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Karl Steadman, CrossFit OG, Flowmaster, Affiliate Liason
382 Plays2 years ago
If there was ever a CrossFit OG, Karl Steadman is it. Karl discovered CrossFit in 2003 and was immediately drawn to its counter-culture 'alternative' approach to not fitness but more importantly, a 'career' path. With curiosity and novelty driving his pursuits, Karl has dedicated his professional life to sharing the impacts of CrossFit with others. He has been an affiliate owner, has delivered over 400 CrossFit seminars, and now is the UK affiliate liaison for CrossFit HQ. In this episode we hear about his experience with the Dose, his relationship to 'doing hard things', and how he navigates fitness today. With 20 years under his belt, Karl continues to evolve and shares what 'getting better' looks like for him.
Karl is on Instagram @KarlSteadman
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Transcript
Introduction to Karl Stedman and CrossFit Journey
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome to the Between the Ears podcast. This week we have Karl Stedman on the show. If there was ever a CrossFit OG, especially in Europe, Karl Stedman is it. Karl discovered CrossFit in 2003, 20 years ago, and was immediately drawn to
00:00:19
Speaker
It's counterculture alternative approach, not just to fitness, but more importantly, to a career path within fitness. In many ways, that still exists today with saying, you have to go here, you have to do this course, this university, this degree, if you want to teach somebody how to reclaim freedom in their health through movement.
00:00:41
Speaker
Carl was always a counterculture kind of against the grain guy and that didn't sit well with him. So with curiosity and novelty really driving his pursuits, he dedicated his professional life to sharing the impacts of CrossFit with others. He dove in in 2003 well before it was cool or as he says like really anybody knew what they were doing.
00:01:03
Speaker
But has since climbed the ranks to be CrossFit Flowmaster, where he's probably most famously known for. He's shared and worked and delivered over 400 CrossFit seminars. He's an affiliate owner. He's the UK affiliate liaison for, to, and with CrossFit HQ. And just a wealth of knowledge. Talk about somebody who's
00:01:27
Speaker
Been around since the beginning and seen many things and experienced many ups and downs throughout the space Carl's a wealth of knowledge and an all-around good lad In this episode we hear about his experience with the dose. Of course, this is a common thread line through our podcasts we we dose and we share what we do with people and
00:01:55
Speaker
And really, it's a cool thing to hear. It's a cool thing to hear someone who has been doing this for this long still learning. I don't know about you, but that certainly inspires us.
The Philosophy of Doing Hard Things
00:02:06
Speaker
We also talk about his relationship to doing hard things, how that's changed and what it provides and how he navigates fitness today.
00:02:16
Speaker
With over 20 years of CrossFit under his belt, you know, Carl continues to evolve and he continues to get better. And he shares what getting better looks like for him. And his answer is truly inspirational. And it hit home for us. It was a beautiful reminder and a beautiful invitation. And it really echoed the sentiment of between the ears that we believe everybody is a student and everybody is a teacher.
00:02:45
Speaker
This episode is full of gold. There's gold in these hills. We hope you share. We hope you enjoy. And without further ado, here's the show.
00:03:26
Speaker
Hello. Hello. Looking good. Looking good. Cheers, mate. You actually look really alive and well for having done that workout, so I'm impressed. It was about two hours ago, but I'm still coughing my third lung up that I grew during the workout. Yeah. When I did it the last time, the final time, one of the apparent of a client that we've been training came in to say hello and introduce himself.
00:03:54
Speaker
Un, unscheduled visit. Unscheduled visit. And like 11 minutes into talking with him, I was like, excuse me, sir. I just really need to just drink some water. I'm just watching this happen. I'm like, this is great. And he's like, uh, okay. And like, I just, just the lack of saliva and oxygen in my system right now is an indicator of only my fitness, not my sanity, but maybe they are connected.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, you do wonder about what people think, eh? Because we've got people at the back of the house and they're doing like planting of trees and stuff, whole new forest kind of thing being up there. And they go, all they can hear is just like crazy music loud in a barn in the middle of nowhere. And then I come running out immediately afterwards and just start dry heaving in a corner. And you're like, uh, yeah, I guess, I guess that was a bit daft, but you know, just sort of wave them, wave in the distance. So as they know, I'm not dying. Yeah. Oh yeah.
00:04:49
Speaker
Yeah, we have a similar scenario on our street. But I think at this point, we started coal plunging. And we don't have a very large backyard. And where the coal plunge is, there's a house right there, and then our neighbor's house. And one day, Bill was just in this ice bucket, and our neighbor goes with her coat to walk the dogs. And she just looks up, and Bill's like,
00:05:17
Speaker
Hello, just, you know, nothing to see. So just over here in the corner hyperventilating, you know, just good. Totally fine. Yeah. It's the middle of January. No worries. So Carl Steadman is our guest today. Um, Carl, we'll get into all the, what we're talking about and obviously the workout in a bit, but, uh, we've known each other for some time. I don't know how long.
00:05:47
Speaker
I don't really remember. I've worked a couple of, I've been honored to be, I was like a, I was like an adopted child on the UK Euro team for a little bit doing some gigs in Norway. Yeah. Yeah. I remember that. Centrum. I remember that. Yes. That was really like the, some of the, the original days, but, um, yeah, tell us a little bit about like who you are these days, what you're, what you're doing and,
00:06:14
Speaker
Yeah. How we know you kind of the backstory. Gotcha.
Karl's Roles and Community Evolution
00:06:20
Speaker
Um, thanks for having me, by the way, mate. Um, so I have no idea what I'm doing most days. I won't lie to you, but, um, currently, uh, Sata sat at home in Scotland, but, uh, my general role, I guess, and what most people know me for is working for CrossFit for a, for a while for headquarters on the seminar staff. Um,
00:06:39
Speaker
Been an affiliate owner since 2006, been doing CrossFit since about, I think O3 was my first kind of workouts, badly. War of attrition survived those, thankfully came out the other side of it. Yeah, now I work for, on a seminar staff, on that provision, level ones, level twos, and just recently went through sort of the level four rating internship as well, which was super cool.
00:07:06
Speaker
And yeah, I work for them on the affiliate side as well. So I've been for about the last two years being a bit of an advocate representative for the UK and Irish affiliates. So technically working for CrossFit, but I feel like it's the other way around really, right? Representing the affiliates and advocating for them to CrossFit in the US. So yeah, that's about me really. First, do you want to know, mate? I could gob off for about another half an hour here, but I think he tells you one.
00:07:34
Speaker
Yes, anyone who starts who anyone who's like an early adopter doing it before it's cool kind of situation always like is not only has I think our respect but also is interesting and has a story like how did you get involved story that's always so fascinating. So in 2003, you know, 20 years of CrossFit now for you, how
00:08:00
Speaker
Yeah, I'm old. How did you, how did you get involved in it? Um, you know, I think, I mean, firstly, I didn't find it. I'm not smart enough to do the research and things that normally piggyback off of much smarter people, you know, stand on the shoulders of giants kind of vibe. But, um, I think I was really, really disillusioned with fitness as a, as an entity is what I'd chosen to go into.
00:08:24
Speaker
kind of buck the trend of everybody who's saying, hey, you need to go to university, go do the job kind of vibe. And I was like, nah. And I mean, I'd always been attracted to the counterculture of everything, right? Always liked motorcycles, always liked heavy metal, always liked tattoos. So it was very much the vibe I identified even before I came across CrossFit. And I was in the regular fitness world since I was 19.
00:08:48
Speaker
So, you know, I'd done most of the facets of fitness at that time and I hated them all. You know, like it was the epitome of false motivation is better than no motivation in all of those environments, right? You know, like you're just trying to be positive, but everybody hated it. Nobody was ever getting results. You know, you rinse and repeat the same workouts and it just, it seemed weird. So I kept changing the areas I went into, right? So I started off in local authority gyms.
00:09:17
Speaker
Then I went to sort of private clubs. Then I went into sort of corporate clubs after that, just trying to find, I don't know, something that I thought where I'd belong, if I'm honest. And I didn't in any of them. And so luckily, a buddy of mine who was a bit of an eclectic dude, he was a personal trainer alongside me, but he was also like, come from a Greco-Roman wrestling background.
00:09:41
Speaker
He's very much just kind of like into, you know, he had club bells and kettlebells and stuff like this that I'd never seen before and he trained a lot with sandbags and things.
00:09:52
Speaker
We just used to play around training with each other, because my background was not from any of that, right? So I'd expose him to a little bit of the things that I did, and I'd laugh a lot, right? Because it would absolutely devastate him. And vice versa, then he'd go, all right, then we'll do some defense drills in terms of grappling. And I'm like, yeah, okay, that doesn't sound too hard. And then about 90 seconds later, my world is ending. And I realized that, you know, traditional, I didn't have fitness in that realm. And so we were just playing around with that for a while, you know,
00:10:21
Speaker
bored with traditional gym training. So we just meet in his garage on a weekend and just like smash ourselves with random stuff and have fun. And then he said, Oh, actually, you know, you should check out these guys in the US, they're doing what we're trying to do really well. And that was that was CrossFit. So I spent like logged on, I think I did my traditional, I think I happened across a five by five back squat day. And, and I remember doing the traditional of like, where's the workout kind of vibe? What is it?
00:10:50
Speaker
Um, and then looked a lot and they had the message board at that time, right? So you kind of would post up and like lots of things like that. And I just sort of started to understand and try to dig into a bit of the ethos that sat behind it as well. And I really liked what was going on there. They seemed like the counterculture of fitness. So that attracted me to it. So the culture and the ethos that sat behind it attracted me. And then when I did the work, they were tough. So I kind of was things.
00:11:20
Speaker
At that time, the message boards and the random things that would be posted on the rest day. You kind of forget about that, I think. And that went on for kind of a long time. That was well into the 12,
Beyond Physical Fitness: Mental Challenges and Resilience
00:11:36
Speaker
13 timeframe. Now, I think it's like...
00:11:41
Speaker
I mean, I think it's still strange, but did that strike you as odd? Like why is this political article or like, there were some like tangential things that had nothing to do with fitness, but I think it sort of was also spoke to the type of person that might be interested in that fitness. Like what was your experience of that stuff? Well, I think, yeah, I definitely do. I mean, it was just sort of an acceptance straight out of the gate because I think when I was reading the articles and, and you know, you, you had the,
00:12:11
Speaker
the free PDF and the articles like what's fitness and things that were written by Greg and things like that. A lot of the language that was used, you know, instinctively, you went, someone smart wrote this, if I'm honest, you know, definitely punching it above a level of just like your traditional education. So I just thought that went hand in hand, you know, smart people talk about smart things that I might not necessarily understand. And so therefore, when I when I saw these things,
00:12:38
Speaker
it wasn't anything that sort of swayed me either way. It was just an acceptance straight out the gate, I think, where I'm like, well, you know, smart people talk about smart things that make you ask questions and make you question yourself, your views and all of that kind of stuff. So I could see the training world. And then when I saw it on maybe the political realm, too, I was like, well, I guess they're just poking
00:12:59
Speaker
poking the standard consensus there, too. And yeah, so it wasn't really a thing that impacted me personally, realistically, a lot of it, I guess, was biased towards the US anyway, understandably. So it wasn't something that made me question much, really, it was just an acceptance out the gate, really. Yeah, yeah, it is kind of cool. And that's sort of one of the things we've talked about, like,
00:13:22
Speaker
going back to that grassroots, I think you said it well. It's a curiosity. It's encouraging people to be curious. And at the time, I think that's where CrossFit started from. If you aren't curious, then you're not going to be interested in this program or exploring anything that's not already known. And not to say we've lost some of that, but that was really what I think when you talk to people who have been
00:13:50
Speaker
doing it for a long time, the prerequisite was curiosity and dipping your toe in water that like, I don't know how this is going to go. So that's really cool. Yeah, I agree with you 100%. That was always the ability to critically think. And honestly speaking, learning more about CrossFit, learning more about that world turned what I thought I knew on its head. And so I took that
00:14:15
Speaker
in every factor that I did moving forwards, right? So in learning what I thought was, you know, gospel truths, when it comes to training and fitness, then I just kind of took that forwards into many factors of my life, right? Where it's just like, well, maybe I'm not just going to take you at face value, maybe I'm going to dig a little deeper there and come up with my own opinion. So I'm pretty grateful for that, right? It stopped me, stopped me from just being so blindly trusting sometimes, which was pretty cool.
00:14:44
Speaker
It's cool to hear that the counterculture roots were there and CrossFit provided a home. And I think for those who are against the grain, if everybody's going to go left, I'm going to go right kind of deal. But in that sort of, there's belonging among a bunch of people who feel like they might not belong to what the traditional sort of
00:15:14
Speaker
hear everybody gather. It's like, eh, not really. Like, that's cool.
00:15:21
Speaker
I think you nailed that spot on. That was exactly me. This is the route that you should take. I'd be like, nah, I'm going to do that just because. I have no idea why. Maybe I was wired stupid, but it would always be like whatever the traditional way to go was, I was like, I don't know. I just trusted my gut, I think, a lot of the time. It's got me so far and I'm not dead yet, so I'm going to keep rolling.
00:15:44
Speaker
if it, you know, the traditional way of living and things, I was like, I don't want to go and work in an office and I want to do the nine to five, I don't want to do what's expected, I want to do what I think feels right. And just sort of stuck to doing that, which was helpful, I guess, hasn't put me wrong so far. What got you you said some of your background when you were training with your buddy, what was your background sport? You know, what was prior to?
00:16:10
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, realistically, and it always seems weird when I'm talking to obviously YouTube characters and my peer group as well, like they all had like pretty good, like high end backgrounds, you know, whether it's going to be sport in excellence, whether it's going to be like tier one military, I am absolutely Johnny average.
00:16:28
Speaker
Like I was quite literally just squad player in teams, you know, probably like flirting with the bench, you know, all of these kinds of things. It's just, yeah, I was a mediocre to average runner. I seem to have like some natural aptitude there. So any sport that had me being able to utilize some pace and some engine, I was okay at. So that was normally like wing in either rugby or football, sorry, soccer, but it's still football or, or, um,
00:16:57
Speaker
you know like running out right as well i seem to have an aptitude for any kind of running really i could sprint i could go medium and i could go long pretty well so you know i used to.
00:17:06
Speaker
run for hundreds pretty well with minimal training could go and run a marathon and stuff. So it was, I just had these weird and ability to run there, but it wasn't exactly like, you know, world breaking or top tier team and anything really. I'm the epitome of just a regular dude. If I'm honest, don't come from a genetic gifted background or anything like that. Just a, just Joe average mate. So, so yeah, flooded with many sports, but a bit of an aptitude for running. And that was about it really. Yeah.
00:17:37
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, I love hearing that because, you know, especially, I don't know how it is over in the UK, but in the States, you know, there's this, there's this obsession with specialization, with having the kids be in the highest levels, club academies, you know, from the ages of five. And
00:18:00
Speaker
you know, we can get into the whole cultural influence on that. But I think, you know, one of the, it's almost like success puts on blinders at that age to almost reinforce and reconfirm what you think you know. Whereas if you're just like dabbling and doing different things and you have to pay attention of, all right, like I've got to work a little bit hard. I've got to do different things. Nothing's like, you know, maybe naturally gifted.
00:18:29
Speaker
There, I think maybe in that sows the seeds of curiosity and exploration rather than, Oh, this is the one thing that like, this is like my track that let's be honest at five, you're not selecting your tracks. I'm just putting you on it. Um, and so now to see, you know, fast forward to, to now to see, you know, how, where you kind of have come to and be in the Flowmaster and representing the affiliates or if we're across it and all of that to be.
00:18:58
Speaker
to have somebody in a position of significant influence who understands like the average person. I think that's far more common. I mean, it's cool that that is cool that CrossFit has
00:19:11
Speaker
you know, and had at its roots, like elite military, but, but far more applicable is everybody else, you know, coming to it. So yeah, I mean, I didn't have any, I was, I was not a athlete. I was like a fitness person. And kind of to your point, like, it was just like, wow, this is really, this actually makes sense. And this is interesting. And I'm kind of not buying the other shit that they're selling and
00:19:40
Speaker
but I didn't have any background. But I think that's also what, you know, there's a difference in some of the elite people have a harder time approaching fitness just for the sake of fitness. Like Bill, some of his thing is like, well, what's the point of training? And for me, it's like, what do you mean with the, what's the point? Like to stay fit and healthy, like that's been the whole point the whole time. And like, I never was training for some,
00:20:05
Speaker
higher purpose. Um, but yeah, you did though recently, didn't you do some 40, 50 miler, a hundred miles? What was that? And I feel like all of a sudden you just like went out and ran the hills of Scotland or something like that. Did you even train? Yeah, I guess it's, yeah, there was, um, even though I never really sort of achieved a lot sort of sporting excellence wise, I guess, I guess to your point originally,
00:20:33
Speaker
The irony is the flip side of that is that's how you breed champions, right? Is you recognize talent and you squeeze it to optimize that individual. But yeah, alongside you are going to probably create some weirdos as well as heroes, right? So I totally get that.
00:20:48
Speaker
But I think for me, I've always been driven by doing a challenge though, right? And that's, that's where that comes to your point. Kay was like, you know, I've got I want to go and do stuff that makes me feel uncomfortable, because I know that there's, there's merit in there for me as a human, even if I'm not the most athletically talented, I want to, that's the reason why I wanted to go do a marathon as an example, because I'm like, can I
00:21:11
Speaker
And what do I do when it gets really miserable? Because I'm not expecting to breeze this. I don't just have that gift to be able to just make it easy. I'm like, what do I do? Because when I looked at inspirational and aspirational folk, like whether it's top tier military or top tier sport and whatever it was, I was like, yeah, they just seem to have something that someone like me doesn't have. I don't know. That was my impression anyway. So I wanted to challenge myself in as many of those
00:21:41
Speaker
uncomfortable situations just to see what I had. And so a lot of those elements of like doing that ultra marathon was like, well, I've run a marathon, and that was misery, and it nearly broke me. And so I was like, so, so I'm like, well,
00:21:56
Speaker
What else? Yeah, exactly. There are some savages out there that run like more than a marathon. So I'm like, well, maybe I should have a little dabble in that thing as well. You know, like, I don't know, maybe I've got some self abuse issues or something. But I'm like, I was like, I want to go and I want to go and give it a little go. And it was a good excuse to get out and run in this fantastic environment. I'm a big one for accountability. And I need it as much as any other human, right? So because I had to train for this thing, it was a great excuse to get out with a dog into our wonderful surroundings and just go run.
00:22:27
Speaker
Um, a lot in the Hills. So, so yeah, it was, and at the time, um, it was a good reason to get together with another two lads when we'd all been stuck in our homes for a little bit over here, right? Due to the reaction to the stuff. So it was a good, it was a good reason to get out and mental space too. I use it like meditation when I go running. If I'm honest, I wouldn't be able to tell you how far I've run or how hard I've run. I'm off somewhere else. So, so I think it was a multi-factorial why I wanted to do it really.
00:22:58
Speaker
Yeah, it's almost like it makes sense naturally. And then we search for an explanation for why it makes like what's happening. But for you, it's like, yeah.
00:23:06
Speaker
Yeah, it's like escape, you know, get out the house, get away from the pressures of everything, turn the computer off, you know, I love the wife and kids, but every now and again, you need five minutes, you feel me? And then then you, you go out and do the stuff and it was it was just good. And I mean, now I wouldn't be able to tell you about a single detail of anything I thought about when I was out running for a couple hours, but it was needed.
00:23:29
Speaker
Yeah, it's kind of, I don't know how you feel now. I mean, I spent a lot of time training. I did one Iron Man sort of similar, like I didn't have any of these accolades or saying I like, you know, compared to someone like Bill who could tell stories of training situations where I'm like, I don't know if I could do that. But yeah, just like I wonder what that's going to feel like. And you hope
00:23:55
Speaker
obviously there's some challenge in it. If there's no challenge in it, then the whole exercise was somewhat, not pointless, but like, okay, it's cool to do something fast and like be a professional at it. But the best moments were like the ones where you're like, I don't know if I can keep doing this. And then some, you know, you finish. But hours and hours and hours of training. I mean, it was whatever 15 hours a week, which was a lot. And now I think back on that. And I'm like, how did I even do like what? Yeah, like, what was I
00:24:25
Speaker
thinking about like all that time, but it was really, it is something special. And I think often people don't have the patience or the ability to say like, and same thing, like I don't even know where I'd find those 15 hours now, but I did. And it was, um, yeah, it was an awesome experience. I don't know that I need to do it again. Um, but it was like,
00:24:49
Speaker
a learning, it was just, it was, you have that and you have that experience now with you forever. Isn't it mad though? I think that's the separator you've got like.
00:25:00
Speaker
You know, like, I mean, we could go off down a rabbit hole here, I guess, but you've got like it seemingly from my perspective, most of society seems to be going towards like, let me just keep chasing something that makes things easier. You know, like, whatever that might look like, you know, mentally, physically, you know, societally, whatever. And it's like, I don't know, there's there's certain elements of like, and we go exactly the other way. It's like, how do I know?
00:25:23
Speaker
How do I make today tougher? You know, how do I make this thing harder? But not not just because we've got some weird way of we want to thrash ourselves because we're we're not happy with ourselves. It's just because we know that there's I know there's merit in there. There's merit in that struggle. You know, it's going to make you a little bit more resilient. It's going to make you, you know, definitely physically tougher, but probably more importantly, mentally tougher, you know, which I think is
00:25:48
Speaker
which is huge. I think this style of training makes you mentally tough, a full stop. You know, I think, um, you know, that, that just overcoming your own, where it is bullshit every day. Um, you know, cause it would be so easy to believe your own bullshit of like, I don't need to train today because I did yesterday, you know, whereas I think, I think we all understand that there's like, you start with zero every day, right? You know, like today you start with zero and you've got to earn everything this evening, right? You got to earn your beer by,
00:26:17
Speaker
doing something, you got to earn you whatever, you know, so rebuild it again, you're only as good as the last time you do the thing. Like don't sit on entitlement and stuff like that. But I do think it takes a unique group of individuals to understand that concept. And that's actually pretty rare, realistically in the rest of the world. Yeah, and I feel like, you know, of course, there's like the physical, you know, how do I make this tougher physically? And it
00:26:44
Speaker
I don't think you have to be a rocket scientist to figure out, you know, well, you go heavier, you go faster, you go more complex. But it is an interesting challenge to solve or question, perhaps to ask of like, how do you make this more difficult mentally? How do you physiologically, you know, yes, like, Hey, you just did that mile, like do it with a weight vest on or do it up a hill or do it, you know, whatever, without shoes with you. It doesn't matter.
00:27:12
Speaker
How do we make this more challenging and more difficult to overcome to experience those doubts psychologically? And that's kind of where we can use, I think fitness as a way of sometimes for something like we programmed to work out one time for folks that, um, well, it was 999 calories on the echo bike.
00:27:37
Speaker
and the intention of the workout wasn't to do it as fast as possible. That's a different workout. That's a different workout. This one was kind of do it slower because we're diving into this concept and this mindset of being patient and how do we develop patients physically, not just write down on paper or say, don't do something, but like active patients. And I think that's where, when we look at people's intentions and experiences and okay, how are you approaching this workout?
00:28:06
Speaker
how can we make it difficult? How can we dial up that psychological difficulty?
Curiosity and Avoiding Complacency in Workouts
00:28:15
Speaker
And that's kind of- Yeah, I mean, in that workout, similar to probably a lot of running hurdles, like you're not, when you're running long and generally slow or
00:28:25
Speaker
that workout took me two hours and 28 minutes on the echo bike. And it was excruciating in my mind. There was nothing like, it wasn't like, Oh my God, it's not like doing a back squat to failure. We're like, okay, I cannot do another squat. Like I can't get back up. There was nothing wrong. Like I could turn the pedals. I could move my arms. You don't even have to use your arms. It was just mentally like,
00:28:51
Speaker
Like this is just, this is so, it would be so much easier sprint, you know, whatever. Um, but what's funny is, and this kind of a good segue into the workout you did, you take those two workouts to very same bike.
00:29:08
Speaker
two very different applications on different ends, like your maximum intensity, where you don't even know what's happening in your mind, and then the most minimal intensity. But you're on there for it. It's like, well, what? OK, which is worse? Or which is better? Or which is more effective? It's like, well, both. But they're different. And I think that's one of the things that we appreciate about some of this stuff, to go back to the curiosity. And I think we talked about it on a call.
00:29:37
Speaker
it can be a trap or easy when you're you've been doing this a long time to kind of just check a box or go do the thing and like yeah you got out of breath you got your legs hurt whatever it was but needing that like refuel of curiosity like what okay what else what else can we add to this which is kind of what yeah exactly all is you made me think
00:30:03
Speaker
That's the that's the good thing, right? For a start, you know, I know I appreciate that most of the time, I like to live in this kind of area where I don't think which is kind of nice, you know, makes my life a little less comfortable. But um, but yeah, generally speaking, I think like when I had to nail it on, like if I looked at those two examples, he gave us right the workout that I did today, and the 999 calories, I'm like one of those scares me and the other one doesn't. And so therefore, I think
00:30:28
Speaker
that's going to be different on the individual, right? And I think it's the same with CrossFit as well, from the outside looking in, just the program's scary. So any workout you do and overcoming that fear of it is going to be developmental and beneficial for you, right? Whereas for characters like us that have been in it for a long time, you know, there are certain ones that scare you, but generally speaking, you're like, nah, I'm going to be good here, you know, because I'm smart enough, I'm gnarly enough to have figured out.
00:30:55
Speaker
a way of making it not too scary or surviving. So for an example, something I had running in it, I'd be like, I'm not too scared about today's because I know I'm going to do well, you know, however you define well, but I know I'm going to do well here, it's not going to hit me as hard, I'm going to get a good score on the board, I'm all good. If it's a workout where I don't have anywhere to hide, and I can't rely on that ability to, you know, move myself through space, I just say stay in one place and move a barbell as an example. That scares the shit out of me.
00:31:23
Speaker
And so therefore I'm like, right, there's probably more benefit for my fitness physically and psychologically in being in that hole. So yeah, you can see how like that, the 900 odd calories, I'm like, yeah, that'd be shit, but I'm not scared of it.
00:31:40
Speaker
So I'm fully aware that it would be. Yeah, exactly. But the one that I did today, like when you sent that through, I was actually pretty grumpy about it. I'm not going to lie to you, right? But that's not because of what you've done, right? It was just because well, now shit, I've got to do it. And I really don't want to because that looks horrible. I see exactly what's going to happen. I'm going to go absolutely off of a cliff.
00:32:03
Speaker
And now I'm annoyed because I have to do it, but I appreciated it because it was like, right, I've got to do this thing. But that's what I mean. It scared me much like, you know, back in the day, you'd log on, you'd see a workout, you'd be terrible in the morning, and then you'd be thinking about it all day because you'd just be like, I know this is going to be utterly shite. And that that feeling which you've nailed, you kind of lose over time in CrossFit, I think, because you just sort of
00:32:29
Speaker
figure out ways to survive and still do well. You know, like well, as in I still lift an okay load or I still I do enough to be the gray man in any workout, right? I'm not the worst. I'm not the best. I land right in the middle. Therefore, no one's looking so I'm good. You know, I can deal with my own bullshit and tell myself that I did well that day. Whereas I think the ones where you're scared. Yeah, those are the ones where you're like, I've got to develop some
00:32:55
Speaker
I know processes or some better mental faculties at the other end of it. And so it's always more developmental to do the thing you're scared of, I think. Yeah.
00:33:04
Speaker
Yeah, it's interesting too for people and I don't know what how you follow, I mean, because you obviously work out mostly at home. But, you know, we kind of are in charge of our own programming. And there's, you know, we have a gym that people do something on each day that's like what they need. So somebody might need strength one day, someone might need a crossfit workout one day.
00:33:30
Speaker
And there's value to finding the right thing for you, but there's also sometimes value. And so having, we talk about agency, like the agency to pick what is the best fit for you. But then, you know, a bill has like a great line, there's like a very fine line between like enabling and empowering people.
00:33:49
Speaker
And you can be super manipulative with yourself to be like, Okay, is this that I don't want to do this? Or is this like, I shouldn't do this? And so having something once a week, or whatever, where you're like, I really don't want to fucking do this. But I'm going to do it. And
00:34:10
Speaker
So the workout that you did or people listening was the fire plunge, which we started cold plunging in January. And so we would be in the cold plunge for like two or three minutes. And it was the first 30 seconds to a minute is definitely not pleasant.
00:34:30
Speaker
And at the same time we did this workout, which Bill started with the idea of doing, getting to your body weight. So that would be 10 rounds and quickly we realized like, okay, that's not fucking happening. Nope. Let's still be going. And the second round, I just started saying like, I can't, I can't, I wasn't even, I had done one, one round. Yep. Minute two. I'm like, I can't, I can't. I was like, just keep fucking trying. And all I could think about was like,
00:35:00
Speaker
This is so much worse than a cold, like a cold plunge. Like this is, yeah, that was, that was where fire plunge came from. Um, like it's so bad origins. Like fight gone bad origins, right? How did that feel? Gone bad. Gotcha. I mean, just, um, so that workout for you, obviously it's every minute on the minute, 10% of your body weight and calories. And when you.
00:35:27
Speaker
don't hit it, you kind of take a minute off and you get back to it. And yeah, how'd it go? How was that experience for you? What happened? I mean, immediately, normally when I see things that are like, you know, based off of body weight and stuff like that, normally I'm doing a little bit of a happy dance because I'm not the biggest dude. So I'm like, you know, this is, you know, percentage of body weight stuff or whatever. I'm like, yeah, this is good. I mean, apart from Linda, that workouts a shit show, but, um, the, yeah, it started off and I was like, right, this is going to be terrible. So, you know,
00:35:57
Speaker
I just thought full immersion, absolutely annihilate and go hard as you can in the first minute. So hitting that thing well, immediately then regretted that because then saw the second minute kick in and I was like, right, just hang on, got two minutes in and hit the numbers. But then I knew I was fucked at that point. I'm like, uh-oh. The third minute kicked in.
00:36:21
Speaker
And then it was like, you know, trying to spin that sucker up, you know, feeling, feeling the pressure come off and then being like, no, you turn, get after it and get really undulating pace, but just trying to get back in the fight, missed it on the third one. Uh, cause of the, you know, the, the protocol, if you get the extra minute into the next minute, um, that got me enough recovery to be able to hit the fourth one. Um, got that in, um, fifth one missed and then, um,
00:36:51
Speaker
Then I think the last one, I think because of the way it worked out, I only had to get like two calories. So that was fine. Just blasted those and then fell off the bike and drive it outside for a while. So, so yeah, I mean, pretty, pretty minimal in terms of timeframe, but maximal in terms of, um, pain and effect, but, uh, but yeah, it was good. It was great. I just tried to try to hang on. And I think it's a great one for you not accepting you slow down, you know, so easy to sometimes just go into cruise control a little bit and just tick the calories off or.
00:37:21
Speaker
Or if you're running, you know, just ease the pace off and just be, oh, I'm out enjoying myself. And you have to remind yourself to push. You have to stay present. And that was definitely one for those to work hard to get. During, I mean, obviously in the replay, you can kind of think, but during, were you aware of any like thinking any, what was your state? What was the sort of, if, if, if you could project a movie screen or a movie sort of scene, what would that do? Recall anything?
00:37:50
Speaker
yeah panic like just panic man like it was just you know just that feeling it was initially panic but then familiarity i think was would be the hugest thing i wouldn't say like i wouldn't it'd have to give me a while to think of like a movie scene but there was definitely sort of like this is really tough really hard panic rose and then there was like yeah but you know what this feels like so is you know you're good here you know what it's like you know i think it's
00:38:18
Speaker
very similar feeling and a short timeframe, obviously, but to when you've had a period of time off of high intensity, and you're actually afraid of it. And so, you know, you kind of like you're afraid of anything that like gets you into that place again, and all it takes you is one or two workouts of being there again, before you're like, Oh, I'm good with this. I know this feeling. Am I gonna die? Yeah, exactly. Realistically, that's, I think that's where the panic came from is like, Oh, my God, I think I'm gonna quite literally like have a heart attack here. But
00:38:45
Speaker
But then you just sort of go, no, you know this mate. So you crack on. So I think it was, yeah, massive rise in panic, then familiarity and then just, you know, misery, but in a good way, you know, the misery I like, which is challenge. So, so I think it, and then it was just survival really. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think that there's so much, like you can't, like panic has a physiology to it, you know? And, and, and I think for people who.
00:39:15
Speaker
Yeah, we generally don't want to be in chronically induced states of panic. But if we're intentionally stepping into them, we're able to associate this physiologically and psychologically excruciating experience. But then almost, because it sounds like when I hear you say it, it's almost like,
00:39:38
Speaker
You naturally and effortlessly, even though you were putting out max effort went to this, but I've been here before. Like I know this, I'm okay. I can, I can continue to be in this rather than almost feeding into the panic and trying to escape, which just makes the panic worse. Cause then you're riding around in the pain. Yeah, exactly. It's like, I think.
00:40:01
Speaker
it's been plenty of workouts where I've had to frame it that way as well. And so I guess it's training too, right? But just psychological training where I'm just like, you know, I've had to switch my mindset from like, I hate this to Oh, actually, no, I fucking love this. Like, that's why you do this. You actually love this. And you know, you do. So I think there's a lot of
00:40:20
Speaker
You know, I've done it so many times where it sounds stupid, but you know, collapsed on the floor after a workout and you just scream out, I fucking love their shit. You know, like, and everyone's like, you nutcase, but I know it's just, you just have to switch sometimes.
00:40:34
Speaker
You can think all you want, but like, I don't know in my mind, if it comes out of here, then it becomes true. You know, you can, all of this stuff up here is all, it's all bollocks, right? In terms of what you have to deal with. But as soon as it comes out there, I don't know why that seems to be my buffer of like, now it's real. So you just have to try and almost will it into existence sometimes. It's what do you think for you? Because you've been doing this for 20 years and in the fitness industry, you know, beforehand and your whole life has essentially been exploring movement and
00:41:05
Speaker
you know, the transformative flavor of it. And yet still, you find those moments of like, fuck, I don't want to do this. I hate this. Thank you. Like, what do you think it is that pushes you onto that track, then that requires you, which is a great thing. It's a great skill to have. Obviously, it'd be like,
00:41:29
Speaker
No, actually, I like it. Why do you think you get we but you get pushed sometimes to like, whatever, I hate this, I don't want to do this. I think it's just, you know, I'm human and we're built to almost chase ease as much as discomfort equally depending on like psychological state and
00:41:48
Speaker
You know, I think you look at the rest of the world and you can definitely see that people have listened to that more than the push themselves. And I think just looking at humanity, you then tend to see we've got this wonderful kind of like spectrum of age, haven't we? Or experiencing like you can totally see what's going to happen if you don't do it. So you've got like a pretty powerful incentive of like, well, I can see the older generations that aren't exactly
00:42:12
Speaker
inspirational as a general rule, you know, like I don't really want to go in the old folks' home. I don't want to be eating in such a way that I'm a turd and then therefore, you know, like I lose my mind as well. Like dementia is one of the biggest killers that we get over here as well. And that's what my grandmother went from. And you're like, dude, I don't want to be around that scenario anymore. And if I think there's a relationship between keeping physically active and maybe eating less like a turd, I'm all in because I don't want that in my life again. That was pretty miserable.
00:42:41
Speaker
So I think there's just, you can kind of see what the future is if you don't, which I think is a very helpful motivator. But again, you can be a bit ignorant to that too, right? Willful ignorance almost where you can be like, la, la, la, la. It won't happen to me kind of vibe, which, you know, is a bit daft and naive, really, I think, because we're all kind of built the same way and seem to react to certain stimulus in the same way. So I think for me, it was, that was the powerful indicator for me. It's like,
00:43:11
Speaker
Yeah, you've always got that reminder of times in the past where, you know, we've all got, I guess, familiar stuff, right? Where you would just be like, hey, I'm not going to do this because I saw the damage it did to XYZ when I was a kid or a teenager or an adult or whatever. So, you know, I might leave that alone. Or, you know, had it impact a friend at some point in the life. So yeah, I might leave that alone as well, or whatever it may be. I think we've all got those things that perhaps work as a motivator. And I know that's definitely my case, right? So, you know,
00:43:40
Speaker
alcoholic sort of tendencies in the past. And I've got that demon too. And so therefore you're like, try and manage that as best you can rather than fully embracing it. Or, you know, if you do seem to have tendencies in the family to go down certain lines, then you're like, yeah, I can kind of see what the end result is. So I'd probably say that's a very powerful motivator, if you're willing to see it.
00:44:03
Speaker
Yeah, appreciate that. Yeah, it's amazing how these are doses of just human experience shared among, you know, talk of like, wherever you come from. Insert any fucking label that you want to after that, but like, yeah, nobody escapes being human.
00:44:25
Speaker
but in our society and cultures right now, that's almost what's trying to be done, escaping being human. Don't feel the pain, don't work hard, don't like, yeah, movement as a universal language. Oh yeah, totally. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. Yeah, I think you've got like, life's for experiencing. That's why I'm always beasting the kids about being on the phone the whole time, you know, it's like, get off your damn phone, you know, or I'll whack
00:44:51
Speaker
Obviously, this isn't being recorded and going out to the wider world. So I'm sure you've not whacked my kids around. It's different. It means a different thing in like the UK. Correct. Yeah, exactly. I don't know, motivational consequences. But yeah, you know, it's like, but it's true. That's why I think we moved out of like in a in a city where you're
00:45:11
Speaker
inundated with too much so you end up having these kind of like mechanisms built in where you do get numb to everything you know you don't there's so many people so you don't have any interactions with any people because it's just too much to take on board you know you overstimulated so therefore you don't actually react to any stimulus everything just becomes like super numb and as soon as you sort of start taking a step back from that
00:45:33
Speaker
then things get cooler. You know, you get to look outside where we live now and it's like, I appreciate the fact that it's really quite green right now. We don't remember the last time I did weird shit like that. So I think there's definitely an element of when you're overstimulated with something too much, you probably get a bit numb to it. Just like any human process, right? Too much stimulus, get resistance. I'd need more of it to get a response, I guess. Yeah, yeah.
00:46:02
Speaker
Have you seen, cause you've been doing the level one, like have you seen any change in who's coming? Like, just curious from a, like, have you seen a change in the people in the last, I don't know, even like more 10 years? Cause obviously pre the first 10 years, I think it's kind of phase one and we're in like phase two or whatever, but like, what's that experience been like with participants and that community?
00:46:31
Speaker
I mean, yeah, that's a that's a really good question. I mean, I worked a level one just gone. I was in Leeds this weekend. And it was it was brilliant. You're starting to see more and more regular folk on them, less and less professional trainers, less and less
00:46:47
Speaker
you know, absolute abject fire breathers, they'll still be there. Don't get me wrong, you know, like you'll still have those but you're, you know, this weekend, there was a really lovely lady on there who was in her 60s, you know, and she turned up and she was shit scared because she thought that she was going to be the worst performer there that you know, like, you know, everybody comes in with their preconceptions, I get that. And yeah, we worked really hard just to kind of show like, no, this is just regular folk. And it really you could see the development and the
00:47:14
Speaker
confidence grow across those two days, which I think was awesome to see. So you always do get a bit of a mix. I guess we always do a bit of a litmus test in terms of like, Hey, who's who's here to be a trainer at the end of it? About half the crowd goes up, who's here just to kind of like learn more about it and, you know, potentially help out at their box, then the other half goes up and all that kind of stuff. And that's normally where I joke about I'm like, Hey, that
00:47:38
Speaker
the half who just sort of said, oh, I'm here to help with the box. I'm like, yeah, that's the gateway drug. That's how we make you trainers. You know, we just say that you're only going to do a couple of hours and then that's it. You're a career coach a year later. So, um, and I think we do a lot of work there just to kind of show people that not necessarily the best athletes make the best coaches. And I think that, yeah. And I mean, that's, it's a generalization, of course it is, but we generally just try to showcase that like anybody can coach as long as you show some prerequisite care.
00:48:09
Speaker
attention to detail and a basic skill set, you know, anybody can coach. And so I think that's where you're starting to see a shift away from just absolute badasses turning up thinking that, you know, they have to be the best to be the best coach, as in the best athlete to be the best coach. And now you're actually starting to see more and more regular folk turn up, which is great. So yeah, I don't think it's been like a massive shift. It may be sort of just a slow drip feed over time of
00:48:39
Speaker
sort of more regular folk alongside trainers. What's the, what's the quality, how many, how many level ones have you worked by the way? I feel like this is like that probably about 400 and change. I think 400. Yeah. Wow.
00:49:00
Speaker
How do you, um, how are the questions like, how have you known any themes, any trends, any changes in questions, uh, either content quality, understand, like, what are the questions like?
CrossFit Seminar Evolution and Personal Growth
00:49:13
Speaker
Yeah. So. Yeah. I've got a fun perspective on this one. I've talked about this recently too. I think some of the members of the team, when I first got on staff, I was afraid of questions because you're afraid that someone in the crowd has got like a ton of, a ton of knowledge and a ton of experience and they're going to drag you down the rabbit hole.
00:49:30
Speaker
beat you up and then spit you out on the other end and just make you look like a fool in front of everybody, right? And you're like, oh, no, I don't want it. And we did get a lot more of those characters who would be like, you know, I found the one thing that I don't like, and I'm going to base my entire argument on it, which, you know, sounds like social media before social media, if I'm honest.
00:49:52
Speaker
You know, it was, that was an intimidating thing. That was a scary thing. I guess you can draw parallels here, right? And so as a result of it, then I kind of worked to try and make sure that I built up my knowledge base and my experience as much as I could and as fast as I could. So as I could then take the floor and, and, and present information and talk about it better. Um, and so over the years, as I got more confident and, and more able to sort of deliver that material.
00:50:18
Speaker
Um, the questions got less ironically. So I got to the point where I was looking around in the crowd and I'm like, trying to identify that guy or girl, but like, who's going to be that person this weekend? He's going to give me some, give me some pushback because I wanted it. And I found that I got less and less. And that was a bit of a, a, a shame for me. Cause I'm like, Oh, I want someone to give me some crap back here. You know, but I think that just sort of shows the validity of the, of the, um,
00:50:44
Speaker
of the program really and how well it's actually been received and the evidence on the other side, it just seems to work, I would say on one end. But yeah, I think the other challenge we have there, lost my train of thought now, but I'll get there in a second. I think the questions itself, that's where I was at, I used the litmus test of, let's say the nutrition one, which can be a personal chat to a lot of people.
00:51:14
Speaker
If at the end of that lecture, I've got people asking me questions on how they do something, then I know that I've delivered the material well enough to not create contention. So if it's not pushing back on a detail or a little nuanced thing, and they're kind of like wanting to go to town on that or push back on, if I know that their questions about like, got me, how do I other questions,
00:51:42
Speaker
I know that I had a successful lecture, if that makes sense. I was more effective at actually delivering the material. So I would kind of almost challenge myself to leave there no questions. And when you deliver a material like that, I guess you can then lean on your experience and know where there might be potential rabbit holes that people might want to drag you down. So if you can kind of skim over that, then it helps. So for example, if somebody said, Hey,
00:52:08
Speaker
You know, the first sentence of the wellness prescription as an example is eat meat, vegetables, nuts and seeds, right? We, the standard, the standard drill. So I normally just stop and I go eat meat. And I'm like, now I know that some of you are going to already kick back on this. All right. And so I like, and I went, look, here's the deal. I'm not your dad. So you do your thing. But I said, like, you're going to need some protein in your life. So, I mean, just based on the experience of somebody giving it the whole, like, Oh, I'm vegan. And what do I do? You kind of navigate that as part of the,
00:52:37
Speaker
of the lecture by just sort of giving that right out the gate. And then it kind of shuts that thing straight down. And then it makes for a more seamless, I guess, talk or delivery of information. So I guess you get a little less of those questions if you end up being smarter or leaning on previous experiences to then navigate your way through material. So I guess that's not really answering the question, but just giving you a bit of
00:53:06
Speaker
How, how do you appreciate that? Yeah. I mean, you're a true professional. I think that I know, but also what I'm hearing is like professional enough to know that how, okay. Yes. Where's, of course, where's, where are people going to butt up against? What are people, what about, okay. But like, so acknowledging that that's a part, that's an experience from the participants over, you know, 400 and 10s of hundreds of thousands of people that you've,
00:53:36
Speaker
interacted with. That is a reality of this seminar, this experience. But also professional enough to know that your role as the guide, as the head trainer, as the flow master, and some of these more difficult topics that can turn into an argument, not a real inquiry.
00:54:00
Speaker
to disarm that ahead of time so that the person can be open and curious and learn as opposed to just digging their heels and entrenched and trying to piss on a fire hydrant for the sake of whatever that bit of information says about them. And it's like, they're not asking you the question. They're saying to you or saying to everybody, look how much I know. And I think, oh man, like a real professional gets that and is able to disarm in a like,
00:54:29
Speaker
frickin' Bruce Lee kind of way where now we can go and do good stuff and get the head nods and the magic of, I think, that experience. Yeah, agreed. It's communication, right? We talk about it a lot in coaching, but it's true. It's all about how I deliver it because some folk will be like, hey, if I'm coaching and I talk to an individual,
00:54:52
Speaker
I don't want to call them out in the group. So they won't do any specific queuing as an example. I know it's a very nuanced thing towards coaching, but it'll be like, I see somebody on their toes at the bottom of the squat as an example. And they'll be like, Hey, I don't want to say, Hey, Bill, get like, find your heels, because I don't want to feel like I'm, I'm picking on Bill. And I'll be like, well, you're only a dick if you act like a dick. You know, like if I just say like, Hey,
00:55:14
Speaker
You know, if I just say, Hey, Bill, find your heels a little bit, mate. Yeah, that's much better. Good job. That's, that's fine. Like no one's going to take that weird. But if I just go like, Bill, fuck sake, bro. Like find your heels again, you know, like now I'm a dick and it's the same thing. So I think a lot of the time it's, it's, it's the communication piece in, in how you put things across. If you present information, like, you know, everything, Hey, no one knows everything.
00:55:39
Speaker
And then, you know, be that doesn't give you any any buy in. So I think you just have to make sure that you're authentic a lot of the time is like, look, we're gonna talk about something that might push some people's buttons. Don't you worry, man, you know, like, we'll, we'll navigate our way through it. You know, you've got people who had deeply held beliefs on whatever. And I mean, fitness might as well be religion, you know, same as anything else. Politics or footy teams, everyone's going to kick off about it. So you then end up saying like,
00:56:06
Speaker
I think it's all about just like, yeah, you know, you can like whatever footy team you like, as long as it's not Spurs. Cause then I can't like you, but it's, it's as long as you make it a bit of a joke and you can be authentic about it and help people navigate weirdness, then you're winning, aren't you? Cause there's nothing more weird than fitness, than nutrition, than life. So if you make it more, if you make it weird, then it'll be weird pretty easy. Yeah.
00:56:34
Speaker
hat, what do you want? What's one, one thing, one area that you want to get better at? You have so much experience. Like, you know, I'm always amazed. I'm always, I'm always trying to learn. I think we are always trying to learn from people who are, who have learned a lot and are still learning. You know, we have this thing that we believe that everybody can be a student and everybody can be a teacher. And we want to exercise our, you know, we want to wear both of those hats. So for those who have been in the field for as long as they have been,
00:57:03
Speaker
or as short as they have been, but have whatever their past experience is. Always listening or always asking, what do you want to get better at? I think something that really helped me at the start of my career, I slowly lost over my career, and that was empathy. I kind of chatted to somebody the other day about
00:57:25
Speaker
There'll almost be an empathy fatigue when you're in this world for a little while where you end up, give so much and you get burned, you know, like you kind of expect others to treat you the way that you would treat them. And that doesn't necessarily get reciprocated. And so you then end up pulling, you put shields up, you push people away without realizing that that's the one thing that kind of made you you.
00:57:49
Speaker
And so I know that's what happened to me. Ironically, I'll tell you the story to give you some context there. We kind of had a bad breakup at the gym, our previous ownership there. And it didn't go too well. It was, you know, as these things do, it was pretty nasty. And that made sort of me and Rachel's kind of part of the reason of moving where we moved as well. We were done with people.
00:58:13
Speaker
I could rally enough to go and do good work at the weekends, but it would deplete my social battery pretty hard. So it was very easy for me to just sort of disappear to the mountains for the rest of the week and just be like, yeah, push everything else away, push life away, push people away, and then be able to rally again for the next weekend. Then COVID happens, right? The response to it, everything shuts down. There's no more work. There's no more things. And we had the perfect storm of,
00:58:41
Speaker
CrossFit as an entity looking like it was probably going to fold in on itself as well, right? For all of the reasons that we all know. And so that actually was a catalyst for me, to be honest. That was actually, it reminded me of why I do what I do and what I love about what I do. And it kind of lit the fire under my ass again to actually get back in and start, you know, hitting up people that hadn't talked for a while and being like, Hey, how are you doing? Like I used to do, you know, like,
00:59:07
Speaker
can I help with anything? So reaching out to others in the community that were trying to rally their individual communities or the worldwide one and things like that and saying like, hey, can I help? Can I go to work? Can I do anything? And that directly then led me back into doing the work on the affiliate side and stuff. So yeah, that was and still will be my challenge. I'm still
00:59:29
Speaker
Ironically, I think when people talk to me, they'll probably say, oh, you're really good with people. And I'm like, yeah, but people really wind me up too. Like I kind of fluctuate.
00:59:39
Speaker
like I laugh with my wife all the time where you know pretty much every month I'm like right that's it I'm fucking quitting I'm not doing this anymore and she just goes all right dickhead she lets me go go off for about like five ten minutes sort of talk myself out of it and get back in the fight again so yeah that's definitely a continuing fight for me there is to remember that
01:00:00
Speaker
most people are really cool. It's just, and don't get bogged down by the idiots that you have been burned with or had poor interactions with over time. There's more good people than bad people. So I think that's always fine at the start, because I didn't have the experience of bad people to really give me the perspective. And then over the years, as you meet more and more, and I guess if you go up the rankings, you've got more people going and having a go at you too.
01:00:29
Speaker
So there was, um, I think there was an element of then I started pushing people away and I realized that didn't really do me any good. In fact, it probably did me a lot of harm because that's who I was. So I think that'd be my, my, my continual challenge is to keep reminding myself of that, even in bad times. And I mean, bad times, first world problems, you feel me? But it was still challenging. So yeah, I think that would be mine if I'm honest. Beautiful. Yeah. Wow. Thank you. That's.
01:00:57
Speaker
Yeah, that's powerful. And I think that's what I love about that is like, man, talk about like, just how like, you know, I could say like, the air squad and the pull up can change people's lives. Like the continuous pursuit of being more empathetic and honest with, yep, there's some bad actors out there, but there's mostly better. Um, yeah, that's, that's, that's wonderful. That's beautiful. Thank you. No worries, bro. Yes. Um,
01:01:25
Speaker
It's challenging, but that's why I wanted to get back into coaching too, you know, like, so I wasn't coaching during the week. You know, it's very easy to get spun up on stupid bullshit in your own mind when you don't actually see the daily application of, you know, life affirming actions or change or something where you see people and you're like, you know, they just got a great workout in and they leave happier than when you came in. That's it. If you don't get that sort of little daily dose or something, then it's very easy. You'd be like,
01:01:52
Speaker
Oh, what's the direction of CrossFit? Or what's this, that and the other? Or that program he's doing? Is that bad? You know, I think I needed that little reminder of just helping people every day in whatever way you can. And just having those interactions is hugely powerful, I think. Yeah.
01:02:15
Speaker
Yeah, that's a beautiful reminder for us as well, that maybe hit its home a little bit. Without a doubt, yeah. Always learning from people. Well, I think that's a great place to end. Yeah, chew on that if you're listening. Chew on that, digest that, live that. It's wonderful.
01:02:37
Speaker
Yeah, well, I think that we might be seeing you this fall if you're still, we're coming over to Oakley's Forest Flow to do the seminar at the end of September. Yeah, that'd be awesome. Forest Flow, I was just there last week actually doing some work and stuff. So that was a great place. You'll love it.
01:03:02
Speaker
Yeah, I think it's a cool I think it's a good fit her community what she's built, you know, speaking of like, coaching humans and the human experience. Yep. And, you know, for a lot of people who go out and are like you who are providing this experience for people, I think, unfortunately, it's hard to sometimes get something for yourself. And so I hope that, you know, it'd be cool to have you and Oakley like just participate for yourself because
01:03:32
Speaker
You know, it's natural to have that, like, ooh, in the back of your head, how can I use this? And of course, you'll take it forward and hopefully apply things and share it with other people. But yeah, just being a little selfish sometimes and receiving. Exactly. I've got to keep learning, man. Today I learned don't do the fire punch again, you know? Well, so here's the challenge. We'll leave you with this, Carl.
01:03:57
Speaker
So you have a score. You could do the fire plunge every week and see what happens. I was voluntold to do that. And it was an experience. And what's funny is when you were saying that about laying on your back and saying sometimes like, I fucking love this. So the last week of the month of doing this, Bill, you know how you get like,
01:04:25
Speaker
We have this thing, all right, I'm going to go do it. I'm doing it. OK, OK, you're going in. All right, let me know how it goes. So Bill goes to the gym by himself, and he filmed it. And your experience, your world just narrows it. You don't know what you're thinking. So someone asked me the other day about filming. I'm like, half the time in some of those workouts, you forget you're being filmed. You're not aware. So you just see Bill. He's showing me the video. And you just see him finish.
01:04:53
Speaker
all five he hits it like boom boom boom five in a row lays down on the ground just laying there i mean writhing awful and then you just see him like this yes yes i did it like you know by himself but just this like pure like celebration of like a fucking day like um so it's kind of cool but but that's an interesting uh experience yeah it took a month it took it took
01:05:20
Speaker
It took a month to get to though. And it took, so we did it once a week for four weeks and then kind of like, Hey, see how close to completion you can get it. And, you know, if we're looking at this binary through past fail metric, like I went fail, fail, fail pass. And I was actually really proud of that because, you know, I.
01:05:44
Speaker
For me, one of the things that I need to be better at and improve upon is consistency and showing up for myself, actually, and not just sometimes just, OK, I'll self-sacrifice and all of that. And there's a long story and a tale to that. But the fact of the matter is, when the going gets tough, show up for yourself. And don't run away from that. Or don't hide behind. Well, I'm going to help somebody else out.
01:06:14
Speaker
and observing how those two can interact and coexist. But I was really proud of myself for like actually being like, yeah, okay. I hit the thing. It wasn't the accomplishment. It was the fact that I actually committed to the process of once a week going. And that day it's funny because like, it wasn't ideal conditions. I was like, I had like 90 minutes, just finished some counseling, came in, did a quick change, pulled the thing up, set the thing up and just kind of went into it. It wasn't like, all right, let me make sure the fucking
01:06:43
Speaker
barometric pressure is set and I've got my perfect playlist. Like, no, like just, just be, be pure with that. And for me, like that's been something that hasn't. Okay. You mentioned something earlier about like losing connection with doing something for the sake of doing it, where my, my background might be like, okay, but what's the point with this? What are we trying to accomplish? And yeah, I can get lost in my head. I can create hell in my mind. And.
01:07:12
Speaker
I haven't really had these challenging athletic endeavors. We've done some crazy hard shit, but like, like we did a two hour sled push one, one year, just like, we're like, all right, let's do, let's do a two hour sled push.
01:07:26
Speaker
And like, yeah, those are challenging and all of that. But for me, what's challenging isn't just saying, let's do some crazy shit one day and being like, wow, what the fuck is wrong with you? You can go there. It's the more challenging thing is do something. Consistently for like a normal week, just normal shit incorporated into your life. And I think that's where like, you know, anyway.
01:07:50
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, your background is going to be, is like doing hard stuff is, yeah, that's kind of like what you do, isn't it? But it's like the consistent hard stuff. It's like those, what do those Japanese dudes call it? Is it a mazoji, a mazoji, something like that? Well, however the hell, it won't kill you, but it will take you close, you know, like, yeah.
01:08:08
Speaker
merit in doing those things. I think that's, yeah, trying to get one of those in because that fire plunge felt like I was pretty close to death. A couple of those in like, doing that once a week, then then yeah, you're getting the same benefits, aren't you know? Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for taking time. Thank you for your time. Yeah. Appreciate it, man. This was great. Yeah, it was good to catch up and always
01:08:32
Speaker
Thank you for having me.