The Sevan Podcast - Nick Urankar | CrossFit Games Champion

Episode Date: January 31, 2024

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Where are you, Nick? Do you know, well, Notre Dame, South Bend, Indiana, like right outside there. So you're on Eastern time? Yep. Early riser? My wife was an early riser, which basically she made me one by default. And do you have kids? Two.

and do you have kids too i kind of have this this rule i learned early from having kids that um you got to be up before the kids because you got to get your shit situated right like yeah you need at least an hour so that you can actually have some quiet time and there'll be some shit like you'll just never do you'll never cut your nails never cut your toenails never do you want like just some basic fundamental shit that has to get done. If you don't get it for your kids, they just take over, right? Yeah. How old are your kids? Seven, seven, and nine.

Oh, dang. So mine are 14 and 10. A boy and girl? Nope. Both girls. Both girls. Yep. That's why I try to stay in shape

the boys all know who i am yeah and hey dude it's a good example they're gonna marry their dad it's a fucking what a great example yeah you set the bar high and then that's what they're gonna expect from dudes right that's the goal that's the goal hey nick i'm gonna plug in your um do you want do you want your uh i'm gonna put in an instagram account for you here next to your um do you want do you want your uh i'm going to put in an instagram account for you here next to your name do you want zeus method or your car okay uh n-i-k-c-k uh sorry n-i-c-k-u-r-a-n-k-a-r got it what kind of name is that, your rank car? Slovenian. Slovenian. Yep.

And it's actually a name that's really big in India. So I get asked by Indian people all the time if I'm Indian. And I'm not even close to Indian. Yeah, that's crazy. Why is that? Do you know where the crossover is with Slovenia? Slovenia is a super small country. Yeah, I have absolutely no idea,

but there's even like, I think there's a town or something called like Urank, and somebody was like, do Urank cars have so much money? And they're like huge in the, I don't know, I guess there's a lot. Tech space, huge they're like huge in the, I don't know. I guess there's a lot. Tech space, huge in the tech space. Yeah, I don't know.

But yeah, no, I'm definitely not Indian, but I've been asked probably over a hundred times if I'm of any Indian descent. Are you first generation in this country? I think I'm third. okay yeah so my grand i know that like my dad's grandparents didn't speak english um and it's a very like i was born in cleveland um that's where they were from and it's like super tight knit like you can't marry outside of Slovenian like really crazy like yeah and Cleveland was a hardcore uh hardcore uh immigrant town my my uh Armenians ended up there too that's where

my family's for a lot of my family Polish German like there's all these little tiny communities like still so I grew up and it was like uh polacks are this way and it's i remember just being like why are you well i don't even they all everyone looks the same right yeah look at this uh historic fitness i have nick's 2015 i'm back game shirt who this guy does oh dang wow dang 2000 yep that was the year everybody thought that i was gonna quit after that year okay i want to go i want to go back so you grew up in cleveland and when i was born there when i was one my dad my mom all their family grew up there when i was one we my dad, my mom, all their family grew up there. When I was one, we moved to Florida. Oh, that's a nice move. Yeah.

Yeah. Oh, I loved it. Why'd they do that? Uh, I believe my mom's dad had moved down there and started a like HVAC company and my dad went to work with him. Okay. Okay. And that's where you were raised in Florida. Till I was about eight.

Okay. Okay. And that's where you were raised in Florida? Until I was about eight. And then we moved to Northwest Indiana. Was about that time. And then about a year later, my parents got divorced. And then we basically hopped around. My mom worked. We'd get dropped off at school. There was this thing called Kid Stop. And we got dropped off at like 5 30 a.m where the first kids you'd be at kid stop and then after school there was like after school kid stop but at 5 30 it closed so we'd get bused me and my siblings we would get bused to the boys and girls club and i basically would be there until my mom got off work no shit so your mom was just working her ass off yeah so they found out she was just a secretary at i think like an air conditioning company or something uh-huh and uh they found out that

she had three kids and basically we were like living in like we had our christmas presents bought for us super like little tiny place and when they found out she had these three kids trying to raise them they're like stay do as much you want. They kind of gave her extra things she could do, and she was able to get a ton more hours in. Hey, how old are your siblings? I have a brother who's a year younger than me. He's 38. A sister who's 35, and I've got a brother who's 26. So you're 39.

Yep. Hey, did all three of you share a room? No. So my brother, when my mom got remarried, he was born when I was like 13 or 14. But my brother and I did, and my sister actually got. So we had like a townhouse. Super small, but it was based off income. So we were able, because we had three kids and my mom, she got her own room.

But it was like my brother and I's bunk beds were the room. And then my sister she got her own room but it was like my brother and I's bunk beds were the room and then my sister actually got her own her own room too hey did you know that your mom was a uh single mother struggling or were you like because my mom was my I grew up with a single mom too with my sister and and in hindsight my mom will say shit like yeah like do you remember the year that like all we ate was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches? I'm like, no, I probably fucking love that shit. And she's like, no, it's cause shit was tight. I'll tell people all the time,

like getting to play sports all day at like the boys and girls club and play games and hang out with kids was like a dream. I got, I, I, I, it was like, I didn't know.

I knew we didn't have much, but I didn't know what having much was. So I was around a lot of rough kids, saw a lot of bad stuff. Even as I got older, I was around a lot of bad stuff. I was just more like, whatever, naive. Didn't even think. I remember there was a time, there was a roll of quarters. In the middle of where we lived was where you would do your laundry.

And of course you had like do the quarters and stuff. I found a roll of quarters. Well, about a block away was a Kmart. So I like grabbed like two boys in the neighborhood. I was like, dude, I just found $10. Let's go to Kmart. We bought like Doritos, candy, got everything you could possibly think of and still probably had like four bucks left. So we're walking back home. I go upstairs in like our town home. And then there's a knock on the door and it's a lady. And she's like, Hey, I'm trying to find, I dropped my roll of quarters. Like, does anybody know? My mom was like, Hey, did you find

anything? I remember I walked down and I was like, I i did and we went to kmart and i told her and she was like i would have done the same thing gave her back the quarters i had and she's like it's okay don't worry about it like but oh that's cool wow what a good story so i felt so bad if you'd had a dad at home you'd have got a belt probably and my dad came back when i was like uh he was he struggled a lot uh but fourth or fifth grade I think he kind of came back into trying to do some stuff he went back to Cleveland so he would like come pick us up in the summer for like two or three weeks sometimes um and I remember just we hated it hated him I hated him till I was probably 21 or 22. What changed?

Who? So I hated him till then. And my wife would probably say you hated him till you were probably 34, 35. Which is true, but I could tolerate him. And what changed was a few years ago, he called me. So he used to basically tell me how stupid CrossFit was. This is dumb. You shouldn't do it.

You got a family. When he finally was trying to be like, I'm going to be your dad, I was like, shut up. And a few years ago, he called me and he was just like, hey, I just want to tell you I was wrong. Everything I've ever said, I was wrong. And I'm sorry. And if you ever decide to do anything in the future, I want to be involved in it. And I was like, and it was one of those where I was like, wow, like it was the first time I ever believed it. And now he's like my best friend.

No shit. It's weird. It's crazy. What do do you do is he going to therapy what do you think happened for him what what what brings a man to like just be humble enough to say that um i think grandkids well so grandkids got him to quit smoking and a lot of so like the day i first was born he quit smoking which again if you know a smoker who smoked since they were like 13 in their 60s or you know in their 50s yeah they say they quit all the time um but they don't and it's pretty obvious but he legitimately quit i think what it was was that obviously everything he ever

told me that i couldn't do i did and then i obviously i didn't excel at everything i wasn't the best everything but i never quit at anything so it was like every step he'd be like, you can't do this. You can't do this. There's no way. And I think finally, like I got into, like I bought an extra real estate property, upgraded our house, was doing all these things. And I talked to him. I'd be like, yeah, I'm going to, you know, I'd go to his house sometimes. He lives about an hour and a half away. And I bring my computer and I just go on and start doing stuff he's like what are you doing i'm like i got an idea for a business thing i got an idea for a new program i just i want to create it he's like this is just what you do and i was like yeah but it's all because of the stuff you told me i shouldn't

do so without saying it but yeah so i think it was all him seeing everything and kind of being like, dang, like I got a cool kid who I've never really just let be who he is. Twice my dad has told me he's proud of me. I'm 51. And most recently he told me like about a month ago. And it's crazy that I can remember those two times. Hey, I'm proud of you. It's always like he's hugging me and he whispered both times. He's hugging me and he's whispers in my ear. Hey, I want you to know I'm proud of you it's always like he's hugging me and he whispered both times he's hugging me and he's whispers in my ear hey i want you to know i'm proud of you i i can't remember

anything about my dad except for he came home one night and made a frozen pizza and i asked for a slice and he said no that's like everything else is kind of like visually like seeing him just being like he's laying on a bed and we're laying on the ground and he he is you know there's a fan at a window and he gets the fan and we don't get it it's that kind of stuff yeah you know you just like as a kid you're just like i see it you think you're sly and like you're because you're the big guy like you treat us like crap Black John Young I'm proud of you Doesn't land quite as hard

But I appreciate it But I appreciate it Sema Boobs Middle Eastern kids prefer I'm proud of you over I love you He tells me he loves me all the time You can't make the kids happy My dad tells me he loves me all the time I don't think I love you hits

The same I think the kids happy my dad tells me he loves me all the time and yeah i don't think i love you hits uh the same i i think like especially for like my dad's i'm proud of you over i love you i'm like anybody can say i love you let me ask you this are you you know what i started thinking now that i'm getting older i'm thinking that maybe our parents want to hear us say we're proud of them oh yeah you know what i mean like like now that you have kids doesn't it feel like you're looking for validation sometimes from your kids that you did the right thing i mean i try to push i don't want them to see that um not yet but but i do want to i do want to make them proud you know what i mean like i went to a hotel swimming pool that was just disgusting a few days ago and i did not want to go in, but I wanted to make my kids proud. And of course, once I went in and played with them for an hour, I was stoked. I did it, but I did it for like, I do it to make them proud.

I am proud of my dad and I think I tell him all the time. I think that's before we had kids. One of the things that I said to my wife, cause we got before we got married, I said, what I want you to know, cause I actually found CrossFit one month before my wife, we had our first kid. And what year was that?

Do you remember? 2009. Okay. Uh, yeah. Or wait, damn. I don't know. 2009 or 2008 2008 it was december it was december 2009 when i actually when i did fran for the first time wow but i told my wife before we were married i

was like hey i just want you to know i grew up not knowing my mom other than my mom like my mom was just a mom she did what moms do didn't you know i didn't know what she did outside of being a mom and she worked brought home money put food on the table yeah yeah she didn't have a life she didn't have friends she was there to serve you yep yeah exactly yeah and i said that what i want to do is show my kids that there was life outside of being a dad and i want them to say like that that's my dad. He's this, he does this, he loves this. He's passionate about this. Cause I want them to know that life never stops. That when you all of a sudden you get married or you have kids, you get to still reinvent yourself, do what you love, be passionate about it and do it. Even though you have other things to do,

like take care of kids. So I've always tried to make sure that my kids see me living a life outside of theirs so that they know that they always get to live their life so you were raised by the school system i guess you could say that i went yeah i was at eight different schools and and you spent a lot of time there like go in the morning come home late yeah early on are your kids in school yeah and how do you how do you feel about that do they do you do you like um do you like the way the school systems in indiana is raising them uh my kids don't they say they say they don't learn anything there's a lot of wasted time um i think of the school system especially for like what i do now is like it's uh it's a glorified

babysitter um you know i get time to not have to worry about the kids but ultimately you're still worried but no i think right now the way that information is and how easily accessible it is and what you can do like there's there's school is to me it's just teaching them how to be social it's teaching them how to learn and what they like to learn um i think that it does teach a lot of people how to be an employee so i like to talk to my kids about like hey have dialogue with your about like, Hey, have dialogue with your teacher, like ask them questions. It does. There's no right or wrong. Whereas like a lot of times that's what they think. So my kids will step up and she'll be like, I, my teacher

said this. And I was like, well, I disagree because of this. And they're like, well, you can't because in the book it's this. And she's like, but I understand there are more ways than that to do it. And I'm like, that's awesome. Oh, that's so awesome. And you kind of nailed it right there. My issue is I want my kids to know how to learn. I don't want the school telling them. I don't want the school telling them. God, how do I phrase this? I want my kids to be able to investigate the claims that they make so if they say hey there's global warming i want them to be like hey what's global warming yeah you know what i mean i

would say what the school system taught me was that i thought learning ended when you left school i thought like i remember just being like all right when i'm graduating this is it i can't learn anything else i i had this in my head like as a late teenager that i'm done learning like i can't learn anything else because there's nobody to teach me and that's the complete opposite i've learned pretty much everything since i got out of school like i've yeah and i learned what i want to learn so yeah it was crazy like i thought that um what did you what do you do in a boys and girls club as i was driving i recently just drove from santa cruz california to um idaho just northern idaho like an hour from the canadian border and i saw three different boys and girls

clubs and i never i'm assuming we have them in california i just never see them what do you do at a boys and girls club what do you do there so ours was actually like an old school and so the there was a big gym which basically just play and if enough kids want to do a certain thing like basketball or soccer then you kind of do it play tag then there was like a main level of where they had like offices where you just kind of hang out, talk, sit down. But then the second level was like a cafeteria and they had TV. So Power Rangers was always on. I hated Power Rangers, even though I secretly think I would have liked it. I was more like weird kids watch Power Rangers.

Yeah. Next level was like all the table games. You had pool and there's that one pool game with the little blocks and you got to go around and get it in the holes. Foosball was like my jam. Ping pong. So basically then you just go up there and it would just be like if there's much a kid you ask a kid to play a game do something and you just basically ran around and then you do that till 5 30 till your mom came and picked you up yep yeah you just yeah and did you play any organized yeah did you play any organized sports? Yeah, so I played pretty much everything.

Baseball, basketball, soccer. I really, really fell in love with soccer early on in young age and then did really, really well until about 12. And all of our stuff got paid for. We got picked up by other by coaches and other parents to make sure that we got to the game because or got the practices and games even when we were moving around like an hour away people would come pick us up and take us um me and my uh brother that was a year younger than me so we we were actually really really good and then finally my family just moved way out in the country and my stepdad was like gotta play football now oh yeah soccer here and i remember just being like why would you take

away the thing i love just because you don't love it um and then i really now i realized he didn't he didn't take it away but they wanted to go somewhere and it just happened to not have what i wanted uh for the you have a you have a programming you have a company called The Zeus Method? Yep. The Zeus Method Training. Doodle Bob says his programming is phenomenal. What is that? What is The Zeus Method? The Zeus Method, when I started,

it was actually funny. I was on a podcast with Ben Alderman and Blair. They introduced me as the strongest guy in CrossFit. introduced me as like the strongest guy in CrossFit. It's like 2016 strongest guy in CrossFit. If he had a strength program, he would crush it online. And I remember I was like, I already tried a program twice and like I quit. It's hard, right?

It's hard, right? Yeah. It's a lot of work. Yeah. I tried a couple of them. Well, it's all it's in. It's you don't know what the work is until you get into the work. It's hard, right? Yeah. It's a lot of work. Yeah, I tried a couple of them. Well, you don't know what the work is until you get into the work. It's like anything.

Like, I'm going to start a business. And you think that it's just the business. That's all you have to do. And that's not true. So after that, I basically was like, all right. Strength is simple to me. Like a lot of stuff, I try to simplify everything. So I was like, well, who's the strongest?

What's the strongest thing I can think of in my mind i was like zeus zeus like so i was like all right i started as a strength program like all right i'm gonna just help people get stronger but like simplify strength and started there and then it was like people asked for like a little bit more and then more and it just kind of grew to where now you can actually join and there's like if you are a competitor there's like a competitor. Boom. What you have to do kind of for everything. But then it breaks it down to like there's a powerlifting program, Olympic lifting program.

There's just met cons. There's bodyweight workouts. There's I love like six minute like dumbbell and basic workouts for like quick time. So there's always a six minute workout. There's just grunt work where it's just kind of like go. There's a thing called cardio lifting where I basically couple lifting because a lot of times when we lift and then we have to do something else, it's well over an hour. So I basically break it down into 20 or 30 minutes where like you kind of couple them all together. You're still building up in weight, but you're kind of getting more fatigued. Essentially it's

CrossFit on with lifting on steroids in a sense. Um, and I noticed you have a lot of videos with you just training with the bar. Yeah. So then I just a 45 pound bar. I saw that. And I kind of, I liked that. I do a ton of that kind of stuff, just like triplets, but just leave weight off the bar. So, so I have to keep moving. Yep. So I created, or I'd'd say creative it's just a bar but i made it i called it just a bar and it was maybe 2013 or 14 you know a lot of times like as for me it'd be like all right i'm done with my training and i'm gonna i got like 10 or 15 minutes or maybe i had to coach a class i'm like what can i do that's fast that's easy to put away and i just would start grabbing an empty barbell and i'd look around and be like, who wants

to do a workout with a bar? Just grab a bar. And I probably three or four times a week, I would just grab people and more and more people started liking it and doing it. And I was like, well, I could create some cool workouts with just a bar. And then boom, I do them all the time. I've got eBooks with them. They're inside the program.

So that's why I like it. It's them. They're inside the program. Uh, so that's why I like it. It's simple. And people always say, they're like, Oh, there's no way that works. I'm like, what, what does work even mean? Like it doesn't work for what grab it and just try. Hey, um, give me an example of just a bar workout. Uh, so great example would be the first one I ever did. And it's so on crossfit.com. When you started CrossFit, everybody went there and that's the workout you did. I mean, years, my scores are all in there. I don't even know when, well, when I first got on there, a 5k row popped up and I was like, I don't have a rower. Like I can't a 5k row popped up and i was like i don't have a rower like i can't a 5k row so as everybody did you just google like what's scaling rowing well what's the scaling for a 5k

row you're asking me yeah no i don't know 500 empty bar sumo deadlift high pulls oh so one one sumo deadlift is 10 meters so i was like i gotta do 500 sumo deadlift high pulls and i did it and it took me like 22 or 23 minutes and i remember i woke up the next day and i was like i can't even move well it was a rest day the next day and then the next and your traps probably felt kind of amazing too great just so someone touched them and they hurt you're like yeah i was like bodybuilding what like yeah yeah yeah that's cool but two days later it popped up again and i redid it and i did it in like 19 or like i was two or three minutes faster wow and i remember just being like dang this is like great data and great testing um so that was like my first experience with like all i did it was 20 minutes and i was posted yeah so it was just it was always in the back of my head as something like oh i can always use that thing like i i never i you know i

never had um top end strength like uh like you did but i also did notice that just using the bar made it so that I could pretty much maintain close to all my PRS. So if I was injured and I just started using the, like I injured my shoulder once and I just started using the bar, I would only use the bar overhead and in my press was one 35, just a strict press. And then a year later when my shoulder's better, I did strict press and I could still do one 35. I didn't lose any because I still kept greasing that groove. Oh, and that's what I love. You know what I mean? Yeah, you can keep your movement the same.

Like, I love it for technique work, too. I used it all the time as warm-ups, like a five-minute, just grab a bar, five minutes, you know, five movements of three reps. And you notice in two or three minutes, people are setting the bar down. It's like, what are you doing? Yeah. I'm like, oh, it's really hard i'm like okay so you see real quick like it doesn't take much but it helps so much in technique work too just it's i always say to people most of the time you don't get enough reps because you get too tired like the beauty of a pvc pipe

is i can do a thousand reps and teach you. I can, we can watch a thousand different reps, which is just so much more practice that we get. Even if you use a bar, like eventually you get fatigued. So the goal is how can we get more without you getting so tired or, you know, so we can increase and improve and get better feeling through movement. So I love a bar for that for me. And that's why I would also transition to a PVC pipe when I would get too tired. love a bar for that for me and that's why i would also transition to a pvc pipe when i would get too tired uh i do a lot of nick empty barbell workouts quick pump um uh nick you you said twice you you started programming and you and you failed and you had to go back to the drawing board what did you learn from that and what's why why why are you not failing this time um what i learned was most so whenever we get a job what we're essentially doing is work

that somebody else didn't want to do so what i had to think was all right what is the work that i don't want to do and that was what was holding me back and i hated inputting workouts hated it yeah probably somebody somebody's had somebody like a one-on-one coach that sends them workouts and i bet you money one week they didn't send you workouts and you're like hey i didn't get my workouts and they're like ah because they just didn't do it it's so for me it was like i stopped inputting them as far in advance it's like oh if i just put them out way out in advance then it'll be okay but then that catches up and. And the next thing you know, boom. So I would just stop. So when I got back, I was, I was literally in my gym and I was like, how can I do this? And there was a guy in there that I knew trusted him. He

was a police officer and a SWAT officer. And I just walked up to him and I was like, Hey, I want to start a programming company. I don't make any money. I want to start a programming company. I don't make any money. I don't like to do inputting of workouts and kind of like just kind of let them know like two or three things I wasn't a fan of. I was like, would you do it? I was like, but here's the thing. I don't have any money.

How about I'll just give you 10% of whatever I make. And you do all that for me. I'll just create everything. I'll send it over to you. You input it into the app, and we're good. And he was like, me? What? He was like so happy that I asked him that I was like, wow.

This is something I would have never wanted to ask anybody because I'm like, oh, I'm asking for something, and I have no money to give. Right, right. He was like so excited, like, let's do it. What are you going to call it? And I was like, I don't know. And then next thing you know, I sent him workouts. He input them, and I was like, right. He was like so excited, like, let's do it. What are you going to call it? And I was like, I don't know. And then next thing you know, I sent him workouts.

He input them and I was like, dang, wow, that's, I hated that. So I hired out what I hated. Right. And all because I was like, man, that's all employers do. They hire out what they don't want to do. Yeah, full circle. I didn't know where you're going with that, but we do the work that someone else doesn't want to do. And you found someone to do that yeah you know what's funny is um i got contacted by

sugar wad a few years ago and they said hey i think it's sugar wad or one of those i forget what it is but and they said hey we don't have any kids programming you should do some kids programming for us so i i i filmed just 50 i filmed 50 50 workouts and then did write-ups on all of them, and then I had to input it. And, dude, I fucking hated it, dude. You're so right. I hated it. And these people who do programming every day, that's the biggest thing. It's funny you say that.

I knew it, but I had never verbalized it it and that's why i never did 50 more it sold really well but i just never did 50 more i'm like i'm not doing that again and i enjoyed every other process of it working out having my kids do the workouts writing the workouts staying with this equipment or that equipment i loved all the creativity i loved holding the camera but fuck dude the, you're right. That's what I loved. I loved almost every other aspect of it. Yeah. But it's ours.

And how long have you had it up now? So it's 2016. So it'll be coming up on eight years. So you have a crazy robust library. Yeah. Yeah. And where does it live so it lives um i have my own so i have it on train heroic a lot of like the set programs but i have my own app zeus method training and what's really cool about it is that every day there's 10 programs

that get loaded in daily for you so and they and they're all labeled. So you can choose whatever one you want, but then also there are plans and I've got, so what I basically did is I have so much that I can create plans on my app. And if you click plans, there's about 50 plus four to eight week programs that you can just click. It's like, you just want CrossFit. You just want high intensity bodybuilding. You want swole, which is a dumbbell program I made. You want these things and you can follow like part one, part two,

part three and click and it'll run through for your six weeks. And then they'll be like, all right, here's what you should do next. But yeah, I just, I can put all these plans. So when you go in, it's not that you just get these daily workouts. You also get the option to choose through all this other stuff and videos like this i'll upload any videos that i make in there and you can just go to videos and they're archived and you can just watch a video on mindset or on how to train for emoms if you're trying to improve on strength or technique stuff like that so it's basically thousands of hours of your work and it just keeps compiling over the years and i've only had the new app for a few

months so i'm still i'm basically having like my sister and i've got a guy that does all my inputting and i just send them stuff and they just keep inputting them and i just relaunch and put new ones in every single month new programs tell me about this app uh how did you find out about this app like how did you find out about why did why did you pivot to your own app um so i wanted my own app a while ago i've i've probably tried 10 different ones um and there's always something i didn't like uh and i finally started hearing about like oh you can like create your own app and whatnot and there was i can't remember the tribe i think it was tribe i was with them and they were like hey i told them i want to get my own app like hey we can do it for you so they did it i wasn't a fan of it it didn't the experience wasn't very good for

people so i started researching and people won't use it if the experience isn't good correct yeah they just it matters a lot more than i think people think it matters less than you think but also more it's weird like It just depends on the person. The experience has to be... Like Snapchat and TikTok, I spent five minutes on each of them and then I just deleted them off my phone because that was the attention span

I had to enjoy the experience. I didn't want the learning curve, so I'm just stuck on the old man Instagram. But you don't need all the social media stuff. But you know't need all the social media stuff. Gosh. But you know what I mean? Just along those lines, like if the app's not working for me, I'm not.

Yeah. Correct. So I found out, so I researched. Even Twitter, dude. Even Twitter. Sorry. Even Twitter. Here's one that I struggle with.

Even Twitter. I'm like, how come every time I want to read other people's comments, it's asking me to comment? Like I haven't even figured out what buttons do what there. I'm just like, what the fuck is Twitter? Exactly. I try it sometimes, and I'm like, I don't even figured out what buttons do what there. I'm just like, what the fuck is Twitter? Yeah, Twitter. I try it sometimes and I'm like, I don't get it. Well, I had a company exercise.com basically build out my app,

which is cool because they can, I can like tweak things and change things as I want them. So I basically like kind of have opened it up and I'm just asking for like feedback. So I'm constantly tweaking and changing. That's what's nice about it. I can change how things are labeled, what shows up where I can add new groups. I've done like some challenge stuff. I've just, I'm constantly trying to evolve and make it a better experience.

And your sister and your other dude, they know how to do it too. They like, they know how to input the stuff, um, and do all that. And yeah, they, they like it and they give me good feedback. Um, I have a few different employees that will help with it. Some of them I don't want them to touch it. Just do what you do. But, yeah, no, like it's super simple to do a lot of the stuff for me on the back end, and it looks really, really good for people. Nick, what's the best you ever did at the games?

Individual, 20th. As a a master i won the 35 in 2019 and then 20 they canceled everything uh congratulations on on that that's that's fucking really cool that you you got a title it's insane um when you look back at those sports that you did, the football, basketball, soccer, all that stuff, which one do you think transferred the most to CrossFit? Which one do you think you're like, oh, this is the one that gave me the foundation that was most utilized? I've never been asked that question. That's a good question. I think it was like a lot of things, each one compounded. I think soccer made me a better football player. I mean, required a lot of details. And I think the work ethic I got in

the weight room because of football, um, obviously allowed me to see like, Hey, you work really hard. Um, good things happen. It doesn't, you're not guaranteed anything. You're not guaranteed the result that you want. You're not guaranteed to win anything, but I can guarantee you I'm going to put in everything I possibly can so that the result is more in my favor. And yeah, so I would say that it was more of just the fact that I did so much, um much that what all those taught me is that the basics and the fundamentals are the most important and constantly go back to them. So that's why just a bar is such a big thing. I did that while I was training all the time.

What movement? What movement? Like a just a bar. What's a just a bar? Just a bar. Just an empty bar. That's what I call it. Oh, just a bar.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Like, so like same thing. bar that's what i call it oh oh just tomorrow okay yeah yeah yeah okay yeah like so like same thing like i whenever i coach a lot of people i always say like with movements example like a

burpee create it to be like a dance step so it should be every single rep should look the exact same just like if you're doing a two-step so everything that you do has to be calculated and broken down and so that way you never have to think while you do it. You're just, it's this con like you just have this habit established. And then inside of the habit, you can then start to see things that don't align, that don't add up. If I start a lift the same way, well, that should never change. So then that can no longer be the problem. The problem now has to be somewhere else. And then I can break down and make every little area smaller so that I can fix critique and improve on whatever that is. So if let's say on a 1 to 10 you do soccer and it converts to CrossFit as a 7 and football converts to CrossFit as a 7, then you're saying you do both of them.

And then they both get elevated. They compliment each other and they both convert as an eight. I know that's a pretty rude example, but you're saying that, that you can get more out of each one because you could do because of what you got from all of them. They all got me. Soccer got me really good with my feet, lateral movement. How about your engine i always think of miko salo in soccer versus katie henniger and basketball she was in you know she was a powerhouse in the four-minute domain and and whereas uh uh miko salo could do it all right get that soccer kind of transferred more yeah so that's where i think it's tough because I finished college football and I had broke my back for a second time, like right when I was in college, finishing out college. And I basically said, I'm never

lifting again. Like I'm done lifting. So to me, all that was left was doing long distance stuff. So I signed up for a half marathon and I started running half marathon. So I got down to about 160 pounds and was fast, like fast at like, I could run, I could run 10 miles. You got down to about 160 pounds and was fast like fast at like i could run i could run 10 miles you got down to 160 pounds sorry i saw this comment i'll bring it up in a second you got down to 160 pounds after you broke your back in college yeah but i did that but i got down so i was like 210 did that and then was maybe like 190 and then i started running heavily like like six miles a day shit yeah oh yeah okay 10 miles a day wow yeah so i would do that and then that got me down about 160 ish and i would i could run a seven minute mile for 10 miles wow like so when I came into CrossFit, it was that person coming in.

I was 167 when I decided I wanted to, like, go in on CrossFit. Oh, that's fascinating. Hey, let me go back for a second. I want to talk about your back breaks. I want to hear about both those two. But do you think it's – this is a big question. Do you think it's easier to build engine or strength? And do you think, what play does age have in it?

Like when you start building your engine or when you start building your strength? Engine, for sure. It's harder to build? Engine's harder to build? Engine's easier to build. Oh, easier to build. Yeah, but now that's relative because what I would say is like if we have have, you know, a top potential of like, where can you get to? It's easier to push to get to 60 to 80% in your engine

than it is to get to 60 or 80% of your strength. And I think age plays a role in both, but I think your engine can last a lot longer than your top end strength can. So starting later, the stronger it's going to take is going to be a lot harder. A 40 year old who's never lifted in five years isn't going to all of a sudden be me right but a 20 year old you give him to 25 he's going to improve quite a bit but he's also mentally going to know i've got

a lot more time ahead of me a 40 year old is going to be like well fuck i'm done like so you already have what about what about so let me ask you this um if a 40 year old uh so so a 40 year old might be like it's already at the phase of your life where you're just trying to like maintain your strength right um so but you're saying that a 40 year old could significantly increase their mile time you're 40 and you have a 10 minute mile time you might get it down to 6 30 if you work on it for five years. Way faster than going from a 100 pound snatch to a 200 pound snatch. Right. Okay.

All right. All right. What about something that's easier like a deadlift? By easier, I mean requires less technique. I think that a lot of that comes back to like we were talking about. What did you do? What does your past look like? Because example,

somebody who never has deadlifted, but yet played football, played an explosive sport, um, was wrestling all the time or doing things that built up natural strength or picking even a contractor dude is unloading plywood out of the back of the truck eight hours a day. Yeah. Yeah. So people, we underestimate. So like a lot of times I can cross it. People come into the gym. They're like, God, that guy beat me. He's never even done this before. And it's like, but what's he done?

Right. You know, so I think you, the older, the older that we are, the more we have to look back at what we've done to establish where we can go. Whereas I think when we're young, we have, we don't have that in front of us. We get to establish what that is. The six foot two, 140 pound, 50 year old electrician that comes into your gym all of a sudden can do the pegboard, even though he's never done it before. Yes, because he's been fucking pulling wires his fucking whole life and he's a fucking stick. Exactly.

He smokes a pack of cigarettes a day, but he owns the pegboard. Great. OK, you want to know the perfect example of that? Yeah, please. And I've seen shit like that. I've seen like the plumbers come in and you're like what the fuck this is so i went to a gym uh and i it was one of my first times going to a gym walked in and it was diane 21 15 9 deadlift 225 for guys 155 for women and handstand push-ups so i was like okay let's do this workout, whatever. So I do the workout and I finish it in like four minutes and 20 seconds. Wow. Everybody's jaws are on the, they're like, and I'm like, what? They're like, we've never seen that before. And I was like,

see what? I mean, those deadlifts were so heavy. And they're like, no no you just did all the handstand push-ups strict and unbroken and i was like huh they're like people don't do that and i was like those are easy like what do you mean and i went up and i did 30 and i came down and i was like what they're like people can't even do one yeah so i called my brother up and i was like mitch hop up on the wall and tell me how many handstand push-ups you can do and he did 30 and he's like, Mitch, hop up on the wall and tell me how many handstand pushups you can do. And he did 30. And he's like, he doesn't work out a ton now. Wow.

And I was like, people say that that's hard. And it's that kind of stuff. Like it's, I used to kick up. I used to walk on my hands all the time. I wasn't a gymnast, but I would play. Like boys and girls club shit. Just being a kid, you were doing that. Kick up on the wall and just try to hold as long as possible against another kid i didn't know it was going to transfer over into hands

and push-ups and that's why i think a lot of times what people don't understand and i started trying to think of this when i first started competing it's not about doing one movement to try to get that movement better it's what what I call transfer of movement. What's one thing you can do to make a hundred things better. And if you can find that you can exponentially improve in less time, but not just less time, but you also have more time to then improve on other things. Cause some things you have to just do like a double under, you gotta be able to figure out how to do that. But a pull up a chest to bar, a bar muscle up, a ring muscle up, a rope climb, a legless rope climb, a pegboard, all of those, you can find the one that will improve them all in a pegboard and

a legless rope climb will make your pull ups better. They'll increase the stamina and the endurance you have on your arms. I stopped for a couple years doing pull-ups because I was doing so many pegboards. But they would improve so many other things inside my training. God, the pegboard's great, isn't it? It's phenomenal. I love a pegboard. Tell me about the broken back thing. How did you break your back the first time, and how old were you?

I was at a concert. Oh, Nelly. I was 18, I think, 17, 18. Cocaine? Cocaine? Cocaine? Was there cocaine involved? No, there was no cocaine involved.

I was in a mosh pit, and one of my buddies was on the side, and when I had my back turned, he just speared me. Your buddy. Did you know in real time that something bad happened um yes and no i mean yes like i knew but like i didn't want to act like it and so you woke up in the morning and you were just like oh shit i can't move yeah yeah and uh it it definitely affected i actually put on weight after that from not moving and just like eating like crap. Which vertebrae?

Did two of them come in and chip it? I don't really – I was never like told how it happened, but it was the Scotty dog. No. Oh, the kind of dog that's a Scotty? So it looks like a Scotty dog with a collar. So when it breaks, it breaks the vertebrae on the end. So it makes it look like the collar of a Scotty dog. They call it Scotty dog.

And when I broke my back, they didn't do anything. They just like, hey, you got to just chill. But I remember not knowing it was broken. Then I woke up in the morning and I was like, oh, fuck, I can't move. I actually never went anywhere or told anybody. Wow. So I actually found out I broke it the first time. The second time I broke it.

And how did you break it the second time? So that was off season of football. We were doing max rep at like 80% of your max back squat. And we had catchers. So if you don't know what a catcher is, it's like be% of your max back squat. And we had catchers. So you don't know what a catcher is. It's like be inside of a squat rack cage. And there's those metal bars that come across. So when you go down, it basically would catch the weight. So failure for most people means when you feel like you can't do another one, you stop. That's most people. I like, no failure to me was I'm going to actually fail because you at,

you told me to fail. That's what I'm going to do. And I failed. And when you fail and you think you actually have some support in a catcher, you just like relax. So I was going up, failed and just relaxed. Somebody had pulled the catchers out before. So it justashed me it was about 425 basically folded you in half it stayed on yeah so i was like it was on my back still and i was folded over just like this and they had to like i couldn't do anything and i was just stuck there and they had to get it off did you know at that point something that one was bad that one i'd like i laid on the ground and i like kind of like rolled laid on the ground and i like kind of like rolled out of the side it was like the last set and they all just thought like oh he's

tired and like oh whatever and we had to do like planks and they put weight on your back and i was like don't you dare touch me or do anything to me and we had to be at physical therapy or like the trainer's room by 4 a.m otherwise you were considered healthy like so if you didn't make it by 4 a.m so i basically was like guys get me there so i had people how old were you 21 college football yeah so they basically got me there and i went there um and they were like okay well you know let's just wait because again it's college they're trainers you know they're all just like just wait. Because, again, it's college trainers. They're all just like, oh, we're doing this because whatever. It was about two weeks later, and my strength coach was like, Nick, stop milking it, man.

Like, come on. He's like, I know you want to be here. So I was like, I can't move. I can't. And they were like, really? So I went in, and they're like, let's get an x-ray. And they got an x-ray. And they're like, you rebroke it. And I was like, rebroke it?

They're like, yeah. And they showed me. And they're like, you's get an x-ray. They got an x-ray and they're like, you rebroke it. And I was like, rebroke it? They're like, yeah. And they showed me and they're like, you can see. See, here's where you did the first one. Oh, the exact same one, L5 again? Holy shit. Yep. And I was like, what? And they're like, yeah.

So basically, like, you need to start, you need to take these, like, just basically, whatever they gave me, they're like, you got to do all this stuff. Basically, you're in bed. So that one was more serious. Did they give you a shitload of vicodin no no oh they did but i didn't take it oh i remember that was the coolest thing about having my back broken that was my introduction of vicodin i was like whoa this stuff's crazy i had this really bad mentality that like if my body wants me to feel the pain it's the it's a reason it wants me to feel it yeah so i like that's yeah like i don't because i remember i broke my arm one time

and i remember i was like moving it around i was like whoa and they're like i don't think you should do that and i was like well how do i know i i'm gonna do something so then i was like scared so that's what made me like okay if if the pain pain is there, it's going to limit me from what I shouldn't do. How many bones have you broken? You've broken your back twice and your arm once? Arm once. Collarbone I broke a week before the Open in 2011, and I made the games. Wow.

It's on YouTube. Was it setting a bar down on it in the front rack? No, it was the last rep of Fran. Oh, pulling the bar down? No. I was doing the last pull-up, and i flew off the bar and flipped upside down and broke my collarbone holy shit yeah that's 2011 uh it's on youtube it's called unfinished fran wow if caleb was here he'd pull it up holy shit it was i was on like pace for like 208

because my wife didn't believe me that i could do it. So I'd actually gotten rabbed the week before at the Arnold Classic because I did a workout against Miko Salo, and I beat him in Mary. Wow. This was 2010, or this would have been 2011, and it was like with Tommy Hackenbrook. Yeah, that's it. It's the last one. Holy crap. You'll hear my wife's it. It's the last one. Holy crap.

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Oh, and you grabbed straight at it. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, when I flipped back over, it popped back in. That was the week before the first ever open in 2011. So did you get the, did you get your, was that the last rep? I was nine.

It was the ninth rep. I didn't get it. No. So you had to do it again. No, I can't. Yeah. I waited a couple of days and I hopped back up and just did it. Oh my goodness.

Hey, when you come off there, did you know that there was a chance do you recall were you like oh i know because it never happened before oh right you're just like oh like i would come out i don't know i just you're so in the zone um you don't even care that's what they say you'll die for points uh uh the burpee dude uh nick did not beat miko you can't tell me i'm wrong ask miko um so so 2009 you find crossfit and um tell me that story about your first like what's that shit over there so my buddy uh when i was running he was like dude you're not a runner stop like you got

to check out this crossfit thing and he was the guy that was like, dude, you're not a runner. Stop. Like you got to check out this CrossFit thing. And he was the guy that was like in the internet trying to find every cool training program. He would just send me stuff. And he's like, you got to check out CrossFit. Well, I thought it was like aerobics. I was like, I'm not doing aerobics. Come on, man. And I just kind of like brushed him off. And it was about a couple months later. He's like, dude, because you saw the classes and you were like okay yeah yeah i was like oh no so he basically is like dude i'm gonna

come over i'm gonna bring a video and you're gonna watch it and it was 2008 every second counts oh wow so he brought the dvd over he brought the vhs wow wow so he brings it over, he pops it in and I'm like, this is real. Like I can do this. And he's like, yeah, man, like, dude, this is what you should be doing. And I was like, like I would, my mind was blown that this was like a real thing. Cause he would find all this underground stuff. And I was like, what? And the winner gets $2,500. Yeah. So then I like, then I dive down the hole and I'm like, all right, how do you start CrossFit? And if anybody started like pre, I don't know, 2010, 2011, maybe it was like,

you got to do Fran. Yeah. I was like, what's Fran? I look it up and I'm like, what's a good Fran time. And have you ever even seen a thruster at that point? No, but I'd done enough lifting. Like when I saw it, I was like, oh, it's just a front squat and a go overhead. Right, okay. But you'd never seen it before that because I had never seen it before that.

So I had a coach when I was a junior in college who all of a sudden our training looked way different. It was like shorter and there was other stuff. And he now owns a CrossFit gym. And he was like, dude, you were doing crossfit your junior year in college playing football wow and so there was like we were like snatching with like 195 then going over and doing like strict pull-ups and then doing that for like five sets or five rounds but there was like no rest so i do recall like a lot of that and i remember being being more tired. So I watched the video. I decided I'm going to do Fran.

I have the P90X pull bar in my basement. And I have one of those like 10 pound really spinning, like those spindle bars where you got to like spin the weights on. So I'm like, all right. So I put one, it was like 107 just because I couldn't find the right weight or 103. I think I'm like, oh, I'll go heavier. it yeah right you work out yeah so i did it and it took me six minutes and 47 seconds wow and i and probably all strict you probably did it all strict back then i was trying i was trying to try and kick around i crawl up the stairs and i was like, it hurts. It was like new pain I'd never felt.

And I looked at my wife who was eight months pregnant and I'm like, that's legit. I'm all in. Like, I'm never looking back. I'm going to win this thing. I'm going to make it to the games. Wow. And she was just like, okay, what? That wasn't even long. What'd you do? I was like, Franan so that was the start and that was what year 2009 2009 yeah wild and then and then how long before what was the first year you went to the games 2011 crazy and the games were in um carson at that point yeah yeah that was the yeah yep because I did sectionals in 2010.

So basically when that happened, I was like, I started researching numbers and what people are lifting and I was like, shoot, I got to lift. So I have to fix my back because my back was still a problem. I was 25 at the time and I was still having back issues. I had rheumatoid arthritis. They were like, you can't, you shouldn't be lifting. You shouldn't be doing any of this stuff.

So I basically did my own research and was like how can i fix my back like what would be the problem and it was everything came back to like you have a weak core you have a weak lower back you have this so i'm like what's the best way to strengthen a back like dead lifting but we never dead lifted in football never dead lifted at all so i didn't even really know how so i just researched the most basic way to build up strength in the deadlift and it was just starting strength which is a five by five and i just increased every week i started on tuesday and started really light and just taught myself how to pull off the ground like i'd get myself in a square you started light what did

what's that so my deadlift at the time was maybe three something that i could actually like like between 335 and 355 so i started like 255 to 265 for five okay and i just would do five reps on a tuesday and then the next tuesday i would do five reps five pounds heavier and it wasn't a five by five it was like all right i hit 255 last week that means on tuesday i gotta do 260 for five and then on that tuesday i would do 260 for five then it's like all right next week i gotta do 265 for five and if it didn't feel like enough i would just hit a couple sets and every week i just added five pounds with the goal of improving how i pull off the ground like get better at pulling focus on your back like you can't have pain but then sometimes my back would hurt and

i wouldn't be able to do it that week and i'd have to come back and i think the process would go back you would go back you take five pounds off no i know i'd go back like i would go back to that same weight and just like all right this is where i'm at this is where i'm at i gotta practice this i got it whenever why didn't you give up why didn't you just be like hey because that's what i did i was like hey i'm not doing i'm not i'm not doing this anymore like I'm I'm gonna give up I'm like I'm not I'm gonna do other movements I think because I I or I'm gonna go really really light now I believed it would work you did and I believed it would work and I think I was so caught up and like I'm gonna I'm want I want this I didn't know you had your eye on the prize yeah so because what I've thought about was all right as long as I'm going to, I'm want, I want this. I didn't know. You had your eye on the prize. Yeah. So, cause what I've thought about was, all right, as long as I'm not going backwards,

like obviously it hurts every week. So what if I can make it hurt every other week? What if I can make it hurt every third week, every fourth week? So my goal was if, if it hurts once every five days, what if I can get it to hurt once every six but if it starts hurting every fourth or third day i should reevaluate what i'm doing so it was more about trial and error in that and eventually it took a year and a half and all my back pain it was about a year and a half later i realized it'd been like six months since i've had a back issue wow so i went and got x-rays i changed my diet i changed everything got x-rays. I changed my diet. I changed everything. Got x-rays, and they were like, you have no arthritis. Everything looks great. Matt Burns, I think I'm going to – Seve, it's because he's not a pussy. That's kind of what – I think what he's saying.

Yeah, yeah. Thanks, Matt. You don't need to correct it. I get it. I get it. Yeah, he's definitely not a pussy. What about this phenomenon, Nick? see um what about this phenomenon uh um nick what about that phenomenon where your back hurts so my back used to hurt and then i would work out anyway and then it would feel better for like five

hours and then as i cooled down the pain would set back in did you did you deal with that a lot yeah yeah yeah but it was it's i think we all kind of know there's sometimes where it's, it's that numbing this almost where it's like, I'm just used to this. Yeah. So for me, it was always, all right, if I'm used to this, then I got to kind of work through it. And the goal is to find improvement. So for me, it would be like, if I found improvement for five hours, it'd be like, all right, it better be six next time. Or at least five. Like I just can't go backwards. My whole thing was like if i am where i am goal is to go forwards but like if i stay here i just have to ask like what could i improve on

what could i change uh and for me it was learning how to pull like your first rep i think a lot of people especially deadlift example then if they pull one they can do two like they don't know how to pull for a one rep a true one rep is like you can't do a second one especially in crossfit we can somebody pulls one they do a five rep they're like pr my one rep and my five rep yeah yeah yeah yeah that's how and i was like that so that if you're doing that that means you really don't know how to pull yeah not your first initial pull off the ground correct yeah um can you explain is there is there anything you can just tell me now about the first pull that like i that i could glean off of you that I could be like, okay, this. It's not a pull.

All you got to do is lock your back in place and push down on the ground as hard as you can. And I always press against the bar, like press as hard as I can away from the bar, even on my Olympic lifts, because you got to lock out. That's just a lever. It's not doing anything. So a lot of times we put tension on our biceps and our arms. Yeah. Boom. It's just a lever. It's not doing anything. So a lot of times we put tension on our biceps and our arms. So I just boom. And my whole goal is to get my back set like this.

And I just, it's got to look one straight line, just going straight up. So my back is just locked in. And as I drive to the ground, as long as I don't let my chest drop, keep my chest hard. And I just stand. So it's not only, it's not only a cue for you. It's a practice push off the ground. Yep. So I would get in a square, like a square in the gym. I'd pretend like it was an elevator that I was holding onto a bar.

Kind of like, you ever see those bars at a farm where it's like a pipe? And it kind of goes down the ground on both sides? No, I've never even been to a farm. Thank you, though. I'm in California. You're in Indiana. I've seen a crack pipe. pipe okay so imagine a crack pipe that goes down into the ground okay oh yeah yeah i've seen that i've seen you can't and you can't

pick it up though so what i'd pretend is i'm standing against something that won't move so i would grab it and i'd press against the ground as hard as i can and i'm not essentially pulling the pipe up i'm pushing the ground down yeah and the pipe stays in the same spot or the bar stays in the same spot so my goal is always same thing with like going overhead put your hands on a low ceiling push as hard as you can down nothing happens but if you jump you go down right jerk so it was always these weird cues that i tried to create of like if something can't move something else has to move hey you ever heard this cue spieler gave me this cue once uh push your knees back like as i was dead lifting you ever heard that one yeah i yeah i mean i think

that's a natural when you're doing it correctly yeah that's a natural thing in the deadlift for me um i try to just stay more vertical like with this clean and the snatch like 100 yeah get your knees back what for me it's whatever works for the person so right right i'm gonna think about that but i'm gonna switch i mean i've tried all the cues you know they kind of they i feel like they go through phases yeah like i feel like i cracked the code on something i'm like oh my god i've been doing the deadlift wrong this whole time i should be doing it like this i should be canna lever it over more and then all of a sudden after a while i'm like nah this something's not right yeah i always just say you just have to have your shoulders and your

hips should stay the same level so if this is your hips and shoulders they're just moving like this until the bar is at the knees and then it's just hips forward which brings the chest back um there's this the thing that people always will bring up about you. I'm sure you've heard it a bunch of times that you, there was a shitload of pectares at, at, at, at the, at, at what you were at.

2017. Central. Oh, is it central? It wasn't in Del Mar. Okay. Central region. Oh,

this was this. Yeah. Yeah. This is here. We were always everywhere. Yeah. They, I mean,

I was at the Del Mar one and there was a handful of pectares there too, from all the ring dips. And then you went out into the vendor village, and you did a 300-pound snatch. And everyone's like, how the fuck does that happen? Can you explain that? Have you ever answered this before? Has anyone ever asked you this before? Have you explained how you—

Not on a podcast. Okay. How can you do both? Like, I don't snatch 300 pounds, so I don't know. But do you not need your pec to do that? So I – to go back to – Tell me the story. Yeah, so the week before regionals, that was a workout I was super pumped for because I'm like I'm going to destroy this thing because dips are like –

kind of like handstand push-ups. They're just super easy for me. So I was doing like that workout, doubling the reps do like all this stuff and it was the week before I kind of felt like a little tweak in it to where I was like oh that's not good and then that week like people started getting hurt on that workout and I was like dang so I basically like didn't really do anything for that that week and I got to regionals with this fear of like, uh-oh, like hopefully I'm okay. And I did the first workout. Isn't that crazy?

What a depressing thing. The thing that you're best at all of a sudden you're afraid of. Yeah. Yeah, what a weird – that's a tough mindset. Yeah. Well, it was the second workout. So the first workout I went out, and it was a long one, and I got like eighth place. So I did really well in a workout that people would be like, oh, that's a second workout. So the first workout I went out and it was a long one and I got like eighth place.

So I did really well in a workout that people would be like, oh, that's a horrible workout for Nick. Go out. I'm in the warmup area before and I'm doing some dips. I'm like, yeah, I feel good. And I go up on one and I'm like, ah, there's that pole again. And I jumped back up and I like, I knew that if I went up, it was going to be bad. So I'm like, shoot, like, it's not horrible. So maybe I can go out and do it.

So go on the workout. I run out. I do my 21 snatches on the first one to the rings. I jump up because you got to start at top and I start to go down and I come off the rings and I'm like, dang it. Like it's going to, something's going to happen. So I looked, the judge is like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I peck like something's up and they judge is like, what's wrong? And I'm like, I peck, like something's up.

And they're like, don't do anything. And I'm like, what? Do I be smart, be safe? And I was like, well, I'm going to try. So I jump up, I try again. And like, I'm like, if I do this, like this could be bad. Do you remember who your judge was? No, but they had the head judge come over.

I don't think it was Boz. Actually, Boz probably was there too. But they had three people come over at this point. And they're like in front of me and they're like, Nick, chill out. And I said, well, what's the minimum work requirement? And they're like 21 ring dips. And I'm like, so what's that mean? And they said, if you can't do 21 ring dips, you're no longer allowed to compete. And you'd be out after one event basically.

And I said, so wait a minute. I have to do 21 dips or I can't come back out on the floor. What if I could do it? The only thing I know I couldn't do that would hurt it was rope climbs because I tried to like pull and I knew that that would hurt. So I didn't tear my pec, but I couldn't do 21 dips without really hurting myself. And they wouldn't let me come back out on the floor. So, okay. So the workout ended and I didn't get any dips and they were't let me come back out on the floor. Oh, okay. So the workout ended, and I didn't get any dips. And they started stopping me. They're like, don't do it. There's too many injuries.

Don't do it. So I went in back, and I was arguing, like, please let me go out and beat. I earned my spot. And they wouldn't let me go out on the floor and compete. So I had to watch the rest of the events. Well, then a buddy of mine is like, I'm going to go lift over at the USAW. Okay. So you only did one dip, and it wasn't really a full. I didn't even get it. of the events well then a buddy of mine's like i'm gonna go lift over at the usa okay so so you only did one dip and it wasn't really a fool i didn't even get it i didn't even do it i couldn't

because i because you had to start up top and then go down and on my way down it was like it wouldn't even so it's a bit of an exaggeration when people tell the story he tore his pec yeah and he did 300 pounds snatch you didn't tear your pec no but they were so concerned because there were so many happening around the world they were really trying to stop me from trying because again they didn't want the story to be people are getting injured at the second event at the cross at the crossfit semifinals yeah which yeah because again it was already kind of hurting but there was no i probably could have done five and and hurt myself exponentially worse but i wouldn't there was no physically impossible for me to do 21 dips safely

like there's there's no way are you glad they stopped you in hindsight no because i i mean i couldn't have done it i like they were just more like i was getting mad that they were saying what they're saying i was like guys i'm not an idiot like i it's like i'm i'm popping up to the top just to see how i feel and see if i can but but I'm not going to actually go through – like 21 is an – all of a sudden, 21 became this giant number that was like I got four minutes. This is impossible. Right, right. You needed a minute to do each one. So I couldn't – so I finished the workout, and like the next day, I tried to do a push-up, and I couldn't.

Like I couldn't do a push-up. Wow. So I'm like – Because of pain or because you couldn't just recruit the muscle? a push-up wow so i'm like because of pain or be just you couldn't just recruit like yeah pain pain pain okay yeah i mean again like i feel like it was i'm smart enough to know like if i pressed up it was just gonna make it worse it'd be like having a hamstring pull and then being like i'm gonna try to sprint again okay it was like that like we were like it's it's gonna hurt it's obvious so my buddy goes and he starts lifting and i'm like well i can't lift

and i was like but i'll grab a bar and i clean it and i'm like well i can't lift and i was like but i'll grab a bar and i clean it and i'm like huh don't feel anything that's weird yeah and then i put it over my head and i'm like wow i don't feel anything so i start telling the guys there i'm like wow and they're like yeah based on what you're saying like they're like it it doesn't affect you and i'm like what this doesn't make any sense and they're like we know but it happens a lot where this will occur but like it doesn't make any sense. And they're like, we know, but it happens a lot where this will occur, but it doesn't affect your Olympic lifting. So I cleaned like 385 and jerked it.

Didn't feel a thing. And then I'm like, well, I know I can't snatch. So then I start snatching, and I'm like, I don't feel anything. And I hit like 308. Just there in Vendor Village. I remember seeing the picture of the video back in the day Yep And nothing felt nothing

And again it wasn't like I didn't I wish I was out on the floor Right right Because the accusation was that you faked it Correct Complete horseshit Yeah I don't understand that part And then not only that

it wasn't like i wanted to be not be out there i wasn't allowed to the accusation that they were at least at the at the one i was at the acu there was a guy there i cannot remember his name yes the accusation there was is that he was avoiding he wanted to do it to avoid drug tests yes so so then that became the accusation for the 20 guys that injured themselves. That became the accusation for all of them. Yeah, because he actually called me maybe a few months after. Like, this is probably around the games time. And he was like, did you hear?

Because at that point, I never heard anything about, like, faking or anything. Nothing like that ever came up. No one's saying that to your face at the regional. Nobody, no. It wasn't until- Funny how that happens. It just shows up on the internet. Although there were 10,000 people

that could have just asked you to your face. Yeah, no, but I mean, I know the only thing that was posted was, I believe Castro got a video of it. He posted it and was like, Nicky Rankard tears his peck and then PRs his snatch like on Sunday. And my wife went on posted it and was like nick your anchor tears his peck and then pr says snatch like on sunday and my wife went on and posted and was like way to support the athletes like oh and then he deleted it oh he did yeah so he deleted that and then it came so christian did they test you there did they test so yeah so you did get tested there on sunday i finished the lifting yeah and then um

something happened where some somebody came up and said something to me maybe it was about like oh you're faking it and i remember i looked at my wife and i was like let's just leave like it's just hard enough already and like now i don't i think it was after the post i was like let's just leave and i'm we're going to the car and i get a phone call from i think it was after the post. I was like, let's just leave. And we're going to the car. And I get a phone call from, I think it was like Alex Anderson. And he's like, hey, Nick, dude, they're looking for you. And I was like, who's looking for me? Like, I'm, what?

And he's like, they want you to come back, CrossFit. They want me to give you your numbers. I was like, okay. I was like, yeah. So then all of a sudden I get a call and it's one of the judges. And they're like, hey, we need you to come back. And I was like, why? They're like, you, you got randomly drug test. You got randomly chosen to be drug tested. It's like noon on Sunday at the competition. So I was like randomly like, yeah, I'm like, is this because I was lifting? And they're like,

I don't really know. And I'm like, yes, I'll answer for you. Yes. Yeah. I was like, this doesn't make any sense. I was like, okay. So I go, I get drug tested right know. And I'm like, yes, I'll answer for you. Yes. Yeah. I was like, this doesn't make any sense. I was like, okay. So I go, I get drug tested right then. And then we go. But that year I got blood tested. I got tested so much. CrossFit did blood testing on you. Yeah. I got blood tested. They came to your house and did that. I've never even heard of it.

No, no, no, no, no, no. I was out at, no, it was, it was one of those like you're at an event and you get tested wow so then at this point i've been tested so much it was kind of a big deal like when i was being said so so i was like i'm making that's all just because the way your body looks i think that that's an easy one to look at but to me i'm like people aren't taking steroids to get bigger in CrossFit. They're taking it for an advantage. It's not steroids.

I don't know. I'm pretty naive to a lot of this stuff. My mantra was, if I'm not taking it and nobody else is taking anything, then I'm right where I should be. Right, right. If I'm not taking it and everybody else is then I'm a fucking badass right right right but you never are ever gonna know so I would rather live with the I'm right where I should be and everybody's clean then go down this path of like I can't control that so I got to the games and I'd been tested so much and me and Alex Anderson and what year is this

this is 2018 okay so we're walking in to go get like our gear and check in and the first person at the door is like holds me a hands me a envelope and they're like you've been randomly selected for a drug test and alex anderson was like what the fuck is this what are you doing this man's been tested so many times hey and he's as big as you right he's a big dude too right he's a big dude too he's a brick shithouse right yeah he's taller than me he's weighs more too and his body's chiseled his body looked like it was chiseled out of granite too oh dude and he's an awesome awesome guy like super yeah the and so i basically got tested walking into the games also and he was so mad and i remember fit kowski came over and he was

like i just got tested too and i was like another guy who's chiseled out of granite i mean fuck his body's nuts i remember the first time i met him was at wadapalooza and whole foods and we had been talking back and forth a ton uh online and he basically was like we were just joke we did a lot of like the open stuff together and i hear like is that nick your rent car and i turn around and i see this giant sick dude he's big yeah new guy and i looked at him and i was like whoa how are you so big and so weak he was like why are you so small? And I was like, I'm good. I'm strong. Because I remember just being like online, he doesn't look like –

I look like I'm 6'2", 225. How tall are you? 5'10", 195. My wife says I'm 5'9". Okay, so you have – you are the shit. You're like the perfect cross – you have like the perfect CrossFit dimensions. Back in whatever. I don't know. It's probably 5'7", if you go off fraser yeah probably getting probably getting shorter

hey did you see that video with him and will tennyson and will tennyson couldn't do one handstand push he can't even kick up against the wall did you see that no fucking bizarre dude wow he's so thankful you found crossfit you didn't get into like professional bodybuilding you think you could have ever gone that way to professional bodybuilding um if you saw me before i started crossfit i wasn't like shredded i mean i always like obviously i did so were you ever when you were a runner were you skinny fat did you or no you were um i don't know you're not a good judge anyway because you said 255 is a light deadlift. So I don't think you're a good judge. I would say yes, I was skinny fat. There's a picture of me on my honeymoon when I was like running and I didn't, I thought I was in, I thought I looked good until I looked back at the picture.

It wasn't until like in maybe 10 months into CrossFit when I like went paleo was like soup that all of a sudden I was like, I remember I lost 10 pounds right off the bat in CrossFit. But in and I committed to like doing this for six months, like I'm going to eat this way because it's going to be good for me. And then like I lost like 10 pounds in three months and then I put back on all 10 pounds in the next three months. But it was like ripped. So whatever I lost, I needed to lose. And then I put back on just pure muscle. So you loved it. You loved that adaptation you were getting from it.

Yeah. Did you ever take your L1? Yeah. And then you opened an affiliate too, right? I had two, yeah. And you don't have those anymore? No. So 2012, I opened up my first affiliate, which actually I was sitting down after the games in 2011 with Don Hasselbeck and Reebok.

Oh, wow. Wow. I forgot about that, dude. That guy was great. Right? He was like, man, Froning's getting ready to open up. He's got his affiliate Mayhem. He should call it like Froning.

Why isn't anybody using like their game status? And I remember my wife is like, well, you want to open a gym, right, Nick? And I was like, yeah, I want to open a gym. She's like, well, what can we do? And we were like, well, your first, my game's number was 061. So my first gym was CrossFit 061 in honor of the first game's number. And that was in Indiana? Yeah, that was like Granger, South Bend.

And then you opened a second one, so you had two gyms simultaneously? Yeah, so 2016, 15, yeah, 16. A gym was closing, and I just basically bought it. And now you have no gyms? Yep. So tell me about that journey too hard too much work too time consuming with without the return uh just something a young man should do to learn how to run a business would you do it again give me i wouldn't change anything

i've ever done because that's why i'm here um i i back when i opened the gym it was what competitive athletes did. They owned a gym, and they competed for the games. That, like, if you go back and look, everybody who was good owned a gym and was trying to make the games. You, Tommy, Scott, Rich. Jason. Oh, shit. I can't believe I'm forgetting the name.

What's the chick's name? She's a 10-time games athlete in SoCal. Oh, Becca? Becca, yeah. Becca Voigt. Yeah, okay. Right. Yeah, so it was just kind of like that's what everybody did. name uh she's a 10-time games athlete in socal um becca becca yeah becca boy yeah okay right yeah so it was just kind of like that's what everybody did and i was like jeff tincture jeff tincture right remember him so many yes dealer right yeah everyone's open gym right okay yeah so i was like that's what you do you open up a gym and i i'm like all right that's what i'm gonna do and it

was mainly like i tell people i'm, I opened a gym as a hobby. So I had a place to train in an environment that I wanted to create. So I opened the gym in 2012. It definitely was a lot harder than I thought. The first two years was 2012 to 2014. I did everything. I was at the gym from four till nine o'clock. My marriage suffered. I had

my first kid or I had to my first kid who was a couple of years old and then had a second during that time. Um, I don't know how I competed at all and finally got some help. Just lived in the gym though. Like it was just lived there, started, kind of got it on autopilot where I knew what I was doing. It made enough money for me to be okay, but I really couldn't support others, which was a part that kind of sucked, right? You want to like, if you have a coach, you want to actually like help support them, not them support you. So when I, the second gym, I was like, well, the only way I can really make money and be self-sufficient and actually have an income that's good is I got to do more of these gyms is what I thought. So when I bought the second gym, I said, I can't run two gyms. I need to basically have somebody

do what I do. I'll be the face of it. I'll do the programming. I'll kind of set up all the systems, but I need somebody to run this. And a guy at the gym was like, I'll do it. I've ran businesses. He wasn't working at the time. So he did it and it just didn't work. Kept it for five years, never took a penny from it and ended up having to pay to close it in 2021. Oh, wow. You had it for a long time yeah it was like i just held on because like did you close both at the same time no so i sold the second one so during when covid hit i was struggling it'd been a few years where i was like what's next like i'm I made the games at 34 in 2018 and got 20th. My wife, my wife was like, you can't, cause I wanted to go individual again. I was like, I'm getting better. I'm ready. Like,

and she was like, how much money do you, you made? I made $10,000 getting 20th. And she was like, how much could you make? If you won the masters, you're going to be 35. And I was like, well, it's 25,000. But what if I did team? And then team and then she's like what's a team get and i was like 100 000 split four ways yeah is that really it that's what the winning team gets wow so i was like 25 and she was like what's the likelihood that you win with a team and i was like i don't know so i did wadapalooza with story um camille and uh travis william. And we got like third. And I remember I was six. I wasn't giving much input. And I was like,

this is three other minds that like, think that they have all the answers. And then you, if you threw me in there, this would be a shit show. I was like, I was like, I'm going masters.

And I told my wife, I was like, all right, I'm going to go that route. And when – Did you guys fight at Wadapalooza? Was there like yelling and shit? In like the practice stuff, yeah.

Yeah. It was like who could pick the right strategy? I don't know. I wasn't saying much because I was not feeling well. So it was just like kind of being like that outside person watching it. yeah watching camille and uh the doter and uh travis brawl it out that's awesome awesome who was the most stubborn it was camille the most stubborn uh i would say camille and travis i think thor was like meh but it was travis and camille i would say would be the two be god we need to mic that up that's bad. We don't got that on tape.

Look at that. So, uh, when, at this point I'm trying to figure out like what's next. Cause I'm not going to compete forever. Obviously I'm like, I'm thinking I am, but really I know like I'm not, but then this gym's not going to support the lifestyle I have. My wife had quit her job and she was at the gym and then she was helping out the other gym. She was trying to figure out what she wanted to do.

And then next thing you know, I get ready to qualify for the games. COVID hits, they shut everything down and I'm like lost. And that's when my dad apologized. It was around that time. And this whole, like, everything just left me, like this wave of, you're okay. And the fire to compete left. Wow. Just gone.

I didn't want to be at the gym. I didn't want, like, I wanted to train and work out how I wanted to train and work out and I started creating these programs where like I'm like I just want to do stuff with dumbbells so I created this thing called swole and I was doing people were like wow this is really cool and I was just having fun getting more on the business side and people at my gym started both the gyms were like you need need to do this, this, this, this. Tell me all these things I have to do. And I remember just being like, but I'm happy.

I'm really happy. And I was happy then too. So I had to start telling people like, if what I'm doing doesn't make you happy and it's not giving you what you came here for, you can leave. And that's okay. You're not getting what you came here for, you can leave. And that's okay. You're not getting what you wanted. And I had to start having all these conversations. And I realized that other people's expectations, which I was getting a lot of are just what they want from me. And I realized that it's okay for me to want stuff. It's okay for me to not want to have to be there. So during

COVID, I basically said, I'm going to coach my coaches. I'm going to let them be the head of this thing because now I've got like my online programming. I'm starting to feel good. I'm like, I want to stop paying myself from this gym and I want to let other people do what they want to do and love on it and teach them what I know to help other people. So was COVID good for you, Nick, because of online programming? It was fantastic. Oh, that's good to hear. Okay, good. Yeah, it was awesome. So what I ended up doing was I created the gym to become a business. I stepped outside of it.

All I did was run the numbers. I did the programming. And within six months, I was getting a lot of upsetting emails and calls, messages from people. And within six months, people started talking to my coaches. And they started like looking up to them and seeing leadership in them exactly what I wanted. And I didn't go in the gym for about a year and a half. Wow. Yeah.

So I struggled a lot, but then I kind of like found like, wow, it's okay. Like it's okay. It's okay. There was nothing wrong with that, and I wasn't doing anything wrong by making other people upset. They needed to be okay too, and I was okay. And once I started doing that, eventually – They were upset because you weren't coming in there? They viewed you as the leader of the gym? Yeah.

I was the best coach. They were bitching about everything going the bathroom wasn't clean this coach said this to me this they didn't they came two minutes late today just in your right dudes why aren't you coaching my class more i want you right right and because the discrepancy between coaching was big like i care so much and want to see everybody like get the most out of them and when i realized the coaching, everything else was down here, I'm like, well, what if I help bring that up even just a little bit? And I make it same across the board and I remove myself. And when I did that, one of the younger guys was like, man, I want to

own a gym one day. And I was like, really? I was like, come in my office. And we started talking and I was like, well, I'm designing this to where like, it's no longer about me. It's about the community and the community is not going to change. And what you can deliver is not going to change. So over like two years, I started letting him do some programming. We didn't tell anybody. And then after a couple months, it was like, Hey, he's doing the programming. It was, you know, he started working for me online. So, cause I explained to him like, Hey, you're not going to make like, here's how much money you should take. If you get the gym, I want to help you on the other side.

You work for me. I'll pay you this. You can do this. Let's help design this gym, set up systems for you. And then eventually we got to a point where he tried to get an SBA loan. He couldn't. I found an investor. It was kind of like, ah, I don't know.

This might be too much. And then I found another investor forum inside of the gym that basically went in with him, and they bought the gym for me, and we closed in August last year. Is the gym still going? Same exact name, nothing changed. We did an equity sale, so it's just like nothing changed. Same coaches, everything stayed the same.

That's it, yeah. And everyone feels good about it. Fantastic. It's, yeah. People that had left because i was there came back that's awesome i love the way you say that so i'm leaving come on back and there's nothing wrong with that like it's not no i agree i agree you're just you're so mature about it the way you say it i just like it yeah so it's moved out of my house my ex-wife came back so but what and so then like getting it was kind of like that was the next release of like

okay um yeah and then i got into like real estate bought some rental properties um do like airbnb my wife loves that she then got into real estate so like it's just really cool like um i love i live everything in like five year span so i think like oh at 65 you retire well i'm like no we get so many lives like so many things we can do so i break everything in five years i'm like all right in five years who knows what i'm gonna do if yeah 10 years ago i opened a gym and did all these things and then all of a sudden there's all like we constantly evolve are you are you are you still do you still have games aspirations are you gonna do masters again no people are like you're still

fit like i still am just i don't want to say just as strong but like i just cleaned like 370 the other day and i was like wow i was still i just i think i snatched like 290 something like i but i'm not lifting like I was I'm not training like I was but I think I have such a big base that it's and I still like to work out and I still look good and but I don't want to hurt like that and it's hard like I don't want to live in the gym I get to spend I get to pick my kids up from school I get to hang out with my wife I get to wake up in the morning have a cup of coffee do what I want to do I get to go travel around so much now what I get to do is crazy because what I do now didn't exist when I when I found CrossFit I didn't know I'd own a gym I didn't know I own a second gym

I didn't know I have an online programming company I didn't know it would take down this path and that's where like for me I don't know what five years looks like I didn't know I owned a second gym. I didn't know I'd have an online programming company. I didn't know it would take down this path. And that's where like, for me, I don't know what five years looks like. I don't know what's going to be, what's going to exist. So as long as I understand that I'm constantly evolving, I can find new opportunities. Who knows? I might be 60 and be like, I want to compete because I got nothing else to do. I don't know. If you're not competing how what's your primary way of people finding nick your anchor like how do people find you you know what i mean like yeah like for mayhem it's worked great with no one's that i i think the community and this is not a negative thing at all but sports in general just people in general general or what have you done for me

lately yeah and so in in two years no one's even i know people aren't going to believe this in two years no one's going to know who fraser is the people competing at the games will be they'll never see i mean there's it's already like that like mal o'brien was like eight when rich was at the games you know what i mean there's just we we're getting older how are people going to still find you how do you still stay relevant? Um, I mean, I know you have a big social media following, but is that really what it is? Is it all just through social media? Yeah. I mean, I mean, yes. And I mean, yeah, I would say that that's the primary way. Um, I think for me, like I tell my wife this all the time

in a few years nobody might want to get on my programming everybody might cancel nobody would care about me and that was a big thing for me it was super hard to realize that one day nobody will care and that's okay

and they do right now in a small form as long yes i'm not as long as he keeps his shirt off in his reels he'll do just fine so yeah it was it was uh you feel pressure to stay in tip-top shape because of that and and and not even as a bad thing and do you enjoy that pressure um so i feel a lot of different pressures. One, like I should still be able to lift the weights that I've lifted because that's what I'm known for.

Um, I should look a certain way and I, I work out 10 to 40 minutes a day. Wow. Like not that much, but I'm, I know your nutrition is dialed in crazy yeah no um it yes okay yes my if you looked at my nutrition you say yeah it's dialed in but i don't i don't count macros i i don't like a lot of junk food i'll snack on stuff but we don't have it in our house

um i think like for me you don't eat in the morning do you eat in the morning you don't eat in the morning i'm gonna go not really no i won't eat like 10 or 11 coffee um maybe i'll throw like a snack in my mouth but no i was gonna guess you didn't eat until one sometimes yeah i'll intermittent fast a lot just by default just because i get into stuff um do you enjoy the pressure of needing to stay strong, needing to like, like I enjoy, I,

I, there's some pressures I just like. Yeah. Like I don't, I don't mind any of them because I realized it's just me. Right. Nobody really cares. Right.

You're putting it on yourself. Yeah. It's made up. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't really, I,

I like it because it gives me purpose. Right. So like, if I can lean into that, it gives me a reason to work out. It gives me, it's like, if there was like, ah, there's no reason why not. And that's why a lot of athletes get out of shape, um, so easily and I'm never going to stop training. So I do have to have purpose. I do have to have a reason. Um, and sometimes that that's it, like, that's a reason. Um, and sometimes that that's it. Like that's a reason to go and let's check to see what I can clean and jerk. Um, yeah. Hey dude, it's fun. It's funny. This is the most I've ever talked to you. It's a awesome having you on your, what a great conversationalist you are. I really appreciate you coming on. Fuck man. We covered some ground. Yeah. You're a good dude. Thank you very much. It's pretty obvious why you're doing so good dude thank you very much it's pretty obvious why uh you're doing so good you you have such it's funny when i my image of you is that you're a

much more aggressive aggro guy just to kind of the image i had of you in my head everybody says and you're just so fucking cool you fuck you're so cool people are like oh you're like a bro i'm like man i'm i go real deep all the time to a fault well good look great interview already well thank you judy yeah all right man well have a good day uh thanks for coming on and and i hope our paths cross again oh for sure man i appreciate it uh nick your anchor the zeus method. Thanks, brother. Yes, you're welcome. Cheers. Dang. Yeah, have him on again, please. Yeah, he's cool, right?

Wow. Look at even David. We think he's a cool dude. Holy shit. Holy shit. Holy shit. That was easy. Two gyms. I bet you he got some stories.

Today, I feel like is the first day of my life. Because I'm getting back in the, I'm getting back in the groove and back home. I feel like I've been away forever. Kids are finishing up their school, 8.30 a. a.m headed over to the skate park for two hours then i'm gonna go play tennis with them for two hours i'm gonna take them to kumon for 30 minutes then they're gonna go back to jiu-jitsu and tennis what a day oh look at that already bring back nick you wow nick nick your anchor damn you guys really liked him yeah he's cool right chill

I never panicked I wasn't like fuck what are we gonna talk about next time we gotta get Caleb here the dude's body is fucking ridiculous and I'm glad he got to say that that's that's crazy that uh I'm glad he got to talk about the um

300 pound snatch because man he caught That's crazy that I'm glad he got to talk about the 300-pound snatch. Because, man, he caught some shit for that. That's cool that they drug tested him. And these guys are like, fuck you. I passed. Eat a dick. Oh, shit. My phone's not charged.

Son of a bitch. Ah. I was normally at night. I leave my phone in the kitchen and plug it into the chargers and because I just got back last night I didn't uh pull out unpack all the chargers son of a bitch all right guys um what's going on what's going on? Tomorrow Greg Glassman is coming on. Is there anything tonight? No. Thursday.

Thursday. No. It says Ariel Lowen. That can't be right. What's tomorrow? Oh, shit. Ariel Lowen is coming on holy shit all right Thursday Ariel Lohan third fittest woman in the world fittest woman in North

America and then Friday the behind the scenes episode Oh Friday we have Tommy Hackenberg what is this is all crazy and he's with Kotler now and underdogs um and then Friday also we have episode eight uh coming out and then Saturday Darian Weeks for those of you who've been listening for a while I know I had a plan b charger too. I just didn't. There was a couple just sitting around the house but it wasn't in the spot

that I normally like to have my phone. I was just being OCD. Just a weirdo yesterday. I came home. I was a mess. Guys. The open is coming.

Our Friday nights on the station are going to blow you away. On Friday nights we're going to have Taylor Self versus the world. First week, Taylor versus Dallin Pepper. Second week, Taylor versus Jason Hopper. Third week, Taylor versus Colton Mertens. We're taking over the open.

I think we're doing it at CrossFit Charlotte two weeks, Andy Hendles gym, and then at CrossFit crash, it's going to be insane. It's going to be so beautiful. Remember that last thing, we'll brand setter, uh,

set up with, um, Taylor doing that water blues workout. It's going to be sick. Bye-bye.