The Sevan Podcast - #787 - CrossFit Affiliate Series | Javier Jaime of CrossFit OTL

Episode Date: February 5, 2023

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You did, man. Right on the money. Javier. And say your last name for me, Javier. Jaime. That's two first names? Great. Yes. I have three first names, actually. My middle name is also a common first name. What's your middle name? All right. You asked. Orlando.

Wow. That's an ethnic name if I ever uh says savon matosian my mom my mom was a fan of tony orlando when i was born and so that's really where that came from who who is that was that a singer i think so yeah singer singer in the 70s 60s 70s Yeah. Singer, singer in the seventies, 60s, 70s. And I guess they could be last names too. You could be Jaime. No, no. All of the above. I've met everybody. There's a baseball player, last name, Javier. There's a plenty of people. First name, Jaime. Absolutely. All over the place. There you go. There's the man.

He needs some CrossFit. Not a lot, just a little bit. I don't even know if he's still alive. 10,000 air squats for Tony. I'm glad we opened up with that. My mom, when she listens to this, will be really proud. All moms are proud, no matter what. Right. Thanks for coming on. I was thinking this morning, sometimes I have these guests on who've done a lot of podcasts and they're always surprised that we don't talk before the show goes on. And I just wanted to remind everyone that pretty much every show you see every, like, I don't know these people, they don't know me. And we just come on and you're watching two people um just kind of bump into each other in an elevator and and uh and have

a discussion yeah so are you at home i am yes and are you in dallas yeah that's right like right in between fort worth and dallas okay yeah we're a little closer to fort worth but yeah that's right like right in between fort worth and dallas okay yeah we're a little closer to fort worth but yeah that's the uh that's the metro area and the gym you have there is crossfit otl crossfit otl yes and what's that stand for the otl on the line on the line and is there another organization called like fitness otl or or so um well is there another one no not by me but but but have you have you get mixed up with another gym i because when i was when i was digging around on the internet i saw another otl and i think i want to say it was in austin or something well you know what we went through a heck of a time coming up with a name, going back and forth with CrossFit headquarters. I probably had about 20 different names before we finally got to settle on it. I wouldn't say settled on OTL before it was one that wasn't taken. It wasn't too similar to another name in the area. So yeah, OTL finally. So I, I, there might be another OTL. I don't

think there's a CrossFit OTL. It's not a cry. It's not an official CrossFit, but there is an OTL in Austin, Texas. OTL fitness. Well, you know, I wonder if it stands for on the line too. Is that a common acronym for on the line OTL? I don't know. You know, how did you, how did you how did you choose that name yeah um so initially the first facility that we were going to move into was going to be a building that was split right on the border of two cities and literally the border was going to go right in between like right down the center of the building so one wall is going to be in one city another wall is going to be in one city. Another wall is going to be in the other city. On the border sounded too much like, you know, Mexican food. So we went- I like that, on the border. So we went with-

Bring your green card, CrossFit. Yeah, that's right. So we went with on the line. And then the debate was, do we go with CrossFit on the line, the word or we do the acronym only and then you know when you're affiliated with CrossFit you have to pick you have to be really specific you know it's OTL said okay so I think OTL is just easier to write out every time well I like it and it gives a little conversation because people then can ask you what they stand for well it has another meaning to us now actually so we didn't move into that building after all okay uh we ended up moving to another building it happens to be on the border again of two of the two towns but not like split in the middle but at one point we said well we'll keep

otl because it has like a different connotation to us now like the on the line now means for us like what is on the line like in your life like what's on the line, like in your life, like what's on the line, like your freedom, your health, your, you know, your wellness, your family, all of this stuff is on the line. So our answer to is like, what's on the line. We say everything, everything's on the line. Yeah. As soon as you said that, I heard the little voice in my head say my family, it's my family's on the line. It's always on the line. Yeah. And that's really the most important thing to our our gym you know we we center around the family and um you know our even our membership kind of kind of shows that and you know what do you what do you mean by that what do you mean you

around the family and your membership shows by that yeah so you know we're we're at our one year anniversary like just a couple days ago um. Congrats, dude. That's awesome. Yeah. No, we're, yeah, we're excited. And leading right into the open, we didn't really do the open last year. So we're leading into our first year. We're going to do our first like full official open. When we opened last year, we had, you know, a handful of members that came from our garage and I can talk about that.

If you, if you want to hear about that later, please. Yes. But then as we, as we've grown, we've grown not only in our, you know, our adult members, but our kids and teens. So we, we do emphasize a lot our kids and our teens program. And I think that has a lot to do with when we started CrossFit, it was a, it was kind of like a family thing and that's really what's going on here. So, you know, so we have a lot of adults, we have adults with their teens. We have the kids program. You probably, the reason

I think that I got connected with you through Chase Ingram is, you know, we, we homeschooled our kids. So we have a lot of homeschool communities, you know, as well. A lot of kids that are homeschooled that come through our, through our program so it's really like you know a whole family affair god did you see you saw what happened right there suza yeah it all connected yes yes javier this is the absolutely least prepared i've ever been for a podcast in my life i spent more time learning nothing about you last night than I've learned about anyone. You are very hard to dig out information on. And I thought this morning I was making fun of myself to Sousa before you came on. I said, watch this one. I said, this is literally going to be two people bumped into an elevator. I went through your Instagram. It's very thin. I went to your gym. I'm like, oh, this is going to be. And I'm like, hey, dude, there's got to be

some reason I invited him. Like I know like he adopted some kids or something it's something and then as soon as you said the chase interim homeschool i was like yes yes it connected yeah we've made it already i don't have to fish for 90 minutes we're seven minutes in and i and i know why i love javier yes yeah i thought i would go ahead and put that out there right there so that god you're a good dude smart man how they are smart man yeah okay that is absolutely fantastic um uh how many members to the gym so we're at 120 in one year yeah we started with 30 that'sa? Yeah, yeah. 120 in the first year is awesome. Yeah. Yeah. Now, again, that's a mix, right? So we have adults. So when we say members, we count all of the members. So that's adults, that's teens, that's kids, that's some of our

personal training clients as well. But yeah, that's 120. I was just having a conversation with somebody about that yesterday. You know, we've had some great months. You know, we've had, you know, the the net the net increase has been about, you know, eight to eight to 10 per month every now and then, you know, we'll we'll get a really good month. But we'll also have some people that drop off that move that maybe CrossFit wasn't for them. But, yeah, we've been really happy with the growth. Obviously, you know, we'd like it to be a little bit more, right? Who wouldn't? We moved into a bigger facility than I think that most people would recommend,

like right off the bat for like a new gym. So yeah, so we got to fill up the space a little more. What's the square footage on that? It's 5,000. Oh, okay. Yeah. footage on that it's 5 000 okay yeah uh hey um one of the things that's come to my attention recently and maybe every gym does this but it's more overt and mayhem is like a mayhem they have they they put their values first like who the character i guess of the owners and of the core

group of people who run the gym. And you don't necessarily have to have the same values of them. You know, it's not like they're obviously Christian and they, they have these Christian values, but obviously everyone in there, you know, atheists are welcome. They come on this show all the time. Muslims are welcome. The whole gambit's welcome, but they wear their values on the front. And, and I think that's, I think that's a good thing. I think open-minded people want to be around people with good values, right? Regardless of whether you're Mormon, Christian or whatever you want to, you want to hang out with people who have good values. It sounds like that's what's going on with your gym, that there's some values that you guys wear on your sleeve, whether it be around whatever values got you to do homeschooling

or that makes it so it's a family gym? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. We, you know, I would say maybe we don't have like a poster on the wall that says here are, you know, personal values. I think as a gym, you know, we value our members. And so we, you know, when they come in, we want to know why they're there. We want to understand what they're trying to do. And then we really try to cater, uh, not necessarily like customizing programming, but really the message that we have for them about why they would benefit being there. But I think the real, maybe the value that people get when they show up is that we just really do care about their growth. I think I'll say like my stories in CrossFit has never been about competitive CrossFit.

I'm competitive with myself. If we dig into it a little bit, like the things that brought us to where we are today have been about lifestyle change, life change, health restoration. have been about lifestyle change, life change, health restoration, and all of those things that have happened not only with me, but my wife, my daughter, my son, my mom, my sister-in-law, all people whose lives have been affected because I found CrossFit 12 years ago or 10 years ago. Yeah, that's, you know, I never thought to say that out loud either, but I don't know why, but that's 100% me too. I never came to Crossfit for any competitive reason i was a dude i really i really loved going to the globo gym i like moving i like lifting weights i like the lap machine i like walking around i like the drinking fountain i just like a gym you know and and i and uh so i would go to a gym and then i found crossfit and then i was

just like oh this is cool too but but never for the competitive reason whatsoever just to stay uh healthy and fit i guess because i just liked moving i guess now that i'm older it's to stay healthy and fit but in the beginning it was just to move yeah i didn't i didn't know about the crossfit games before i walked into a crossfit gym i didn't i didn't even right yeah i didn't know there was a competition i didn't know there was an open i don't know any of those things. It existed because I think I started like 10 years ago, you know? So that's funny you say that Javier, because one, neither did I, there wasn't even a CrossFit games when I started CrossFit.

I never even thought of that. I never even thought of that. You're right. Yeah. Yeah. So I just, I had been doing an outdoor well I guess my life had gone through some kind of stages of fitness right after right after I graduated from college um I started traveling with the company that I worked for it was like my first you know first job and we were doing I was traveling all over the country doing training you know week after week staying in hotels, eating terrible food. And then one day I got home from like a two week long trip and I got off the plane. And this is before, you know, the security checkpoints in the airport.

So my wife actually met me at the gate and I walked off the gate, hadn't seen her in two weeks. And I was like, so, so looking forward to seeing her. And these words are the words that really have kind of changed the rest of my life. The first thing she said when she saw me was you're fat. It was such a, it was, I was mad. Like PH, PHAT. That would have been nice. That would have been cool, but no. Boy, you, you, you picked up a gold chain when you're in Brooklyn. That's fat. boy you you picked up a gold chain when you're in Brooklyn that's oh yeah yeah and a pair of but no she said you're you're fat I was like offended I mean you know I was a high school

athlete I was in good shape you know but you know college had not you know I gradually lost any you know fitness that I had when I was in high school and college. And, um, and then I got out and went, and then at that moment, I decided that I needed to, to, well, after I was angry and mad and upset and, you know, butthurt about it, then I said I needed to do something about it. Um, and you know, I had been working out off and on through college. So it wasn't as, and this was right after college. So it wasn't like I, you know, I didn't know what to do or how to do it. So what did you do in college, Javier? You played collegiate sports? Oh, gosh, no. No, I went to the University of Texas at Austin.

I had no thought or ambition that I could play D1 football. I knew that wasn't in the cards for me. I mean, I was a good football player in high school, but I didn't think about it. I wanted to be an engineer, so I went to an engineering school. Okay, and you exercised through college, though, is what you're saying. Yeah, off and on. didn't think about it. I wanted to be an engineer. So I went to an engineering school. Okay. And then you, and you exercise through college. That's what you're saying. Yeah. Off and on. Yeah. Yeah. Off and on.

Nothing formal, nothing fancy. Hey, were you fat or was your wife talking like hyper? No, I mean, you know, like right now I'm, you know, about 180 pounds. How tall are you? 5'10". Oh yeah. That's, that's good. Yeah. Yeah. You know, I'm, that's that's good yeah yeah you know i'm i'm kind of fluctuate you know between single digit and you know low teens and the body fat depending on how things are going wow but then i was probably a good 215 okay yeah so yes that's 40 that's 35 pounds more yeah 35 pounds more for Yeah, 35 pounds more for sure. A fluff.

Yeah. I mean, I wasn't strong. It wasn't like I was training for strongman or something. That's basically that's one of those big bags of dog food you were carrying around everywhere. That's right. Yeah, that's it. I was good. And so so then I, I found or maybe I didn't, you know, I mean, I've been reading. I've been I've been into working out since I was 15, 16, you know, I mean, I've been reading, I've been, I've been into working out since I was 15, 16, you know, and you know, the only, the only authority you had on working out back then was like muscle and fitness magazine. That's it. And then I remember finding in one of those, the, uh, the advertisement for, um, body for life from Bill Phillips. You guys ever knew, you ever know about that? No. Maybe if I saw a was it was the eas supplements and i remember them a body transformation challenge and i said well i'm gonna i'm gonna do it right so i did like the before picture and then i went and you

know put my engineering hat on and then figured out how to calculate macros and kick put this spreadsheet together and then backtrack how long it would take for me to get to a single digit. I had this little handheld body fat thing and I figured out like, okay, I was at whatever I was back then. There you go. That's the book. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I recognize him for sure. Yeah, no, that's it. Like, I think he's a vegan now. I don't know. I'm not sure what he's doing these days.

It's all a journey. It's all a journey. Yeah all a journey yeah wait wait so so i figured out how to um well i went on this program i had like three three protein shakes a day three so i was doing the six meal macro counting you know thing this is back in 2000 i guess or 98 99 2000 so i figured out how to do all that stuff lost all the body fat got to about the same composition i am now doing doing that back then uh and then i was working out and i moved out of a like a i would say global gym i moved into an area that only had a ymca a rec center and i And I was working out at the YMCA. And then somebody asked me, I guess they saw me working out. They saw, you know, what I was doing. And they said, hey, would you, do you want to be a trainer here? I'm like, what? What do you mean? No. Well, I mean,

I'm just working out here. They're like, oh, well, you seem like you know what you're doing. And you've been helpful to some of the members here. You know, will you consider doing that? I said, well, I guess. So yeah, so I somehow got myself certified to coach at the Y. So for, until my kids were born, which was probably about a good three or four years, every morning at the YMCA from like five to six and six to seven, I would train people in the morning and then seven to seven to eight, I would work out. And then I'd go. Did you like that? Hey, was that your first time dealing with people? Cause I mean, both, both, it was your first time kind of dealing with the public and also you liked it.

Yeah, no, I loved it. I mean, it was, I mean, I loved helping people. So, I mean, you know, I really, you know, I learned how to put together workouts and programs for people. I figured out how to, you know, how long it would take to do, you know, set, you know, this is all, you know, splits, right. Like, you know, chest and back and all that. Yeah. And so I figured out how to get all of that stuff and compact that into an hour and put people through a warm-up and it was great learning it was probably a better experience and learning about people it was like a therapy session most times most days you know yeah and

how old were you 25 and they were your basically your guinea pigs they like both they were your they were your uh original students and they were lucky i guess to find you yeah they were my original i remember how old i thought they were they're probably younger than i am now they were they all my clients were you know middle-aged men and women you know whatever mid to 40 mid 40s 50 years old like back then i was 25, what ethnicity are you? Mexican. Hispanic. Mexican-American. Were you born in the States? Yeah. I was born in Corpus Christi,

raised in San Antonio. And you have blue eyes. Yeah, greenish. Yeah, green. And what color are your wife's eyes? Hers are blue. She is not Hispanic. Oh, what is she?

She's an English mutt, like German-English something. You wanted to wait to be married for 25 years before you ask her. Leave something for the end. Well, you know, I don't know what her – she refuses to do any of those, like, you know, ancestry things that test her blood. She's like, I'm not giving anybody my – Yeah, I'm not doing that hey use a fake name by the way if you ever do that moving forward yeah use a fake name we had some family members because you don't want like your your uncle john who killed someone 20 years

ago going to jail you get family coming out of the woodwork on that well before i was before i was wise enough for that i used my real name and I ended up getting an email from somebody that says, hey, we're related. I'm like, okay. And my wife's like, ignore it. Don't answer. They're going to try to kill you. And so I didn't answer. And then later I get another email from the same person that says, hey, I was just looking over my husband's shoulder. This is crazy. He's crossfit with crossfit. I was looking over my husband's shoulder at his CrossFit leaderboard and I saw your name on it. Do you know this guy? And I'm like, Holy crap. Yeah. Like the small world. So this person that said she was related to me, but I ignored the literally just a couple of

weeks later was looking over her shoulder. His husband at the leaderboard at our CrossFit gym saw my name and, and it turns out, yeah, it's like a really crazy story. Yeah. So not only are you related to him, but but she was related to her. But her husband works out with me. I knew the husband. Oh, I've worked out with him for a couple of years. Wow. And were you like, hey, sorry, I ignored your wife. My wife made me do it. Ever since I got skinny, my wife my wife made me do it ever since i got skinny my wife doesn't let me talk to other women yeah well yeah i did meet up with her and her and him and you know she had some actually really interesting this interesting information about

the history of our family that nobody on my family knew about and i talked to my mom about it and she was like oh crap i didn't know that so is your mom born here in Mexico uh in the United States yeah we're probably like fourth generation Texan you know I don't have any family that I know of at all in Mexico um my grandparents were from Laredo so which that's right on the border so I would you know maybe and maybe their parents might have been but I don't hey how far are you from the border now not far I mean Dallas is I don't know uh I mean well if you go due west to El Paso that's a nine-hour drive you know but okay okay so you don't have people coming through your do you feel any of the influx of immigrants coming in? Yeah, they get, yeah, they, I mean, not necessarily in my community. Um, but I know, you know, the Dallas Fort Worth area, I mean, the, the, all of the kind of like Texas cities

have kind of transformed over the last, you know, 15, 20 years when, when I was young, growing up in San Antonio and Corpus, you know, there was, there was always, you know, the, you know, kind of the derogatory terms for the people that were coming across from Mexico and stuff. It was smaller and the community wasn't as small. If you were in Texas and you were raised in the 70s and 80s like I was, you were a couple of generations, especially if you're in San Antonio, Corpus Christi, you know, you're, you're one or two generations in Texas. That's pretty standard. That's not as much the case anymore. Because the numbers are crazy and they're not even Mexicans. It's like 95% like just other, other people coming across the border.

But then, I mean, the numbers in the picture, obviously I haven't been down there, but the numbers in the pictures are nuts. You would think that, I mean, I remember I went to school in California as a little kid and then, uh, you know, first second, kindergarten, first, second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th grade. And I always remember there being at least one or two immigrants in every single class I took minimum and not Mexican either. Actually, now that I think about it, it was like usually Asian, but there's always one or two kids in the class that didn't speak English. So I figured if

you live in Texas, God, it's gotta be every class growing up when you were in school, there must've been someone in there who didn't speak English so good. Not, not necessarily for us, at least not the age that I was. I mean, maybe now. Okay. How old are you now? Uh, 48. Oh, okay. So we're about the same. You graduated in 92. I graduated in 90, 93. Okay. Yeah. And you've never left texas i would say back then i would say back then my um this is my pure guess right i'm no authority on this at all i would say if you

were crossing the border and you did not want to be close to the border patrol you skipped all of the southern cities in texas and went past them oh right okay like you're getting but yeah it makes OK. Yeah. Makes sense. Right. And and you've never left Texas. Well, I've lived I've been a resident of Texas my whole life. I did spend like a summer in Berkeley doing research. I'm sorry. It was a crazy experience, man. It was very different. Very different. It was a crazy experience, man. It was very different. Very different. Yeah, I lived I lived there right on campus, like a couple of blocks from Telegraph. And I worked up in the lab on the on the hill.

I spent many, many, many, many, many days and nights in that area. And did you ever visit People's Park? What year was that you were there? Do you remember? That would have been like my sophomore year in college so like 95 yeah but so like the summer of 95 i think or the summer yeah that's not right what a small world yeah you didn't meet your wife there did you no we actually met in high school oh okay wow not until our senior year not like so end of my, we were in a big high school, like class of like 600 or something like that. We did not meet until like the very end of our senior year, even though we were in the same high school for four years. And she was the same grade as you.

Yeah. And you hadn't seen her your freshman, sophomore, junior year, or you had, but just never paid her any mind. If I did, I didn't really really we were like in two different circles like i was on the football team and she was in the band you know so it's like you know we're like we're never on the same bus never on the same schedule never practice on the same field and somehow we were never in the same class i don't you know so the dudes on the football team don't pluck the girls off from the band dudes? From the band?

Yeah. I don't know. Oh, we're taking your girls, guys. Yeah. She was in the drum line. She was like in the cool part of the band, apparently, is what I'm told. I don't know. Right.

That's what everyone says. Yeah, the drum line. That's it. That's what everyone. I was in the cool part of it. Yeah, she didn't play the trombone. She was in the drum line. The only cool part of the band is the football players who date the band

girls. Yeah. Uh, and, um, so, so you get, so you get off the airplane and she tells you that you're a Gordo.

Yeah. And, um, and, and you were pissed. Like, like you thought it was rude. I thought it was rude. Yeah. Yeah. Then I did something about it.

How long did it take for you to, how long did it take for you to kind of flip the script on that? Did you start working out even before you, when you were still mad at her or did you come to, well, I'd never really ever stopped working out in my life. I just really started paying attention to my nutrition. Honestly, I probably worked out less over the next 90 days that I was going through that transformation that I was working out before the program. I really spent more time focused on my nutrition.

And what did you stop eating? Sugar, for sure. I mean, processed foods. I mean, that's when i first learned all you know meal prep i mean i used to cook you know like a dozen chicken breasts on the weekend and i'd meal prep for that and then i would pre-cook like wild rice and this and you know whatever i really i had my macros late you know fully set up to where i had the meals pre-planned and kind of my theory back then was if I could, if I was eating six meals a day,

if I could eat five of them that I would know every single day exactly what they were going to be, then the dinner was the only one that was kind of left for chance. And at that point, I mean, you know, I really wouldn't go overboard. So that seems so as long as I knew five out of my six meals. So three of them were protein shakes. One was breakfast. One was lunch. wouldn't go overboard so that that seems so as long as i knew five out of my six meals so three of them were protein shakes one was breakfast one was lunch dinner was up in the air every day but beyond that the five were always in control so i knew exactly what i was eating and i was tracking my weight and my body fat the whole time and did she give you any feedback like after a month did

she ever like retract her statement like after like a month she's like oh you look good did you ever get like a like you know like those signs you drive into the national forest and it tells you like if the fire fire uh the the chance of fire was she like oh i'm moving the needle over you're not fat you're just like yellow zone you know like when you're in the same house with somebody sometimes you don't like notice the the obvious the changes right away i mean people were definitely noticing and i think you know that because people were noticing you know then she obviously recognized that i mean yeah i definitely wanted to please her she was my wife but i also knew that i didn't want to be and you know this brings up the whole story of my my whole family and kind of like what happened growing up for me. And I didn't want to be like the rest of my extent, you know, extended family. They're all

sick. Like, you know, the, you know, that whole with chronic disease. Yeah, absolutely. Chronic disease. I mean, so almost every one of my, every one of my, my parents, siblings, you know, have diabetes, you know, or some form of chronic disease, you know, they're all on medications, they're all struggling. And I just, I grew up seeing that. And I didn't, I just knew that I didn't want to do that. Were you ever a fat kid? No, not at all. I was actually a pretty thin kid. I mean, they used to actually make fun of me when I was young, because my family was all

bigger. They used to call me Flacco. They used to because I was too, they thought I was too thin. You know, so it's not really like in my, I guess, real genetics, like, I didn't have to worry about that. I was like the, you know, in the 70s and 80s, or especially in like the early 80s, you know, the kids that would just run around in the neighborhoods, you know, kind of like, especially in like the early 80s you know the kids that would just run around in the neighborhoods you know kind of like yeah that was me yeah me you know i mean we were climbing trees jumping fences you know i'd ride my bike for hours away from home like just come home for dinner what did you ride what do you remember what you rode oh yeah man a haro a bmx yeah yeah yeah i was a freestyler yeah i used to do all the tricks and the

and the quarter pipe rides and stuff like that i used to skate too i didn't skate but i had a i had a mini goose and a mongoose yeah i had a mongoose then i bought a haro fx that had the coaster bike you know whatever you know you spin the handlebars and oh i never got any cool shit like that gyro yeah and i was a kid like i went to the bike track by my house and just watched like i never once got on it never not once never yes just watched i was that no man we know we loved it i was i i mean i remember something but i won't say where my friends and i got all of the plywood and the wood supplies, but we just came across five of them. Yes.

And we built a quarter pipe in the back and somebody's backyard. Like we just built it and started riding. Wow. And then the parents were like, you can't have that here. And then we fully disassembled it and moved it like a whole block over and then put it in my backyard. Wow.

And your parents were cool with that? Yeah. Yeah. They were fine. Yeah. Those your parents were cool with that? Yeah. Yeah. They were fine. Yeah. Those are, that's good parents. Hey,

that's smart parents too. Cause then the kids are at your house. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We were doing the, we were riding the back and then eventually my dad's like, you know,

I don't know what happened. We need the wood. So we tore it down. Built a fire. I mean, nobody was riding, you know, at some point nobody was riding anymore

yeah i mean it was engineered by let's see i'm trying to think of how old i was i would have been in the sixth grade or seventh grade i mean i was like i built it like me yeah that's impressive yeah so you know we we designed we designed it i would have looking back now i would have changed the the slope slope yeah because i'm a grown-ass man and i paid someone ten thousand dollars to build a wooden ramp in my that's that's a video that's a that's still the guy came over the guy came over the bag of nails and i got scared i mean that's i mean i i need testosterone i need testosterone i'm pretty good at building ramps um my uh my son when he started skateboarding when he was younger i built a little you know just a little kick ramp that we put in

the street because i wasn't going to build one of those big ramps and i and we put it and we had it in the street in the front and they were a kid they were kind of riding up and him and his my nephew he lives my nephew lives right across the street he is um he is the son of my wife's twin so my wife's twin lives right across the street so that's another story we have twin twin siblings well anyway this ramp was out in front right in front of my curb and my me my brother-in-law do you know how weird that is to be married to a twin like where my brain goes like it doesn't even like they're just the same i knew you were gonna be stuck i know i just stuck like if my wife had a twin i would be just tripping i would be tripping but go on if you go to our instagram feed one of the and look at all six posts yeah i know well look look you have to talk to my son about that like we had a lot more posts

and he was like oh i need to clean this up so he cleaned up but he probably knows too he archived it so goofballs like me don't dig into your history yes yeah he archived like some of our you know some of the posts he's like those all novice. Like one of the earlier posts, there's two women at the bottom and we're like getting started in the blue. That's my wife. Okay. So we're standing out in front of the house talking. Cause the boys were like kind of on and off on the ramp.

And it was me and my brother-in-law and then my neighbor. And we were just talking, standing there on the sidewalk. And then out of nowhere, a lady drives down the street and drives her two wheels up onto the ramp and literally does like a dukes of hazards on her side for a split second and then oh she didn't see our ramp i mean you know this was like a little kick ramp right she didn't see the ramp and so she rode up the ramp kicked up two wheels and we're all just absolutely shocked that's and like our funny thing is that our first response yeah let's look at the ramp oh man is the ramp

okay we're like oh maybe we should go check on the lady the ramp held up by the way so hey for those of you who don't know there was a time in my life and Javier's life I don't think Suze's life where once a week when you watched on tv there would be a stunt where a car drove on two wheels it was like a two or three year period it was in every show Knight Rider, Dukes of Hazzard, Chips, The Incredible Hulk it became it was like this thing now that you mentioned it we're like just stunt guys just figured out that like hey we could drive a car on two wheels and they started doing that do you remember that it was like in every show oh look there's the car on two wheels oh look there's the car they'd be chasing each other on two wheels you're like dude okay we get it right

and then you get a glimpse of the driver and it wasn't at all the actor right it wasn't like you have a helmet on right it was somebody else like yeah that's so weird that's gone that era's gone right that doesn't impress anyone anymore no no now they've got to jump off of the building or you know yeah the two-wheel driving that's so funny hey um i have these black uh plastic uh ramps a ton of them that you assemble them together like legos they're big and you can build like bike ramps, a ton of them, and you assemble them together like Legos. They're big, and you can build bike ramps. And I always get concerned leaving those in the street for that exact same reason. Some car is not going to see them and drive up on –

We caught it on video camera. Well, not what we did. My sister-in-law's security camera actually caught the car doing it. Wow. I think it's on her i think it's on her instagram but she if your son was really good he'd put it on his instagram put it up now put it on your youtube you get like a million views off that so no we should well you know we knew that we'll go put that i'll put it as a short and i'll sell the uh the integrity of my ramp building

because it's still good javier when you um when you started dating your wife in, uh, your senior year, did you guys both know you wanted kids? Nah, I don't think we were that mature to even be thinking about that stuff. I know that she probably did. Yeah. Um, I never, I probably never thought that far ahead. I didn't, I never thought that I wouldn't or that I would. Yeah. There you go. That's us it's my son damn that's a good looking family you didn't see her at high school yeah she

yeah she's beautiful now i'm now i'm thinking about when she called you fat it's like 10 times as bad yeah yeah yeah yeah when a pretty girl calls you fat it's horrible like that is yeah that was a blow man that was definitely yeah but hey look it changed the whole course of history it changed it changed everything you know you know though because like you're starting to have to like if you have a belt with holes in it you know all of a sudden like that day when you put use a hole that you've never used before you're like like, oh, this isn't cool. Yeah. Well, I mean, I kind of think, like, for now, absolutely.

Like, the way clothes fit, but honestly, I work from home a lot now these days, so I don't wear wear belts that often. But, I mean, I can tell, like, when the burpees aren't hitting right, you know, or I can't get, you know, I used to be able to do this many pull-ups and now i can do this and i don't attribute it all to like oh i'm old and my fitness changed i'm like oh wait a minute i'm kind of slacking on some things you know and right sometimes it's just like you know a couple pounds up and down hey um inflammation is massive to just mood right there's there's sometimes where you have, at least for me, my desire to work out is just all on my inflammation. So if I'm not inflamed at all, like if I fasted for a day, I I'm excited to move, but anytime I've eaten shit, I'm not excited to move. It's a, I don't know if it's subconscious or what, but I, the thought of getting, going through full range of motion, getting my body on the ground, squatting below parallel, all that sounds miserable.

Yeah, I talk to people about that a lot because, you know, when they start, when you get into the, I'm going to say that maybe not, you know, the habit or the discipline of choosing to work out however many days a week you're going to do it, right? So three days, four days, five days. you're going to do it. Right. So three days, four days, five days, the choices that you make the day before you start to be conscious about that choice from the day before about how you're going to feel the next day. Right. You know, if, if you're the kind of person that says like, oh, well, I don't feel like it today. So I'm not going to go because of what I did yesterday. But if you say like, I go every day, I go Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, that's what I do. There's absolutely no ifs, ands, or buts unless something happens. Then you start thinking about what you do the day before. You start thinking about what you ate,

what you drank. I think that that's part of the lifestyle change, the daily feedback that your body gives you about what you're going to do that day. I think that just starts to add up over time on like making good and better decisions about your lifestyle. And it's, and it's, it's, uh, I don't know if this is the right word, but I'll go with it. It's worse as you get older because you're already starting to lose some mobility and some, um, desire to, to just, it takes longer to warm up. I mean, just, just straight up yesterday, I had to be, I've been messing around with dumbbell snatches. And at the beginning of the workout, I pulled out the 70-pound dumbbell and I could barely drag it out to the center of the floor. And literally,

I warmed up for 45 minutes. And then all of a sudden, the 70-pound dumbbell snatch was no problem at all. It was a joke. But literally in the beginning, I'm like, oh, I may only do one a minute for 10 minutes. And then by the end, I was like, oh, this is easy. I could do 10 in a row. I mean, that would have never happened when I was 30. No way. Oh, I mean, I walk into the gym and I've got to do the warmup routine that's in our programming. And I trust it because it works.

It gets me warmed up. Who does that uh we use the corporate uh the crossfit affiliate programming cap oh okay cool yeah so you know we we love it because it's you're the first person we've had on that uses that that's awesome yeah um yeah i was on another programming before that and um because we have so many new and new crossfit members um what i really liked about cap was it has a very clear like rx intermediate and beginner programming built into it right away like i don't i don't have to think about trying to break it down and and i would say most of my members are along that intermediate level to beginner there's only a

couple people that in our gym that are RXing, you know, the cat version of the workout. Right. But yeah, sorry. And you go in and it's just, it's just set for you. It's funny. Some people poo poo it, but I like the thought of that too. I like the thought of showing up,

going over the workout for 20 minutes or 30 minutes as the coach, just by myself and then being like, all right, here here's the lesson plan for today someone who's really good has thought it out some people will talk some crazy shit about that and be like hey you shouldn't open the gym if you're not going to write your own programming i don't i don't agree with that at all actually well i mean i think it's a i think it's a you you definitely can appreciate what's in cap if you wrote your own programming. So again, there's a big gap between when I started training and where we are today. And there was a time when I was programming for the people in my garage and it was, it was difficult. So, I mean, I,

I definitely commend anybody who does that, you know, for five or six days a week for 10 straight years. I mean, that's, that's some, that's's some work it really is um and then especially when you start thinking about like piecing it together across you know not making you know making it a a program that's progressing people through the month and through the year and then you also start to you know incorporate the warm-ups into the workout and you know what we get from people that come from other gyms that are using us when we're following cap is like, they love the flow of the class,

you know? And it's like, it's like doing an L1 refresher every single day. Oh, wow. Wow. That's a, that's a serious plug. Yeah. Yeah. And we have a lot of new coaches right like we're in young gym you know so you know so our coaches are new like i didn't show up and immediately have like you know like five x games athletes or five l ones that are like you know part of it was me and my daughter who are the you know and so we got a couple people how old is she how old your daughter she's 20 but she got she got her l1 when she was 17 years old in one month wow and hobart's the one doing the cap right james hobart yeah yeah it doesn't get much better than that well he oversees it right it's his stamp of oh yeah it was his whole thing from birth. Yeah. Because it was the handplant

before that, right? Correct. Yep. And then they bought it. Seve's back with Snap with the Hunt. Listen, ding-dong. I probably did 30 snatches yesterday with the 70-pound dumbbell like it was my job. I did 10 in a row. I was holding back my amazement when you said 70. I'm like, damn, that's pretty good.

Yeah. I mean, it's not a long range of motion. It's like three feet it's very very uh it's very i'm gonna get to that i'm gonna get to that 100 it's gonna be my next party trick for you guys you guys gonna be like wow okay um so so when you when you meet your wife and um how old were you when you decided to have kids? We were 28. Were they planned? Yeah. You did plan. Oh, you're right.

We were ready. You were ready. I thought, you know, we got married pretty young. Is he avoiding the question? Susan, I asked him if they were planned. He says we were ready. I've never heard anyone say they were ready. I've heard people say they were planned.

I've never heard anyone say they were ready. Well, we people say they were planned. I've never heard anyone say they were ready. We weren't not trying to have a kid. Right. Okay. You knew you were being irresponsible. They were ready. You were being responsibly irresponsible. We were ready, yeah.

They were ready for the consequences. Now, our number two, that one we planned. We're like, let's, we were, there was a window. We wanted to hit a window where they were actually two grade years apart yeah as opposed to three yeah i don't know why like we like we didn't want to be three grade years apart we wanted to be two grade years apart so we're like oh we got to get it we got to get on it because we got to get the number two two two's perfect because then they have the same like things in life happening at the same time but they're far enough apart to where they're

not always in each other's business my brother and i are four years apart so we miss a lot of kind of life events together like when i go to middle school he was still in elementary school when i went to from middle to high school he was still middle school i graduated he came in so you're kind of at different phases but the two years are nice mark well that's exactly what we were thinking my sister and i were three years apart my wife and uh you know her sister were you know five minutes apart you know so we're wife and uh you know her sister were you know five minutes apart you know so we're bridging the gap right they were my twins were five hours apart yeah that's nuts right two hey two different days two different like zodiac is that what they're called two different days the five hours split yeah two different astrological signs

do they argue about who's oldest no they know The little one acts like he's like 30 years younger than the older one. Hey, can you imagine this? You knew you were having twins, right? Yeah. Okay. My wife's mother did not know that she had twins in there. The BOGO said it. Wow.

So when the second baby came out, she thought she was birthing the placenta? Well, I don't know. I don't have like the play-by-play of what happened at that moment he goes deep right away that's how yeah i don't know i don't know what she was thinking i'll ask her one day but yeah you got to hear that story that's a crazy story uh excuse me ma'am there's another human being still in you what hold on we're not done yet dude when my wife found out she had twins it was the craziest I'd never seen her like for 24 hours. I mean, we might as well told her there were two Chinese spy balloons over the United States.

I mean, she was completely freaked out. Two babies in you. What a weird thing. So, so, so you have, so you have, and that's another great thing too by the way the concept you brought up there's this whole part of your life where you're like okay i can't get this girl pregnant i'm not gonna have uh i have instagram believe it or not javier's okay i believe you he's got seven posts he does yeah well he used to have a lot there again he's you know he's he's media savvy he cleaned out this is cool dave castro does that these

cool people think they're gonna archive their shit it's like all right be cool fine be cool i told them just like put you know come on he um the the other part of like why our gym exists i'll maybe we'll get to that no no go for it go for it i'll just start talking about you and your wife having sex if you don't get me back on track so go ahead yeah i'll get to the gym part uh okay so bridge the gap oh that's my daughter so there you go so she's on there too no more talking about the last subject that'd be weird yeah they don't want to know about that they don't want about that well let me just say this then before we talk about bridging the gap how crazy is it that there's a point in your

life where you're trying not to get pregnant and then if anyone's never experienced this other part where you're actually are trying to get pregnant it's awesome like i we had i remember it's just like your whole mindset flips and you're like you're you're it's like um just indulging it's just great i hope everyone at some point in their life is like, okay, we're going to try to make a baby. It's so, it's so, what a great thing to do with someone you love. It's so cool. Okay, go on. That's it. It is. It is. Yeah, we, uh, okay. So I trained people in the gym. I was in pretty good shape. Isabel, who just said hi, is born. I'm still training people. Still in pretty good shape. At the Y? At the Y Javier? At the Y, yeah. And then, and then, uh, then life happens, man. Then it just gets busy. And then Nicholas comes along two years later and then like, I, I just stopped doing, I didn't have time. I mean, the kids were

young, you know, we were busy. Life is, life is challenging. And then just fitness just got away from me completely. Um, and my wife had never been a person that really worked out in the gym. Like she never did that. So, so fast forward about, you know, I guess six years later and I'm in the worst shape of my life. My wife is in the worst shape of her life and we're both now fat, right? We're both now, you know, relative to us, the worst shape we've ever been um we went on this family retreat we took like a family picture of the four of us didn't look at anything at all like that last picture you guys pulled up and we just look at each other and we both like go like oh man we're both not in good shape um and then that's when my wife said she's going to do something about it and

again she'd never been a person to go work out in the gym. And, uh, and we found out about this kind of outdoor bootcamp program that was in the area that people were doing. And so she went and joined that and just absolutely loved it. It was like five o'clock in the morning. She was going and working out in a parking lot, like rain, sleet, snow, heat wave, whatever it was, they were working out. And I was like, I've never seen her do anything like that. And she got into amazing shape. I'm like, man, I need to do that. So then I started doing it and really enjoyed that. Same bootcamp. You started going. Yeah. We would go at different times, but yeah, it was just because somebody had to stay home

with the kids. But I'm going to, the reason why that's so important to me is because that's that, that experience is what changed my perception of working out from like I'm the lone wolf at the global gym, working out by myself in the corner to working out with groups. Like I really enjoyed it. Like I enjoyed working out and being coach led. I enjoyed, you know, getting to meet all these other people. And there was a they had established a pretty nice community. This is like at the dawn of like Facebook to like when facebook was like kind of growing and stuff everybody would like check in you know when they show up and stuff you're like oh so and so checking so we started we did that and i loved it i got in like great cardio shape but then i really got to missing lifting weight and so i said i really want to you know lift more weight and they're like oh just

bring a heavier dumbbell javier and i'm like well you know you can only do so much you know with a little 20 pound dumbbell you know in the parking lot and then that's when i decided i'm going to try this crossfit thing like maybe i'll be cross it and do you remember when that popped on your radar was it was it sometime during the boot camp classes it was it was like at well that the, so the thing about the bootcamp classes, like they would move around from parking lot to parking lot, depending on what business. And I think the, we had, we had physically moved away from the one that was convenient to us. And so the one that I wanted to go to was no longer convenient. And I think we, it was like a time that we stopped doing that. And I was thinking, well, do I really want to go back and go to another one of these bootcamps or do I want to do something different? I really want to go back and go to another one of these boot camps or do I want to do something different? I really miss lifting weights. I hear they lift weights in CrossFit.

So I found a CrossFit gym near me and we started there. Were you freaked out about it? What was your impression before you went? I didn't even know what to expect at all. Honestly, I had no idea. I remember I found a gym. I went to one and I think this gym did everything they could to try to drive me away because like it was poorly run. I mean, I won't name any names or anything like that. Go ahead. That's fine. We'll bleep that part out. Go ahead.

Snitch them out. Let's go. It doesn't exist anymore you know it's like well it's like me and like this is again five o'clock in the morning right this is a 5 a.m class so walk in the coach wouldn't be there there was a couple other guys who were you know who had been doing it before the workout would be up on a board somewhere and then we would all look at the workout and then we would do the warm-up by ourselves and then like about halfway through the warm-up the coach would show up and he kind of like tell us what to do. And then we would, I'd start doing the workout. And then like a couple of minutes later, he would do the workout

behind us. Like he started doing the workout. But, but I was really intrigued by like some of the movements. Like, I'm like, Oh, what is this kipping thing? I was watching the guy do the kipping pull-up. And then I, and I was decent at pull-ups when I was in high school. So then I started doing that and I figured out how to do the kipping pull-up and then I, and I was decent at pull-ups when I was in high school. So then I started doing that and I figured out how to do the kipping pull-up like within the first couple of days. And I'm like, Oh, this is cool. And then some of the workouts we did, I'm like, this is cool. So I, I, so then I told my wife, I'm like, I really think I like CrossFit, but I don't know if I want to do this gym. So then I found another gym. How did you know that that, how did you know that every gym wasn't going to be like that?

So that's like one of the big complaints from affiliate owners right that it just like someone goes to a crossfit gym they get an ass experience and then they think that they're all going to be like that how did you know just because you have three brain cells well because everyone what say that again you're being kind my wife would say like i have two sometimes well it's like it's like i go to super cuts and i need to get my haircut and i know it's Well, because everyone... Say that again? My wife would say I have two sometimes. It's like I go to Supercuts to get my hair cut and I know it's a crapshoot. But it doesn't mean I stop going there.

Yes. Do you know what I mean? I get there, I assess it. There's ten ladies, right? And I just hope that... Half the time I'm like, God, I hope I don't get the blue one with the fucking's with the

fucking 18 nose rings and then i get her and she ends up cutting my hair fine and i was totally wrong yeah but um yeah but somehow you knew that this wasn't gonna be i mean if i go to mcdonald's and it's ass like you know they're all ass you're like yep mcdonald's sucks um but you somehow knew that crossfit gyms would be different well i't know. I really didn't know what to expect. I just called up the other one and I, I called up another gym and I, I ended up getting the, you know, the owner on the phone and you know, and I told him like, yeah, well, I have a little bit of experience. You know, of course, you know, I was a trainer back in the day. Right.

So in my head, I'm like, I know how to work out. He's like, well, we still want you to go through our, he didn't call it an on-ramp, but they had some kind of, you know, fundamentals class. Yeah. Some kind of fundamentals thing. And we went in there and did like a, you know, a little like seven minute, I don't even think it was seven minutes, like a little, you know, push-up, sit-up, you know, sequence. And it about killed me, it about killed me even though I'd already done it a few times at the other

gym. Right. But then, you know, so we went through that and like the little on-ramp thing and then I got integrated into class and just never looked back. And I totally became like a CrossFit nerd. I mean, I watched every YouTube video, watched every probably every one of the documentaries that you, that you produce. Yeah. I love those. I like gobbled it all up. I watched them all. Like my wife probably thought that I was obsessed.

What year was that? Let's see. so that was 10 years ago when i started so 12 12 13 when you when you called that other gym did you know right away when you started talking to that owner like this is going to be a different experience than the other one well for sure because of the i mean i kind of did because he was he was you know he was first of all having a conversation with me as opposed to hey just show up um then you know then there was this class thing i was a little i was a little annoyed by having to do it at first but then once i did it i was you know really thankful for it you found a value when you when you search those gyms did you just literally type in crossfit gym near me into google to first find your view i'm always

curious as like what's the first entry point did Did you watch it on YouTube? Did you like, what took you from knowing about it to then typing it in to find the one nearest to you? Yeah, I think I just Google CrossFit. Yeah. And there was a couple of people who crossed it. You know, I don't know exactly what I typed, but yeah, there were really, at that time, there were only like a couple in the area. There was one that was probably close enough to reach, but I would have not been interested in driving that far. The other one was like close enough that I'm like, very kind of traditional, you know, CrossFit experience where it was like in an industrial park, you know, in a metal building, no air conditioning, no heat. You got to drive by it four times to make sure it's the right one.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Exactly. Like, I'm like, where is this place? You know, I'm like, you know, it's like a little, you know, inconspicuous door you open up and then there's you know yeah that was it hey there's there's these um there's the gym like that and i've been to that affiliate where you go in and you're not even sure who the coach is like no one says hi to you it's it's bizarre there's like a pretty girl and a pretty guy in the back flirting like and that's it and like you suspect one of them might be the coach the shirtless dude's the coach and then there and then there's the gym where they kind of give you like there's someone going through the motions it's like jamba

juices like this like you walk in there and they're like hi and they just say that to you hi because they're told hey every time someone walks in the door they say hi to you and then there's the crossfit gym where it's like the dude's across the room he's training someone and he's when you walk in he screams you hey welcome i'll be there in two minutes make yourself at home we got if you want a cup of water there's paper cups and water and then he gets back and he yells it like you don't have to be like was he talking to me or nothing you know what i mean that's like the three I don't give a fuck about you. I give a fuck because I'm told to give a fuck about you and like, hey, I actually see you.

Whoa, that person's like, it doesn't even matter what they say to you. They just saw you. And you're just, it takes so little to make a human being happy. Yeah. So little. Like they just acknowledge you. That's the rule for us. Yeah.

That's, I mean, it's kind of like a staff rule for us. Like, you know, when somebody walks through the door, we say hi to them and call them out by name. You know, that's very intentional. Yeah. And it's a great some people would be like, well, it's fake. And it's actually no, it's actually just building good habits. And those are one of those things you can fake it till you make it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, for some of our younger staff. Right. It's a thing that is definitely we're asking them to do something that maybe is a little uncomfortable.

Yeah. Challenging for them. Yeah. It's like challenging. Hey, you know, you see it. So so not only do you have to say it, but you actually have to know their name. Right. In order to do that. Right. And so for us, you know, we ask we definitely ask people, you know,, to reserve a spot before so that we see that they're coming, you know, we make it a point to make sure we have a picture on file in our, in our software so that if it is a different coach and they don't know that person, then they can see them, they recognize them, you know? So, so we get, we see it, we see a spot in our, in our, in our app that says that, you know, there's a, we don't have a picture for somebody.

We make it a point, let's go get a picture. That way when they come in and you see them, somebody recognizes them. We don't, they don't come in and it's a new coach and they don't know who they are. But yeah, that's cool to do that. Hey, and the repercussions or the fallout or the collateral benefits of, of asking kids to make eye contact and say hi to people is great. At that point, if it is uncomfortable for you, then you know, like it's uncomfortable for me. and all that does is tell me, hey, I'm the person who needs to practice that the most. Because it shouldn't be – it should be second nature for us to acknowledge each other as human beings. It's like the weakness hopper of your life, right?

Yeah, there you go. Whatever you fear the most, you need to do next. yeah there you go whatever you fear the most you need to do next so um so you uh you when you and your wife start so when you start crossfit um and you start telling your wife about it how old are your kids at this point oh gosh so they're 10 years ago so 10 and you know eight ten and seven okay and so she's still doing the bootcamp and you're like, yo, I did this CrossFit thing. I'm on my, I'm on my second gym. You should give it a try. This is all, this is all crazy how all this stuff starts to come together now. Right. So Hey, were you homeschooling your kids at this point? We had, yes. Did they ever go to public school? I know I'm opening another thread,

but we'll get back to you my my daughter did well before they went to school before they were school age homeschooling was something that we that we thought we were going to do i was very you know i was very apprehensive about it yeah me too it's what weirdos do it's weirdo shit yeah neither one of us neither one of us had done it i mean she wasn't homeschooling. We both went to public school, right? So, um, we thought we might do it, but then we said, well, we kind of like gave in. We said, okay, let's put them in school. Now we didn't put them in public school. We put them in a private school. So they did, uh, my daughter did kindergarten first and second in the private school. My son just went to kindergarten at the private school and then we pulled them out and

we did homeschool. So yeah, at this point point okay same for us basically same for us two years at some Montessori private school and then yeah yeah you're out but yeah so then we so then we pulled them out at this point we're homeschooling them um and uh we're homeschooling but my wife continues to do the boot camp thing but I go to oh, Oh, to this day, she's still a bootcamper. No, no, no, no, no, no. Again. So what happens was she's doing the bootcamp, but instead of doing the bootcamp at the campus, one of the coaches for this bootcamp thing, he, he starts working on the side. So he comes to our neighborhood and then he starts to coach like the boot you know outdoor boot camp stuff in our driveway with my wife my wife's twin sister he comes to your house to do boot camp with your wife sounds like a great guy don't forget we saw your wife it's like it's like five people like there's

five so it's him it's him my wife never let it go below 10 safety in numbers that's yeah yes we need a chaperone for your wife at all times so thank you what the funny thing is was we keep doing that right so she's doing that in the they're doing that in the driveway like her and her group and then i would get in my car and then drive off to the crossfit gym while they're doing their class right then i come back and i'm just like y'all should cross it i was yelling like y'all should cross it. I was yelling like y'all should cross it. Right. Yeah. Your workouts might warm up. Yeah. You're a dick Susan, but I love it. Well, and then the trainer quits, he has to leave. He can no longer come to our neighborhood anymore. And so my wife says,

well, Mandy's list. Why, why can't he come to your neighborhood anymore? Well, he, he had kids, so he had had to like he couldn't come at that hour he's still okay okay the way you made it sound is like okay all right or the way i made it sound okay the way we sputtered in our heads yeah well i think a couple times we did have some people like call like you know the neighborhood watch on us on them or something like yeah neighborhood and stuff but no he, he, he was no longer available during that time. And so then my wife asked, Hey, can you write workouts for us? Or she was like, I could either join the CrossFit gym with you, or could you write workouts for,

you know, for me and the rest of the group? She asked you that? Yes. Okay. And by now your garage is building up some equipment and stuff i'm guessing well at this point we have no equipment right they've been looking out in the street they didn't even do the garage like at this point they they're still just doing you know battle ropes and hopscotch around the driveway right they've never done crossfit in their life um judy reed seban's mind can't get out of the gutter after seeing javier's wife there may be uh some truth to that go on it's a cantankerous crowd i apologize i know i've been i've been watching your podcast okay i'm a clean man but i but even a clean man like me has to uh bring in the dirty sheep and uh my flock is a little bit

vile i apologize i was i was i'm prepared i'm mentally prepared. I don't know. I have answers for you. But so she asked me to start programming. At this point, I'm not an L1 by any means, but I am a CrossFit geek. Right. So at this point, you know, I'd like if I didn't know how to do a muscle up and I couldn't learn in the gym, then I YouTube videos and I practiced. If I couldn't figure out how to get my double unders, I practiced, you know, all of the stuff I was teaching myself, if I didn't get it in the gym. And so and so I mean, I thought plus I had the background in fitness, I said, Okay, sure. So then that's when I started writing workouts for them in the garage, we moved from outdoor the girls. So it was like four women, and I think four or five women that started in the gym. And then so I started writing programming for them. And then we bought some equipment. And then next thing you know, we've got, you know, rubber. We've got a rig. We've got pull up bar. We got weights. We got all kinds of stuff. And then I'm coach. I'm training them. And that honestly, that started six years ago. So we we've been doing that in the garage for for some time. And so they were doing that.

And so what happened is I would go work out at my gym, like at the CrossFit gym, not my gym, the gym I was working at. I do the five o'clock class. I would come home at six, six fifteen. You know, I'd make a cup of coffee and then hang out. And then about seven o'clock, they started their workout. And then I would either coach them through their workout or, you know, when I wasn't available and I would just put it up on a board and they would follow it. Would you ever do both workouts? Would you ever do theirs and CrossFit gym? No, they didn't want me working out with them. They didn't. Okay. Because you would give them pointers like squat deeper and stuff like that or? Well, no, they just, you know, so I, I think this is, this also speaks to like one of all of these things that we're building up in our experiences. CrossFit is what we're building up in our experiences

crossfit is what we're trying to build into our gym and that is that they were afraid to walk into a crossfit gym themselves they were afraid they weren't fit enough they were afraid yeah movements they were afraid they were afraid of all these things so they just wanted to do it in the you know the bubble of our garage because there they didn't have the, you know, the fear of, you know, either judgment or capability. They're like, oh, we're just, you know, we're old and slow and this, and we can't do CrossFit. And we went to a real gym. We would embarrass ourselves. I'm like, no, you wouldn't, you'd be fine. I'm like, okay, fine. So we just, we keep working out there. Yeah. I didn't, I mean, I did actually work out there.

What do you think about that for the brand? What do you think about that? I'm always torn. What do you think about that for the brand? What do you think about that? I'm always torn. I always think that we should roll the red carpet out as far as we can to people's doorsteps to get them in the affiliate. And then on the other hand, if I hear someone preaching that, I start to get defensive. I'm like, no, if you don't have the balls to go in, then if, yeah, you should be a little bit afraid. It is hard. I'm always torn. Like depending on, I guess I'm always playing devil's advocate. Do you have thoughts on it? I mean, I think you're, I think that when people decide to stay after they've over, once they walk through the door for the first time, if the gym, if, if the affiliate family community, right. If they know that that's the kind, that's the way, you know, if somebody who walked through that themselves and they see somebody else come through the door and they can kind of just sense it in them. Right.

They can kind of see it. There's a welcoming for those people. Right. And then that people who are really timid. Yeah. The people who are really timid, you know, but the hard part is getting those timid people on the door. Those are the ones that we never see, right? I don't know the person that just will never make the call. There was a time when we would get calls from people and they'd be like, oh, we don't know anything about, you know, we kind of know about CrossFit, but do you just want to come and check it out? And I'm like, really?

You don't know anything about it? Like, I was really excited to hear about people who didn't know anything about it. Right, me too. Yeah. Um, but for the others, what happens as soon as they would tell somebody, and this is, you know, this is the challenge, I think for many affiliates, as soon as they go and tell somebody, Hey, I'm going to go try CrossFit. The first thing they say when they come in the door is they say, Hey, yeah, I'm interested in it, but everybody tells me that I'm going to get hurt. Like, oh, you're going to get hurt. You're going to get hurt. Like, well, who told you?

Hey, this is a great line. Look at this, Javier. Someone put in the comments, CrossFit is wasted. CrossFit is wasted on the fit. I mean, that's an interesting line. Yeah. Yeah. Because the glass ceiling is just so high for anyone who's afraid to come in. Like and man how lucky are they if they come into your gym it is a failure on any affiliates part if they

lose someone by hurting them right like you really fucked up by hurting them i mean um on the first day if someone walks into your gym on the first day you have to be able to capture them that's like yeah you have to have the you have to be have good and it's not one size fits all right if there is someone who comes in there who doesn't if you don't challenge them enough they might get frustrated but if there's someone and you challenge them too far um yeah well when you're growing the gym initially and you want every lead to come through to become a member because you want to get your membership up you know um you know you you want everybody and you try to make them fit and i I think, you know, now it's not to say we don't

want, you know, everybody we want, whoever, you know, it's, it's, it's going to go through the journey with us. But what we're, what we're finding is that there are definitely people who are coming in that just have the wrong kind of motivation. You know, they just don't have the right, um, you know, the right mindset. And so you trick them. Can't you? I mean, I mean, can't you manipulate them? Because eventually, it will click for them on it. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, we I mean, we definitely will take people through the process. I mean, for us, our goal here is if somebody does not have any CrossFit experience, you know, we bring them in, you know, we're following the two brain, no sweat intro, you know, kind of, you know, process, right. So I'm on the two brain mentoring program. And so, you know,

we, we do everything we can to get in touch with them as soon as possible and to get them in person in the gym so that we can have that conversation and really get to know one another and see if it's, and see if it's a fit. And, you know, I think that we're finding, you know, there's some people that are interested in, you know, just getting a workout in and we're like, okay, good. Like, I want to bring you in because I, what I want to do is I want to bring you in and I want you to get to learn about what CrossFit is. And it is really a more of a, it's a lifestyle, not just a place that you work out, you know know and then once people are into that and they

can cut to seed and they kind of get the energy from the community then it's great but then there's others that are just like in their mind they've got this mental block already like i just want to know your price and i want to know how much it costs and you know if you know if you're out you're out of my range you know you're too high i'm like okay well i mean i'm pretty competitive with all the other crossfit gyms but if you're comparing me to Planet Fitness, okay, sure. Can't help you. You said you do two-brain? How long have you been doing that?

Why did you do that? For anyone who just joined, by the way, the gym is exactly at its one-year anniversary, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Four days, three days plus. Yep. Exactly. Well, so I'm going to bridge that gap for us here. So we were working out in the garage with my wife. Then my son started football and I started coaching him in football and the homeschool football team. There's a, there's organizations that, you know, have homeschool, you come together and then there's volleyball, football, basketball teams. I had no idea. That's cool. Do they play the regular high school football teams? Well, so we were in a six man program. And so yes, we did, but high school, public schools that had

six man teams are out on the edge. It's like country boys out, you know, like an hour and a half outside of Dallas. So we played, so our six-man team played a combination of public schools that are way out there. You would consider them 1A schools, private schools, charter schools, or other homeschool groups. Okay. But he was no longer able to work out at his CrossFit gym. He was a CrossFit teens member because it conflicted with football practice. And so in their first year of football, his first year of football, he did not do any workouts during the season. And him and his buddies that CrossFit it together that were in the teens program,

they lost like 25% of their strength throughout the season. And so we decided that, hey, man, why don't you just do a strength program in our garage with your buddies and so so then we started so then i started programming a strength program for him and his teammates some of his teammates and they come to the garage and start working out so now we have a nine o'clock a seven o'clock women's class now i have a nine o'clock um teens class or let's say homeschool boy football team class. Right. And then we decide, okay, my daughter is, we're choosing, and this is kind of the big thing. This is kind of like the story behind what we're doing here.

My daughter and my son aren't going to college. So what are they doing instead? Well, we said, okay, we're going to kind of double down on something that you guys are already quasi experts in at a really young age because we've been living this lifestyle of CrossFit. Like they know CrossFit movements. They know CrossFit really well. We've been living this lifestyle of healthy eating, healthy sleep, healthy recovery. You know, we did everything in the you know, we did everything that of in the revolving around the kind of the crossfit type nutrition program so as a family we did the zone um we did paleo uh we did intermittent fasting we did keto we did now carnivore and you know lion we've we've seen them all so and my kids have gone that's so cool by the way doing all that with your family just taking the journey exploring just all the different healthy lifestyle things that are being put out there, not being afraid. What a cool thing you're doing with your family.

Yeah. And they and they know it all. So like it's not just like my wife and I went through this whole process ourselves. she started, she was about to go and have surgery on her, uh, in, in, for, in her throat for, to correct like reflux. She was getting, she, she, she had been actually, after she had my son, she was sick for years. She just didn't feel right. She had skin problems. She had gastric, she had GERD, gastro, whatever that GERD, whatever. It's like a gastrointestinal reflux disease. I think what that's called. She and her sister both suffered from that. And, uh, and they were both miserable with it. And when we started CrossFit, that's when we found out about, um, paleo or, you know, when we, and we, even though she didn't do CrossFit, we went on this kind of 30 day elimination diet and we went paleo, right? So we got rid of sugar, alcohol, drug.

I'm not a drug. Sugar, alcohol, brain. Cut that clip. Cut that clip. Well, actually, in a way, yes, because we got rid of the medications that she was on to correct. She was on all of those things. So she got rid of all those things. And within days, her skin cleared up.

Her GERD went away, her headaches were gone. And all we did was just eliminate grains, sugars. And, you know, we did basically what paleo. And so she got I love this. She got cleared because of that. And so that got us committed and that like brought the whole family and sort of like, OK, now the whole family's on it. And that like brought the whole family and sort of like, okay, now the whole family's on it. And, you know, and it was, it was a challenge because we were doing things kind of counterculture, right? We were already homeschooling that already kind of made us quasi weirdos, right? Now I've got my family on paleo and my kids aren't eating sugar. You don't have canned beans and what's that pink stuff? Cotton candy and people hate.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So become the enemy. beans and uh and um uh what's that pink stuff cotton candy and people hate yeah yeah yeah so become the enemy so my family has eliminated all of these things and that's the lifestyle we're living it kind of made us you know kind of made us a little weirdos you know yeah the groups it was it was kind of challenging at times especially in texas right yeah well and my kids were young and other and not only do not other kids not understand it other kids parents didn't understand it right and and in fact they would almost it would almost be offensive to them that our choice to not eat those things was almost like an insult to them like i look i'm not picking on you like we just choose not to eat that right we're not

gonna eat that our kids aren't gonna eat that that's so weird how people get that way though like it doesn't affect them at all abusive because i don't let my kids drink juice yeah my kids have no desire to drink juice yeah crazy they you know people i mean i mean the some of the things that might have been so it was a challenge for my for my kids there you know to at times because they were the they were the different kids right you know people used to think oh like you know, at times, because they were the, they were the different kids, right? You know, people used to think, oh, like, you know, you're holding them hostage or something. We're like, look, we're just teaching them how to be healthy. And, you know, the whole family history that we have, that my wife has in our family of people being sick, chronic disease and stuff. We're like, we're just, we're, we're trying our best to avoid that. And if I wait until they're, you know, 25,

hey, you should try this. I mean, how hard is it when they could do it now? Hey, this is the healthy response when people hear that too. I want their kids to be friends with my kids. Yeah. Of course. We all want our kids to be friends with Javier's kids. Those are the kids. Those are the kids you want your kids to be around. Well, and so, so there, again, my point is they, they become, you know, at a very young age, very knowledgeable about all these things. Right. Because we didn't just tell them what to do it. We told them why we were doing it and we read the books together or we read

the stuff together. We read the stuff that might've been in the CrossFit journal. And in fact, my daughter's senior thesis was about sugar, about like the, about how sugar was basically based on, you know, why the food pyramid was set up the way it was. So her paper was about like Ancel Keys study and like how, you know, corrupt, corrupt politicians and greedy corporations and bad science kind of created that issue. And then she goes and she gets her L1 and then COVID happens. Right. And she already had in her mind, this ambition that she maybe wasn't going to go to college. And so we were trying to think of like, okay, well then what's the right

path for you? You know, well, I'm like, let's double down on what you already know. Right. She's, she had actually been a CrossFit kids assistant coach since she was 14. So she started attending the teens class at the gym that I was in. Even though my wife was at home, my wife was never a member of that gym with us. It was me and my kids. My kids went to teens and I went to adults. And then after a while, they asked my daughter if she would be an assistant coach at the kids class. And so I that, I think

she was 14. I may have it. She might've been 14, 13. So she started like helping out as a helper to the lady who was coaching the kids class. And it was a big kids class. They had a lot of kids. That's why they needed the help. And so my daughter did that from the time that she was 14. So she was 17. So she was at across the gym to you know two times a week helping with the kids class and and she just loved it she loved helping the kids she loved it and so she was learning how to teach kids how to because she had a great mentor so i'll say that loud bonnie bonnie billingsley hey bonnie she's she's great she was the kids coach and she was so good at teaching the kids the fundamental movements that the kids that were coming out was the kids coach and she was so good at teaching the kids, the fundamental movements

that the kids that were coming out of the kids class and moving into the teens class were showing up very well prepared for the teens class, right? Because they had the foundational movement. So my daughter was learning all of that. And then she, she had in her mind that, okay, maybe the right thing for her at some point is for her to move into, stay in the health and wellness industry, point is for her to move into stay in the health and wellness industry become a crossfit coach and maybe open up a gym one day and that was that was really the mission that's what kind of brought about the whole idea that we would do a gym was that it was going to be about like her being able to do that as opposed to her going off to college getting a you know some degree that's not going to get her you know or all the all these not going to get her, you know, or, or all the, all these factors

coming together. People are already training in your garage. They've been training there for years. It's the group is growing your kids. Did you, sorry, I was looking at our time left. There's two things I want to say to you. Did you, Oh, I want to bring up Ansel keys in one second. We're never going to be able to finish this today. We're never going to get to Chris Cooper and we're never going to get to homeschooling, which we have to get to. And the reason why is my kids have a jujitsu tournament today and I only have 12 minutes. I got a, a kind of a serious question for you. What are you, could you meet me again later on today? And we do a part two.

I've never done a part two. The only thing I have on my schedule today is to go to this jujitsu tournament and then, and then come back and watch UFC tonight. other than that I would love to like I'm so curious about two-brain and homeschooling yeah yeah no but really it all it all comes together now and I think the story that we have about why the gym is open and why our family is so integrated into it is what's got most people intrigued and what i the story that i told chase to chase is like i got to connect you with with savannah like i want he needs to hear this yeah and i do want to hear and i want to hear it in detail um let me ask you did you you said your daughter did

her senior paper on ansel keys she did her senior paper on like the whole idea of corrupt like the the whole system yeah created the the the sugar industry put it where it was he's a monster yeah and and the the the funny thing is in the timing was her senior year where she's putting that paper together is the year that covet happened yeah in the exact god in the exact while she's putting together this paper about sugar, the exact same thing is going on in in this other. And no one's talking about it yet. Can you imagine being an 18 year old kid? And you're like, wait a second. I have the answer right here. I think I know what's going on. And you got two presidents.

You got the orange guy in the in the in the dementia guy. They can't even say it. They can't even say it they can't even say hey just stop eating sugar you're good yeah and yet she's in high school and she knows right and so that's why we're like look these guys you know i think people go through us you know you go through the stage from when you're like 18 years old to your in your mid-20s right where where you are learning about life and you're accumulating some knowledge so you can at some point really be a value to society and i think the goal for us was that our kids were getting that from the time that they were 10 right they were why do you

say that why do you say that because they were absorbed the you know you go off to school and you start learning this skill and this trade and this knowledge and maybe you don't have the experience yet that someday you're going to use, that's going to be a value to a corporation or to an organization so they can sell your services somewhere, right? Whether you're part of the process or not. And so what I was saying to my kids was like, okay, well, sure. You could go off to Chick-fil-A and I could have you at Chick-fil-A and you could start at the fryer or sweeping the floors. And that's great. That's work. And there's nothing wrong with that. Right. But right now you could work in a facility where you are able to really not only be a contributing member of the cleanup crew,

but there's actually value because your knowledge in fitness and your knowledge in nutrition is already above the every single person that walks through our gym every you know all of the people you know for the most part especially if they're new you know anybody from their mid-20s 30s 40s you know my my kids i was talking specifically about my kids have more knowledge and experience in fitness and nutrition than they do right so we're already giving so i say is like if we move them into the gym environment and that's a place where they're not just a worker, they're actually a valuable contributor to the business. They can actually provide value to our clients as opposed to just be the person who takes out the trash or does, you know. What is your day job, Javier? Yeah. So I'm actually the the the head of a key account program for, uh, for a

major corporation. A key account program, like the car key is, or like the furniture store? No, no, no. So, uh, when I say key, that's like strategic accounts. So like the, the company that I work for, well, we have relationships with large customers. Oh, okay. Okay. Okay. And then, so the people, so, one of you have, one of your customers for the company you work for is a really big account that requires someone to manage. It requires a, it requires a person to manage that. And they have to manage all aspects of that customer's relationship. Now they, they manage the relationship. They don't necessarily do all the tactical day-to-day things, right because it's a big complex scenario and i won't go

into it but point is is that we we're we're the people the people on my team are the people that handle the customers initial requests and then they take care of things when things go south but then they're also there to help develop the next you know the next solution that they might want to work on with our company with the company but that's my day job um i thought no plan b meant skipping kid stuff for sake of the podcast and then he and then jeremy says i'm just joking you know it's it's funny you say that so i missed a jujitsu tournament for zellos games and last night when i was putting the kids to bed um i said i was telling i was talking to my wife about their geese and how they're in the dryer. And I dried them like really good because I don't want any moisture in them because you have to weigh yourself when you get there.

And one of my kids goes, oh, you're coming to this tournament? And that broke. I don't miss shit for my kids. I don't miss shit. They remembered that one. Yeah, and they remembered the last one I missed. And that hit me like a ton of bricks, dude. That rocked me i i

played it cool i just acted like i didn't give a shit but like maybe i'll go maybe yeah but i maybe ran into the kitchen and dried like the corner of my eyes i was like oh i know you're joking jeremy by the way i know you're joking um and and so so from there that's when you decided she, so she took her, when she took her L1, were you actually thinking about opening a gym? Well, yeah. So at the point where. And this is in, this is like in December of 2019. No, this was, so this was, so she was January, her birthday. So it was just February, 2019 literally she we took we took it together we took I hadn't taken the L1 at this point I was waiting because I went I went with her and so we took it together we got our results back from her passing which by the way was a big deal for a 17 year old

like to pass the L1 for dude it's crazy yeah it's crazy like the test because this was like not the online test this is the one that you take with the Scantron, like right there. You know, there's a lot of pressure. There were people in the back of the class that showed up on the last day because they had failed it twice. Right. And so here she was 17 years old. We didn't you know, she was nervous. And so she everyone's nervous. It's crazy. Yeah. So she we found out that she passed. And then like a week later, the world shut down. You know, and the goal. Yeah. We knew that one day we were going to want to open up a gym. We didn't really know how it was going to happen. So when she took the L1, the intent was for her to get the L1. And then my hope was that she was going to get to like apprentice and help at the gym that we were members in at the time. And then there's a whole other story why that stopped happening. But COVID was kind of the trigger point. It took us home. It wasn't because someone there hit on her, was it?

No, no, no, no, nothing. No, nothing, no, nothing at all inappropriate. It was just, you know, it was time for us to move on. How dare you say that, Sousa? Why does your brain always go there, Matt? You're disgusting. I'm sorry. She's a pretty girl, you know, for sure.

I apologize. Yeah. My outburst. Thank you, Sousa. But at the time, she was a minor. So if somebody had, there would have been trouble with me. Right. Hey, even if she's not a minor.

Yeah. Stay the fuck away. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mind your own business. Gosh. Mike Sauer, after almost 800 episodes, I had a dream. Susan called me urgently to hop on the podcast to help interview Def Leverd, who I've never listened to. What is happening?

That is maybe the best comment ever. I might write that on the wall. Okay, so here's what I think. So tomorrow is wide open, but I think today is pretty open too. So what I'm going to do, I think, is I'm going to jump off here, load up the car, and we'll start a text thread with me, you, and Sousa to try to reschedule you either for later today. We'll totally accommodate you. Don't feel stressed at all. Oh, no, no worries.

We've got nothing else going on. Okay. So we'll either reschedule you, and then the first 10 minutes of the call, I'll have to tell you about the jujitsu tournament. You'll hate that. And then we'll meet again and we'll continue. And I got my notes here and we'll pick up right where we left off and talk about the opening of your gym, how you went from you and your daughter taking the L1 to opening the gym. And obviously, I really want to get into homeschooling and how you've attracted other homeschoolers. And I'm guessing how you're using your facility as more than a CrossFit gym,

but actually a place to facilitate and accommodate people who homeschool their kids. I'm guessing. Yep. Yep. No, you guessed right. All right. Brother, thank you so much, Javier, for coming on. Great to meet you. Least prepared and maybe one of my uh most favorite no one say you always say that seven i don't always say that okay uh brother thank you thank you have a good day and uh and we'll start a text thread within minutes and uh figure out how we're gonna do this yeah yeah enjoy the tournament okay cheers brother thank you damn that's good yep you were like worried you didn't have enough information and now it's hard to. I was like, who is this guy we're interviewing today? How funny.

Oh, God, I love this. So he's on the CAP program. He does Two Brain. He does the homeschool. He's got a day job he's juggling. And he's got a wife who calls him fat. Well, he's using the gym as an opportunity vehicle for his kids that's really cool like he that's like a long-term thinking right he's like hey like they could start here the knowledge that they're going to gain is going

to really make them valuable in society and i'm going to give them the building of the platform to start their careers in okay i love it yeah all right so the the tournament uh so basically i'm guessing what's going to happen is their first match is at 11. Then probably I think that their last match is at one. And I should be home by. It's an hour away and I'll probably stop and get him some crazy hamburger milkshake or some treat for competing. Yeah, definitely. Maybe even get him to stop at a toy store.

We're going to Fremont. We're like going to like a real city. a toy store we're going to fremont we're like going to like a real city like i know it's gonna blow them known ahead of time i would have met you out there they don't make it out of the country very often yeah so it's gonna blow the way okay so i'm guessing maybe like four o'clock pacific standard time all right that should work that should work for me and then and then i can watch the UFC after. Okay. All right. I'll bug you later. I'll see you guys in text message. Thanks, guys. Bye-bye.