what I try to use to, you know, kind of grow people's knowledge on what life is really. What city do you live in? It's called Salina, Ohio. So it's C-E-L-I-N-A, Salina, Ohio. We're in Midwest, Ohio. It's a, we're real small, 10,000 people. It's a very rural area. We're the county seat of Mercer County, sets on Grand Lake St. Mary's, but we are a very small population here. And is that where this incident took place? You're born and raised there? Yep. Yep. Yep. Yeah, right there, Salina. So if you see where, yeah, so it actually took place just outside of town. You see that 127 in Rockford, right just south of Rockford there. Okay, it really is out, it's in the middle of nowhere.

Surrounded by corn. Can you, so someone tried to kidnap you yeah it was my it was my mother she had oh okay so it wasn't the bus driver wasn't kidnapping you no no yeah there was some she was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia um so you know she had some mental chemical issues in her, in her mind, um, prior to that. And there were several, several kind of episodes from my, oh gosh, from my kindergarten through my fourth grade year. And then fourth grade, that's when that took place. Were you on the bus? Yes, sir.

And you saw your mom come on the bus? Yeah. Yeah. I watched the whole, the whole thing unfold. How many kids were on the bus? Just me. I was the first one picked up and the last one off every day. Cause we, we lived out in the country about 10 miles out in the country.

So I was first one last off. Wow. Yep. Yes, sir. And fourth grade, how old is that? I was 10. And um even more traumatic well equally traumatic for you I'm guessing is then your mom was not gone out of your life after that yeah I lost I lost a lot of things that day I lost you know my mom and in some sense I have a great relationship with my father um it wasn't always that way. As we all, you know, we grow up, we learn to realize

what, you know, our parents tell us are probably more right than wrong. But when we're young, it's all wrong. So I've got a great relationship with my father. But in a sense, that kind of wrecked my relationship with him. I ended up changing schools to the city I live in now. I changed and went to a smaller school even where my grandparents lived because I was living with them at the time. So I lost a whole set of friends. I lost a school. I lost, my mom went to prison. That's where she eventually died. So yeah, there was a lot of things lost that day. CrossFit Crave has changed my life. The community is hands down the best. Matt and Debbie have built something incredible. So proud to be a member at this affiliate.

How did you meet Debbie? She's been a member here. So CrossFit Crave, we opened in May of 2010. Ashley Eink was the original owner. She had come out of Practice CrossFit, which you probably know that name, Josh Bunch. She brought it to Salina, to our hometown here. I knew of CrossFit. There was an individual that I worked with. I handled the Walmart account for our company. And there was a buyer that I'd worked with 13 and a half years ago that went to CrossFit NWA in Northwest Arkansas. I was on the phone with her literally. There was a CrossFit NWA? It still is. CrossFit NWA. It's the oldest affiliate in Arkansas.

So she's like, oh, my hands hurt. I'm like, what? I kind of laughed. She played basketball at, I think, Missouri. And I was like, what's going on? She goes, well, I do this thing called CrossFit. You should check it out. And that week, um, Ashley started moving things into a very small space across town. So I drove by and, um, within the first week I went to my first class and I threw up three times. Wow. Um, here we are almost 13 years later. So go ahead. Did you have any athletic background? Did you play any sports at that point? Football and baseball in high school. And then I played a little collegiate baseball at a junior college. It was Columbus State University. But, you know, through that timeframe after college is when I really started, my trauma really caught up with me. So I started drinking pretty heavily. I'm only five foot five, so I'm not a tall man. And I ballooned up to about 210 pounds.

at CrossFit Crave that first day at 210. And I think we were doing something simple, wall balls and maybe a farmer's carry and some setups. And I got halfway through it and Ashley looked at me because I was three shades of green. And she said, well, there's a bathroom right there if you need to use it, but you need to finish once you're done. And I went in, literally threw up, come back out, finish the workout. She was telling you that if you do threw up, come back out, finish the workout. She was telling you that if you do throw up, you have to come back and finish. It's not like a, yeah, it's not, it's not an option. And I love her to death for that because honestly, that's old school CrossFit. That's just the way it was done.

Right. And, and when I walked out of the building, I'm like, I'll never go back there. I was embarrassed. I was, you know, I'm like, that's it. Never again. Man, she called me the next day and she's like, Hey, when I walked out of the building, I'm like, I'll never go back there. I was embarrassed. I was, you know, I'm like, that's it. Never again. Um, man, she called me the next day and she's like, Hey, when you coming in? And I'm like, Oh, I don't know. She goes, you got to come back.

Um, and I went back the second day and never left. So, and so this lady isn't even a lady. I mean, you had a professional relationship with her, but it's not like she came to your house for dinner or anything. No, no. Just someone you worked with in your, in your business. Yep. Ashley. Yeah. Yeah. So, and that's, that's where it was at. So that's how it started. What a cool lady. Yep. Yep. And then she, um, about four years into it, uh, she, she had to move. Um, her job was taking her away from Selenaina and it was ripe and ready. And so I bought it at that

point in time. And then about two or three years after that, my now business partner, Debbie Wagner, we got to a point where we were growing and it was, I still have a full-time job and it was like, Hey, we want to be able to manage it well enough for our members to make sure that everything is covered, that we can share the workload, so to speak. So Debbie came on board with my wife and I, and here we are. We're having a lot of fun. I have some insignificant details I'd like to know about. What did you sell to Walmart? So I work for a company called crown equipment corporation so we do electric forklifts um we manufacture electric forklifts we're the

the largest electric manufacturer and the fifth largest manufacturer of of internal combustion in the world but it's a privately held company so one family owns it it's like a 4.2 or 5 billion dollar company based in ohio based in ohio yeah little town called new bremen ohio we manufacture around the world we manufacture in europe and china and but our headquarters is in 15 minutes down the road are you still affiliated with them yeah i still work for them no shit yes sir yep wow the people there must how long have you been there 28 years oh man so there's people how long have you been there? 28 years. Oh man.

So there's people who've seen you go through this journey. Oh yeah, for sure. No question. Yep. Yep. And then I'm a, my title is a national account manager. So I take care of Walmart for the, it's our largest customer. So, so, so meaning Walmart has to, um, if Walmart wants, if they open a new store and

they need 10 forklifts there to move their goods around, that's what you do. You make sure they get their 10 forklifts. Yeah. And a lot of it, a lot of it's in their distribution centers, right? So whether it's domestically in the U.S. or I travel the globe. So whether it's in China or Chile or wherever it's at, that's, you know, I meet with the business headquarters in each country and we try to make sure that we're positioned from a company perspective in, in a favorable manner so we can continue to do business. But, so that's what I, what I do. Wow, that's fascinating.

That's like deep behind the scenes stuff. How about Costco? What other, what other accounts do you guys have besides Walmart? Do you have any other big stores like Ikea or costco or yep costco walgreens uh you you know amazon okay you share a lot of a lot of the large any large box kroger um what would you have um on the west coast i traveled the west coast for a long time. You would have Ralph's grocers, a lot of those individuals, those components that make up a, uh,

uh, how many, how many different kinds of forklifts do you guys have? Oh gosh. Oh really? It's like that. It's not like two. Yeah,

no, it's, we probably have 10 different lines, 10 different models. And inside of each model, there's five or six variants of the same truck. So there's quite a few. There's a lot.

Hard plastic seats, ones that are going to be parked outside, ones that are going to be parked inside, ones that… A manual, yeah, a little manual pallet jack that you would see in the back store of a gas station moving Pepsi products around. I used to play with those. Yeah, I had a job where we had a pallet jack yep all the way up to uh what we would call it a turret truck a very narrow aisle truck that's going to go 605 inches with 2 000 pounds in a 70 inch aisle real small aisle wow that's cool fascinating that should be a whole show um and and and that's how is the is the founder of that company still alive um so no j Jim Sr. passed away about two years ago. Jim 3. So it was Jim Sr., then Jim 2, and then Jim 3. And Jim 3 is now, he's just a little older than I am. I think he's 51 or 52. He's the president and CEO and he's engaged every day. He's a great man to work for. It's a great family. It's a great

family-owned business, that's for sure. When you would sit on the bench in high school waiting for your turn to get it back, would you tell yourself this? Would you hear the story start up of who you are? No. So the story didn't haunt you. You didn't have this narrative in your head. I'm the boy whose mom came on the bus. No. No, because the narrative I built was I have to be the opposite of what that is. So I need everyone to like me. If there's a party, it needs to revolve around me. It needs to be at my house. It needs to, you know, so there was a group of friends and Dr. Aaron Kuhn, who helped or created the trauma training, was my best friend growing up. I met him when I was nine years old and we trauma bonded right away because he had dealt with some trauma in his background as well. So all the way through high school, he and I were doing the same stuff like, hey, how fast can we get done with the football game and go get drunk or go smoke or whatever that was,

whatever we were trying to do for that day. And so I left the, you know, I thought I left the trauma behind because I built this persona of, man, I'm going to be that guy. Right. If there's a party, that's, that's where I'm going. You were conscious of this? Very. Okay. Very conscious of it. Yeah. So, but I didn't realize that, you know, I didn't really kind of sit back and look until I was probably late 26, 27 when I'm like, my first marriage was a disaster and ended. And I had two kids at that point in time. I'm like, man, I got to figure life out fast. And you knew that, and did you know right away that it was, you could see that it was some rope tied deep to back to that incident, you know? Yeah. And that's probably what really, that's when it really started to change for me. And then,

oh, within the last four or five years, um, I've really sat back and said, okay, um, there's something way deeper here inside of me that I don't know what it is, but I got to get it figured out because I'd go through really dark times, really depression. On the outside, I'm great. Everyone said, oh, hey, Matt's the happy-go-lucky. He's got a great life, got a great job, got a great family. Everything's great. Inside, I was a wreck. So I guess it's been eight months ago through the prompting of Dr. Kuhn, as we were building this trauma training for coaches, he's like, Hey, you should probably maybe go see, go see a psychiatrist. And so I did, I took it as advice and it's the best thing

I've ever done. Because I'm now realizing some of the things, the reason I am who I am today is primarily based on the trauma that I lived through and how my body and mind coped with that. And I'm grateful for it. But now I'm understanding why I do what I do, if that makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. But the work doesn't stop there, right? Just because you know what you do doesn't mean you can just stop it.

No, you got to. Yeah. It can't stop. Yeah. That's another layer of work. No question about it. Yeah, because the trauma is never going to go away. That thought process is, it's there, whether you're a trauma survivor like I am, or you're

an addict, or you're a recovering alcoholic, or there's something that's going on, you wake up with that every day. Now, what you do with that is, of course, your conscious choice. So it's an everyday battle when you wake up to say, hey, I'm going to put that behind me and look at what I've got right back here and look at the family and the community that we created and let's see if we can help someone else. That's why I love that Greg Glassman quote, because we can certainly help if we can just get him in the door. I don't remember when I came up with this idea, but I had this idea that from when you're born to a certain point, you can blame your parents and everyone around you for everything that happened to you. You're 16 years old, and your girlfriend broke up up with you and that's why you're upset. And there becomes a point,

and you can do that and you can do that and you can do that. And then there's a point where you turn from a caterpillar, not everyone, some people, I don't even know what the percentage is actually. I don't even know if it's half or if it's only 2%. I mean, I hope the number's big, but there's a point that's the demarcation between being a child, a caterpillar, and becoming an adult. And that's when you start realizing it doesn't matter what anyone else did. You are responsible for it. And no one's coming. The blame has to stop.

That's right. I think what we try to tell our kids in the juvenile probation program that we have, it's a lot of them, they don't know any better, right? When they're that young and you live in the lives that some of these kids lived, that's all they know. So, you know, what they see on the outside world is foreign to them. What they know is drugs or domestic violence or substance abuse or maybe it's sexual abuse. Whatever that is, that's all they know. So when they go to the outside, that's just normal to them.

People forget that too. When you're a kid, people forget that. You see from the outside someone's beating their kid and you feel sorry for the kid. You have to remember the kid doesn't think that there's – to a, doesn't think there's anything wrong with it. They're like, yeah, I get beat. That's life. That's all they know. Oh yeah, kids get beaten. Yeah. That's the way it works. Yeah. That's the way it works. That's, that's it. And it's hard for adults, right. To accept that at times. And it's even teachers, it's hard for teachers to accept that, you know, they're trying to teach 25 kids at a

time. And, you know, that one individual that walks in the door that's got some severe trauma, you know, it's tough to realize that, yeah, that individual last night probably didn't sleep, didn't do the homework because, you know, mom OD'd or dad got pulled out to go to prison. And that's reality. So it's tough. So what we try to tell the kids is, yeah it's tough it's rough your life's rough right now but if you take the hand that's given to you you can pull yourself out of it i mean case in point where i'm at in in hundreds and thousands of kids that have done it the right way but they have to they have to openly say okay i want make myself better. And I want to use what we've done here at CrossFit Crave to build a community around these kids that says,

maybe I do want to take the right step in the right direction. And then one step creates the second step that's good. And then the third step, and they realize, huh, that's not so hard being right. It's not so hard going to school. It's not so hard doing my homework. And I don't get in trouble as much. And I get the ankle monitor off and I don't go to JDC. But they have to, well, we tell the kids you have to. Juvenile delinquent court? JDC? Okay. Juvenile delinquent center. So it's a prison. It's the juvenile prisons. But they have to be willing to take the hand that's given them. You know, they have to rise out of that. that's given them you know they have to rise out of that you guys are looking at matt uh shindel decker uh one of the owners of crossfit crave you have a business partner debbie wagner yes sir uh he's running a program that's four years old that we're about to get into uh the gym opened in 2010 congratulations that's amazing uh he also keeps a full-time job that he's had for 28 years. Pretty impressive.

And he works with the juvenile courts in Ohio. No detail is too small. Could you tell me the origins of this? We know nothing about it, what you're doing. And by the way, this story is going to – this is a really important story for affiliate owners for two huge reasons. One, it probably can offer you the most fulfillment you've ever had being a gym owner. And two, you can make money. Okay. Action. It's okay to get paid to do really good things, right? Yes. So about four and a half years ago, when this whole process started, one of the probation officers here

in town, Jennifer, came to us and said, hey, we'd had a relationship through her husband, said, hey, we'd had a relationship through her husband, new of CrossFit. They came in and said, we've got this young lady that's a really tough nut to crack. She is on the verge of being type two diabetic. She has got a really tough attitude. She comes from a really tough background, parents in prison, and we can't get her to to open up and they had done a running how old how old um she was just turning 15 into 16 so she's right in between that 15 and 16 years and already a type 2 diabetic yep yep so um they had tried several things prior to so our our, our probation department in Mercer County is really unique because they really valued the, there's intrinsic value of health and wellness

along with the mental side of what they try to do in their job to protect these kids. So they had tried to run club. They had tried another fitness place down the road that they just, there was not a connection there that wasn't, they were missing the community piece, right? There wasn't, and that's, they didn't know that up front, but essentially that's what they were missing. So Jen brought this young lady to the gym here and she walked in the first day and literally like this. And she was, she's short. She was probably, gosh, I'm five, five. She's probably five. One was jet Jen's the probation officer. Did she do CrossFit?

She did not. Nope. Nope. She matter of fact, she had a really, really terrible knee, um, injury, and she had a knee surgery. So she laughs to this day When she first came in, she was hunched over and she couldn't stand and walk up right. She just couldn't do it. And that's a whole nother story in itself because now she runs and she lunges and she does great because we were able to fix her in CrossFit. So this young lady came in and she was like this. And we walked around the building here and we were talking about the workout of the day and i was trying to explain to her what we do and the workout had wall balls in

it and you know i showed her you know a medicine ball and i showed her what a wall ball looked like and didn't say a word i mean literally just completely closed didn't say a word so within about what we would see is disrespectful like basically fuck off i'm not listening to you that's right yeah but knowing that she had an extremely abusive background with a parent in prison due to it right so in and we won't fill in the blanks but you can imagine what happened um so i took her up front to our couches so right over here we've got three large couches where people just kind of hang out and all of us sat down on the couch and I looked at her and I said, Hey, you're carrying a pretty big chip. And she kind of looked at me and didn't acknowledge. And I said, listen, I, can I tell you a story? I kind of, I don't know your exact situation, but I

kind of know what you're going through, right? You've got a parent in prison. She's like, yeah. I said, well, my mom's in prison as well. As a matter of fact, she died there. And she's like, yeah. I said, well, my mom's in prison as well. As a matter of fact, she died there. And then I shared with her my story of what happened to me. And then, you know, within five minutes, the arms dropped. And she leaned forward a little bit. And she said, what was that wall ball thing you talked about?

I said, check it out. So we literally went back and we showed it to her again. And she looked at Jen and she was like, well, let's try it. So that was the beginning of the summer school is just out. She came through that entire summer. By the end of the summer, she would, her time was 9am. So she would come to the 9am class. That was her designated time to show up. We knew she would bring her, um, her probation staff, probation officers would bring her and drop her off. Um, so by the end of that summer, the probation staff, they started coming as well because they're like, listen, you like, she's completely turning herself around. She would come

in to our five 30 class here in the evening because this was the safest place she knew. So she would walk herself across town, which our town's not very big, but she would walk herself across town to come to the 530 class, not to work out, just to hang out because this was her safe place. So at that point- Do you remember the first time she did that, seeing her walk in and being like, what's she doing here? Yeah. We got a phone call from one of our coaches who is actually one of the teachers here in school, middle school, called us right away. And she said, hey, you know, she's here. Everything's safe.

There's just some bad stuff going on. And this is at home. And this is where she felt safe. What do we do? And I said, well, let's make a phone call to the probation staff and just let her know that, hey, she's here. She's safe. What a compliment to the probation staff and just let her know that, hey, she's here. She's safe. What a compliment to the program. Oh, yeah.

To our coaching staff. It wasn't us. It wasn't Debbie or I. It's our coaching staff and our members that said, hey, we have this thing on the wall, right? Consistency, equality, and community. We want to make sure that everyone feels that equality, regardless of where you come from. And this is a community. And it's our people that surrounded her. And that's what, you know, essentially saved her life. So at the end of that summer, the probation staff had started to come. They fell in love with it. And they said, hey, let's just bring all our kids

here. Like, okay, great. We sat down with a juvenile court then and said, hey, what's it going to take? They asked us, what would our monthly billing rate be? How could we pay for this program? And up front, it was like, oh, we're just doing this because we're nice people, right? And we want to serve our community. And we weren't really worried about the dollars and cents piece of it until the county said, no, no, no. Listen, you're doing good things here. We want to pay you for that. And we're like, okay.

So we worked out a payment and that was four years ago. And we've received a check every month, like clockwork. Even through the pandemic, when we were shut still, the county still paid because we're on a basically a year-to-year term. And we get, for every kid that walks in the door, we're paid our monthly membership for that individual by the county. And it's through state funds. So that was the beginning of the program. So that's, you know, that was four years ago. And, and again, it started as, we're just want to do something local. We want to do something that will help kids in our area because I know what it's like going through hell, right? Let's see if we can make these kids better.

And then, gosh, I guess the year of the pandemic, that was 2020, somewhere late 2019, one of our probation staff's husband sent an email about the Scholarship L1. Remember the Scholarship L1 program? And said, hey, you need to check out this program. It's changing kids' lives in Mercer County. And we want to see if we can get a scholarship for CrossFit Crave. Unbeknownst to us, we still have never seen the emails. So that was happening. I get a phone call then about two months after that first email. And they said, hey, CrossFit's going to come in and give you a scholarship l1 and i was like you're you're joking what does that mean they're going to run an entire l1 and everyone in it's going to be free yeah that's what they did wow yeah so they brought

they brought so they scheduled it and i think i saw that video i saw austin maliolo and gary gaines in the video from cross that was that was a separate video so that's okay that's another part of the story oh that was when michelle moots came yeah michelle moots larry came yep that's when michelle came um so they awarded us the scholarship i won so we had 15 kids um they brought the three red shirts right here um to give those kids an l1 um now they couldn't say sorry Sorry, sorry. Let me put this in the time. That was in 2019. How long had the program been going? Three years. And do you have a rough estimate of how many kids you'd run through the program at that point? Probably about 100, maybe 125. And how long is the program for a kid? 10 months? So it depends. The state of Ohio and in our county does it on relationship based.

So there's some there's some counties and states that do it by date. Like, hey, you're on probation for 16, 90, 120 days. And it's based on or a year. It's based on your offense. If it's truancy, it's less time. Right. If it's if it's drug selling, it's more time. If it's something criminal like physical violence, you know, it's all based on what's Trinsy mean? What's Trinsy? What's that? If it's intrinsic. So if it's all intrinsic. OK, OK. So let's say. But here it's based on relationship. So if you're on probation, let's say you have a drug charge, whether it's trafficking or using,

you're taking your urine test, right? They're monitoring your school attendance. They're monitoring your grades. They're talking to teachers, making sure home life's okay. And based on that relationship, if you have a track record of positive results, then essentially, they let you off. It's not, you're going to be on probation for a year. Okay. Okay. Okay. How, how you kind of rehabilitated yourself through that process. Okay. What's the shortest you had someone? Oh, probably four months. Okay. And what's the longest? Um, we've still have kids in here for almost two years. Okay. Awesome. Okay. So, so it's even, even four months is substantial. It's enough time to do start the work oh no question okay you know three weeks would be enough time to start the work really um but yeah

so it's so so the l1 comes in i derailed you at 2019 the l1 comes in yeah that that started that process they came in late uh 20 so because the pandemic that shut, he doesn't charge you anything for that. No, they actually, they actually pay because we were hosting L one gym. They paid us a thousand dollars. Awesome. Awesome.

So because the pandemic that got delayed, so they actually didn't come until, uh, the week. And before the games in 2021. Okay. So it took that long because of COVID and everything being shut down. So the weekend before the games, um, 2021, they showed up, um, had a great weekend. The kids go through the entire L1 process, just like you would go get your L1. The only thing they don't take is the test. So they're not tested. Now, if you're 17

and you want to take the test, they will then gift you another weekend for free. You can take your test and then become an L1 trainer, which is, we had three kids do that, which is phenomenal, right? Which basically opens up jobs for you on 15,000 locations on planet earth. Bingo. Right. Which is phenomenal. You know, it gives these kids something that like, Hey, I'm worth, I can get a job now. Yeah. And that too, right? Yeah. You're L1 certified. Exactly. So, so we went to the, so we left, we did that weekend. We went to the games, Um, so, so we went to the, so we left, we did that weekend. We went to the games, um, went up to the affiliate lounge and met with Eric Rosa, um, and said,

Hey, I, I wanted to say thank you. My wife and I wanted to say thank you for allowing the L1 scholarship team to come to our gym. Our kids were blown away by it. And he, he hesitated. This is my first, um, meeting with Danielle with Danielle Hale, which is funny. I love her to death. So he's standing there and he's like, well, tell me more about your program. So I told him about what we do for the kids and that we're paid for this service by the county and the state. And he's like, well, that's a great nonprofit. I said, no, no, I need to make money to pay my flight bills.

This is not a nonprofit. They pay us. It's revenue. And he stopped and he said, whoa, timeout. Hang on a second. You're getting paid to have a community function by the state. I'm like, absolutely. And he goes, I got to know more about it. So he spent like another 10 minutes absolutely. And he goes, I got to know more about it. So he spent like another 10 minutes asking questions about this. And Danielle, there was like 50 people lined up, you know how it is in the affiliate lounge, just waiting. And she's like, Hey guys, listen, let's learn more about this program, but we have to get more people through here. So she took my contact information right away and said, Hey, you know, I on the behalf of Eric and CrossFit and we'll figure this out. So in that same timeframe, we got back from the games. That went well. We got

back from the games. The very next week, the governor's office called my cell phone, a gentleman by the name of Andy Wilson, who is on one of those videos um he's the senior law director for the governor for governor dewine his name is andy wilson he calls my cell phone and goes hey matt this is andy wilson with the governor's office and and i'm thinking oh like what did i do like what did i do wrong you know what what's going on he goes hey we've been talking to your county about your crossfit program sorry i i i did you know what what's going on he goes hey we've been talking to your county about your crossfit program sorry i i i i did you know that the county was doing that okay i was wondering did i miss that part okay so you're totally shocked yeah the phone call came through someone's talking you up someone's like holy shit you got to see this program to someone at a higher level in the

government yeah yeah it was and it wasn't someone it it was the, the recidivism rate, the rate at which these kids reoffend. That's what was talking itself up. And so Andy said, Hey, I've been working with your County on, um, their reoffend rate, recidivism rate and why it's so low. Um, because do you realize your County's recidivism rate is 24%? And I'm like, well, I well, I knew that we didn't see repeat offenders. Once they got off for probation, some of them stayed because we gifted them scholarships here so they could stay and work out and keep this community. Some of them went on to play sports and so on. But I knew there wasn't a lot of faces that just kept coming back. It was always a new turn of faces. And he's like, dude, that's the lowest in the state of Ohio. We want to figure out what's going on. And the county said it's because of

CrossFit. And actually in one of the articles I read, it's actually the inverse to that without the program. It's actually, it's actually 75% recidivism rate. That's right. And people who come through your program, the hundred and 120 some odd kids at that point. Yeah, it's down to now 23 percent. 23. Crazy. Awesome. OK, I love it. Yeah. So so he was like, hey, we want to visit. And the governor would would like to attend if he can. We're going to bring six or seven directors of the state of Ohio State of Health State, state of division of corrections and rehabilitation,

division of youth, DYS, division of youth services. So he's like, we want to bring this host of people in. Can you walk us through what you do and why CrossFit is such a foundational change in these kids' lives? And we're like, sure, absolutely. Right away, I contacted Danielle and I said, Hey, Danielle, the governor of the state of Ohio wants to send his people here to CrossFit Crave, the CR program, the one we talked about at the games. Maybe CrossFit wants to listen in or join or, you know, whatever. And of course, of course. Oh, right away. You know, she was like, Hey, let me get ahold of Gary. I talked to Gary Gaines, and they were like, yep, we're coming out. And they've been phenomenal. Danielle and Gary both have been great to work with. I love it. So on October 17th of 2021, yeah, October 17th of 2021, we hosted 61 individuals here. 31 individuals from the state

of Ohio. We invited a whole slew of CrossFit affiliate owners across the state of Ohio to come. Wow. Why did you do that? Because we knew what we had was something special, right? We knew that this program, it's special because our people are great, but every CrossFit affiliate has great people in it. And it's the community that is changing these kids' lives. And we knew that every affiliate could affect that community. But why not just be like, it's mine? Why not guard it? It's mine. It's mine. It's mine.

It's mine. This is, I did this. This is ours. It's that wall over there. The big, there's a big gray wall. It says CrossFit. And then it says crave and, and CrossFit is the reason why what Greg Glassman created, um, the old phrase, and I'm sure I'll get it wrong. But if you think about the old phrase of, you know, we're building relationships between thrusters and pull-ups and the net result is fitness. And in order to change people's lives, you have to create a relationship. And every CrossFit box in the world is super special at one thing, creating relationships. So in our mind, it's, we have to share this. We, if the state of Ohio says, Hey, we want to duplicate this program, then we have to get affiliates that raise their hands

says, yeah, me too. Why can't I host a program? Right. So they came in, we do the right thing for the right reasons was always Greg. It's like, like we would be like, Hey, should we make this video? He goes, does it do the right things for the right reasons? He's like, I don't even care. Just do the right thing for the right reasons for the right people. Yeah. He would always say that. Yeah.

Yeah. Think about it. We're, we're doing, we're doing the common stuff, the everyday life stuff, uncommonly well. Well said. So we had the meeting, we spent two and a half hours and kind of previewed the program and Dr. Kuhn, um, who helped us with the trauma training and created that trauma training, all of our coaches have been through it at that point in time. And that's truly that marriage between what we do from a physical, mental perspective, married with that counseling, is how we are successful. We are successful.

So he talked about the success of what our coaching staff have been through to recognize trauma when it comes in, how to deescalate issues, how to talk to them, proximal level, calm. So we don't fire them up and we don't re-traumatize them. And then at three o'clock, 15 of our kids came in and they were fired up. They knew this was a special day. So our 15 kids and their probation staff came in and we had, um, gosh, close to 70 people. Every single person from the state of Ohio threw on their workout clothes and worked out with Gary and Austin was there and Danielle. And it was, it was just a really, really cool experience. Um, Those kids, those kids, when you say there were 15 kids there, what was their duration of experience in, in that, in that group? Some of them were, some of them had been with us. Matter of fact,

there's a few that are still with us, um, because the offenses were still, you know, we're pretty, pretty tough on them. Um, but some of them had been there maybe three to four weeks and some of them had been there for six months, close to a year. So it really, really, still some green. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Very green people. Yep. Yeah. No doubt. So that, that day kind of was the catapult to kind of where we're at today, if you will. So the state left that afternoon, they got ahold of us about two or three weeks later and said, Hey, we left that afternoon. They got a hold of us about two or three weeks later and said, hey, we want to, the director of division of youth services wants to

approve this in every county. We need 88 more affiliates. You know, how do we, how do we work through that process? And with anything, right, it takes time, right? It's, you're working with government entities. Every county is different in the state of Ohio. Um, so it's not a light switch. It's not like, Hey, let's just turn the program on. You have to, you have to go through the training for an affiliate. So that process takes time. And the state says, we're willing to invest the money. Um, if you guys are unwilling to invest the time it takes to find the right affiliates and get counties on board. So that's what we're doing. The director, the DRC, the Director of Divisions and Rehabilitation, she sets over all of the adult parole and prisons systems in the state of Ohio. So we're dealing with two different entities there, youth outside of the system, and then adults in the system. After that meeting, she also contacted us and said, hey, how do we start this inside of our prison system? How do we inside the wall? How do we do that? Similar to what Colorado has done.

How do we do that inside of our adult facilities? And I'm getting off on a tangent from the youth sector, but that day really kind of changed the lives of us, certainly, because I, you know, two years ago, this was just our program and we're going to leave it at that. And we're going to try to help lives of our local youth. And now it's, gosh, I think we're in, we have, our local youth. And now it's, gosh, I think we're in, we have, we're talking to 50 affiliates. Uh, we're working through 14 different state systems and their judiciary systems to figure out how we can grow our program for more youth and more affiliates across the United States. And, um, I can't say enough of, you know,

obviously the last couple of years have been rough, right? I'm an affiliate owner. I get it. The last long time has been rough, but I can't say enough of the direction, even through all that rough time, the direction that Danielle, the direction that Gary has given to doing the right things for the right reasons inside of the affiliate network. Um, and they've, that makes me so happy to hear that. That's awesome. They've been, they've been great to work with. Um, so, you know, right away, what's interesting, you say that too, is you say that relationships, you, you keep, you know, emphasizing relationships. Those are from everything that I know about those people. Those are great relationship people.

No question. Like, like super high level relationship people. No question. Like super high level relationship people. Yep. And that's why it's been successful, I think. You know, so we went back to them and said, hey, we need help. Like, we can't do this on our own. Well, you know, what do we do here? So, you know, we started working with Danielle and they created CrossFit, created a I'll call it a pilot, if you will. Um, and they created CrossFit created, uh, I'll call it a pilot. If you will.

I don't even know if you want to call it a department, but it's called ASAP affiliate community empowerment programs. So it's a group of programs where like the juvenile probation program, where we can work with affiliates to say, Hey, if you're willing to take a program on, we want to do the background work with the local judicial system to get you funding and the kids to come to your gym. Let me push back on that a little bit. Yep. Tiny bit. Yeah, go. What if this loses its power? What if it's power? Not power.

not power what if what if it's not a pivotal part of the success of this was the fact that you started it from the grassroots yeah and that if the affiliates don't um uh it's it's it's kind of it's it's kind of like um i'll use the relationship thing if you don't the longer you know a girl before you sleep with her, the better everything is. You court a girl for five years and fuck, man. The chances of your success probably skyrocket. Right. You don't.

You meet someone on Tinder and, like, there's a chance you're going to leave less a person. You're actually going to lose something. Your relationship – you're actually going to damage you. Yeah. Your relationship – you're actually going to damage you. Yeah. So maybe these affiliates should be having the contacts with the government bodies instead of you – like I understand the logic of what you're doing. These people are professionals in the gym, and they know how to do the work, so we're going to move the red tape out of the way for them so they can get to work.

But what if that part is really important, the relationships with the gym owners with those people in the government offices? Well, it is, and here's what I would say to that. Is this fit for every affiliate? Absolutely not. It's just not. That demographic, the demographic we work with, juveniles, or let's say you're working with addictive services. So you're partnering yourself with an addictive service center locally, and you're bringing members in through a paid service through Medicaid, every affiliate's not fit for that. So what we try to do is those affiliates that come to us and say, hey, we want to look into this program. We go through, I'll call it a vetting process, but it's very similar to what you would go through if you were to say, hey, I want to start my own affiliate. So there's an application process. You fill out the application process. Then we start making phone calls to the affiliate. Let's talk about their heart.

What is their mission statement? Why do they want to serve their community? In some cases, we make a visit. Hey, let's make a visit and sit down and talk to this group. And if everyone agrees and they know that, hey, you've got to go through the trauma training. This is a special demographic, a group of kids. Right. It's not all roses and rainbows every day. That's it's it's very rewarding. But just like any class, you'll have those members. We all do. Right. If they're saying, yes, we want we have the heart for it and we want to go forward, then great. Then we start helping them make contact with their local judicial system. And that's when that relationship starts. And that's why, realistically, this is not an easy button.

Hey, let's just turn the program on. It's not that way. It will never be that way. Nor is CrossFit. CrossFit's not easy. It's not easy opening an affiliate either, right? So we have to take those painstaking steps to ensure one program's success to the affiliate's successful. So we don't want to marry an affiliate up and have them fail. That would be awful. That being said, you're three and a half, four years in, four and a half years in

with this program. And some levels of it are that were hard in the beginning are now completely greased and grooved. We don't even think about it. Because you have a reputation with the people in the government, the people bringing your clients to you. Steep, steep learning curve there. But as time goes, you get to focus more and more on the clients and less and less on the bureaucracy. All the work really for the affiliate is loaded towards the front. It's all front loaded because of the relationship you have to build, the communication.

You've got to find the funding, make sure the funding's there. You've got to find the kids for the program. We want the probation staff to work out with the kids. Some counties will, some counties won't. some states will, some state won't. So that it's very front loaded, but once the program starts, it's no different than opening your doors for 5am. We run the same class schedule. We run the same programming.

Um, you know, we, we do special things here, which a lot of affiliates do. We talk about integrity. We talk about community. We talk about value. So we'll spend maybe five minutes at the end of class and we'll recap that class. And we'll try to instill into the individuals that their value is worth way more than what they feel it's worth. So that's a little different than maybe you do that in your 5 a.m. class. I don't know. But that would be the only real big difference that we do at our 3 o'clock juvenile probation class. I want to show you guys something. This video is on YouTube. It's

worthwhile for everyone to watch it. But if you're an affiliate owner, absolutely, this is a must watch. Take the 10 minutes to watch this um it's it's called expanding horizons crossfit crave and mercer county juvenile courts and it's made by a production company called jw production and sound and this is the part that only crossfitters know and it's so here you could tell someone this a thousand times and um matt just mentioned it, but we all know it, but here it goes. These are the probation officers that work with CrossFit Crave in the program. But here we are in year three and the program is still going strong. It's good for the kids to see the adults in the class because we do it with them and they see us struggle and uh it's it's good for them to see

that not everything there it is could you hear that matt yeah absolutely the fact that these guys these probation officers come in there and work out with the kids is like i i don't think the program i think the program loses half its success if they don't do that agree it levels the playing field it creates a quality you know that but one final thought but i also want to give crossfit the credit for that because that's the culture of crossfit bingo so kudos to these guys for stepping into the culture of crossfit it's just as scary for them i'm sure as it is for um the kids yeah it has to be these are fucking just people too yeah has to be terrifying for the probation officers but they grew as people too i guarantee you just as much of the kids went after

that first thing and they high-fived the kids and forgot that they were their probation officers it was probably like holy cow okay sorry what were you gonna say it levels the playing field yeah levels playing it creates equality and what it's allowed, you know, they, you know, that suffering you do on the floor out here for an hour, right? That's true. That's suffering. Let's be honest. And at the, at the end of that, you're either on the floor or you're walking over your partner, you're giving a high five. We, we end every class with high fives. That's mandatory. You can't get out of that. And those kids will come up to this area right up here. I was going to try to show you, but this area right up here and they'll set for another 30 minutes. And the probation staff says, those are the best

30 minutes of the day to get the communication in because their mind is clear. They've achieved something that they didn't think they could achieve before. And now they're willing to talk. And in that 30 minute timeframe after that hour workout is the best time for them to communicate because they just suffered together. And when you, it's trauma bonding. When you suffer with someone else, you're more likely to say, hey man, I'm having a tough day and this is why. Right? So that's the experience that these kids see. And they, we have, we have teachers coming to class now. We have their principals coming to class.

The school resource officer, probably the coolest comment that I've heard out of this whole program. He's a Salina police officer that during the school year, he's assigned to the school. So he's a resource officer, carries the gun, walks to the school, right? Last year, he started coming to class and he said within about probably two months of him coming. Why? Why? Because the kids kept asking him, Hey, come on. Cause he was, he was in shape. He'd worked out, he'd run. He's like, Oh, come on, you know, come, come to CrossFit with us. The kids kept hounding him, come to CrossFit, come to CrossFit. Right. Because what do we do best at CrossFit? We talk about CrossFit. I love it. So the kids go to school and talk about CrossFit. So he's like, he finally broke. And he, again, about two months into it, he was like, you know, Matt, he goes, this is, this is the biggest change that I've seen so far in him personally. This is the biggest change that I've seen so far in him personally. Before I started coming here, these kids were a case number.

And he used pretty flagrant, you know, just another fucking case number. And I don't blame him for that either. And I don't blame him for that. I've got all of these kids and I've got adults that I've got to deal with. And it's just another case number. And he goes until I walked in this door and I started to work out and I turned around and went, Oh man, I'm, I'm struggling and he's blowing by me. And then he turns and looks at me and says, you know, Hey, officer Miller, keep going. You're doing great. And gives me a high five. And that's the kid I arrested two months ago. Wow. Right. And he goes, I've quickly realized that they're just kids.

They're just another human being that needs a relationship in order to change the scope of their life. And where do we build relationships? Right here at CrossFit, right? I apologize for the volume being low. I'm going to play another clip and I'll try, but basically the probation officers were saying that they work out with the kids. And that's so like, we all know that the magic of that. We all know that like you're working out and something you were so mad about your wife about in the middle of the workout, you're like, shit, I should have said, sorry, the whole script can get flipped. We know that someone that we don't even know in our class that we don't

even want to talk to when the workout starts at the end, you're like, Hey, you want to go for a cup of coffee? Like we know that you see a guy next to you and he's, he's a, he's a young punk or he's an old guy or whatever you judgment you have at the end of the workout.

You can't wait to reach over and touch their hand. It all. That's right. Yeah yeah it all goes away we all get clarity of thought and we stop our uh silly little narratives um this this video um this is a judge uh-huh i i this this is a judge talking here let me see if I have in my notes what he's going to say here the welcoming nature of the community, the judge credits, the culture I do want to say two things here, this is why I say you have to take your L1 in person, I don't condone an online L1, I've not taken it but I just don't condone it, but I'll be transparent, I haven't taken it the other thing is the fact that um matt uh shindle shindle decker who you're staring at here

now has a program within the crossfit walls that's going on january 21st 2023 at rogue it's is it a two-day seminar it's a one-day trauma training i'm telling you nicole carroll would not let that fucking happen yeah unless she saw value to it like crazy value it's not enough just to have a little value it's not enough to be great you have to be on par with with the l1 she she's she's not interested in diluting the brand at all so it's a huge compliment. OK, here we go. Listen, listen to what the judge says here. I could give you several examples of kids who have been immensely helped by that program. And it is in no small part due to the culture at CrossFit. So he's saying, sorry, the volume is low. He's saying that this program to no small part

is because of the culture at CrossFit. And as you learn more about Matt Schindeldecker's program, you realize there's been other fitness programs. There's been running programs, there's been weightlifting programs, there's been sports programs, but they didn't work. And so this isn't just another fitness program this is a place where

you work out with your probation officer and then sit on the couch and talk and hang out that's right and drink water and crack jokes yeah just like any other member that's right yeah yeah they don't even probably it's probably the only i'm trying to think if there's any other time and i don't know much about probation officers where they have an opportunity to spend that time and never talk about the kids' problems or what the rules are or what disciplinary action is. It sort of just transcends all of that. It does. Absolutely does. And that's why it's so valuable to the probation staff, the judicial system. valuable to the probation staff, the judicial system, and the trauma training that you referred back to. You're absolutely right from a presence of, if you look at what CrossFit does from a human movement perspective, we're the best in the world at it, hands down. Now what we'd like to do is

work with the coach on the human condition piece of it, right? Because we know human movement inside and out. We want to work with a coach to work on the human condition when they come in the door. And we're not, through that training, we're not teaching you how to be a clinician. That's somebody else's job. They get paid for that. What we're trying to help you with is how do I navigate?

Let's say it's a long-term member and they come in one day and they're just despondent and you have no idea why. Or, and we've had this and we've had, I've had affiliate members call me that at the end of a class, a member came up and said, man, I, I just, I don't have a value for life. Like, or my, my wife said at me, or I just lost my job. Individuals like that are going to talk to a coach or an affiliate owner after a class or before a class, before they're going to talk to somebody at the water cooler

or their boss or sometimes their spouse. And unless you've had a little bit of training from an affiliate owner's perspective or a coach, what do you say to an individual that says, I just don't, or you overhear somebody say, you know, I just have no value for life. How do you handle that? That's a, that's a suicide, unfortunately waiting to happen. And the first responder, if you look at the first responders inside of the affiliates now, the highest death rate today is suicide. It's outpaced heart disease and

lung disease. How do I talk to my first responders? And we have a section on that to talk through what does secondary trauma look like? So it's not beneficial for just the juveniles that come in. It's beneficial. We see it as beneficial for every individual that walks in our door. And that's, I think that's where the value like you said nicole and the training staff really see in and how do we become a really really well-rounded health and wellness um uh affiliate and is this the is this the first what did you call it it's It's a trauma. It's a, it's a athlete centered trauma sensitive coaches training. This will be the third one. Yeah, this is the third one that we've given. The first two are, you know, we're in beta, the very, very small.

This will be the third one where, you know, we're hosting it at Rogue. And we're, we're excited. And in that, it looks like there's also some tools provided that after you finish the course, there's tools provided to how to even not only deal with the individual, but how to start this program in your gym with the people who write the checks. Yep. It's a requirement. You know, if you want a program, it's a requirement to go through the training. It's something that the states are now recognizing. We just went through the Arizona

Supreme Court process to get CrossFit on their listed vendor list. And they're excited about it because they don't have to find a vendor because that's basically what a CrossFit would be at that point in time that now needs to go through some type of special training. We've already got it. of special training we've we've already got it um and it can be accredited there's ceus you can get from it so um i i cannot post a link well maybe i could the problem the problem with crossfit it's been there for fucking ever is that if you don't have a cfid you can't even get to the fucking course to read about it yeah and and that's been a problem since since that was as far back as i can remember 2008 like it's fucking nuts because i wanted to look at the course last night and i didn't have a cfid or i couldn't remember it and thank god my computer

remembered my wife's what's the name of the program maybe i'll um you sent me a link on my phone maybe i can send it yep and post it in comments, but you'll still need a CFID to get past the wall. There's no reason for that. They got to fix that. I don't, I don't know if CrossFit even has an it department anymore. That's above my, that's above my,

uh, let me see. Let me see. It's a, a athlete centered mental health training, Matt and Matt. That was the CL Conversations. Go here.

Okay, here we go. I'm looking for this link to the program. So, athlete-centered. CF Port. Oh, no. Sorry, sorry. Can you see it there? Oh, yes, yes yes there it is

there it is okay so it's at crossfit.regfox.com and i'm gonna try to put a link down there but you'll still need in the comments give me one second yep that's all that stuff's above above my pay grade but i know how to yell at people for it and complain. I'm good at that. I'm good at that part. Yes, sir. Let's see if I can send this over to my computer here.

Let's see if this can open up here. Okay, so this is the page you'll get to. And then from here, you'll need a CFID. So if you want to read about it, I just put the link down there in the chat. A-C-E-P-N-O-V-E-M-B-E-R 2022. How's that, Heidi? That's all I got for you. That's all I got for you. And Matt Burns, I saw your comment earlier.

Sevan, don't get triggered. You know me so well. I was definitely triggered. Yeah. I want to show one more video here. We saw that the judge credited the culture, and it makes me so happy to hear him say this stuff. This guy gets it. This is you're going to hear him say this stuff this this guy gets it this guy this is you're going to hear him credit the um community and it's it's kind of amazing that he gets it i think one of the judges

even visited uh the class right yeah yep yeah that's cool i can't give enough praise and enough thanks to the CrossFit community as a whole, but specifically to Matt Schindeldecker and Debbie Wagner for being so welcoming for all of you. The kids in this program, they have taken most of you under their wing. And that is something phenomenal to see. I can't say enough thank yous to everybody involved. How happy is that guy that he's seeing kids not come back? Yep. Tremendously happy, right? Yeah, generational, changing generations. Right. This is um generational juvenile poverty yep

i think that was a quote from uh andy wilson the law director of state of ohio what you said you're in 14 states um yeah we're working inside of 14 states trying to get programs started. I was two weeks ago. I was in western Chicago, DeKalb County, and met with the judicial system there. And they are they are blown away. Once the they say to you? I'm playing devil's advocate. the conference call and they're ready to go visit their first affiliate to say, Hey, is this one that we can partner with? Um, and that's, that's how, that's how we know it's successful. Um, so, you know, it's, here's the way it works, right? Every state has a juvenile, I'll call it problem. Every state has an adult problem. State funds programs to serve that population. So there's funding there. It's just how do we find it and how do we work with the right affiliate that can house a program like ours? I'm not sure I understand this comment. i feel i feel bad for the affiliate that follows this so inspiring no wait you feel good for the affiliate that follows this yeah

yeah it's every it's not the the special sauce is in the community right it's in it's in what we all do inside of our affiliates every day um It's why you mentioned earlier on, Savan, it's why an affiliate owner says, hey, I want to open my box because we're not getting rich. This is not, we're not being millionaires here, right? What do we want? Well, we've all been through something and we want to help someone else through it as well. Colin Lawrence, mental health isn't a place or status it's a trained muscle that fails sometimes under heavy loads yeah that's right i like it when smart people say smart shit uh the state of california has 4 000 the state that california is the state on the um

west side of the united states people that borders the Pacific Ocean. It's a big state. A lot of people, 30, 40 million people. There are 4,000 minors detained daily in juvenile run facilities statewide. Approximately 35,000 supervised by probation officers. So that's 35,000 clients wandering around just in the state of California. Just the state of California. At the end of the day, that's the population that we could serve if we have the right mentality, the right people. And that's just a juvenile. There's two million adults incarcerated. That's not even probation. That's incarcerated adults at the tune of $46,000 a year per adult inside of our detention centers today. That number is staggering. What if we could prevent that at the juvenile age or help prevent that at the juvenile age? What would that do for us long term?

or help prevent that at the juvenile age? What would that do for us, you know, long-term to put that in perspective, you guys, 2 million incarcerated people. That's one out of every 175 people in the United States, most of them men. And,

and basically you just look at a high school with, you know, if your high school had 2000 kids, that means 20 of them are fucking going to jail there's another fascinating stat here there are um there in california there were 17 200 minors under the age of 17 were arrested in 2018 yeah we did a um speaking about california two weeks ago, we were asked to attend a quarterly drug trends call for the state of Ohio that had 168 members of state and federal government on. And we co-hosted this hour and a half conference call with Judge Mitchell, who is the Skid Row creator of the Skid Row Run Club.

He's a Superior Court judge in L.A. County. So they did a huge movie on him, you know, what, 2000 or 2001. So the state and the federal government said, hey, we want CrossFit alongside of the guy that started the Skid Row Run Club that's hugely famous to talk to us about why physical, mental health, and wellness is so important to the rehabilitation of both addicts, juveniles, and adults that are in the system today, which was a huge honor it was a lot of a lot of fun you know what's interesting you said that and i'm not trying to shit on what

you just said at all just the important perspective um they didn't mention the fact that makes this so different is the community and they didn't mention that to you when they said that do you open with that always you open with like hey there's kind of a misnomer of what we do it's a community yeah it's kind of like the misnomer of what crossfit is it um it's a new it's foundation it's a nutritional program and yet and yet people miss that because the other piece is so and sometimes you come in through the back door. I came through the back door. I start moving first and then start tweak and then got to the bottom of the pyramid.

Sure. Right. But everyone says that, hey, this is, this doesn't work by just bringing the kids in and put writing what you do up on the board and leaving. Doesn't. Nope. No, absolutely not. It's the community you invest in them. It's the relationships you build. That's why it's successful. Nope. No, absolutely not. It's the community you invest in them. It's the,

the relationships you build. That's why it's successful. What is the, um, what is the baseline workout when a kid comes in? What, what, what, what do you have every day? We don't change it. The only thing we do here specials on Thursday, we do team workouts on Thursday. Oh, that's cool. So they partner up, teams of two or three or four. They have a little fun. We get them excited. We pick a student of the week. So every week, it's nominated by their peers.

So we have a big whiteboard, and they have to come on the backside of the whiteboard and write who they felt out of the probation group, out of their peers, did something special this week, whether it was their attitude. Maybe they did something at school to help another kid out. Maybe they just worked out super hard. So we use Thursday as a team building. So we do team workouts on Thursday, and then they pick the student of the week, and we talk about why they pick that individual. Outside of that, it's the same programming we do at our 5 a.m. class and our 6.30 p.m. class. We don't change a thing. And that's the beauty of, like I said, the front end work is loaded up front. Once the front end work is done and we've got a program started, it's no different than coming into your 5 a.m. class. You're building community in your 5 a.m. class. You can build it with these kids. I'm guessing you're like an artist who had

an idea for a song and then you wrote it and then you played the music for it and then it goes out in the wild. I'm guessing Matt Schindeldecker wakes up every morning pretty pumped in the last couple of years because you have – you're watching something grow right before you that's your baby. Yep. It's – yeah, my wife and I and Debbie, we're like, is this reality? Is this really happening? It's that good, huh? Yeah, I could tell by talking to you. It's really that good. Yep yeah it's really that good yep it's really that good you've gone beyond you stumbled upon and if you start in the beginning there were no plans he had his head down like this and was just working okay give me this bring go ahead you bring this girl in bring her in you were just open you didn't force this you weren't in control of this no but

you were prepared but you were prepared, but you were prepared, prepared. And we, we didn't go to CrossFit and we didn't, we didn't go to the state of Ohio. They came to us. They came to CrossFit and said, what's the magic sauce here? Why are these kids so successful? So you are, you feel beyond rewarded right now. You're, you're just, you're exceptionally blessed. Yep. Yeah. And for every program we've stood up, there's nine programs in the state of Ohio. For every program that we stand up, it's just like one more, there you go. You know, the cool part about it, Belmont County, one of the most recent programs here in the state that stood up, they received grant money from the mental health and wellness of their county, $25,000 a year to house a program.

So that's for an affiliate owner. And they're all not that way. But for an affiliate owner, that helps pay the bills at the end of the month. Oh, my goodness. helps pays the bills at the end of the month. Oh my goodness. Hey, and if I,

if I go to an affiliate and I see they're running this program, I want to support the affiliate even more. I want to go there. I want to, yeah, I want to go there. Yeah. That's the place I want to go.

That's the place I want to go for sure. It's got some street cred. It's doing the right thing. It's good people. It's people. It's like the whole reason why we go to this place is because we want to be surrounded by people who also want to better themselves i mean that's the um are you overwhelmed at all it seems like a lot it really does seem like a lot you we it's funny you say that we were on a call um yesterday with um the state especially bureaucracy what you just said there we were on a call with the state i mean as soon as i hear that

like i don't even want to fucking go to the dmv i drove without a driver's license for a year i didn't even i don't even want to go to their website everything's just junk so after that drug trends call um we had i think we had 12 individuals from the state of ohio send us email like hey we want to talk to you about this program one of them was he basically collects data for the state so he looks at all of the funding looks looks at all the data out of all the programs, and he wanted to better formulate the data that we have and that the counties are collecting so they could present it at a broader scale.

So we have this 30, 35-minute call, and he sat back and he goes, hang on a second, what department do you guys like what department do you guys run and you know debbie and i looked at each other and we're like uh it's just us and he's like no no it's just you two and he asked that three times and like yeah it's just so he thought you were like he was like dealing with like gold's gym or some shit like you guys had offices and you were like the kids outreach program yeah no it's in a second i'm going to be the guy that cleans the bathrooms exactly yep that's what i'm going to be exactly and i'm going

to load you know the water in the refrigerator because we're out um so he laughed he's like it's just you two like yeah yeah right now but you know and crossfit is done like i said i can't speak enough highly enough of daniel hale and what she's done for us and what Gary has done on, you know, taking something that a year ago was nothing and really helping us grow it, which is really, that's a, it's fun. And by that, you mean providing the, the level one, getting you in contact with the training department to push through the trauma training and the videos and the articles. That's right. Helping us communicate with other affiliates that there's a lot of really good things you can do in this world and you can still make some revenue doing it. And that's the most important thing. I mean, you know, from an affiliate owner's perspective, you know, let's be honest, I got an email every

year, right? It says, hey, your affiliate dues are up. And now what we want to do is be able to give back to the affiliate and say, hey, let us, from a CrossFit perspective, take CrossFit crave out of it. From a CrossFit perspective, let's help the affiliates look at programs that can bring members and revenue. And here's one of multiple that we could work on. And that's the beauty of it, I think. I'm glad you brought that up because it was a thought I had before. I ask all the affiliate owners, why do you continue to pay your affiliate fees? And I'll ask you before, because I don't want to taint your answer. Why do you pay your affiliate fees? And I'll ask you before I,

before, because I don't want to taint your answer. Why do you pay your affiliate fees? Because when, you know, if you remember back when the tweet hit and all of that, and you had all of these people going, I'm out,

I'm out at the end of the day, again, CrossFit is the front of our name. And maybe it's the back of some other people's name, but it's CrossFit foundationally. And what Greg created is what we do in this box. No different than Craig Howard. I fight hard every day to ensure that I'm following the methodology that I was taught through my L1, through my L2, that keeps CrossFit, CrossFit. It's my box. This is my CrossFit crave. And I'm damn proud of that.

And I will never let go of that name because it's changed my life. And I know it's changed the lives of those that have come through this building. Right. That's why I do it. It wouldn't make sense. What would I call it? What would I say I do? It just doesn't make sense. What would I call it? What would I say I do? It just doesn't make sense. So right, wrong, or indifferent. I'm sure there's probably a lot of naysayers. It's a great answer. You're practicing the methodology that you learned that Greg Glassman and team put out to the world, and you're committed to it. It's your piece of integrity that you maintain by paying it. You're committed to it. It's your piece of integrity that you maintain by paying it. So, and I've said this, I sound like a broken record, but towards the end of Greg's running of Cross to, he realized that what he needed to do was litigate, legislate and educate. And he was going to take that affiliate money and fight off anyone who fucked with the protocol, anyone who would fuck with the trainers, he would be the ultimate fucking sword and protect them to the death. And he he's, and he's good at fighting. He's really, really good at fighting.'s really really good at fighting and it was an amazing thing and since then i've kind of wondered how is this um new group of people

going to offer any value to crossfit they were actually more likely to um hurt crossfit than do anything and i think in a lot of hurt had been done to the brand but but it speaks volumes uh that the brand is still so strong and so successful it's shit does not stick to this thing yeah that being said greg also said that he is not the builder of skyscrapers he is the caretaker of a forest and what i'm seeing when you mentioned danielle and gary gains his names i'm seeing them like really embodying that because they didn't create this. They're not taking credit for it. They see a part of their forest flourishing, and they're running over to it and learning, nurturing, and sharing and facilitating the growth instead of forcing something like, hey, we're going to give you a discount on blah, blah, blah, blah, blah on FitAid. I just fucking love this, and it's kind of the first thing.

In all my time at CrossFit, it's kind of one of the most – outside of the actual training, it's the most powerful thing that I think I've ever heard of available for affiliates. I swear to God. Thank you. This is unreal. It seems limitless what this could do. It does. I swear to God. Thank you. I, I, this is, this is unreal. This is unreal that I, I just, it seems limitless what this could do. It is limitless. Yep. Yep. Because the popular we're, we're affecting one small population. We've not worked in the adult

population, which there's funding available and, and a need where addictive services, you know, what Dale King and their, that team's doing there's a boss yeah there's so much good that can be harnessed um and funneled through the doors of every affiliate it's those that raise their hand and say hey i want that program on behalf of everyone in the community and i mean this you could have really fucked this up dude i know you could have really fucked this up, dude. I know you could have really fucked this up. I wake that up. Well, I woke up this morning, scared to death to come on here going, man, I am going to screw something up for sure.

You could have, you could have, you could have been like, I'm not, not had your head on straight and, and, and, and got distracted by the shiny object. And instead you just focused on the kids and spreading the program and let all the other shit just kind of come. Yeah. And, uh, on behalf of everyone, thank you. What a great ambassador you are for the methodology. I want to say this too.

I do shows like this and on the complete other spectrum, I do shows with Andrew Hiller, which are just as valuable, but I can't drive this home. There's all these influencer jackasses who talk about CrossFit, who get these tens of millions of views on their thing, and they say stuff like CrossFit ruined me or I don't like the pressure from doing workouts. They are nothing. They are a tiny, tiny speck. Never get distracted. It's like someone complaining that there's a worm in one apple in the entire orchard of apples.

That's right. Just spit that out. That's right. Bite out the worm and spit it out. Let him have his little acreage of the apple and then eat the rest of the apple that's right yeah this is this is the vast majority you don't see it's not going to get the number of views a number of likes but this is the vast majority of what's um going on agree all right brother thank you for letting me pick your brain thank you for being so vulnerable. I'm glad to connected with you.

I'm glad I have your phone number in my phone. Yes, sir. Thank you for all you do. Yeah. Like I, you can text me 24 hours a day. I don't sleep by my phone.

I am your friend. And yeah, what a great pleasure it is to meet you. Yes, sir. Thank you so much. Cheers brother. Oh, and tell Debbie and the whole crew over there.

I said, thank you also, please. We'll do that. Absolutely. Yep. All right. Thank you. See you guys you guys yep bye-bye

wow craig howard thank you uh for those of you brian friend thank you and then for those of you who've dm'd me in the last couple weeks who see matt's really uh um take taking the crossfit uh community by storm that there's a there's a lot of chattering about this guy what a freaking beast i wanted i so wanted and i don't have time now to this is fucking amazing i so wanted to talk about this i don't have time but i'm going to tease you guys with it just so you can just see the kind of absurdity in this world someone sent this to this is a picture for those you can't see who are listening online this is the beautiful and always on the highest moral ground danny spiegel i have a picture of

up on the instagram and it says someone i first of all i think anyone who does these ask me a question things it's fucking I think it's bizarre. But I know why they do it. They want engagement so that they can get into the algorithm. But it's a picture of her in her underwear with some titties showing. Her hair looks cool. She's out in the woods somewhere, and her shirt's open, and she's got mud on her legs, and it's cool. It's a cool shot.

And it says – someone said, do you get tired of people commenting on your body? Sevan podcast, for example. Of course I do, but it's not going to stop. I've learned to just deal with it. Wait a second. You, you, you, you're tired of people commenting on your body. I, I, I, I'm going to, I'm going to, I don't believe that. I think she's a liar, but, but, but I would love to have her on and ask her because her, I go to her Instagram and it's just full of pictures of her body. I don't know what am I supposed to comment on, but, but I, but, but I don't think I comment on her body that much, but anyway, I commented on her clothes, not fitting her right at the rogue, uh, uh, invitational. I talked about her performance at the games being absolutely mind-blowing and then it says i've long accepted that any man who

has the audacity to get on a public platform and speak ill of a woman ill of a woman especially if he's talking about her body so let me i just want to say this and then i'll come back to this because it's fucking hilarious i've never spoke ill about her body i've let me, I just want to say this and then I'll come back to this because it's fucking hilarious. I've never spoke ill about her body. I've told you guys, I like fat people. I like fat girls. I'm a huge fan of foreskin. I'm a huge fan of chubby chicks, chubby guys. I'm fucking the lover of all bodies. When I was in high school and the boys would be like, I have a type. I'd be like, dude, my type is anyone who's nice. Let me tell you what I have been critical of. Most critical on this show, the one most consistent theme is people with mental illnesses who direct them and project them onto me.

This person didn't ask if I spoke ill of your body. I've never spoke ill of your body. Oh, my God, Savant. I've never spoke ill of your body. Oh my God, Sevan. And the fact that you're conflating me talking about your body with me being negative about your body, that's what I've been critical of

on this show across the board. Thank you, Johan. Lean into it, Seve. Thank you, I needed that. I've never been critical about your body. And if you, I put a really really loud I'll get into it later because this is so fun I'm having so much fun with this but this the only thing I've been critical about is people who live in echo chambers who don't listen to other people who are so self-absorbed that they think that they start talking to themselves this person didn't ask you anything

about me saying anything negative about your body a second thought little boys will continue to use hate i i don't use hate but i am a little boy i love dump trucks i am such a little boy i never grew up i never got into sports cars i still i still like like the world's largest dump truck i think is cooler than a ferrari. I am a little boy, but what I am not is I'm not someone who has mental illness, who gets defensive and, and, and, and takes what other people say and twists it in order to play the victim role. I don't do that. And I think your picture is wonderful and you have an enormous ass. All right. I will talk to all of you later love you guys i'll see you this evening we are going to uh uh we are going to have an amazing show tonight relax dude relax stay creepy i will i will don't worry there's these fucking knuckleheads

oh okay i'm taking me and my foreskin to take my boys to the skate park today. And I also like old people. I catch myself checking out old ladies. I am the most loving of all bodies. I do get

concerned that obese people are fucking on a shitload of meds and killing themselves. That's what I get concerned about about i get concerned about your mental illness a little bit like i wish oh fuck what if she didn't she just she doesn't have to carry that around with her she could be so much cooler okay i did look up just since we're here one last thing let me see if i can find it uh i i did look up this is the um this is the world's largest uh dump truck it is a 32 feet wide 67 feet long and weighs 80 000 pounds the world's largest dump truck love you guys see you at the skate park