412 The Future of Fitness with CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman

"CrossFit is a fad just in the way the human genome is a fad." - Greg Glassman If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes, video, and more at http://lewishowes.com/412 Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Lewis Howes?

  This is episode number 412 with CrossFit founder Greg Glassman. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:33Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone to episode number 412 of the School of Greatness Podcast. Super pumped to have you here. And about five years ago, maybe it was a little more than five years ago, it might've been six years ago. I did my first CrossFit workout with my buddy Graham Holmberg, who ended up winning the CrossFit Games. That's why I got into it a number of years ago. I played football with him in college. He was actually one of the first episodes I had on of the School of Greatness Podcast. I believe in the first five episodes for being the fittest man in the world. And CrossFit really transformed my, my life, my habits, my body for a number of years. And it helped me develop an incredible community. There were some incredible things that happened to me because of CrossFit.

• 1:16Lewis Howes?

  Now, a couple of years ago, I actually ended up transitioning out of CrossFit workouts. Per se, going to the, the CrossFit boxes and, and doing the actual workouts that they have there. Because I was doing more USA handball stuff and I needed some different strength training. I didn't, I needed different plyometric training. I was playing a lot more basketball. I was just doing other things, long distance running as well to build up my endurance. And I decided to, to move away from it a little bit. Now I still go back from time to time and I'll do a workout here and there, but I love the idea of CrossFit. I do my own high intensity interval training workouts, which are very similar to the CrossFit style as well. So I love the style. I love the community. I love what they stand for.

• 2:00Lewis Howes?

  And I wanted to bring on the founder, Greg Glassman, to really talk to him about fitness in general and how he started this, how he built a movement, how he cultivated. Such incredible raving fans from all over the world. We talk about his business model. We talk about if Greg's worried about CrossFit dying out or not. We talk about how masculinity in the gym has been affected by having men and women work out together because it's coeds who everyone works out together. We talked about why having less customers rather than more can actually be a good thing. The marketing power behind having raving fans who get results. Why it's so important to do functional movement workouts despite the risk of injury.

• 2:42Lewis Howes?

  We talk about, you know, a lot of things are, you know, so many CrossFitters get injured and they're constantly going to the chiropractor, getting massage therapy or getting physical therapy because they get injured so much. So I asked him, you know, are you afraid of that when you hear these stories about all these injuries that people have? And he had a pretty good response for me about the injuries that happen in CrossFit and why everyone should be doing these type of functional movements despite the risk of injury. We also talked about why CrossFit is so effective at helping women have great body image and confidence. I was fascinated with his response when I said, what's the thing you're most proud of? Of all the things that CrossFit has done, what's the number one thing? And he talked about something in terms of women.

• 3:26Lewis Howes?

  I won't spoil the surprise for you, but I thought it was extremely inspiring to hear. So we talked about a lot of things, guys, and I think you're gonna love this, especially if you're anyone that likes to work out or likes to stay fit or anyone that has a business that evolves around building raving fans or anyone that wants to learn about how to build an incredible brand that's taken over the world. Really, I mean, this is a huge brand that's taken over the world. You guys are in for a treat because we cover it all in this episode. Make sure to share this out with your friends. LewisHowes.com/412. We got the full video interview on the show notes. We got a bunch of images there, links where you can learn more about how to connect with Greg and learn more about CrossFit and everything else.

• 4:08Lewis Howes?

  Also subscribe to our YouTube channel, youtube slash Lewis Howes, where you can watch the full video and all the interviews that we've done with the incredible leaders in the world on the School of Greatness podcast. But without further ado, guys, this is going to be a very powerful one. Again, make sure to share it with your friends. Click the share button right now on your podcast app if you're listening so your friends can listen along. Without further ado, let me introduce to you the one, the only Greg Glassman.

• 4:37Lewis Howes?

  Welcome everyone back to the School of Greatness Podcast. We've got the CEO and founder of CrossFit in the House, Greg Glassman. Good to see you, sir.

• 4:44Speaker 02

  Good to see you, Lewis.

• 4:45Lewis Howes?

  Thank you so much for coming on.

• 4:46Speaker 02

  Thanks for having me.

• 4:47Lewis Howes?

  And I want to share a story about how I got into CrossFit and heard about it for the first time.

• 4:51Speaker 02

  Alright.

• 4:52Lewis Howes?

  I was, I used to play professional football, arena football. And as I was getting out of the sport, I got injured, I broke my wrist. And I was trying to figure out how to get back in shape. I gained about 30 pounds. And my college football teammate, Graham Holmberg, was a trainer at the time in Columbus, Ohio, and started working me out and doing these different type of workouts that I'd never really done it for. And then he told me one day, "I'm gonna go do this competition thing. You know, I did it last year and I got like, top 20 in the country for this like obscure thing. And I'm gonna go back like next couple of weeks and my goal is to get top 5."

• 5:35Lewis Howes?

  And now a month or two goes by and I see Graham afterwards and I'm like, "You know, dude, what happened with that competition thing?" That I had no clue what it was. And he goes, "Oh, I actually won." And I was like, "What? What do you mean you won?" And that's when I really started to learn about CrossFit was diving in to see like how my buddy like did with this event. And such a cool experience to really dive in and ended up being, you know, a huge CrossFit fan and going to the games to watch multiple times.

• 6:02Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 6:03Lewis Howes?

  It's been an amazing journey to see what you've built and to see how many human beings have been, have benefited from your brain, you know, your creations. So, congrats on everything.

• 6:14Speaker 02

  Thank you. I appreciate that. And just, just to be clear, I'll take, I'll take credit for the genesis, you know, the spark. But this is a largely been a spontaneously developing community.

• 6:28Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 6:29Speaker 02

  The CrossFit Journal, which was fundamentally a newsletter that I soloed for, for the first 2-3 years. You know, wrote every article. It was like, starting a magazine and writing every article, which I wouldn't recommend anyone to ever do. But that was, that was a client's idea. And the, the first affiliate, the second CrossFit gym, the first affiliate. Was the idea of the, of a Dave Warner that, you know, and Rob Wolf that called and asked to do it. And our, our best ideas have largely been other people's ideas. Demanded by the, by the community.

• 7:07Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 7:08Speaker 02

  And so staff and I are, are more the stewards of a, of a natural resource than we are the architects of a. You know, nobody, nobody could have. Foreseen this and designed it and built it. Not, not me nor anyone else.

• 7:25Lewis Howes?

  So would you say you're really good at listening to what the, the audience wants and you build something around that?

• 7:30Speaker 02

  Need. I don't know how good I am. But, you know. I define a good idea as something that has an inevitable nature to it. You know, and what usually lacks is a champion in energy resources, right?

• 7:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:44Speaker 02

  But there's some things that people say, you should, you know, the games, you should have masters and, and kids, of course we should, but you know. Every idea has a, has a price tag.

• 7:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 7:53Speaker 02

  And it's not, it's maybe not just dollars, it could be, it could be energy or, you know, and in fact, I had put it in this order, the hard things to get the champion. Second hardest would be the time.

• 8:03Lewis Howes?

  You mean champion the person leading the.

• 8:05Speaker 02

  That's right, yeah. Yeah, a guy who's, who's goes to bed worried about it, wakes up worried about it.

• 8:08Lewis Howes?

  Cause you don't have the time to do thirty new things.

• 8:11Speaker 02

  I'm championing all I can.

• 8:12Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 8:13Speaker 02

  And, and, and crushed by it.

• 8:15Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:15Speaker 02

  And we're that way about three, four levels, three or four layers of, of really talented people. Up to their, you know, you got one nostril above the water line.

• 8:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:25Speaker 02

  And so now people tell us, you know what you should do? And, and sometimes it's just financial, like the year the guy says. It's crazy, we don't fly all the athletes out to the games first class, you know, I mean, it's. The, the games, the games, the games is not a profitable property.

• 8:40Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 8:40Speaker 02

  You know, it's a.

• 8:42Lewis Howes?

  Did it break even or does it make some more?

• 8:44Speaker 02

  I think it did this year. I think we broke even.

• 8:46Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 8:47Speaker 02

  But I thought we did last year and it cost us four million.

• 8:49Lewis Howes?

  Oh my gosh, even with the sponsors and all the ticket sales and the TV rights.

• 8:53Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 8:53Lewis Howes?

  They're still.

• 8:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and know this, it did, and the thing's driven by thousands of volunteers. I mean, this is really, we owe a lot of people, a lot. But it's, it's, it's not a business in any sense that I would recognize as a business.

• 9:05Lewis Howes?

  I'm doing my first big event this, this week coming up and we're in the hole and I'm just like, what am I doing of this year planning and all these volunteers? So it's a very small scale compared to what you created, but I understand on a small level.

• 9:18Speaker 02

  That's, it starts and then it, and it takes off and sometimes the problems begin when, when the success starts. You know?

• 9:25Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:25Speaker 02

  What are you gonna do with this thing? But it's all, it's all been wonderful. I don't have complaints.

• 9:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 9:29Speaker 02

  But I do, I do find it delightful when I see people imitating the competition space.

• 9:35Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 9:35Speaker 02

  Which visions of getting rich.

• 9:37Lewis Howes?

  Or was it the grid or something?

• 9:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 9:39Lewis Howes?

  These other startups? Is that even around anymore?

• 9:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, something's going on.

• 9:43Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 9:44Speaker 02

  Something's going on. Um, the, you know, of all the ways to get rich, starting a brand new sport is, is like, would really be low on my real list. Of smart ways to.

• 9:55Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 9:55Speaker 02

  It's smart ways to, to make money.

• 9:58Lewis Howes?

  Now, how many, I guess, athletes are doing CrossFit around the world right now? Can you calculate or is there a way?

• 10:04Speaker 02

  Um, that's a, that's a million dollar question and it's, it's come up with a handful of really kind of cool partners, you know, like we've had a long-term kind of interesting, exploratory relationship with Microsoft. They wanted to know. Our friends at YouTube and, and Google have been interested and we were always interested ourselves too. And of course, media always asks, how many CrossFitters are there? The problem starts in defining a CrossFitter.

• 10:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 10:30Speaker 02

  So I got a guy that's doing CrossFit like workouts, but says he doesn't do CrossFit.

• 10:34Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 10:34Speaker 02

  So what do you do? And it's, well, then you hear it and it's, you know, it, it reminds me of the, the gym where you see the rings and the rower and the kettlebells and the, and the barbells and the ropes and, and pull-up bars and like, we don't do CrossFit. I was like, oh, really? What do you, what do you, show me what you do with that stuff? I'd like to see it. Cause if it didn't look like what we did, you'd have to like do maybe the same thing every day, or you'd have a schedule Mondays, we do this, Tuesdays that. Or maybe the pace is so slow that there's not a cardio respiratory.

• 11:01Lewis Howes?

  It's not timed or yeah.

• 11:02Speaker 02

  Yeah, but I, if it, they just don't want to call it CrossFit, so it's not.

• 11:05Lewis Howes?

  They don't want to pay the fee.

• 11:06Speaker 02

  That's for sure.

• 11:08Lewis Howes?

  They don't want to pay the fee.

• 11:09Speaker 02

  And I'm, I'm totally cool with that, you know? I never thought this was protectable, you know? It's, it's like a blueberry muffin recipe, not a piece of software.

• 11:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you can't.

• 11:17Speaker 02

  Unfortunately.

• 11:18Lewis Howes?

  You can't, you can't patent doing kettlebell swings, right?

• 11:21Speaker 02

  Nope.

• 11:22Lewis Howes?

  And, and maybe that's. But you can protect the brand.

• 11:24Speaker 02

  You can protect the brand.

• 11:26Lewis Howes?

  We can protect the brand, yeah. And the namings of workouts, I'm assuming, or something like that, right?

• 11:30Speaker 02

  Yep.

• 11:31Lewis Howes?

  That's cool. That's very cool. Well, I guess how many registered members of gyms maybe or?

• 11:37Speaker 02

  Well, you know, but we've talked about those in the wild, that's the CrossFitters that aren't in the boxes.

• 11:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 11:44Speaker 02

  And what is that number? But let me just answer your question and tell you that we also do not know. I don't, I would, I don't believe if, if so, if, if God had the answer, were willing to give it to me, I would be willing to sit here and bet a large amount of money that it's not less than 2 million. I would also bet with this same, you know, omniscient entity, the deity that's going to tell us how many there are, that it isn't over four. And what's interesting, I mentioned our partners by, by, uh, they've come to the same numbers, but by some methods just full of flaws. But I, so I don't know, maybe my method's not right. Here's what we did. I took a stab at the, at the financial ecosystem.

• 12:27Speaker 02

  And, you know, I have a pretty good sense of how big we are, how big Rogue is, and you know, all the players. And so you make, make a list of, of 30 businesses that are at the heart of this, this movement, you know, the movers and shakers, and make an estimate of their size. And then, and then you have to figure out how many people are spending that much money.

• 12:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 12:48Speaker 02

  And at 2 million, they're spending a boatload of money. And at 4 million, significantly less.

• 12:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 12:56Speaker 02

  And so it gets to the point where I just don't think that people are spending that much money to create this much, this much business. So less than two. But what's, what's fascinating is that actually the, so it's all very different than, than the kind of Kim Kardashian. Social media mindset, the market value of my audience is actually more valuable with the smaller number because they're spending more. And so if you have, if you have, if you can have a chance of dealing with, with four million people spending four billion or two million spending for you, take the two. Why?

• 13:37Speaker 02

  Less headache or something? No, it's, no, it's a super affluent demographic. You know, anyone, anyone in business is proud to get the rich people. Yeah, of course. And I, you don't accuse me of any kind of a rigorous economic mindset, but I'm kind of a trickle down guy.

• 13:59Speaker 02

  You know, I believe that you want to create a revolution, get the rich people on board, you know, and it becomes a cultural revolution. I get, I get them involved and it'll filter down. You want, you're not going to get cars for poor people before rich people can have them. I'm not going to get, I'm not going to get people in homes with, with no means if you can't do it for people with means. Yeah. And what happens is that is, as that upper niches is satisfied, the natural tendency is to start moving into other markets. This is why, I mean, we just sat with, with Google talking about their help and helping us reach a billion Indians. Wow. You know, and that, that's, and, and what's cool is that it's going to cost me a lot

• 14:42Speaker 02

  of money to do that and a lot of effort, but we're doing it because it's the right thing to do. And I, I don't have a sense that, that, that there's a market there for us, you know? I'll give you another example that's where we're going today, the congressional, 44th congressional district here in California. This includes Compton and Watts. Yeah. You know, it's a, it's a hard hit area. There's a lot of underserved people, a lot of black people, a lot of brown people. There are 800,000 residents and I only got 12 gyms there. And it bothers me and it's, and the bother isn't, it's like, we've got 14,000 gyms. I don't, I'm not looking at, at my black brothers and brown sisters and saying, I'm not getting any of their money.

• 15:25Speaker 02

  It's not that, it's just that we have a, we have a, a, a solution, an elegant solution, maybe an optimal solution to the world's most vexing problem, that's chronic disease. And that community is hit harder than, than any other. It's the, it's the least healthy place in California. And I only got 12 gyms. Now globally, we've got, we've got one, nationally, we have a gym for every 50,000 people. Okay.

• 15:51Lewis Howes?

  In the US.

• 15:52Speaker 02

  Yeah, in the US. And I've got a, I've got a, globally, that figures 100,000. It's 100,000 folks teach box.

• 15:59Lewis Howes?

  It's amazing.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I'm, I'm under the, I'm under the global standards that, in that, in that district. You know?

• 16:05Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 16:06Speaker 02

  And, and, and I, and I'd like to, and I'd like to reach them. And, but that's a, that's kind of a luxury. Given that we're here in the States, where the average gym membership, we understand from really reliable sources, is 5X the national gym average. And so, who's going to the boxes? Rich people. Rich people.

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 16:28Speaker 02

  And a lot of them don't.

• 16:29Lewis Howes?

  I mean, I, I trained at Brick here, Brick CrossFit. It's 200, 250 bucks a month, you know, it's not cheap.

• 16:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, you go to Gold's for 35 a month.

• 16:37Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 16:38Speaker 02

  You know?

• 16:38Lewis Howes?

  So these are high-end gyms.

• 16:40Speaker 02

  They're high-end gyms. And, but I do have people of, of modest means that spend disproportionate of their income because they're that committed. So we got a lot of fanaticism too.

• 16:48Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 16:49Speaker 02

  But I would imagine a lot of gyms are doing what I did in that I had, I had several billionaire clients that made it easy for me to say no to anyone that just touched me. You know, I've never, and, and like I can say this now, because I used to live in fear of it getting out. I used to tell people, I'm gonna put you on a scholarship. And if you tell anyone, you're gonna lose it.

• 17:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 17:10Speaker 02

  Tell one soul, you know what? No one ever did. Well, you want someone to keep a secret? Put a, put a paycheck on it.

• 17:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, exactly.

• 17:18Speaker 02

  Not pay them, but take from them if they, if they tell. And no one ever, never shared. But I bet, I'll bet a quarter of the people in my gym were not paying.

• 17:29Speaker 02

  And maybe another chunk were, were, their boss was paying. You know, the billionaire that, that was taking care of them.

• 17:37Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 17:37Speaker 02

  And I was really grateful for the, for the, the, the support of the wealthy. I had a, a friend and client, Sonia Khan.

• 17:51Speaker 02

  Loaned me fifty thousand dollars to expand my gym. And I tried to pay it back when she says, no, no, you pay that back when you're rich. And I tried a couple of years ago again, she says, you're not rich yet. I don't think she's ever gonna let me pay it back.

• 18:03Lewis Howes?

  That's hilarious.

• 18:04Speaker 02

  And, and, and what was I able to do with that? Everything, everything. Work with kids and athletes and people in the community that, you know, people that I would identify out in the street had a profound need. Come into my box, you know, they don't have two dimes they can rub together, that's okay, I got you, you know? And I've got that same attitude on the global level now, so. I'm interested in India, I'm interested in, in, in, in Brazil and, you know.

• 18:30Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I was just down there in Rio for the Olympics. A lot of Cross, there's a lot of CrossFit for an axe down there too. It's starting to blow up there.

• 18:36Speaker 02

  It's a, it's a great market for us.

• 18:38Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 18:38Speaker 02

  It's a great market.

• 18:39Lewis Howes?

  So when was the first, um, first time you said, okay, this is CrossFit, this is a thing, this is the gym? Was it a, a moment, was it a overtime type of thing?

• 18:49Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'd, I knew, I knew in my, as a teenager, that what was going on in the commercial gym facility was ridiculous. That's because I was a gymnast. And, uh, um, you know, the lateral raises and the curls and the leg extension and the reading the paper on the bike.

• 19:09Lewis Howes?

  It's not athletic movements.

• 19:10Speaker 02

  No, no, and, and so many athletes, as you know, don't like going to the gym because the dry land training, you know, the, the gym part. It, it was, it was, it was not why you liked football. And that's not what I liked about gymnastics. Gymnastics didn't have that, that, that problem. There wasn't a, there wasn't a, a training, dry land training effort outside of the sport itself. But, um, people don't appreciate, I think, in the public that the gymnastics routine is a, is a max heart rate event. That is extremely demanding.

• 19:46Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:47Speaker 02

  In the cardio respiratory sense, but you can't show it. You can't pant, you can't open your mouth wide.

• 19:53Lewis Howes?

  You gotta have a smile, you gotta be here.

• 19:55Speaker 02

  Look them right in the face and salute, walk off and then, you know, but inside you're.

• 19:59Lewis Howes?

  Dying.

• 20:00Speaker 02

  And, and, and when the season comes along,

• 20:04Speaker 02

  it's not as bad, but early in the season, it's devastating. It's Fran like. And that was the impetus for developing that routine. I was trying to elicit the cardio respiratory demands of a gymnastics routine.

• 20:20Speaker 02

  Without doing the movements, this is in my own garage, where a parallel bar routine or a ring routine was, is an impossibility for a 16-year-old kid. Sure, sure. And I nailed it. I had those Voight pull-up bars that you twisted into the doorway. We'd figured out if you took the rubber caps off and just kept opening it, you could drive it into the jam and actually get something safe. Wow. The people I know that fractured their skulls, hurt their necks, or broke their arms swinging on these bars, trying to have a high bar at home, right? It's crazy. Your doorway, yeah, yeah. We used to do dismounts off those things. Wow. And everyone else wanted to just come right off. Oh, my gosh. But I had a Voight pull-up bar and I had the Sears Ted Williams $19.95 110-pound weight set.

• 21:05Speaker 02

  And just the very first day when it came out of the box, I was like, let's do 21 pull-ups and 21 of these things. Mm-hmm. And then 15 and 15, 9 and 9, and so that it feels extra shitty, which is what I'm looking for. Yeah. Let's use the clock and just do it as fast as I can. How old were you then? 16. Yeah. And it worked. I threw up. Yeah. Threw up. Went across the street, got my buddy, brought him over, and he threw up. Hmm. And we're like, that's it, because that's what happens. See, in the season, when you, early in the season, you're developing tricks. So you know things you want to be able to do in a routine. As the season approaches, now I got to stitch them all together. And what a completely different thing that is. Hmm. To stitch them together than to do them in solo,

• 21:49Speaker 02

  to do them one after another in transition at max heart rate as opposed to coming up fresh, doing it, and getting off. Mm-hmm. Completely different world. Right. And, and you couldn't be dialed into that process and buy into something like there are exercises that are cardio and others that aren't. Like, I mean, if your heart rate is high, it's cardio, isn't it? Sure. You know, and so in the fitness world, it was bike, run, swim were the three cardio's. And then everything else was strength training. And I'm like, yeah, but you do these thrusters with 95 pounds and these pull-ups, and you're going to get a whole lot stronger. Yeah. And there's cardio. Yeah, exactly. And what the, the exercise community's response to notions like that

• 22:32Speaker 02

  was that that blended adaptation was an impossibility. Well, they had it wrong. The experts were dead wrong. Hmm. The segmented training develops a segmented capacity.

• 22:42Speaker 02

  So if you work strength Monday, Wednesday and Friday and you've worked cardio on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday, if I get my hands on you, I can set up a little circuit of a cardio stimulus for which you have low regard and a strength stimulus for which you have low regard and and ask for three to five rounds of this and you'll find that you're not strong enough and you don't have enough wind and it's almost as if you had done no strength training and had never had any kind of cardio stimulus.

• 23:15Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 23:16Speaker 02

  The blended, the blended demands, the, out of the blended stimulus is, is a unique beast.

• 23:21Lewis Howes?

  Do you think that's why, I mean, you've created, people call it a cult or, you know, a tribe or whatever you want to call it, do you think that these movements or the type of workouts that people are going through is what's created that or do you think it's more of the culture or is it more of the people, is it more of the brands?

• 23:39Speaker 02

  I, I don't, I don't think we can separate them, but I will say the, the brand symbolizes the net effect and was, and was, you know, the charm and allure of the brand didn't draw people in.

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  Didn't draw people in?

• 23:53Speaker 02

  No, and, and I don't think it, it does still really.

• 23:56Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 23:56Speaker 02

  What draws people in is the, is the young lady or the young man or the, that grandma or grandpa that's gotten results and won't shut up about CrossFit.

• 24:05Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:06Speaker 02

  And that's the, that's where the marketing happens and those people drag people in. They bring them by the arm, they bring them by the ear, you know, they beg them, they're relentless in their pursuit of the next customer.

• 24:17Lewis Howes?

  Hmm.

• 24:17Speaker 02

  And that's, that's, there's a lot of magic there.

• 24:20Lewis Howes?

  It's almost like a gym doesn't have to do any marketing, just get 10 people in there and it'll build on its own.

• 24:24Speaker 02

  You know, there's a, there's a, we've, we've regularly had to define some terms. It, it often happens when a term that everyone uses, you have to ask, do we all mean something different when we say it? And some things like that, fitness, everyone's got a different mindset and we all use it. Uh, marketing was one of those things, but for me, marketing is any effort that is designed to improve the bottom line, effective or not, but that's the hope, it's going to improve the bottom line and it isn't a direct tinkering of the product or service. So you're not improving the product or service, you found another way to get people in the door.

• 25:03Speaker 02

  I'm not really impressed with that, but there is a level at which it happens and it's essential and it is that testimony of the end user.

• 25:11Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:11Speaker 02

  That person is marketing. They're not improving the product or service, but they're sure the hell out there. Now, advertising would be that way, putting hot pink flyers under the windshield wipers at the cars, the malls, Groupon, all those things are marketing. There's a lot of advertising is of that kind of thing. My advice would be to engage in none of that and anything like that. And that's just me, that's my bias. And if you've got any energy, resources, time, money, you know, talents, whatever, throw that back into improving your product or service. Get back to that, back to that, that relationship with the person coming through the door. Do such a good job with them that they go

• 25:55Speaker 02

  home and become one of those annoying people that won't shut up about CrossFit.

• 26:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:00Speaker 02

  And I think that's happening everywhere. We've seen a few gyms lose it all to Groupon. Just, you know, they get a whole bunch of people that, that, that chase out the, the people paying full price. They don't stick around and you're not making any money. But it's actually been the death of a, of a couple of boxes. Never, never do anything like that.

• 26:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 26:24Speaker 02

  And so I, I, I never had to do any of that, but you know, where was I? I was a hundred percent in the presence with the client, you know, whether it was one, five or 10 of them. They were everything to me and nothing else mattered. And they took care of me. I didn't have to ever ask anyone to come into the gym.

• 26:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 26:42Speaker 02

  Ever.

• 26:42Lewis Howes?

  They would spread the word.

• 26:43Speaker 02

  They were bringing people.

• 26:44Lewis Howes?

  If you were going to give them your full attention and energy during that hour session, they were going to go tell people afterwards.

• 26:49Speaker 02

  Of course.

• 26:50Lewis Howes?

  I just had the best work out of my life. You should come in, look at the transformation. I feel amazing.

• 26:54Speaker 02

  And Louis says, I talked to orthodontists and lawyers and accountants and same with them. Same thing. They're like, no one, no one advertised. You know, there's always that Jacobian Myers kind of thing, you know, that's a little off the beat. You know, the dentist with billboards on every corner. And I think we all. A lot of us would be wise to be suspicious of that.

• 27:19Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 27:20Speaker 02

  I have a problem with a lawyer's got a commercial on every channel three times a day. You know, I don't think that's the lawyer I'd be looking for necessarily.

• 27:27Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, yeah.

• 27:28Speaker 02

  But the consummate professional has great relationships with the with the people they serve and they provide. They're the source of the new people.

• 27:36Lewis Howes?

  Exactly, great testimonials as well.

• 27:38Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 27:39Lewis Howes?

  If someone was looking to build a movement, whether it be in the fitness world or any world, any industry, what would you say are the key ingredients that they would need based on what you've done? I guess to replicate it, you know, at CrossFit in their industry?

• 27:57Speaker 02

  Some of the answer might come in the in the what I see business as today, you know, my definition of business. And we got some pretty good traction with this at Harvard Business School and two appearances.

• 28:10Speaker 02

  It was really appealing to the students and so that really appealed to me too. Because I think if I'm not sure if the definition is anything other than my own bias. And then to find that kids at Harvard MBA program really liked it, so okay, maybe it is more than just, you know, my take on things. But I believe that business is is the art and science of creating uniquely attractive opportunities for other people.

• 28:38Speaker 02

  And anyone that can iteratively, sustainably over, you know, five years or more, create an opportunity of any sort, whether it's a product or service that is uniquely attractive. And what the evidence of that is that they buy it, they avail themselves of it. But if you can if you can provide a uniquely attractive opportunity for other people, you're going to have a successful organization or a successful business. And for me, a business is is is an organization and importantly so.

• 29:12Speaker 02

  Money is to a business like uh uh jet fuel is to an airline. The goal of the airline is to get people from A to B safely, um comfortably, right? And and and uh uh cost effectively, right? So for them and you. And if you're successful, to the extent you're successful, you're gonna find that you're gonna be burning more gas. Right. But for anyone to look and say, well, the goal here is to burn gas. Um, you're mixing, you're confusing the dependent variable for the independent variable. And it it it doesn't work at all. And I saw all those people that think that money's about making, business is about making money. Um, that's not the kind of business I'm interested in.

• 29:55Speaker 02

  And it may be the, that maybe that kind of money is a different kind of organization. And it might somewhat be kind of an east coast, west coast thing. And I say that because I talk about business, not be about making money. And people point some Goldman Sachs asshole out or a whole bunch of them in or out of the current administration or and the past one. But uh that that's, it's not what's going on in Silicon Valley. Yeah. Not really. And I, and I can say that because I've had some uh uh super successful, you know, household name clients from, from the Silicon Valley. And to think that they were, that they got where they were because they were trying to get rich would be a profound misunderstanding. Right. What were they trying to do?

• 30:37Speaker 02

  Um, the case of one, you know, and it's not that it's more noble than making money. But I got a buddy that if, if he can write code that works better than yours, he's smarter and better than you. And he just like, that gets him off. Right. Well, you find success for that in San Jose and it's gonna rain money. Sure. But it isn't about the money. It really isn't about the money. And because he, he'd do it for free and he did and does. Yeah. Yeah, he can't, he can't help but do it. Yeah. If you put him, if you took all this stuff away, two ways away and locked him in a cell somewhere, you'd do that still, he'd still be writing. You know, writing code. It's just, he's one of those guys. Right, right. And uh, and that's, that's kind of refreshing, really. It was for me. Mm hmm. It was for me.

• 31:20Speaker 02

  What it meant is because, you know, I did this, I did this thing where I make an X and then show you are here, right? And then I got a dollar sign up here and over here have an E for excellence. And I say from, from here. People just, I want money. And what, you know, the universe doesn't care if you want money. Nobody cares that you want money. And, and markets are somewhat unknowable and, and you, you go to chase the money and you miss the mark. A lot of people end up behind bars, lost, broke, just trying to get rich. And, and, but if you pursue excellence, it's, it's like a beacon. It's a lighthouse, you know? That's, you can see it. There's, there's easy agreement and easy recognition of something outstanding.

• 32:05Speaker 02

  I, I don't know anything about orthodontic practices other than I had an orthodontist as a kid. Well, I got a buddy in Prescott, Arizona that has an orthodontic practice. And you go in there and it's just, it's visually amazing, right? He's got, you know, 15 chairs with these view of the mountains. And a, and a pretty girl at each one. Right. Doing the work and music's going and it's well-appointed and it's a factory, you know? Sure. And he's standing there with his arms folded, a big smile on his face and it's just really cool. And the spirit in there is neat. I go, holy cow, doc, this is amazing, you know? I mean, he's just, he's doing orthodontia brilliantly. Yeah. I've seen in hair salons and restaurants.

• 32:46Speaker 02

  And the same thing, you go to a place and you know, there's, it's dirty and you could just, you could just, you'll know right away. Feel the energy, yeah. Yeah. And so the excellence, excellence shines bright and it's obvious to everyone. It's such a, it's so, it's so non-elusive and you can, every day, work towards that E, towards that excellence and you know that you're, that you're, you're in, you're making steps, progress towards it. You can metric it, you feel it, you know when it's, you're making it better. What do you do tomorrow? I'm gonna make it better. And how about the next day? I'm gonna make it even better. You keep looking for things to make it better. And you, there's nothing like that on the money.

• 33:25Speaker 02

  So here's what happens. Those that will stay committed and, and, and really want the E, not the cash, they get there. Now here's what markets do. The markets move the money to the excellence and almost always by a path that you wouldn't have figured out. And so another big part of the Silicon Valley story is that. Guy trying to get from here to there and and along the way the target shifts a little and it's it's excellent but not that excellent but this one and then here comes money from a different angle. But the people that have repurposed startups with large number of employees and just abandoned the technology. Pick a new one quick because you got to do something, right?

• 34:06Speaker 02

  We got, you know, I have buddy of mine had a technology that he thought was the sure thing and a deal with sprint. And turned out that they had been given the the business to throw off from the other cellphone people. The fact that they knew this technology was dead and they just made the investment to anyways. So my buddy was kind of a pawn in a in a in a game of misleading AT and T and Verizon.

• 34:38Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:38Speaker 02

  And so he had to come up with something because what they wanted to do can't be done. And they thought it could and the people that hired him to do it knew it couldn't be done too. And so they had to come up with something brand new overnight and did and just to save everyone's jobs in the business. And it's cool.

• 34:54Lewis Howes?

  Wow. Do you feel like you've made any big mistakes that you wish you could take back over the years in either building the brand? Or how things have run with the business or?

• 35:03Speaker 02

  I it's got some smart ass answers. I've been so disappointed by the behavior out of the weightlifting community sometimes that I wish I hadn't salvaged their dying sport. But that's I'm being I'm I'm being flippant there.

• 35:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 35:20Lewis Howes?

  Now, is there any regrets you've had in building the brand or the way you've run the games or boxes or anything?

• 35:27Speaker 02

  Um, I, you know, if I if I was starting over, I would devalue the kipping pull up and let it occur naturally. And those that, you know, the people that can't do strict pull ups trying to kip is to is wrong. You know, the kip comes ineluctable. You you know, you go from 20 pull ups to 40 pull ups to 60 pull ups. You're gonna kip. You're gonna learn.

• 35:49Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 35:50Speaker 02

  And it's kind of a time under tension thing. There's a he you the I can I can. You can show me a videotape of of five of five pull ups, five of 10, five of 20, or five of 100, and I'll know which it is. And if it's five of 100, that first five, they're really fast.

• 36:08Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:08Speaker 02

  Right?

• 36:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 36:09Speaker 02

  And if it's five for five, that's slow. And the kip comes naturally as a whole body movement out of that whole thing. And it's not it's not a gymnastics move because it's not taught in gymnastics. That's not the kip. It's it's how gymnasts train pull ups. And gymnasts need to have 100 pull ups. You're not gonna get 100 pull ups unless you can kip. But it's but it's not used in anything, you know, it's just a it's just a it's an artifact of training.

• 36:35Lewis Howes?

  Does that created who created the the kipping pull up for?

• 36:38Speaker 02

  Nobody. It's a it's what happens when you keep adding pull ups.

• 36:42Lewis Howes?

  Got you.

• 36:42Speaker 02

  They have to go faster and faster and faster. Now, the butterfly kip a little different. That was someone someone someone got a little clever there, you know, that's pretty cool.

• 36:52Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 36:53Speaker 02

  But uh.

• 36:56Speaker 02

  You know, it's just one example.

• 36:58Lewis Howes?

  Do you feel like you've structured the business in the way that you wanted to, or if you could look back and you? How many boxes do you have now?

• 37:05Speaker 02

  14,000.

• 37:06Lewis Howes?

  14,000.

• 37:07Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 37:07Lewis Howes?

  And how is it? Does it continue to grow or have you seen a decline?

• 37:10Speaker 02

  Still still growing. There's some markets leveling off and others exploding. China's huge. Brazil's huge, you know. In the DC where we have the greatest density in the United States, it's it's tapered.

• 37:25Speaker 02

  Some fall off, others just keep growing bigger.

• 37:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 37:29Speaker 02

  You know, the the best of them will will continue to expand, continue to grow, it seems.

• 37:35Lewis Howes?

  There's you know, there's people talk about, I think with any new gym or any new fitness thing that it's a fad or at some point it will have its time or some point it will be whatever. Do you have that fear with CrossFit that?

• 37:46Speaker 02

  None.

• 37:47Lewis Howes?

  10, 20, 30 years like it's gonna start to taper or?

• 37:50Speaker 02

  Here's here's here's what threatens us in that respect.

• 37:55Speaker 02

  The communities driven by the, the wonders of, of the entrepreneur and capitalism and the free market individually owned and operate, that's a miracle, that's a pillar. The other piece is that the stimulus of constantly varied, high intensity functional movement, leveraged against a diet of meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar, is a really, really good match for the needs of the species. And, and a billion years of evolution. You know, the, uh, there's, there's things that we're doing that are at the heart of all mammalian species. So, you know, go back a billion years. Sure, sure.

• 38:38Speaker 02

  And I'll just give you one of those would be, uh, uh, respect for the insulin glucagon axis. The first proto shrew had a pancreas and so do we. Right. The abuse of that pancreas is a modern thing.

• 38:54Speaker 02

  And we can blame the CDC and the NIH for that amongst others and, and it down at our level, at the grunt level, the NSCA and the ACSM still promoting deadly diets, by the way. Yeah. And so CrossFit is the fad that brought a stimulus back to the shrew. A billion years ago, it's that kind of fad. Yeah. Now, um, the non-CrossFit stuff was the fad. And I knew that. What do you mean? Uh, well, the lateral raises and curls, the, we're gonna do cardio distinct from strength training. We're gonna be on machines with pins. You can deadlift if you wanna be a big ugly power, fat powerlifter and you run if you wanna be, have cardio.

• 39:37Speaker 02

  And, but nobody should ever do both and certainly not in the same workout ever. Right. And I knew that was horse shit. Yeah. Just obvious crap. And, and you, but you couldn't, you couldn't be an athlete and not know that. Not know that. Sure, sure. Yeah. You know, and imagine, imagine the notion of, nobody needs to be strong at high heart rate. Like, really? Yeah, you don't have to be, you don't have to have a big imagination to see what's wrong with that, right?

• 40:09Lewis Howes?

  Sure, absolutely.

• 40:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:11Lewis Howes?

  The challenge is, you know, I know you, I've heard some interviews where people ask you this question about injuries. And as a competitor myself, it's really hard to taper back and hold back in gym.

• 40:25Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:25Lewis Howes?

  It's hard to not compete against my own time, not compete against everyone else at the same time.

• 40:30Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 40:31Lewis Howes?

  And if I don't have the self-awareness of how my body's feeling, you know, I've tweaked my back many times. I've gotten little injuries here and there from CrossFit. And I'm responsible for it because I'm the one who pushes the boundaries.

• 40:44Speaker 02

  Let me share something with you. You can do everything absolutely perfect. You're still gonna get hurt.

• 40:51Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:53Speaker 02

  I can tell you this too. You're gonna be much more injured

• 40:59Speaker 02

  by driving the workout injury to zero. And what'll happen is now comes the specter of chronic disease.

• 41:06Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:07Speaker 02

  Look,

• 41:09Speaker 02

  a couple of million people are gonna die this year from chronic disease. And what is the figure? I think it's 2.8 million. Might be making that up. It's a, it's a lot. I do know this, that 70% of the population will die from chronic disease. It has the, the, the two-headed Hydra of, of, of, of, of a cause in sedentarism, holding still, and malnutrition.

• 41:35Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 02

  The crappy diet. And the worst of that would be the eating way too much of everything. But in every case, it involves too much carbohydrate. Specifically, high glycemic carbohydrate, specifically sugar. And that lifestyle is the deadliest thing on the planet. It takes 70% of lives and we're exporting it now so that there's numbers is holding true. Even in places that are ravaged by infectious disease, they're rapidly approaching a 70% rate on chronic disease. And so, and so, you know, the number of people that die from chronic disease is twice the number that die from all other causes combined.

• 42:20Speaker 02

  And that's what happens when you watch TV and eat the way the Center for Disease Control wants you to eat. Right. And so, and so as soon as you get off the couch, it's dangerous. Yeah. And it is, cause you know what, I'm gonna tell you that sitting there watching TV, um, is, there's a much less chance of acute injury, like say, pick it, ACL tear. Right. Uh, break a wrist, I don't care, any, any of these sprains and strains, you know, bruises, bumps, even, you know, things that might require surgical repair. As soon as you get up off the couch, those, those numbers insert themselves. So you say, hey, I'm gonna, I'm gonna go to the gym. And so you, you get in your car, where the wrist just got compounded. You still have the risk of being sedentary. Yeah.

• 43:05Speaker 02

  And, but now you're out in public. Ride your bike to the gym and it, and it, the risks are even greater. Just look at, look at this beautiful city here of LA. I was doing this stats once, I pulled down some LADPD reports of car versus bicycle. It's horrifying. Every few minutes, someone gets whacked on a bike to where an ambulance is needed. Every couple of minutes, every day in the city. And so that's some really dangerous shit, right? Right. And then, once, but once you get into the gym, I've still, all those risks go up, but what is, what is in free fall now is the risk of chronic disease. And so we trade, we trade the sprains and strains to avoid the heart attacks, the strokes, the cancers. Right.

• 43:44Speaker 02

  The diabetes. And to, and so, someone says, you know, I got a buddy that got hurt doing CrossFit, you know, isn't it dangerous? It's dangerous sitting on your couch all day. Yeah, two million buddies died not doing CrossFit. Right, right. And in chronic disease, it fundamentally is a lack of CrossFit in your life. You know, so you don't like, you don't like, right, right, right. Moving. Functional movement, functional movement. You need to be, you need to be able to pick things up off the ground, get your ass out of the chair, you know? Those are, those aren't exercises. Nobody invented the deadlift. Nobody invented the clean. Nobody invented the pull up. Whoever says, hey, check this out. Can you believe this? Look, check that out. I made that up, you know? No, you didn't, dude. We've been, everyone's been standing up for a long time. Right.

• 44:29Speaker 02

  You're full of shit. But, but, but, but if someone says they invented the, you know, somewhere, someone invented the lateral raise. Cause there was someone that was holding something, doing this. The guy says, what the hell are you doing? He goes, it's an exercise. It wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't, you know, with the functional movements, it's obvious what you're doing to value. Yes. You know, the, the hyenas are chasing, you jump in a tree. You don't, you didn't, you didn't invent the pull up. You pull up and. Right, you're getting away, you know? And throwing a rock, you know, that's not, no one invented that. It's been, it's been there since time immemorial. It's built in, baked into who and what we are. Yeah. And the, the first exercise physiologist, I can't remember his name. When you look him up when I'm talking, he was a guy, a Brit that, that

• 45:11Speaker 02

  observed that the, uh, ticket takers on the double decker buses um, had a fraction of the heart attack rate that the drivers did. And they're making the same pay and you'd get, get the job. And they just assign you to one or the other. But one of them was dying in, in large numbers and the other wasn't. And, uh, in his 99th year, this, this genius observed that this is the first time in history where people have to deliberately exercise to find health. That, you know, and so the, the subject is the fad. Yeah, CrossFit's, CrossFit's a, a fad. Just in the way that you're, you're, the human genome is a fad. And it's, and it's, it's, it's as, it's as stable as that genome is,

• 45:56Speaker 02

  which is pretty damn stable. And so people would say to me, you still like the zone diet? And I was like, yeah, I do. And they go, wow, it's been a long time. And yeah, well, you know, balance of the insulin glucagon axes, adequate essential fatty acid intake. I mean, these things, these things go back a ways. Would the zone diet have worked on people in pre-Columbian time? Of course it would. Hmm. You know? Sure. Of course it would. Sure. These, Sears and Glassman and a bunch of others. We've designed. For our, for our perception of the physiological need, that was the goal. It wasn't to make money, it wasn't to sell a book, it wasn't to, uh, uh, you know, we were,

• 46:39Speaker 02

  we were addressing a, a riddle, you know, a scientific question. And something like that is very, very much not likely to be a fad. Now, may people not,

• 46:50Speaker 02

  CrossFit in the future? Well, sure, but I don't, that wouldn't make it a fad to me either, you know?

• 46:55Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 46:55Speaker 02

  Lot of, lot of good things have been lost.

• 46:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, sure. I'm doing a, I'm doing some research about masculinity for a new book that I'm writing. Now-

• 47:04Speaker 02

  That's interesting.

• 47:05Lewis Howes?

  It's, the book's called The Mask of Masculinity. I've been interviewing former professional athletes, to female psychologists, to men, women, everyone. And I'm curious to hear your opinion about how CrossFit has either shaped or reinvented or evolved masculinity? Or what type of energy you see in a gym around both men and women coming together, doing these type of primal workouts to the max every day? Does that evolve someone's, uh, I guess masculinity? Does it make them more loving and vulnerable? Does it make them harder? Does it make them able to connect with individuals because there is community? What's your thoughts?

• 47:50Speaker 02

  I'm grinning here because my focus has been the women. Cause there's something, you know, if you, if you'd kind of rephrase the whole thing around, around the ladies and is, you know, what's going on there? And I, and I will come to that because now I get-

• 48:03Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I'd love to hear-

• 48:04Speaker 02

  Kind of went there. And the guy thing I haven't thought about so much, I haven't seen it, but I, but I, I can offer a few things. I think this is the, maybe the vainest population to ever walk the earth. And, and I, and I, but I don't, I don't see it as a bad thing.

• 48:20Lewis Howes?

  Everyone's shirtless, everyone's taking photos.

• 48:22Speaker 02

  But you know what? They look so fucking good, they maybe ought to. I mean, it's like, I, I get it.

• 48:26Lewis Howes?

  They look good naked, you know?

• 48:27Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah.

• 48:30Speaker 02

  It's, it's maybe, it's not a false vanity, you know? They're, they look really great and they know it and they're proud of it. And that's all cool. But there's, but there's an enormous amount of testosterone.

• 48:40Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:40Speaker 02

  And no fights. Never had a fight at a CrossFit event.

• 48:44Lewis Howes?

  It's a lot of brotherly love.

• 48:46Speaker 02

  It's crazy because I, I would think you can't, you can't even do that, you can't do that in the Marine Corps. You know, you can't do it in a football team. Right. You know, it's, it's, we, the CrossFitters don't fight. There's none of that going on. Um, we've never had a secu-, uh, uh, you know, we've had, we've had people show up that weren't supposed to be at an event kind of security event, but there's no one, there's no one that had too much to drink. Yeah.

• 49:11Speaker 02

  Police manage large venue events by getting hourly reports on the gate and the alcohol consumption. I don't know if you know that or not, but if you have a stadium, there's a, there's a guy running the thing. Who will every hour, um, it was our Andy Rios who won and he's get, he knows how many beers have been poured. Yes. You know, and when more beers come in and they, they have the right to cut it off and they've got some magic numbers where, um, you, you work beyond so many people and so many beers and so much time. And that's when the violence starts. And so they trim back the beer. And, and, uh, CrossFit, we run, we run a, a pretty drunken event because there's, none of those rules apply. Right.

• 49:52Speaker 02

  And so the beer just flows all day long and we don't have people throwing up on each other or fist fighting or stealing stuff. Every year at the games, someone loses something. And I always tell, uh, the, I've told the security people, I want to know when someone's misplaced a, a wall or a person. If it's, if there's any way for me to come by them, I want to go, cause I want to be there and look them in the eyes. I'm going to tell them, you're going to get your wallet purse back. Right. Cause here's where. Be honest. And, and what's typically done at StubHub Center is if you want, you can start checking the trash cans. And hopefully they'll take in the cash and throw in your picture of your kids and that kind of stuff in the garbage. Yeah, yeah. You know, there's no need to do that here. Someone is gonna, is gonna turn it in and it's gonna get back to you and it'll be, but, but sometime at the end of the day, maybe into the evening, but you're gonna get it.

• 50:38Speaker 02

  And I was telling a reporter that along with our, uh, our agent, uh, from, uh, William Morris, uh, Gabby Morgeman.

• 50:46Speaker 02

  I was telling her the story and it wasn't a half hour later that, where's my purse? And, uh, an hour later, um, her assistant calls her and says, some guy has found your bag.

• 50:59Speaker 02

  He went through everything in it and he found my phone number on an envelope. Oh my gosh. And called and he's waiting for you and this guy's standing there with her purse. She'd left it outside, you know, and like, of course, that's what happens. And I think I can tell you the why of it too. And I don't even know how this has to do with masculinity, but it, but it, it, it, it's, it's related to testosterone in men. And, and the things men do and when they get them in large numbers and we don't do those things. Why, why? Um, uh, CrossFit is really, really hard and a lot of shitty behaviors come out of people looking for shortcuts for the easy way. And the CrossFitters we both select for and train that all good things come out of sacrifice, commitment, hard work.

• 51:44Speaker 02

  Not finding a purse, you know? Or shortcut. Yeah, shortcut, stealing, you know? And so, and so that, that, that brings, that brings a layer of decency on the, on the whole thing. But, uh, I think there's enough confidence in who you are physically that, uh, that makes that, you know? I wrote an article years ago. I think it might've been published in a, in the Santa Cruz paper or some paper, but it was published somewhere. And I, I was saying that the martial arts community in terms of its physical training, they're, uh, you know, this is the MMA was just starting. The Gracies were coming around and all I'm watching the UFC and early days loved it. It was great. Still an amazing property. But I said, these guys are, are training on two of eight cylinders.

• 52:27Speaker 02

  That it's just that, that their, their fitness is woefully lacking. And you triathletes, just in case you think that, you know, that just is bad, if not worse. And I got a, I got a crazy response from it. I got, um, hate, death threats, death threats from the triathlon community. Death threats, phone numbers, threatening to kill, rape, murder my wife, disguised voices, emails, the craziest stuff. And the martial arts community would happen is some of the, many of the world's best martial artists came to me and said, sir, would you please help me with my training? I'd love to see what it is you have to offer. Now, what makes, what makes a skinny little twerp in a speedo with a number on his arm?

• 53:12Speaker 02

  Think he's gonna kick my ass and where the guy at the martial arts, it's, it's a confidence, you know? And they're just, they're just beyond that, beyond it. The martial arts community has just been a joy to work with, just a joy. Really like those kids, all of them. Less ego. Less ego in a UFC competitor than a tennis player.

• 53:33Lewis Howes?

  In general.

• 53:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's fair. Throw them all into the rug. Hey, you know, in UFC, you don't get a paycheck unless you talk a load of shit.

• 53:42Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 02

  And they get trained in that.

• 53:43Lewis Howes?

  Then you get a big paycheck.

• 53:44Speaker 02

  Yep, and you can get a check bigger than your talents if your mouth's big enough. So they gotta do that. I was close to BJ when they made him talk a lot of crap and he's not a crap talker.

• 53:54Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 53:54Speaker 02

  He's got none of that in him.

• 53:55Lewis Howes?

  It's like a reality show.

• 53:56Speaker 02

  None of that in him, yeah. So that, there was a lot of that. You know, that's the P T Barnum kinda angle that the fight world has going with it.

• 54:04Lewis Howes?

  I mean, how does having women and men then both in the gym? With women, how has this been affected with masculinity with women?

• 54:12Speaker 02

  The, uh...

• 54:14Lewis Howes?

  Cause you were grinning before about saying something.

• 54:17Speaker 02

  The old style of P T where, you know, there were movements we did, the snatch, muscle up. There were, the powers that be in the fitness industry rejected those things and even in the military community initially, things were too complicated. That you'd get hurt. Basically it was unknown. But ultimately, without them even knowing it, what they were bristling at is that there was a neurological component. It required coordination. It required accuracy. It required agility and it required balance. And that's not macho stuff. It's the stuff of gymnastics. But it is well within the province of a lot of what women do and the way they are.

• 55:00Speaker 02

  And that stuff came very naturally to them for a couple of reasons. One is they don't have the contractile potential. They're just not as strong and so they have to be effective. The other thing is that a gal has no problem going, "I don't know how to do that. Would you show me?" And a guy comes in and goes, "I know how to do that. I do it all the time," when he's never done it at all, you know? I used to watch at Gold's, I'd watch a guy try a 400-pound deadlift and miss and then come up and say,

• 55:26Speaker 02

  "Yeah, I got 450 today." And I go, "Oh, dude, we were all watching. You failed at 4." You know, we were right here watching. So the guys would lie about what they do and a chick would stand there and, you know, curling and go, "I can't do this. It's too heavy." And like, so the women are, their egos are such that they didn't have full appreciation of their capacity and the guys had this ego that actually had, I think some of those guys that came up and said they did 450 when it was four, didn't know they were lying. And so our sense of self is so inflated compared to theirs, that it makes them easier to train and it makes it easier for them to learn some of this stuff. You know, you can see a guy seething, being taught something he doesn't know how to do, some of them.

• 56:09Lewis Howes?

  Why is that?

• 56:09Speaker 02

  Macho idiots, you know, just masculinity, I don't know. You know, ego.

• 56:15Lewis Howes?

  But, uh, you feel like people are retrained through CrossFit and they evolve then?

• 56:19Speaker 02

  Or is it? Maybe, or we're selecting, I don't know. But I tell you what, you know, um, uh, there are some super athletes in this community that started off as, uh, as, uh, bodybuilders. And their first exposure was, was a tough thing for them, emotionally, intellectually, physically.

• 56:41Lewis Howes?

  They couldn't do it the way they wanted to.

• 56:42Speaker 02

  Yeah, yeah. And it was, it was just really, you know, really stressful. Um, I don't want, I don't want to get his name wrong, he's a good dude, don't feel bad, but there was a, there was a great example of that, of someone that, uh, I might come back to it. But so, so the modern PT, prior to CrossFit, had removed all of that coordination, actually agility and balance. So there's no cleaning, there's no snatching, there's no handstands, we're not hand walking. What are we doing? Well, it's, it's, uh, you know, uh, jumping, jack, sit up, run, you know, lather, rinse, repeat kind of thing. Um, it was, it was dumbed down. They called dumbed down PT, where you removed the neurological elements.

• 57:24Speaker 02

  That radically exaggerates the difference in physical capacities between men and women in dumbed down PT. One advantage we have physically over women is pretty significant, is contractile potential. You know, just how, with what force can the muscle shorten? Guys are a lot better than that at girls. Um, when you add a neurological component to it and you make it, and, and so the CrossFit definition of strength, it's not just contractile potential, but it's productive application of force. And if the goal becomes to get above the rings is your productive application of force, or to stay balanced under an overhead squat is your productive application of force, the differences, the differences shrink significantly.

• 58:08Speaker 02

  And so we stacked the deck against the ladies when we, when we went to the, to the Monday, Wednesday, Friday cardio, Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, doing lateral raises and curls and leg extensions. And you bring it into the CrossFit space and all of a sudden what we have is the 110 pound gal mentoring the kid that played football and just can't seem to get the overhead squat, right? We used to make show of that with Nicole versus the, the big guy in certs. I don't know if you've seen any of that. Sure, yeah. And it was a 95 pound load and 50 overhead squats. And what I'd do is look for the buffest, biggest dude in the gym, who's, who's overhead was kind of like this. So he's 15 degrees forward and you put your hands where they are, put them overhead and

• 58:53Speaker 02

  then, and then here's how he gets them overhead, leans back until the arms are straight, but I still don't have an open shoulder. And so will that beast, and I don't care if he's got a 500 pound bench press, what's going to happen at, at 95 pound overhead squat, 50 reps? Nicole will get to 50, he, he will not. You just can't. Yeah. You can't. If that's where overhead is, you, you're sunk. Same for holding the handstand. And, uh, so it's all been really empowering. Add to that, and so I'm on the subject of ladies now. Yes. You add to that, our meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, no sugar. And a lot of the, uh, uh, insanity around body image just disappears. It's gone, long gone.

• 59:36Speaker 02

  We don't have any eating disorder people. We got a lot of young ladies that have come from that, that problem, but it's long gone now. So, you know. Does jeans make my butt look fat? I mean, our girls know their butt looks good. And your opinion doesn't matter. And they're not afraid to out eat you at the table and brag about it. And their confidence, it's so beautiful. And in the end, what has happened is that we now have, there are enough of them, of us, a new aesthetic has emerged. It's a new look and it's created a new aesthetic.

• 1:00:13Lewis Howes?

  It's as strong as a new beautiful, right?

• 1:00:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, it's a functional aesthetic. It's a functional aesthetic. And it frees women of the tyranny of an arbitrary aesthetic. And when it's arbitrary, look at what we've seen. Stretched necks, elongated necks in Africa. Binding feet in Asia. Heroin anorexia chic in the West. And all of these things are debilitating, devastating, unhealthy and supposed to be pretty. What they also, what they also do is reduce a woman's ability to resist you. And I find the whole thing disgusting. Disgusting.

• 1:00:59Speaker 02

  I think it, I think it's, I think it's a, it's a cultural adoption of a rape culture. And you know, who, why, why do we have to impair our women for them to be beautiful?

• 1:01:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:01:11Speaker 02

  It bothers the hell out of me. And so I'm really, really proud of the CrossFit girls. Cause they said, they, they're strong and in every sense of the word. Every sense there's, it's just strength. It's wonderfully empowering.

• 1:01:26Lewis Howes?

  Do you think they lack vulnerability?

• 1:01:29Speaker 02

  No, no.

• 1:01:31Lewis Howes?

  Do you think the men that train in CrossFit consistently lack vulnerability? Or emotional?

• 1:01:37Speaker 02

  Maybe, I don't know. Maybe I don't know. But I don't, I haven't.

• 1:01:40Lewis Howes?

  They've trained themselves so much that they're unable to, you know, express themselves.

• 1:01:45Speaker 02

  Really? Does that happen? I've noticed there's a bit of a dry personality around the top games competitors.

• 1:01:54Speaker 02

  I want to get into it.

• 1:01:56Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:01:56Speaker 02

  I've been seated at the table before. With a table full of champions.

• 1:02:03Lewis Howes?

  It's dry, huh?

• 1:02:04Speaker 02

  Yo, man, you're hearing the clinking of forks.

• 1:02:06Lewis Howes?

  Really?

• 1:02:06Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:09Lewis Howes?

  What do you think, uh, what do you think would happen if it was just?

• 1:02:13Speaker 02

  Have you noticed that? You know what I'm talking about?

• 1:02:15Lewis Howes?

  I think it's just, they're just very serious. They're so focused, you know, and it's, um, you know, they, their whole life is this.

• 1:02:21Speaker 02

  I don't know. The NFL is full of focused guys and they're going out at night committing felonies and having a blast, you know? I don't.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  I don't know. Yeah. I mean, maybe there's more, um, you're more part of a team in football. So you're a little like joke and play and like play games on each other's, but it's more of like, obviously you train together and you have some partner stuff, but it's more lone wolf type of energy.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I would just tell you, you know, you get put on the athlete bus on the way somewhere and you know.

• 1:02:44Lewis Howes?

  Silence, crickets.

• 1:02:45Speaker 02

  You might want to get on one of the other buses.

• 1:02:46Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:02:48Speaker 02

  The volunteers are way more fun.

• 1:02:49Lewis Howes?

  I'm sure. Yeah.

• 1:02:50Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:02:50Lewis Howes?

  No stress on them. Well, there's some.

• 1:02:52Speaker 02

  I get, I get that.

• 1:02:53Lewis Howes?

  They're focused, you know?

• 1:02:54Speaker 02

  I mean, when you, when you guys traveled in football, were you having a blast?

• 1:02:58Lewis Howes?

  We were having a blast. It was almost too crazy.

• 1:03:00Speaker 02

  Yeah, okay. That's my sense of it.

• 1:03:02Lewis Howes?

  Especially at arena football. It's like Bull Durham. It's like.

• 1:03:06Speaker 02

  Dude, a bus, a bus full of gymnasts is, is, is like a, it's like, it's the, it's the monkey bus, you know?

• 1:03:12Lewis Howes?

  Same thing with football players.

• 1:03:13Speaker 02

  And they're coming out their windows and trying to get on top and.

• 1:03:15Lewis Howes?

  You live in one of the other stories that happened with football players after the games in the bus. It was, it was nuts. It was like, almost like get me out of here. You know, it was a little crazy.

• 1:03:24Speaker 02

  Good. That's what I was hoping it would be like.

• 1:03:26Lewis Howes?

  What, um, what do you think it would be like if it was just all men training and all women training? Do you think there'd be a dim, different dynamic or different energy? I, uh, in these boxes, it was just like men only or women only?

• 1:03:39Speaker 02

  The only exposure I had to a male only environment was as a youngster, I had a brief stint at the Hughes Aircraft Company. Cause my father and mother and grandparents and uncles and aunts and everyone that knew worked, had worked there. And so I'd get to do a little job there and, uh, it was, it was almost all male and it was horrible. I couldn't stand it. But, yeah. I would, I wouldn't, I wouldn't want that. Um, the women, the women have been, uh, role models in our gyms.

• 1:04:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:04:11Speaker 02

  Role models. Someone, I always ask what, you know?

• 1:04:13Lewis Howes?

  I love getting coached by a woman at the gym. I feel like they're.

• 1:04:16Speaker 02

  Yeah. Hey, let me, let me share this with you.

• 1:04:18Lewis Howes?

  Alignment, you know?

• 1:04:19Speaker 02

  I've had a dozen bosses in my life. I've always, I've always um really enjoyed the, the women that I worked for. They were um fantastic bosses. And check this out, the better I did and the better I made them look, the more they liked me. And the, and the, and the more success we all enjoyed. I've had male bosses that become increasingly uncomfortable with the quality of your work. The better it gets, a lot of them, the more they don't like you.

• 1:04:53Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 1:04:54Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they're.

• 1:04:54Lewis Howes?

  Feel threatened or?

• 1:04:55Speaker 02

  Yeah, sure, they're more afraid of being outshined than being made to look good.

• 1:05:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:00Speaker 02

  But you get a, you get a, you get a lady telling you to do a job and you do just a perfect job of it. You'll make her really happy. And there's guys that'll just like, oh shit, uh oh.

• 1:05:11Lewis Howes?

  That's funny.

• 1:05:12Speaker 02

  It is. Have you noticed it? Have you had it?

• 1:05:14Lewis Howes?

  I've never had a boss.

• 1:05:15Speaker 02

  You ever had, you ever seen that?

• 1:05:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:17Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:05:18Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:05:19Speaker 02

  How about you?

• 1:05:20Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah, no. Hope that's okay to do hit the peanut gallery here.

• 1:05:23Speaker 02

  Yeah, of course, of course.

• 1:05:25Lewis Howes?

  Um, couple of final questions for you. This has been fascinating, so thank you for opening up. Is there any question that you wish people would ask you that they never do, that you could, that you could answer?

• 1:05:35Speaker 02

  Yeah, and I can't think of what it is now, but I have thought about it before. I'm sorry.

• 1:05:38Lewis Howes?

  It's all good.

• 1:05:39Speaker 02

  Yeah, in fact, I'll, I'll come back to you and send it to you too late, but I, I, you know, I've, I've done that.

• 1:05:43Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, what's, what's something then you're, you're most proud of that people, most people don't know about you?

• 1:05:49Speaker 02

  The, our impact on, on the women in our community, just what we're on, that was probably, probably that. It's a current hot button for me. I'm just fascinated by it. I'm amazed too at how, how much it's gone unnoticed, you know? I tried to communicate this to the people at Vogue and then it ended up with that spread they did on any Thor's daughter. And I think they were more tripping on her than fully appreciating that this was liberation from a devastating uh deadly culture that they were kind of at the heart of.

• 1:06:18Lewis Howes?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:06:18Speaker 02

  You know, it might've been, it might've been the wrong, the wrong audience, the wrong, the wrong magazine to make that point.

• 1:06:23Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:06:24Speaker 02

  But uh. And the other thing is, look, I'll just tell you where the current leadership is at CrossFit, at HQ, and it relates to pride and things I'd like to be asking, which the world knew. We have an elegant, marked by simplicity and efficacy. We have an elegant solution to the world's greatest problem, and that's chronic disease. And our team, the HQ team, has recommitted, we're doubling down to change the world's perception of what happens in the box. And I explain to staff, by the world, I mean, all those people that are never going to go to a gym and die from chronic disease. I would like them to know that there is, that we have something in our boxes.

• 1:07:07Speaker 02

  The people that are currently going to the gym, I'd like them to know. The people that are going to the box, going to the CrossFit, already CrossFitters, they need to know. You're not just getting fit. You're saving your life. And I need the people that train them to know it, and affiliates themselves to know it, and those of us at HQ. So literally, everyone in the world, I would like them to be increasingly aware of of what it is that's happening in the box and its health. That's what's happening in the box. It's way more significant than the fitness. Yes. The fitness is a Trojan horse, delivering wellness, delivering wellness. And, you know, sometimes you wish people knew, and there's a little regret. No, it's our job now to get that message out. So I get to come places like this and share that with you.

• 1:07:52Speaker 02

  Because I think it's really, really important. Sure. You know, it's not good to save a life and not know you're doing it, you know? Yeah. You ought to know. And you know what? We'll never see the heart attacks that don't happen. We won't see the Alzheimer's that doesn't develop. We're, you only see it when people get sick. But, but look, I got, I got, let's go with the 4 million figure. Well, 70% of the population is going to die from chronic disease. And so if our population were like any others, what that means is that we'd have an exposure of four, of about 2.8 million people that were going to die from, from that growing list of cancers that we believe come from metabolic syndrome. Those things we know do, the diabetes, the stroke, the heart disease, the Alzheimer's.

• 1:08:39Speaker 02

  They've gotten a pass on it. The, the metrics that would suggest that those things are in your future, um, HDL, triglyceride, glycated hemoglobin, um, uh, uh, blood pressure, the elements of body comp, for every CrossFitter, whether you're coming one day a week or, or five, um, those things are moving in the right direction, which means that you are sneaking out the door from chronic disease. Sure. And that may easily be 2.8 million saved lives in the current community, you know? They're still gonna die, but not, but not prematurely and needlessly. Mm-hmm. And, and that awareness is, uh, you know, that's something we need, something we need

• 1:09:24Speaker 02

  to share. And it, and it's, and it's that. So it's 2.8 million lives that you have to, you have to weigh the ACL tears and the sprains and the strains. But I'll tell you, you know, it's a little weird to be sitting in the orthopedic surgeon's office with your badass studly injury you got from your sport, and to see some fat dude who got the same thing getting out of his pickup truck. Right. You know, like, fell out of bed in the morning and you're, you're gonna be in the same hospital room, you know, like? Exactly. Um, everybody gets hurt. Yeah, yeah. Everybody gets hurt. That being said, um, we are dramatically safer than that, uh,

• 1:10:01Speaker 02

  jumping jack, push-up, uh, sit-up, run, lather, rinse, repeat, PT that was going on in everywhere, especially in, in like military and law enforcement training, you know, in schools. And we know this because we are the in-house fitness program for, you know, um, maybe a hundred military and law enforcement training programs. Yeah. We've been at Colorado State Patrol for now like 15 years, 16 years. Wow. And we know the injury rates. And let me tell you what I tell them about their injury rates. I look at it and I go, you, you need to get more people hurt.

• 1:10:34Lewis Howes?

  You do.

• 1:10:35Speaker 02

  Um, it's too low.

• 1:10:37Lewis Howes?

  Too safe.

• 1:10:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, make them fitter.

• 1:10:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:39Speaker 02

  When I strive to, to bring the injury down to zero, um, I'm pulling the plug on the, on the, on the efficacy.

• 1:10:48Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:10:48Speaker 02

  And you need some tolerance, you know? Uh, yeah, as I said, you were a gymnast. Yes. Oh, did you ever get hurt? Never. I'm like, okay, you know, I know what kind of gymnast you were.

• 1:10:57Lewis Howes?

  Right, right.

• 1:10:57Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, your mom took you five times, kind of gymnast. You can't be, you can't stay in that sport without injury. It's true of football, too.

• 1:11:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:07Speaker 02

  It's no uninjured.

• 1:11:08Lewis Howes?

  Many, many injured seasons, yeah.

• 1:11:10Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:11:10Lewis Howes?

  Play through it, too.

• 1:11:11Speaker 02

  They play injured.

• 1:11:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:11:13Speaker 02

  I used to see the, all the greats from the Raiders over at, at Gold's and I remember, I remember seeing Todd Christensen with a bruise from ribs to knee on like, you know, and it would be like, it would just be this horrible thing that would expand and then contract in the space of a week and getting ready for the next week.

• 1:11:36Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy.

• 1:11:37Speaker 02

  Yeah, it was just amazing.

• 1:11:38Lewis Howes?

  Hmm. What is something that you're most grateful for recently in your life?

• 1:11:43Speaker 02

  All my babies, you know? I got, I got seven kids and.

• 1:11:47Lewis Howes?

  Seven kids?

• 1:11:47Speaker 02

  Yeah, and they're just amazing and I, that's the easy answer now because I'm, I'm uh, two weeks away from them right now, you know, and I'm, and I'm gonna go see them tonight or tomorrow, depending on my.

• 1:11:58Lewis Howes?

  Wow.

• 1:11:58Speaker 02

  Energy levels for the drive our planes down, so I'm, I'm driving it and uh, I just, the little ones are, are amazing. You get such insights into, into the world and humanity and seeing how an empty little head fills and I.

• 1:12:14Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 1:12:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, I love that. My little one said, uh, of course they're dangerous. That's why they call them murder cycles. It's like, I mean, that's just rich, right?

• 1:12:24Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:12:26Lewis Howes?

  Very cool.

• 1:12:26Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 1:12:27Lewis Howes?

  Um, this is a question I ask all my guests at the end. It's called the three truths question. So if this was the, uh, the last day for you many, many years from now and you achieved everything you wanted to achieve and you got to write down on a piece of paper, three things you know to be true about all of your experience in life that you would pass on three lessons to your friends, your family, the world, what would those three?

• 1:12:51Speaker 02

  And Lewis will give me 20 seconds to think of them.

• 1:12:53Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. Off the spot.

• 1:12:55Speaker 02

  As the plane's going down.

• 1:12:56Lewis Howes?

  Exactly.

• 1:12:58Speaker 02

  Here's a pencil and paper.

• 1:12:59Lewis Howes?

  Uh, just kind of first, first thing that comes to you. It doesn't have to be perfect, yeah.

• 1:13:03Speaker 02

  Yeah, you know, check the ego, be honest. And I can, I can, I can give it to you. This isn't gonna be, this is gonna be succinct, but, but it is, is an important lesson. And it applies, I think, everything we do. I, I routinely come across someone who's extended themselves for someone's and it backfired. It was either, you know, someone took advantage or wouldn't take advantage, but you, my God, look what I did for you. And then you look what you did for it and I'm all bent out of shape, you know? And I've come to see that the, that the spirit of the charity has to be, has to be that it's up to them.

• 1:13:46Speaker 02

  And, and you can't invest of yourself so much that you're disappointed in the give if it doesn't come out right. And it's not a truly charitable thing if it's, if it's not just that honest that, uh, I don't know what you're gonna do with this and I got my hopes, but, but I don't want to, I don't want to be, let's say disappointed if it doesn't work out because I don't want that to discourage me from, you know, you don't ever want the lesson to your chair to be that I'm never gonna do that again for anybody.

• 1:14:16Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, of course.

• 1:14:17Speaker 02

  You know, and so you have to, you have to get, you have to be willing to get burned and, and repeatedly to find that special person. And it's probably true in love employees and I'm not wrecking your cord.

• 1:14:33Speaker 02

  It's a, I think that's really important. I think it's really important because I see, I see that a lot in people. They're, uh, in the training floor, it was, uh, I had to be very careful. Maybe it was my problem, but I had to be careful that things got weird when I wanted more for people than they wanted for themselves. And it's, and it stresses relationships. And so as a trainer, I was always kind of try to figure out what you want and what you're, how, what, what you're really willing to give. And I needed to be close to that. I'd like to be a little bit in front of you maybe, but I didn't want to be like, you're not living up to your potential.

• 1:15:08Lewis Howes?

  Right, right, right, right.

• 1:15:09Speaker 02

  You know, that, that doesn't, it doesn't work for anybody.

• 1:15:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:15:12Speaker 02

  And that is, believe it or not, for me somehow in my head, related to that giving and being willing to, to see it not come out ideally. And don't take the lesson from it to not give again.

• 1:15:24Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, very cool, very cool.

• 1:15:28Lewis Howes?

  How can we support you? What's, uh, what's the main thing you want people to take action on and? Try, look at.

• 1:15:34Speaker 02

  Yeah, I'll tell you, I'll tell you something that's dear to us right now. Uh, I've got a, I've got a gripe with the, with the soda people. And it's three-pronged. Uh, the first is, this stuff's toxic, but you know what? So is meth. So is alcohol. And there's a lot of toxic things in the world that, that don't support health.

• 1:15:56Speaker 02

  But I don't see them, um, having had a corrupting influence on the health sciences and soda has. Their, their, uh, impact at, at NIH and at CDC and USDA and FDA. And the American College of Sports Medicine and the National Stank Exorcising Association. It's been, it's been, it's been a national shame and a tragedy of unprecedented proportion that we've exported.

• 1:16:24Speaker 02

  So I've got the toxicity, the corruption of the sciences, and then the third, um, these people have stood up some, uh, 501(c)(3)'s and proxies that have, um, lobbied and, and, uh, and, uh, uh, and, uh, legislated against our affiliates. And that's the unforgivable one. Um, you know, it was always poison. And I always suspected the corruption, but we weren't bothered by it because we were doing our own thing. And here's how I deal with soda. Meat and vegetables, nuts and seeds, some fruit, little starch, and no sugar, and it's done. And I got four million people that don't drink the shit.

• 1:17:05Speaker 02

  But to find that I've got 22 pieces of legislation in eight states over nine years, with my training and its crosshairs, when I find that Coca-Cola has spent a fortune to be the leading player in the chronic disease space and the training of trainers to fight this, this chronic disease, to make sure that it's known that you never talk about food. Something's got to change and so now it's a war. Now it's a war. So it's those, it's those three things. The toxicity, the corruption of the health sciences and then trying to stop us from just doing our own thing. We weren't bothering anybody. Right. You know, my, my affront to soda pop was the, was the

• 1:17:51Speaker 02

  new gym that opens every two hours and 24 minutes somewhere around the world is going to have two or 300 members that won't drink their shit eventually. That's all we were doing. I didn't try to make what they do illegal. And, and they did and they're denying it too. But we went to the Podesta group and it's like my favorite lobbying firm on earth. We went to them and retained them to help us find out just where this stuff had come from. One of these licensure bills actually passed in DC and we were getting it repealed, which is a, which is a miracle. I mean, it was a page two Wall Street Journal story that CrossFit was the, this is only the eighth time in 40 years that a piece of occupational licensure had been repealed.

• 1:18:35Speaker 02

  And two of the times it's happened, it got put back, but we, we hired them to help us figure out where this came from. Yeah. And the language was big chunks of language identical. And so there's, there's a fingerprint on this. Who wrote it, who sponsored it and why? And it's traced back to organizations that have no visible means of support outside of, outside of soda. Wow. And so that's, that's a. What can we do to support? You know, the awareness is everything. Yeah. Awareness is everything. And so I, you know. Don't drink pop. That's how we can support. You know, you know, it's, look, that's already handled in our, we have our consumptive reduction program. None of us are reading, so that's, that's not the goal. I want to drive them out of the health sciences so that I get them out of the fitness space. Sure.

• 1:19:20Speaker 02

  And at first I just want them out of the fitness space, but I realized that, that the fix was in it on, with the docs. And we'll never find freedom with their soul. They've been, they've been paid off, you know, they've been silenced. Gotcha. And so I'm going to have to fix medicine to fix fitness. And we definitely have a problem. Our crew, my Russ Green. Found that the head of nutrition, preventative nutrition research or some damn thing at the National Cancer Institute, sat on a big soda's payroll at the, at the International Life Sciences Institute. Sounds good, right? Has a bunch of soda heads collecting soda salaries

• 1:20:01Speaker 02

  to, to corrupt science. But you can imagine, he did this until his death. And can you imagine being in charge of, of, of nutrition research at the National Cancer Institute while taking a check from Coca-Cola? And what you'd expect to come of that is, is these, these organizations would be incapable of pointing to sugar as a culprit in the diet. Guess what? They're in it, they've been unable to do that. So I go to the CDC's website and what do I see? What do they want to do to avoid chronic disease? Reduce saturated fat and salt intake. Let me share something with you. You know, the 2.8 million people are going to die? That wouldn't have saved a one of them. Not a one of them.

• 1:20:39Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:40Speaker 02

  Yeah. You want to have a profound impact on someone's life, take their sugar away.

• 1:20:42Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 1:20:44Speaker 02

  Thank you for this.

• 1:20:45Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, you're welcome.

• 1:20:46Speaker 02

  You've been, you've been, you've been a great interviewer.

• 1:20:47Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, I've got, I've got one final question for you.

• 1:20:49Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:20:50Lewis Howes?

  And before I, I ask, I want to take a moment to acknowledge you for your incredible drive and for being a catalyst for saving so many people's lives and transforming health in so many people. It's unbelievable to see what you've built and what the community has built with you.

• 1:21:08Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:21:09Lewis Howes?

  And how people have rallied behind this idea of eating better and moving functionally. And you've been leading the charge. So I want to acknowledge Greg for that.

• 1:21:18Speaker 02

  I warmly appreciate that. But I have to let you know, I'm, I'm a little uncomfortable just to part humility and part just honesty. Um, I got, I got a lot of people that put a lot of energy into, into what I'm doing and done.

• 1:21:35Speaker 02

  And going back to to my first partner, Lauren Glassman, to all the people that support me today and including a whole cauldron of folks that worked for free for years before there was a job. Worked for free for years before there was a job. And once that happens, it's it's hard to it's hard to me or I anything. It's we.

• 1:21:59Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:22:00Speaker 02

  You know, we did this.

• 1:22:01Lewis Howes?

  Right. Well, I appreciate you being the catalyst.

• 1:22:03Speaker 02

  Thank you.

• 1:22:03Lewis Howes?

  To inspire people.

• 1:22:04Speaker 02

  I tell people, I threw a lit cigarette out the window and it started a forest fire.

• 1:22:08Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:22:09Speaker 02

  You're saying I'm not I'm not the god of the sun.

• 1:22:11Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure. Final question for you.

• 1:22:13Speaker 02

  Yes, sir.

• 1:22:13Lewis Howes?

  What's your definition of greatness?

• 1:22:16Speaker 02

  Definition of greatness? I don't know. I don't have one. It's weak, but.

• 1:22:21Lewis Howes?

  Nothing coming to mind.

• 1:22:22Speaker 02

  You know, you know, what's interesting, like greatness is one of those things. It's like it's like endpoint, you know? And I'm a process guy. And I and I I'm not so much about achievement as I'm about process. And you stay committed to process and that's where achievement comes from. But we we there are things that we we set out to do. And and I don't have a sense of whether it's going to take 18 months or 50 years. And I don't care either because it's we're going to do the right thing for the right people for the right reason. It's always it's always paid off sooner than I would have thought. But I was I never started with that in mind.

• 1:23:00Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:01Speaker 02

  It's kind of like, and I use the example of a fight, too. I've been in I've been in a lot of fights of all sorts, but I've never I've never I've never picked one because I was sure I'd win it. It was like it was just it's time to do this, you know?

• 1:23:18Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:23:18Speaker 02

  So this this this person or concept needs their ass beat.

• 1:23:22Lewis Howes?

  Sure, sure.

• 1:23:23Speaker 02

  And it may not work, but it's it's it's needed and I'm I'm gonna give it a whirl, you know? Hold my beer, watch this.

• 1:23:29Lewis Howes?

  Sure.

• 1:23:30Speaker 02

  I don't have I don't have a definition of greatness.

• 1:23:32Lewis Howes?

  Thank you very much.

• 1:23:33Speaker 02

  Thank you very much.

• 1:23:34Lewis Howes?

  Thank you.

• 1:23:36Lewis Howes?

  There you have it, guys. I hope you enjoyed this powerful and insightful interview with Greg Glassman, the founder of CrossFit. Again, if you haven't shared this out yet, make sure to click on the share button on your podcast app, if you're on your phone, or if you're on the website at lewishouse.com/412. Share that out with your friends on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram. Tag me at Lewis Howes and let me know what you thought of this interview. If you thought something was powerful, if you thought you wish I would have asked something different, let me know. I want to know so I can make this better for you in the future. Again, check out the full show notes to hear all the things that we talked about and cover all the things we talked about at lewishouse.com/412

• 1:24:17Lewis Howes?

  to learn more. I love you, guys. I appreciate you so very much. We've got some incredible guests coming up. Oh, I'm so pumped for you guys, or what we're about to bring on the School of Greatness podcast. So, thank you for all you do to be a part of this incredible community of greatness, and for spreading the message to all your friends. I love you, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.