RYAN FISCHER | The Life Story | Modern Wisdom Podcast 141

Ryan Fischer is a multi-sport athlete, coach & gym owner. Ryan is one of the most interesting characters in fitness. From being among the top BMXers on the planet, to almost making the USA Bobsleigh Team and competing multiple times at The CrossFit Regionals. He's been a pilot, homeless, lived in his car, then started a million-dollar gym to now has become a household name in the world of programming and coaching. Nothing but good vibes today as Ryan gives us his entire backstory and displays how you can overcome adversity with hard work and a positive mindset. Extra Stuff: Follow Ryan on Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/ryanfisch/ Check out Ryan's Website - https://www.gymryan.com/ Take a break from alcohol and upgrade your life - https://6monthssober.com/podcast Check out everything I recommend from books to products - https://www.amazon.co.uk/shop/modernwisdom #ryanfischer #crossfit #fitness - Listen to all episodes online. Search "Modern Wisdom" on any Podcast App or click here: iTunes: https://apple.co/2MNqIgw Spotify: https://spoti.fi/2LSimPn Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/modern-wisdom - Get in touch in the comments below or head to... Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx Email: [email protected]

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

• 0:00Speaker 00

  So I like gained the respect, everybody in the gym, everybody started to love me. And after that month, my mom was like, you know, I'm not going to help you anymore. I just really, there's no need for me to help you. You need to figure your life out. I really think you should go back to school. I think you should give up on this whole CrossFit thing. So man, I had a lot to think about. And I think what really started to happen was I just was running out of money and I didn't know what to do anymore. So I had to come to grips with my friends and tell them like, hey, I don't have any money. And I might have to drive all the way home to New Jersey to my mom's house, go back to school and do something I potentially don't even want to do. So there was this girl and he's like, you know what? You can sleep on my couch if you want, for as long as you need to get on your feet. And but I had never talked to this girl in my life. And I originally turned it down and then got to the point where I had to move all my stuff out of my house that I was living in and I sold all my stuff.

• 0:44Speaker 00

  And I had slept in my car for like a week and I was like, I can't do this. This doesn't right, you know? So during that week, actually, is when I started to steal. I started stealing like food and groceries and stuff from the grocery store because I wanted to stay and I didn't have any money.

• 1:01Chris Williamson?

  Ryan Fischer in the building. How are you, man?

• 1:05Speaker 00

  Super excited. It's been, it's been a long time coming.

• 1:08Chris Williamson?

  It's been a very long time coming. I mean, you've missed each other like three different times, time zone problems, but I've got you. I've locked you down. How's the bicep? How's the injury?

• 1:16Speaker 00

  Oh, well, actually that is coming along. I have like maybe three more weeks until I can kind of cut loose. But right now it's been, it's been one hell of an experience. I've never had to stay so diligent about something for so long. Like I've, I've literally had to like do nothing for two months. And then after that, it's been very, very lightweights for the last like month. And I'm just like dying to get after it again. But I think it was, I think it's been good for me though, because I've been, I've been getting after it for such a long time. But to have a little bit of a break is probably good.

• 1:49Chris Williamson?

  You've probably given other bits of your body a rest as well.

• 1:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. Um, it's interesting. I've had a little bit of an injury as well. And one thing that was a question that's come through in my mind was who are you without your fitness? You know, without that endorphin kick every single day. It's like being on a drug for all your life and someone taking it away.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  For me, it was more like my whole life is fitness in terms of like my business and like things that I sell and everything. And like, I feel like me looking good is part of all that. And just like, it kind of gave me a little bit of stress and anxiety. And then I was like, oh, wait a second. Like all the stuff that you've made, you've already made. You don't like need to currently look amazing in this exact moment. And then like there's other things that you want to do that have nothing to do with that. And I've spent this entire time kind of focusing on those things. And I don't think I would have gotten as far into some of these other projects that I have if it wasn't for the injury.

• 2:42Chris Williamson?

  It's a good way to kind of force fitness out of your life for a little bit and give you give you time to focus on other stuff, right?

• 2:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, for sure.

• 2:52Chris Williamson?

  Cool, man. So first off, how do you describe what you do? Someone says, hey, hey, friends, I've met you at an event. What are you? So tell me who you are. What do you do?

• 3:01Speaker 00

  That's funny, because I get that question a lot because everybody knows that I do a lot of things. So I'm always like, shit, I guess I'll tell, I guess I tell everybody that, I guess the short part would say I'm a fitness entrepreneur. But usually I say I own a bunch of fitness companies and I own a social media agency. That's usually what I say. So I do have books that I sell that do very, very well. So there's, but there's probably like almost 10 different books that I sell like daily. And then I have my earn your carbs challenge, which is, it used to be the carb cycle challenge, and then the keto cycle challenge. And now I'm just turning it all into just the earn your carbs challenge. And you get to pick which way you want to go. So if you like

• 3:43Speaker 00

  high fat diets, then keto cycle is the way to go. If you like high carbs, then keto, the carb cycle is the way to go. And you just pick it. And I get these people in a group on Facebook, we do live Q and As together. They get all this information. I've created a website that you put in your daily energy expenditure and all the numbers and stuff pop up. It's custom to me. And then they get books and workouts and all sorts of stuff. And it's, it's this, it's this big thing that I just did for fun for my gym. And I would post them on social media on my CrossFit chalk Instagram, because that was my first gym was my CrossFit gym. And people were like, I want to do this challenge. It looks really good. And I was like, all right, well, why don't you Venmo me or PayPal me? And then all of a sudden, like, all these people were Venmoing and PayPal me. And I was, I

• 4:28Speaker 00

  couldn't keep up with it. I started to, I'd be sitting home on my phone. And I'd be like, oh, my God, well, this person, and I have to let him into the group. And before I knew it, I'd be on my phone all day for like 2,000 bucks for the month or something. And I'd be like, man, I, there's got to be a better way to do this. So eventually I started to figure out a better way to do that. And now the challenge is, it's a little bit easier to purchase and a little bit easier to manage.

• 4:52Speaker 00

  But as I got better at that, I realized that there was a better way to sell your products as well. And I got into like social media kind of marketing. And then from there, um, I just created the marketing agency that kind of helped me in the beginning. I had all those people quit their job and then we kind of just did it for other people.

• 5:09Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  So now a lot of my really good friends who are like kind of big in the fitness industry, I run all their ads for them. And I just take a percentage of that of the sales so that everybody seems to want to work really, really hard to get that person to make money. So in short,

• 5:23Chris Williamson?

  A lot.

• 5:24Speaker 00

  I created, I created that agency basically to help other people. Uh, and then I have my stuff that's all helping at the same time. And then I run my gym. I run my, I, I'm, I live here in Orange County, California, and I run my gym every day. And I run the Instagram. I run the Instagrams for both.

• 5:40Chris Williamson?

  Is that still you? You haven't outsourced the Instagram to anyone else?

• 5:44Speaker 00

  Nope.

• 5:45Chris Williamson?

  Wow. You know, you get to your sort of size of, of kind of workload and sometimes you've got the, the social media assistant, you dictate across the room. They put the post up or whatever.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  I have, I have someone who does like stories for CrossFit Chalk. And then they'll answer some of the DMs, but I always make the post.

• 6:04Chris Williamson?

  That's an interesting takeaway for gym owners. There'll be a lot of gym owners listening, a lot of athletes listening, people who maybe have aspirations to own their own facility eventually. And, um, it's interesting that you've, you've held on to that, this sense of connection between you and marketing.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  So with, with the post for the gym, they're so important to me because what you say is going to resonate with somebody on some level. You might say something like sometimes I'll talk about like why we do hip thrusts. And I don't think that my person that works the desk can, you know, really talk about hip thrust in like a, in a way that makes people want to do hip thrusts.

• 6:40Chris Williamson?

  I don't think anyone can talk about hip thrusts in a way that makes anyone want to do hip thrusts. That's single, like split squats, man. No one wants to do split squats.

• 6:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. But then I'll also write like, well, hey, like, if you, you know, do you follow CrossFit? Do you follow Chalk online programming or whatever? If you don't, then you know, blah, blah, blah, blah. And like, I don't think anyone's going to want to take, you know, pride and initiative into saying these little things that kind of hook people in. So I always do the post and there's definitely days that go by where I'm just like, I'm so fried on my own Instagram that I just don't even do a post. It happens for sure. I don't think I made one yesterday. My own Instagram is a beast. So it's like, I'll answer at least 100 DMs a day. I have, I always do a post, no matter what. I always do my stories. No one's ever answered a DM in my, in my Instagram.

• 7:29Chris Williamson?

  I mean, that's how we connected, right? You know, I'm hustling you slide into the DMs and we finally get the date right for this. So yeah, I've got a, I've got a friend, George McGill, who talks about that. He says the barbell strategy for certain things like all in or all out for a lot of things, get the people that do the stuff that you're bad at to take that over and then continue to double down. So yeah, what I want to do, I want to get, I want to have the definitive guide to Ryan Fischer's life, right? I want anyone that follows you online. And for the people who don't, you have an interesting, very interesting background. And you hear these stories on your Insta or social media or whatever, little separate bits, little chunks. And that obviously sort of ties people in, but I want to hear, I want the full Monty, right? I want start to finish. Tell us how we, tell us how we get to you being sat here in front of me in Orange County.

• 8:14Speaker 00

  How, where do you want to start?

• 8:15Chris Williamson?

  Let's start at childhood, man. Where are you from?

• 8:18Speaker 00

  Oh shit. All right. Cool. Um, this might take a while, by the way.

• 8:22Chris Williamson?

  It's fine, man. That's what we're here for.

• 8:24Speaker 00

  But I'm good for it. So childhood, I lived in Tom's River, New Jersey. It's a little beach town, central part of New Jersey, all the way in the East Coast. It's obviously a lot farther away than I am right now.

• 8:37Speaker 00

  And as I grew up, I, well, this is actually part of the story is I, I always felt like there was something wrong with me in my family. I, I grew up in a big family. I had, you know, I have, I have five brothers and sisters that I'd lived with in a house, but then I have three other sisters from my dad's side.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  None of us have the same two parents at any point. I didn't know that like realistically until I was like 18. And then I found out who my dad was when I was 18 and then I met him when I was 24. And, and when I actually met him, it made a lot of things in my life, you know?

• 9:16Speaker 00

  Make me understand a lot of things like I I genuinely as a kid was like I don't get it. I I don't know why I'm here like I would feel like I'd wake up in the wrong family every single day.

• 9:25Chris Williamson?

  Black sheep.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  It was such a strange feeling and it took until I was twenty four to figure out why I felt that way. And basically as I grew up, I was always just like a fucking madman like I wanted to I my mom bought me a bike one year for Christmas and I just never put it down like I would ride everywhere like I remember getting like flat tires on my bike and having to call my mom and I at the time I had this giant monstrosity of a phone and it was like it was it was a prepaid phone.

• 9:55Speaker 00

  And I had like ten minutes on it and I'd call my mom and I'd be like, hey, I'm all the way out here. You need to pick me up. I got a flat tire and she'd be like, that's like a thirty five minute car ride. Which like on a

• 10:04Chris Williamson?

  Twenty miles or something.

• 10:06Speaker 00

  On a bike would be like, you know, super far and then um she'd come get me and be like, what is wrong with you? Like, you're twelve. You're not allowed to ride your bike this far. And then I started to like really get into it and then my mom was like, well, maybe we should look into he's obviously really good at riding his bike. So I started like BMX racing. And that was like my first my first like addictive sport that I ever did and I I raced all over. I was um I was number fifteen in the country most years. That was like my ten to fifteen range and then one year I was number one. And then I had to go to Australia for world championships, but nobody in my family really like flew. They're all kind of scared of flying, so I never went.

• 10:46Chris Williamson?

  Oh, man, what a shame.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  But even just forfeiting like to go to the world championships, I still got I was like thirty fifth in the world that year, which is pretty cool.

• 10:54Speaker 00

  And then in the high school, I transferred like all that riding and stuff kind of transferred into, you know, I had some pretty good cardio. So I started running track and cross country. I also played football. I played lacrosse. I did all the sports, but nothing really. I didn't really love anything to the point where it was like really like, you know, sweep me off my feet. I did like track a lot. But I had a coach who, he ran us so much that like I, I wound up getting kind of like a little bit of knee pain and it was a lot. I was running like eighty to a hundred miles a week as a young kid. Which is a lot. I don't know if you know what that is and it's probably kilometers for you.

• 11:29Chris Williamson?

  No, no, no, we're, we're miles as well, man. That's the only thing. You're on the wrong side of the road. You're using Fahrenheit instead of Celsius, but I'll stick to the fact that you know that miles is miles, right?

• 11:39Speaker 00

  That's good. All right. So from there, um, I wound up

• 11:46Speaker 00

  thinking I was gonna go be a pilot someday. After all the sports and everything, I, I actually got a really good scholarship to run at a Ivy League school, which is Cornell University, if you, if you know who they are. And I turned it down because I was kind of overrunning.

• 12:00Speaker 00

  So then I was like, all right, I want to go be a pilot. That sounds cool. It sounds fun. It's right out my alley. You know, I was kind of adventure, kind of junky.

• 12:05Chris Williamson?

  Military, military pilot or like commercial stuff?

• 12:09Speaker 00

  Commercial stuff. So I actually moved to, as soon as school was over, you know, obviously I didn't really like the way I felt in my family. So I went as far away as possible. I lived in New Jersey and I lived in Hawaii.

• 12:20Chris Williamson?

  That is, that is as far away as you can get, yeah.

• 12:23Speaker 00

  I got far away. I went to pilot school. I got my helicopter license. That was my first, first job. So I was a helicopter pilot. And I kind of missed like doing other things. Like I missed like working out and I, I missed that, that feeling. So one day I was actually just walking through the dorms where I was living for, because I was going to school as well. And there was a sign that said, you know, tryouts for bobsled and skeleton for the US Olympic team or whatever.

• 12:54Chris Williamson?

  In Hawaii?

• 12:56Speaker 00

  In Hawaii. So they, Verizon, the phone company. They were going to every single state, all fifty states, trying to recruit people.

• 13:03Chris Williamson?

  Shit.

• 13:04Speaker 00

  And, and I see this sign and I was like, man, that would be sweet, you know? Uh, so I was like, I just decided I was just gonna go to tryouts and see how I did. And I went to the tryouts and I got like third in the nation. So it was.

• 13:19Chris Williamson?

  Having never, having never bobsledded before.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  No, but the the the combine was a three rep max back squat.

• 13:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  A one a one rep max power clean, a vertical jump. There was a sprint where they had timing eyes and it would it would be 15 meters, 30 meters and 45. And then there was an underhand like medicine ball toss. So like out of all the numbers, I had these crazy scores. I didn't even have any idea that I was, you know. Even when it was all said and done, I was like, is that good? And they're like, dude, those numbers are insane. So. Before I knew it, like within like six months, I had. Flown out to Utah and lived in Utah for. About five years. And then actually made it all the way up to like. Potentially being on the Olympic team and I hurt my hamstring and I never went to the Olympics.

• 14:09Chris Williamson?

  Fuck.

• 14:10Speaker 00

  I know.

• 14:11Chris Williamson?

  So that's that's twice now that you've got essentially next to the top flight. How old are you here? Like 22 is that? That age?

• 14:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, right around there.

• 14:19Chris Williamson?

  Cool. So that by the age of 22, you've got to the top flight in two different sports, two very different sports. One's on ice, one's on a bike. Um, and both times through kind of no. Real error or inability on your part, you've. Just kind of fallen. Short.

• 14:35Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that transfers over again when I go to CrossFit.

• 14:38Chris Williamson?

  I know, I know.

• 14:41Chris Williamson?

  There's a theme. There's a theme happening here.

• 14:44Speaker 00

  Um, so yeah, like.

• 14:46Chris Williamson?

  What was your time? What was your time like in Utah? Do you enjoy it there?

• 14:50Speaker 00

  I actually hated it. Like.

• 14:52Chris Williamson?

  Why?

• 14:53Speaker 00

  The entire time I lived there, I was like, this is so boring. Um, there's really nothing to do here. I lived in Park City, which is a very small town up in the mountains.

• 15:01Chris Williamson?

  Loads of Mormons.

• 15:02Speaker 00

  And I, yep. I mean, you can definitely feel the Mormon. Influence, but. You know, funny story is I didn't even know what a Mormon was. Some, one of the guys on my team was like, we were, we were training together. He was a. I started as a skeleton athlete, so head first.

• 15:18Chris Williamson?

  Fuck, that's the, that's the real scary one, man. That's the balls to the wall one.

• 15:23Speaker 00

  I wasn't big enough for bobsled yet. I was only like a hundred and sixty-five pounds.

• 15:27Chris Williamson?

  Okay.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Hundred and sixty, hundred and sixty-five pounds. I was pretty small at the time. A- and I, the only thing I qualified for was skeleton at that time. So, in the beginning, I started at skeleton camp and was with these kids who all did skeleton. And this one kid who was really, really good, he was telling me how he was gonna go on a mission. And he's like, hey, I'm going on a mission and I'll, I'll be ba- I'm gonna be back, I'll be gone for like two years. And I was like, "A mission? Like, you going in the Marines?" And then-

• 15:52Chris Williamson?

  You and Tom Cruise?

• 15:55Speaker 00

  And he's like, "No, I'm Mormon." I was like, "Yeah, but a mission is like military stuff, right?" And he's like, "No." He's like, "Do you know where you are right now?" And I was like, "No, I have no idea."

• 16:06Speaker 00

  And then he tells me like what Mormon people are, cause I had, dude, I had no, thank God he told me though, cause I went on some dates with some girls where it made a lot of sense. So,

• 16:16Speaker 00

  Um, so, After all that, where am I now? So I'm in, I'm in Utah, yeah. And then, As I get older, now I look back and I'm like, "Man, I, I really messed it up." Because Utah's a really cool place. There's all these hikes to do that I'm into now and All these great places to see. And it's, it's, it's an amazing place, actually. And at the time, I just,

• 16:39Speaker 00

  I was one of those people who was like a thousand percent into something and didn't care about anything else. And I look back now and I see the younger version of myself in my gym, the manager of my gym right now, this girl Summer, she's just, She's so into CrossFit. It's the only thing that matters and nothing else matters. And I get that. Like, I was there for everything I've ever done. And I just think, I'm like, "Man, if, if you'd have just brought in a little bit more flexibility into your life, like you just liked a few other things, I think you'd be better." Because There's years of my life that I almost don't even remember, Because I was so strict on my life. Like, I didn't go out. I only ate this. I only went to bed at this time. Like, I always worked out, like- Everything was so structured and I didn't even care about anything else. I was like, I don't

• 17:22Speaker 00

  give a fuck. I'm just gonna be a machine until I just win everything.

• 17:25Chris Williamson?

  Hmm. Isn't it interesting? So we love athletes that are at the peak of their sport, right? You look at someone like Eddie Hall, world's strongest man, but he was adamant that if he'd kept going for a couple of years, he'd have been divorced from his wife and probably dead from a heart attack. But as the people for whom sport is everything they've got or everything they want, they have to make those sacrifices because if they don't, you'll get outcompeted by the Eddie Hall of bobsled or the Eddie Hall of like skeleton or whatever. But you are right. Like when you look back, the benefit of 2020 vision in hindsight is that you can always think, fuck, if I'd sacrificed 2% of that, I could have benefited maybe 20% of life. I could have gone, gone done a hike. I have a friend

• 18:08Chris Williamson?

  who lives in Utah and out of her front door, I saw this video and it's just normal, total normal neighborhood, but the background's just mountains, like some Lord of the Rings shit. And I'm like, that looks so amazing. But obviously for you, you were like, no, head down, crack on. And that's the sacrifice you gotta make. But like you say, with hindsight, it's more challenging.

• 18:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's, I look back and I'm like, I really wasted some years for sure. But I mean, for me at the time, I would, I would tell you that I was happy and I was, you know, I was doing what I, what I love to do. And that's really the trade off.

• 18:40Chris Williamson?

  I wonder as well, if you'd changed that, whether you would have been happy. You now, in that life, might have been happy with the change up, but you then didn't want it at all. Or you'd have done it? Do you know what I mean?

• 18:52Speaker 00

  No, I don't think I would have. I think I, I probably would have been miserable. I would have been like, you're, you're taking me out of what I think is best for me right now.

• 18:59Chris Williamson?

  Fuck you, old Orion. Young Orion knows what he's doing.

• 19:02Speaker 00

  There's, there's such a different definition of what happy is now. It's unreal.

• 19:08Speaker 00

  So I guess from there, I... Start to realize that, you know, I don't want to do this again for another four years, right? The Olympic, nobody gives a shit about my sport until the Olympic year. Even world championships is like the exact same thing as the Olympics and people don't realize this, but like the world championships that happen every year for skeleton, bobsled, skiing, snowboarding, everything is the same thing as the Olympic year. It's just that you don't have the whole world watching.

• 19:35Speaker 00

  And for us, for the sliding sports, we like to call them skeleton, bobsled, luge, nobody was there for world championships. Nobody was there for the national events, like none of that stuff. So there was really no allure during, during that time. So to stick it out for another four years to potentially get to that moment and potentially get injured again or something was very scary to me. And I was like, no, let's maybe just like go into the military, you know, to go be a pilot like I originally wanted to do, or I'll do something else. Like now that I'm a, you know, this really great athlete, maybe I'll, maybe I'll do like special forces or something like that, just because to be in a helicopter hasn't seemed like it's probably best suited for me at this moment. So I started looking into all the special forces branches, like the army, the navy,

• 20:19Speaker 00

  the air force, all this stuff. And a friend of mine said, you know, you should really try doing CrossFit. I think that it's a great training tool for anybody going in the military. Even if you're going to go in and be a pilot, you still have to get through bootcamp and stuff and it'd be great to have this under your belt. So I, I walk into a CrossFit gym and the owner of the gym, his name is Tommy Hackenbrock, if you know who this is.

• 20:39Chris Williamson?

  Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

• 20:41Speaker 00

  The year I walked into his gym, he had just gotten second place at the CrossFit Games. So I didn't know who he was, but as I walked in, I saw his eyes locked on me and he was like, oh, this guy. Like he could just tell, cause I was like really, really fit from bobsled and I think I was like almost, I was almost like 200 pounds at the time and just jacked. And my entire CrossFit career, I've been probably 175 to 180 pounds. So I was a lot bigger than I, than I am now. And I remember walking in and he, he saw me and we had this intro class together where he gives me like a, we just do like a pretty basic workout. And there's five other people that are there for this basic workout as

• 21:22Speaker 00

  well. And as, after the workout, I remember he's just looking at me and he's like, dude, I need someone like you to train with. And I'm like, well, I don't know how to do any of this stuff. I'm just here because I heard that this was going to be cool. I wanted to go in the military. And he's like, well, You know, if you agree to come at like certain times, like when I train, you don't have to pay for a membership and you know, you can help me train for events. And I think that, I think this might be something you really like.

• 21:50Chris Williamson?

  Is this in Utah?

• 21:52Speaker 00

  This is in Utah, in Salt Lake City.

• 21:54Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 21:55Speaker 00

  So I decided I was no longer going to do bobsled anymore and I moved from Park City to Salt Lake City, which is like 30 minutes down a giant mountain.

• 22:05Chris Williamson?

  That's the most, that's the most like Utah direction ever. It's like, go 30 minutes down the mountain, you will find the city.

• 22:12Speaker 00

  So the city was there. And I'm living in the city and I'm, and I'm finishing my degree at the university. And I go to this gym and I meet him. So then we just start training all the time. And probably within a few months, I had articles about me all over the place that I was like this freak athlete. And everybody was excited to see me go to regionals. And excited to see me go to the games and you could look up old articles, I was like the dark horse athlete and all this stuff and it kind of gave me a big head. I was like, oh yeah, I'm going to fucking crush this sport, you know? So I went to my first regional, which would have been, had I gotten top three, I would have went to the CrossFit Games. And it was almost like everybody was like, oh, Ryan's definitely getting top three.

• 22:54Speaker 00

  And I went and I got like 14th because I had absolutely no idea how to compete. Like I was insanely good, but I had no idea what I was doing. Like handstand pushups, for instance, you had to flip up on the wall and do a handstand pushup, you know, with your butt facing the wall. And I would lay on my stomach and walk my stomach to the wall and then do handstand pushups.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Because I was too scared. I was too scared to flip. I had never done that yet.

• 23:22Chris Williamson?

  Okay, yeah.

• 23:22Speaker 00

  And I saw, I saw the workout and the first workout that really screwed me for the whole thing was, it was a thousand meter run, 30 handstand pushups, thousand meter row, that's it. Which is such an easy, such an easy event now, people would kill that. Now it would be like 100 handstand pushups and then a thousand meter row. So I get on the, the wall and I walk myself up and start doing handstands and the guy's like, dude, no fucking rep, like what the fuck?

• 23:48Speaker 00

  So I'm, he's like, you have to flip up. And I'm like, dude, I'm like terrified. So like I, I tried to flip up, you know, I, I had done it at the gym a few times and I just never liked the feeling. But I got it done. And after that event, I knew I was basically fucked. So now, now I should just have fun and just enjoy the moment. And then after that, I was like, well, fuck this. Like, I'm fuck the whole military thing. I have to come back and I have to own this, you know? So the next year I came back to regionals and I got fourth place.

• 24:20Chris Williamson?

  Oh shit, one outside.

• 24:22Speaker 00

  One outside of the games.

• 24:23Chris Williamson?

  Which um, what regional is Utah?

• 24:27Speaker 00

  Uh, it was Southwest at the time. That was the regional. But then I moved to California because in my head I-

• 24:34Chris Williamson?

  After that second year?

• 24:36Speaker 00

  After that first regional, I moved to California.

• 24:38Chris Williamson?

  Got you.

• 24:39Speaker 00

  So I moved to California because I figured, no matter how the next year went in CrossFit or whatever, I still wanted to go into the military. So all the Navy SEALs and stuff were training in San Diego, in California. So I moved to San Diego to train with military guys. And then during that time, I kept, I kept doing my training for regionals and I got a job at a CrossFit gym. So I moved out to San Diego, I start training and I go to the regionals and I wound up getting fourth place, which sucked. And the whole reason I got fourth, uh, fourth place for this particular event, I got top five in every single event at regionals. I would have destroyed regionals. But one of the events I got like 24th place because I didn't, I didn't know how to do a hang clean.

• 25:25Speaker 00

  Like I had done power cleans and shit like in my training, but like doing hang power cleans with 225 pounds to me was like devastating. Cause we had to do 30 of them in a workout and I like could not hang on to the bar. So everybody was doing like sets of two to five reps at a time and I was doing like one at a time. So I wound up getting fourth place and I was like, oh my God. I was like, fuck this, you know?

• 25:52Speaker 00

  So after this time, after that year, that's when things like really start to change for me. This is when I really start to figure out who I'm going to be and what my future is going to be. Because after regionals, obviously, I wanted to be a complete maniac and just be the most diligent person you've ever seen in your life and just crush everything.

• 26:12Speaker 00

  But I was having problems at work and I hated the gym that I worked at. The girl who owned it was running it more like a boot camp than a CrossFit gym. And I was a diehard CrossFitter. I wanted to see lifting in the workouts, not just like long Metcons every day. I wanted to see, you know, skill work. I wanted to see like true CrossFit. So we bumped heads a lot and eventually I got to the point where I was like, you know what? I don't respect you as a gym owner. Like, I don't like what you're doing. It's not, it's not the right way. You guys hired me to do a job, let me do it. And it was, she's a female, so you tell a female, you don't respect her, it doesn't work out very well. I didn't like theoretically tell her I didn't respect her. I told her like, I actually don't respect you.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  And she just lost it. So like, we wound up getting in this big fight and I was like, you know what? Fuck you, I quit anyway, I don't care, whatever. And she had three partners and her three partners were begging me to stay. So I tried to stay for like a couple more weeks, but I'd see her every day and I was like, I can't do this. It's like walking on eggshells at work, I don't like it. So I had about $5,000 maybe saved up, so I quit. About two months went by with my $2,000 a month rent. And now I have like a thousand bucks left, but not really a thousand. Like I had spent money on food and gas and, you know, living my life. So I got like a couple hundred dollars left. And I had written emails to every gym in town that I want a job.

• 27:38Speaker 00

  I had, I had applied for a million different jobs. I had two internship opportunities, one with Stanford and one with Notre Dame because I had done really well in school. And I could have went and become a strength and conditioning, an assistant strength and conditioning coach, but it was non-pay for like nine months or something. And I didn't have any money, so I called the schools and I was like, hey, I want to take this internship, but I need at least like, give me housing, give me a, give me like a student athlete meal plan. Give me something that I can live on. And none of them were willing to do anything, so I had to turn down these amazing opportunities.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  So from there, I'm just like, basically like, fuck, I don't know what I'm gonna do. This sucks. And I had gotten a membership, a very discounted membership. It was like $200 a month, but these guys let me work out for like $30 a month at this gym called Pacific Beach CrossFit. And that's where I met a man named Anders Varner and another guy named Brian Borstein, who Anders Varner now, I'm, I'm, my podcast is on his network, Barbell Shrugged. So when I first met him, you know, they're going off my resume and my resume says, you know, I just got in fourth place at regionals. I was a helicopter pilot. I was on the Olympic Bobsleigh team, like,

• 28:54Chris Williamson?

  This guy's a freak.

• 28:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, I have my degree in exercise physiology, a degree in nutrition, you know, all these different things. And my friend is like, dude, this guy is gonna be intense. And then like, I walk in the gym and, you know, we do a workout together and they're like, holy fuck, this guy is cool. You know, like, they really liked me. And I, but I just got done telling him I had no money and like, the reason I hit him up is because, you know, I just want a place to train. So they were like, whoa dude, you can train here. Like, you know, you can't train here for free, but you can train here for, you know, like $30 or whatever. And it was really, really cheap. So I was like, alright, cool. I didn't, I couldn't even afford that. And like, after, I think like, this next month, my mom might have given me money for rent because I remember still having a house to live in.

• 29:37Chris Williamson?

  Are you still in, is this San Diego still, this gym?

• 29:40Speaker 00

  I'm still in San Diego.

• 29:41Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 29:41Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I like gained the respect, everybody in the gym, everybody started to love me. And after that month, my mom was like, you know, I'm not gonna help you anymore. Like, there's really, there's no need for me to help you. You need to figure your life out. And I really think you should go back to school. I think you should give up on this whole CrossFit thing. And I don't really like the idea of the military and like all these different things. So man, I had a lot to think about. And I think what really started to happen was I just was running out of money and I didn't know what to do anymore. So I had to come, come to grips with my friends and tell them like, hey, I don't have any money and I'm, I might have to drive all the way home to New Jersey to my mom's house and then go back to school and do something I potentially don't even want to do.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  So everybody in the gym was like heartbroken over this. They're like, no way, like not Ryan, like blah, blah, blah. We want him to stay. And there was this girl named Erin Dwyer. And she's like, you know what? You can sleep on my couch if you want for as long as you need to get on your feet. And but I had never talked to this girl in my life. She just like, everybody seems to like you, you know, I'm a nurse. I'm not home all that much and you know, it's there for you. And I originally turned it down and then got to the point where I had to move all my stuff out of my house that I was living in and I sold all my stuff and I had slept in my car for like a week and I was like, just was like, I can't do this. This is not, this doesn't right, you know? So during that week, actually, is when I started to steal. I started stealing

• 31:08Speaker 00

  uh like food and groceries and stuff from the grocery store because I wanted to stay and I didn't have any money.

• 31:14Chris Williamson?

  Why did you turn it down originally? Why did you turn her offer down? Was it pride?

• 31:19Speaker 00

  No, definitely not. I was definitely like willing to take people's help. It was just that I didn't realize I was that far down. Like where like that was what I needed, you know, I kept, I always, in my mind, I'm like such an optimistic guy. And I'm always like, pretty, pretty bubbly. I always feel like everything's gonna work out, you know? But like, it was that one moment where it was like, dude, it's fucking not gonna work out.

• 31:39Chris Williamson?

  You've been in your car for a week. You've been stealing stuff from Whole Foods. Like, you gotta take the couch.

• 31:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, so, and it was also like weird because I didn't know her. It was like, I genuinely, I didn't take classes with her. I didn't work out with her. Like, I didn't know her at all. Like, I know her, I knew her about as long as we know each other on this podcast. So I was like, alright, you know, I'm gonna do it. And I wound up sleeping on her couch for like four months. It was a long time. And it was a very embarrassing time, like to wake up every day just knowing that you're like in somebody's space. And they probably thought you were gonna be there for like maybe a month. And now it's like four months?

• 32:16Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 32:17Speaker 00

  So that started to feel very, very shitty. And I'll, I'll never forget during that whole time, I'll never forget what it was like to go to bed. So like every single night when I would go to sleep, it would just be like full anxiety, just like, why are you even sleeping? Like, you don't have anything together. Like, you have no reason to wake up tomorrow rather than to wake, than to work out. Like, you're a fucking bum. Like, what are you doing? You know what I mean? Like it, and it, it really like crushed my soul like every day. I was like, man, like, I looked at my resume and I was like, this is who I am. But like, this is where I'm at right now and I don't understand it.

• 32:56Speaker 00

  And it was, it was hard, man. It was really hard to sleep. It was really hard to just like, want to show up the next day, but I kept showing up and doing what I did best at the time. And this is when I really feel like, you know, when you, when all else fails, like just keep doing what you love and there'll be a way that it works out. Everybody in the gym at the time had kind of signed me up for this competition called the OC Throwdown and it was, besides the CrossFit Games, it was the biggest CrossFit event in the world.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  And you would do these workouts and you would tape your, your workout and you'd put it online. And then you'd get placed, uh, you know, first to a thousand or whatever. And getting invites was like all the top athletes in the world, like all the best CrossFitters. If you'd been to the Games, you got an official invite to this competition. But a lot of them still had to do the open online workouts.

• 33:47Speaker 00

  I got second in the world on these online workouts. And it was the first time anybody had ever seen me work out who hadn't been to Regionals. So like, social media wasn't that big yet. It was kind of like just starting. I think Instagram had like just started. So I would go crush at Regionals and the only people who would know me are like, you know, the local crowd. But now the whole world knew who I was and they were like, wow, this guy's insane. And like at the time, I never worked out in shoes. I always worked out barefoot because I had one pair. I had like one good pair of shoes and I didn't want to ruin them, so I'd always just take them off. So like all of my old videos, I'm, I'm back squatting. Everybody was really into the 20 rep back squat back then and I'd be,

• 34:33Speaker 00

  I'd be doing 20 rep back squatting like, like 365, 375 pounds and I'm barefoot and like,

• 34:39Chris Williamson?

  Sweaty, sweaty feet on a slippy floor.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  There was one time I did 335 and I lost count, so instead of 20, I did like 30 reps.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  And I have all these things like recorded and I would start putting them on Facebook and people were like, "This guy is insane" because like, no one had had numbers like that in CrossFit. Like, yeah, like Strongman and all that, I'm sure it was going on everywhere, but in CrossFit, man, I was snatching 275 when like 225 was cool. And like, I was back squatting 500 pounds when 365 was cool. Like, I was so beyond the numbers. And then all of a sudden, I started throwing down like, insane MetCons. I was doing Fran in under 2 minutes. You know, I was doing Grace in like a minute, you know, like just crazy, crazy things. Like, everything was unbroken. I was like 2 minutes faster than everybody on Helen. Just crazy stuff, so everybody was really, really excited to watch me go to those you throw down and actually compete.

• 35:34Speaker 00

  And then I get my letter that says, "Hey, you know, welcome to the throwdown and, you know, you gotta sign this out, like fill this out and then pay," and it was $200. And I was like, $200? I was like, there is no way I can go to this. So I never, I just, I just let it go. And I get a phone call like a month later from the guy who's throwing the event. And he says, "Hey, like, you never filled out the thing. Everybody wants to see you." And I'm like, "Dude, I'm really embarrassed to tell you this, but like I am legitimately, like I have nothing. I'm sitting on some girl's couch." There is, I don't, I've, to be honest, I've been stealing food for like 4 months. Like, I, I genuinely have nothing. And I'm like, uh, like the no shoes that you see in the videos, it's not a joke. That's like real live shit.

• 36:20Speaker 00

  So, he's like, "Well, alright, I understand your situation. Let's just, we'll comp your, your, we'll make it free for you. And if you win, you just pay me back." And I'm like, "Alright, cool." You know? So I get all excited. Like, alright, I'm gonna go to this big event. This is gonna be crazy. So, I went to the big event and I'm still sleeping on the couch.

• 36:42Chris Williamson?

  Did you, did you have shoes by this point?

• 36:45Speaker 00

  Borrowed, borrowed shoes. So, my one sne- pair of sneakers I did wear for certain events, and I have photos of them. Actually, the original sneakers are still in my closet in my room. I never got rid of them. I haven't worn them in like probably six or seven years, but they're just in my closet. I can't throw them away.

• 37:03Chris Williamson?

  Probably for the best that you haven't worn them. I can't bet. I wouldn't like to imagine what sort of a state they're in.

• 37:09Speaker 00

  So at the actual event, I needed like lifting shoes and knee sleeves and belts and all that stuff was borrowed and like all my clothes were like stolen. Like, I mean, it was just a complete, I was a complete like yard sale of stuff. So I got second place at this event and I had beaten people who were top three at the CrossFit Games and it was a huge, huge deal. And the scoring was all messed up. So like in reality, they found out later that I'd actually won the event. But it was too late to give me prize money or anything like that, which I would have changed my life.

• 37:43Chris Williamson?

  No prize money for second place, no?

• 37:45Speaker 00

  No, it was 10,000 for first though. That would have totally changed my life. I would have been like, I would have been like, that would have been like rich money. Like, I would have been like crazy. So even think about that as crazy. So after that, I did get a bunch of sponsors. They got like ProGenX was a protein sponsor. This clothing company started sponsoring me. All these other gyms, you know, were like, yeah, you can totally work at my gym. I got all these job opportunities. So I wound up moving to Los Angeles and I did not like that experience like at all. I did not like living in LA. I didn't like living in the city, especially Los Angeles. It was where I was at, like obviously I didn't have a lot of money. It was very poor and like just super grungy, dirty. And the gym

• 38:27Speaker 00

  that I was working out at wasn't very, they weren't very known for being a very good gym. They were kind of, you know, Rodney Teasdale?

• 38:35Chris Williamson?

  No.

• 38:37Speaker 00

  He was kind of, he was kind of a badass at the time where he was very in like controversial type of person. He wrote a big article once about how like fat people were ruining the world and like ruining the gene pool and like.

• 38:51Chris Williamson?

  Okay. Yeah. Yeah. This guy, this guy's intense.

• 38:55Speaker 00

  So CrossFit really hated him because he wrote all these crazy controversial articles. And he was an amazing athlete, actually. He had gone to regionals several times and always went to the games as well. But now you have, you know, me linking up, going to his gym. I start like coaching a ton of classes, start saving up dough. And then I wanted to train more. So I started getting more into like personal training. And I'll never forget the first time, because I don't think I'd ever made more than $25 an hour in my life at that time. And I'll never forget having this kid come in. He was like an actor and he was getting ready to be on an Apple commercial and he wanted to, he wanted to look, look good, right? And I'm like, alright, yeah, well, you know, you can come in, you gotta come

• 39:38Speaker 00

  in like three, four days a week and, you know, we'll do this and this. And I showed him like what we would do, like a strength template and all this stuff. And he was all excited. And he's like, well, how much is it? And in my mind, I was like, dude, I'd be so happy if I just got like fifty dollars. But I didn't have any money. I'm like, still coming out of this hole of no money. And I'm like, it's a hundred dollars a session. And like, I really don't like to work with people unless they buy at least like ten upfront because it lets me know that you're committed. And I remember him just being like, yeah, like no problem, you know? And then after we got done talking, he walked away. I'll never forget. I went inside the bathroom and I just started like screaming. I was like, oh my god. I was like, I'm about to make a thousand dollars. This is insane. So, that feeling

• 40:21Speaker 00

  just like never went away. So I started just selling people on personal training all the time. And I was like, started getting really good at it. And then eventually, after about a year, I had saved up sixty thousand dollars in cash. Like, I had paid for all my expenses. I had sixty thousand dollars saved.

• 40:40Chris Williamson?

  Where are you keeping sixty thousand dollars? Shoebox under the bed?

• 40:43Speaker 00

  No, I put it in the bank.

• 40:44Chris Williamson?

  Oh, alright, okay, okay.

• 40:46Speaker 00

  I wasn't like investing it or anything. I was just sitting in a savings account. So, I wound up, at one of these competitions that I went to during that time, I met with this kid named Kenny Leverage, and he was a CrossFit Games athlete. And he was just like begging me to come move down to Newport Beach where he lived, which is where I live now. And it's obviously a much different vibe, totally different place. So, I'm on the beach now, and it's more of like a town type of feel, like more like family-like and stuff. It's not like grungy bums running around the neighborhood type of place like where I was in LA. So, obviously, I loved it here. And he got me a job at the gym that he worked at. So I moved, and I was only, I was only there for...

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Uh, I think I was there for like a year and a half before I decided to open my own gym. So my time in LA and that year and a half, that was when I had $60,000. So, all of that time. And I met these two guys that I was personal training at the time, who looked like bums, by the way. Like, they looked like normal, total normal dudes. They always even sounded normal, like I never heard anything crazy come out of their mouth. And they just always asked me what I wanted to do with my life and blah, blah, blah. They always saw something, something in me that they just thought that I had a little something extra than the other coaches. So I was like, well, I would love to own my own gym, but there's so many around.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  Like, at the time, the Orange County area, which is where I live, we had like a record, I think we had 16 gyms in the area. Like, in a small 10-mile radius, like, not very much. So, to open a gym here was like considered madness.

• 42:25Speaker 00

  So I told them that. I'm like, well, I'd love to own my own gym, but there's 16 here. What do you want me to do? And he's like, well, I think that the person sells the gym, so like, I think that you would be fine. And I'm like, I disagree. I feel like people come because their friends are here, or because it's the closest one. So, if, if that's all I have to work off of, I'm gonna make sure that when you walk in, there's no way you walk out. So, if you guys give me a million dollars, I will open a gym. And they were like, fine. Like, it was nothing. And I was like, okay. So, it was, it was, it was literally that, that simple.

• 43:06Speaker 00

  Like, to them, it was just like, okay, go find your space, go fucking pimp it out, and let's go. And I was like, wow. Okay, so, like, within a couple of weeks, we had found the space. It wasn't even for rent. The CrossFit Chalk Gym that I own right now was a real working gym at the time. And we gave them, at the time, they wanted $200,000 to leave. Cause they had put $700,000 in, like, upgrades to the building. And they're like, we'll leave if you give us this much money. And we're like, no, we're not giving you a penny more than like 50 grand. So, eventually, they took it. We took over the space. And then, I created what now is CrossFit Chalk.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  And I did not need a million dollars. I needed like, 250 grand was like still more than I could spend, pretty much at the time. But I did need money for like salaries and pay and like what if we didn't make money for a year, like a lot of different things. But the gym is like a legitimate million dollar gym, which at the time was completely unheard of. Like after I opened my gym, I was in almost every single CrossFit magazine immediately. Like the way that it looked and like the way that I was running it and all this like was was completely unheard of at the time.

• 44:20Chris Williamson?

  What was different about it?

• 44:23Speaker 00

  When you walked in, it looked almost nicer than like an Equinox, but it was like a functional fitness gym. I had all of the competition plates lined up against the wall on a rig, like $30,000 in competition plates, which at the time, you know, doing my due diligence of other gyms and what they had and what they were offering, like everybody had at the time, the rubber plates. Nobody was putting in these expensive plates. Like if I put rubber plates in, my whole gym would have been seven grand. And everybody was all about starting in your garage and then eventually going to a small space and then a bigger space and like going step by step by step. And I was always like under the impression, the most, the most, well, the gyms that every, that was really doing well, like all the gyms

• 45:08Speaker 00

  that are doing well, you have like SoulCycle, you have Barry's Bootcamp, you have, I don't know, whatever you guys have by you, but like they're, they're big franchise gyms and they never come out and they're like, you know what, let's just start this SoulCycle in a garage. And then if it gets bigger, we're gonna go to this small space and then if that gets bigger, we'll go to a really nice space somewhere and see what happens. They're like, no, let's just fucking go to the nice place now. Let's put 50 bikes in there. We're gonna fill it. Like, how do you feel when you walk in a gym and there's two rowers and four kettlebells and you're like, it's $200 a month and we're gonna do this? And you're like, what? Doesn't make any sense. So like, that to me always blew me away. And um, I, I, I was like, if I ever get to open a gym, I'm never gonna do

• 45:49Speaker 00

  that. That seems absolutely ridiculous. So, you know, I, I decked the whole gym out and all the nicest stuff. I had 10 assault bikes, I had 10 rowers, I had fucking like 80 kettlebells, all these dumbbells, like stacks of dumbbells. Like, at any point, anybody in class could have any weight they want and I would never have to worry about not having enough equipment, which was always embarrassing as a coach. Cause you have a workout with an RX weight. And then like half the people couldn't do it.

• 46:18Chris Williamson?

  Do you remember when, do you remember when the 22 and a half kilo dumbbells came out? Was it 17 one or 18 one? And there was like, you were seeing all these videos going out online of someone with that 15 kilo dumbbell with a couple of plates duct taped onto the end of them?

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, that was ridiculous. So like, also CrossFit really fucked that up though, because like everybody in the free world had like 45 pound dumbbells, but nobody had 50s. And I was like, even now I have this giant stack of 45s and a giant stack of 50s. And I'm like, do I really need two stacks of a five pound difference?

• 46:53Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  That was Rogue trying to make some money. They probably had tons of 50 pound dumbbells sitting around. They're like, fuck, what do we do?

• 47:00Chris Williamson?

  Guys, no one's, no one's using these 22 and a half kilo dumbbells. What can we do? Dave, mate, is there any chance that you could? Yeah, brilliant. Thank you very much. Cheers.

• 47:09Chris Williamson?

  There's Dave Castro just, we've got like a Rogue t-shirt for every day of the year.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 47:15Speaker 00

  My, my, my goal was to make it to the CrossFit Games and wear a t-shirt that says, um, my momma don't like you and she likes everybody. And it has Dave Castro on it.

• 47:23Chris Williamson?

  Nice.

• 47:24Speaker 00

  The Justin Bieber line.

• 47:25Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, Dave Castro, a funny story. Dave Castro was the second ever podcast that I did. So I got invited down.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Oh, really?

• 47:32Chris Williamson?

  I got invited down to 18.0 by Reebok. They did that. Do you remember that? Did you ever see that?

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So the 18.0 announcement and I'm, I'm sitting down with Dave and I've like, I've done one podcast before this, right? And I love, I love podcast, I've been a guest or whatever, but I'd never done one before. And you sit down and Dan Bailey was coming up after Dave. So Dan Bailey was number three and Dan's already met me, hey, man, how's it going? This, that and the other. And then Dave's kind of, he's, he's kind of a bit, I don't know, intimidating to kind of speak to. And I didn't really know, didn't really know how it was going to go. And then just before we started, Dave was like, so what are we doing here? And I was like, I'm about to record a podcast. There's that, don't really do podcasts. I was like, right, okay. Well, I'm just going to get you to count to five for me, please, Dave, if that's okay. And I just kind of steamrolled through that. But, um, and then I asked him, uh, what did I say?

• 48:21Chris Williamson?

  Would you rather fight 10 duck sized horses or one horse sized duck? And I was, I was just asking him whatever I could think of to like, try and lighten the mood a little bit. And I asked him about who would you not want to face out of the CrossFit Games, uh, in the Hunger Games? And he was like, I don't know what that is. I was like, it's kind of like Battle Royale. Battle Royale, do you mean WWE? And I was like, no Dave, wherever you've been, do you not watch any movies?

• 48:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, he hasn't really been to a lot of places, I don't think.

• 48:53Chris Williamson?

  No, he's kind of in his

• 48:54Speaker 00

  And he's not, he's not a happy man, so.

• 48:57Chris Williamson?

  Anyway, he was, he was interesting, the difference between him and Dan, then Dan comes out and Dan's just like, super funny, super relaxed, but yeah, so you, you're in the gym, you've opened the gym, you've got $30,000 with weights, plates and bars and all that stuff.

• 49:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, and I mean, I, I'd probably spent about a hundred grand on equipment. A hundred thousand dollars probably on equipment, and then I put like, maybe another a hundred thousand dollars into like the build of the building. Just like painting and changing things, making it nicer. My bathrooms were like $250,000, but I didn't have to do that. It was the person before us, that was part of the, that was part of the money that they wanted to get back.

• 49:34Speaker 00

  So now I have like theoretically about a million dollar gym. And my first day open, I had like a hundred members. And I didn't even do any pre-sales, I just like, opened and everybody came, because during that time, I was posting on Instagram, because Instagram was just starting to get big and I started posting like, hey, I just bought 30 grand in Olympic lifting plates, here's, here's the space before all the weights, here's, you know, where we are in town, which is like a really nice commercial area and everybody else was in industrial areas. And like, it was the first time somebody was gonna go and spend, like my rent's like $11,000 a month, it's crazy.

• 50:09Chris Williamson?

  Shit.

• 50:09Speaker 00

  And everybody, everybody before that was spending like three, $4,000 in like a little garage style space. So I'm in this nice area, everybody sees the gym all painted and pretty. Then they see the weights come in, then they see all these rigs and all this stuff, all the rowers, all the bikes, they're like, holy shit, this place is gonna be insane. So, without me knowing, everybody's putting in their 30 day notice at all the gyms, you know, and they're all like, getting ready to come. And I have a video on my computer, like the first day, I'm just packed. And I, everybody told me, you know, if you get a hundred members in your first year, you're doing really good. I had a hundred members my first day.

• 50:45Chris Williamson?

  Shit.

• 50:47Speaker 00

  But I'm so anal and I'm so like, you know, I'm so grateful for this opportunity. I don't want to blow it. You know, my, this, this last year has been very stressful for me, you know, like I had a lot of ups and downs, like the last three years really. And it was very important to me to have the right people there. Like, when it started, I had zero coaches. I coached every, every single class, every single day for two months before I hired my first coach.

• 51:16Chris Williamson?

  What was the timetable?

• 51:18Speaker 00

  So 5 a.m. was the first class and then 7:45 p.m. was the last one.

• 51:24Speaker 00

  So I'd get home, I would get home at usually about 10 and then get back to the gym at about 4 a.m. So I would leave the gym at 10. By the time I actually went to bed, it would be like midnight. And then I'd wake up at 4. Sometimes I'd wake up at like 3 because I'd be nervous to wake up at 4. And then before I knew it, I was only sleeping like three or four hours a night for those whole two months. And I was like a complete zombie. But there was this other girl who had gone to regionals. I'd met her a few times and she kept emailing me, you know, I really want to go on a coach there and blah, blah, blah. So I was like, all right, well, you know, you come and let me, we'll see how you do and whatever. So she did a great job and I had to like watch her every day for like a month.

• 52:06Speaker 00

  So it basically was like me still running all the classes every day. But I'd get to like kind of sit off to the corner and just, you know, get to write workouts and do management stuff. Which I didn't realize how much really went into it. You know, I thought opening a gym was, you know, you open it and you have this many members and this is your expenses and off you go. It's not like that at all. So people always ask me about opening a gym now and I'm like, please for the love of God, do not open a gym. Like you, you genuinely just don't understand. And I was so lucky in my opportunity and like I, something tells me you don't have the same luck that I had at that moment.

• 52:43Speaker 00

  Because just like the height of CrossFit, the height of my career, like the insanity of what my gym looked like, the fact that Instagram was climbing at the time, I had so many things in my favor that people just don't have now. That for you to replicate that is almost impossible. But, and I was like the top trainer at the gym I was at, like, everybody wanted to go with me. Like, the owner of that gym was never there, he didn't care about the gym, he didn't stop in, like, it was, there was no connection to him. So when I left, it was just natural for them to come. I think like forty people probably came from the gym that I was at before. And then everybody else just saw us on Instagram, so that was kinda all going on.

• 53:27Speaker 00

  And during this whole situation, I'm still training for regionals.

• 53:33Chris Williamson?

  And four hours sleep a night.

• 53:37Speaker 00

  Yeah, and everybody still wanted to see me go to the games and all that. But the year prior to this was when I actually threatened to murder that judge in front of everybody.

• 53:46Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, tell us that story.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  So, this was before the gym was open. And this is while I'm still saving money. I understand that in the future I'm probably gonna open a gym and... Like, my whole life, before that time, I just got done being homeless, like, all these different factors, like... CrossFit's my life, basically. And I'm in this moment and I'm doing a workout that is the one workout at regionals that I could not wait to do. And it was twenty-one fifteen-nine deadlifts at three fifteen and box jumps at thirty inches.

• 54:21Speaker 00

  I had done twenty-one deadlifts, probably ten seconds before anyone else even got off the bar. Because three fifteen to me at the time was nothing. Like, I had a six-hundred-pound deadlift. I was probably the only person in CrossFit that had a six-hundred-pound deadlift at the time, and three fifteen to me felt like two-twenty-five. So I fly through it, I get all my box jumps done, I go back to the bar, and now I just start getting no rep like crazy, like, no rep, no rep, no rep. And there's parts of it where the guy's no-repping me and he's not even looking at me, like... "You're me", and he's over here, and he's like, "No rep, no rep", and he's like looking at the head judge, and I'm like, "You're not even watching me work out, this is ridiculous", like...

• 55:00Chris Williamson?

  Was it for extension? Is that what the criticism was?

• 55:03Speaker 00

  It was for bouncing.

• 55:06Speaker 00

  They said I was bouncing the weights. And you can watch the video on YouTube, it's all over the place. And I'm just, the weight is very, very light to me. So I'm just going up and down very, very fast. So it looks like I'm bouncing it. And it's the first year they had ever had competition plates. And competition plates don't really bounce at all in general. So in the moment, I'm like freaking out. I can feel that, because the year before that, I'd gotten fourth at regionals. And this was my year, like I was gonna go to the games 100%. Even with all that, I got dead last in that event, right? Because I freak out, I tell the judge in the middle of the workout, dude, I'm gonna fucking kill you. You're like, you're ruining my life. A lot of people like to say, like to remember that I'm gonna fucking kill you part.

• 55:49Speaker 00

  But they don't understand that I said, you're gonna, you're ruining my life after that. Because like, I could feel like, everything, bobsled, skeleton, being homeless, owning that gym, like, not owning that gym, working at that gym that I hated, like, not having any money, stealing. Everything is like in that moment. And I'm like, I'm gonna go to the CrossFit games and everything's gonna be fine. And he was taking it away from me in that moment. And the only thing I could think of is like, dude, I'm gonna fucking kill you. Like, you're ruining my life. And I guess I like screamed it and scared the fucking guy. And he was like freaking out. And then basically, they had to make an example out of me. And like afterwards, like Dave Caster comes over and like publicly humiliates me and like points to me

• 56:33Speaker 00

  and tells me that I'm a terrible person all over CrossFit. They, they exploited it all over the website, like Ryan Fischer is, you know, completely out of line and a maniac and blah, blah, blah. I got last place in the event, obviously, because I didn't, they would never give me a rep. So I eventually just like, did like 100 deadlifts instead of 45. And then I wouldn't sign the paper at the end. It was just like a giant, giant fucking ordeal. Huh, so after that moment, I was considered the maniac for CrossFit. And then opening my gym actually seemed even crazier at the time. Because now there are 16 gyms in the area. I'm the complete maniac guy that probably nobody wants to go to his gym. Because you look him up and he looks like Johnny McEnroe.

• 57:18Speaker 00

  He's like fucking smashing tennis rackets everywhere.

• 57:23Speaker 00

  So like huh like my mom was like begging me. She's like, Ryan, like your name is not good. Like, you know, you shouldn't open a gym and all these different things. But you know, it worked out. And I and and and the gym was doing well. So with all that being said, the hype for me to go back to regionals was pretty big. Everybody wanted to see me compete again, and they wanted to see me kind of overcome the odds. And that was when I thought that I'd wear that Justin Bieber shirt. My mom don't like you. She likes everyone. Because my mom fucking hates the guy. And she actually called him one day and told him how much she hated him.

• 57:58Chris Williamson?

  Your mum rang Dave Castro?

• 58:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, because after the whole regional event, like, he like, literally ruined my name. Like, it was so bad. And I was like, such a good CrossFitter. And everybody just everybody still to this day remembers me as the crazy person. Until they meet me, they're like, man, I thought you were going to be totally different. Like, you're actually really nice and blah, blah, blah. And everyone always thought you were insane. So she got his phone number at one point somehow and was like, I can't believe you ruined my son's life and like, blah, blah, blah. And like, all this stuff. So I just was like, man, if I make it to the games one day, I want to have this shirt that has like, the Justin Bieber little quote on it. And I and it'd just be so funny.

• 58:36Chris Williamson?

  I love the fact that mums get in to that sort of a thing. You know, I don't know whether you watched the Conor McGregor fight this weekend. But at the end of the fight, so he's just smashed Donald Cerrone in 40 seconds, right? And Donald Cerrone's grandmother comes over and like, has a word with Conor. And it's like, it's so funny, even at the absolute top flight of the sport, or, you know, regionals, this huge event, Conor McGregor, biggest fighter on the planet. It's like, you still got to answer someone's grandmother. Like, the grandmother comes over, wags a finger in your face, you're like, oh, shit, that's his grandmother. Like, I can't. And even

• 59:14Speaker 00

  I saw that, yeah.

• 59:15Chris Williamson?

  He's hard as nails, but you're probably still like weirdly intimidated by the grandmother.

• 59:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, probably. I can imagine for sure. He looked like he said some nice things to her. Um, so yeah, I mean, all that stuff was kind of going on and floating through my head and in my life. And it was a crazy, crazy time for sure. And I'll, I'll never forget all that. But Dave Castro, he didn't go away after that for me. When I was opening my gym, he tried to take it away from me.

• 59:42Chris Williamson?

  How?

• 59:43Speaker 00

  Cause I, I, I wanted to call the gym, cause they wouldn't accept any of my names for the gym. I really wanted chalk and they wouldn't accept it. And I really wanted this other name like Diesel. I wanted like sweat. I wanted to call my gym CrossFit Sweat. All these different things. They wouldn't accept anything. And I was like, fuck this. You guys suck. Like, I'm going to call my gym CrossFit Untitled. Cause you guys won't even settle on a title and untitled actually means by definition that it's beyond a title. And that, you know, it was like this really interesting definition for what it actually meant. And I didn't want to be associated with CrossFit almost at that time anyway. So someone, I had wrote about this on Facebook and I was like, I want to call my gym CrossFit Untitled. Cause it means this and this and this and this. And CrossFit's never been really good to me anyway.

• 1:00:28Speaker 00

  And then someone screenshotted it and sent it to Dave. And then Dave writes me an email and he says, you will never own a CrossFit gym. You know, so you can get, you can get rid of this, this name that you want to call it. And, you know, basically go fuck yourself. So I'm like, all right, well, there goes that. I guess I'm just opening a regular gym now. Uh, so I write to Kathy Glassman, which is Greg Glassman's wife at the time. And I say, hey, you know what? I'm actually not going to be opening a gym, apparently. Dave is actually really upset with me. You know, I don't have the greatest, you know, history with you guys. And maybe it's best I just move on and just open my gym as a regular gym. And we just forget this whole CrossFit thing.

• 1:01:08Speaker 00

  And then she's like, oh, wait a minute. You know, we do have this one chalk contract. It's been. It's been taken for six months, but no one's ever opened the gym. So maybe you can have that one, but you have to pay the affiliate fee like right now. And I was like, done. I've been fighting for that name for almost 100 emails. We went back and forth 88 emails and every email that I wrote had five names on it. So for my gym, so if you can multiply 88 times five, that's how many names that I.

• 1:01:39Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  That's how many names that I suggested before we landed on chalk. It was a nightmare. And then even since then, Dave will be in the area and he never stops by my gym. He always stops by this one gym that's like a few miles away and he stops there multiple times.

• 1:01:56Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:57Speaker 00

  Cause he always takes photos like in his affiliate, in the affiliates. And like, you never go to the same affiliate more than once, like you'd go to a different one.

• 1:02:03Chris Williamson?

  Hmm.

• 1:02:04Speaker 00

  But he's been to the same one multiple times now.

• 1:02:05Chris Williamson?

  In Newport Beach, he's got his, he's got his one favorite. That's interesting.

• 1:02:08Speaker 00

  Yeah. And he never comes to mind, so it's funny. But regardless, after all that, um, the gym, I, I went to regionals again. It wasn't what I thought it was going to be. Obviously I had a lot more scrutiny on me for judging, like there was more judges watching me and.

• 1:02:25Chris Williamson?

  So they didn't, they didn't ban you after the.

• 1:02:28Speaker 00

  They didn't ban me now.

• 1:02:29Chris Williamson?

  I'm gonna fucking kill you, you're ruining my life. That, that wasn't worthy of a ban, but it was worthy of public denouncement.

• 1:02:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, and they really wanted to see me freak out again, so they tried very, very hard. And I got drug tested all the time. Like it was ridiculous how much I got, I got drug tested like every couple of months.

• 1:02:45Chris Williamson?

  A non-games athlete.

• 1:02:48Speaker 00

  Yep. And then my buddy who was a CrossFit Games athlete was like never getting drug tested. And I was like, this is ridiculous. Like you've gone to the games three times and you've maybe been drug tested one time and it was at regionals. I get drug tested just like sitting in my house, like fucking reading a book. You know what I mean? Like it's ridiculous. So I was always getting drug tested. So I, I had that body that everybody wanted to fail. Everybody's like, this guy's definitely on drugs. And I'm like, no, I actually just, I really do eat insanely well. Like I never, ever cheat. You guys are always out partying and eating fucking donuts and shit. And I'm actually only eating chicken and broccoli. So.

• 1:03:27Speaker 00

  So I just looked the way that I did, but anyway.

• 1:03:31Speaker 00

  After all that. The gym was picking up more and it was something that I started to just really pour my heart into and it was. I was starting to realize that, you know, maybe I was maybe meant to be a business person and. I had come so close to so many things, right? Like, like we, like we had talked about in so many different sports. And business for me didn't really feel like I had to ever win anything. It was just kind of, you know, how big can I grow this thing? How many people can I help? Like? There's a lot of things that make you bigger. But there's no like qualification process really, you know?

• 1:04:03Speaker 00

  You have to evaluate yourself and make sure that you have all your, all your ducks in a row. If, if you will, but yeah, you can, you can go as far as you want and there really is no first place or whatever. It's just. Where are you comfortable going? And during that time. You know, I didn't like when gyms started small and, and they, and they started to build. Like I said, I wanted to come out guns blazing. I also didn't like that gyms would put their workouts on their website. I always thought it was weird, like every CrossFit gym, you could just go to their website and see their workout. Like that was totally normal. I could, I could look at any CrossFit gym in the world. There's thousands of gyms. I could look up their email address or their website. Go to their page and I could see their workout.

• 1:04:47Chris Williamson?

  Steal the programming.

• 1:04:48Speaker 00

  Every single day, right? So I was like, this is so weird. I am not doing that. So I never did. But the gym kept getting more followers on Instagram and people would be like. Every once in a while I would post a workout that we did and they'd be like, dude, that workout looks awesome or. What are you guys doing in there? Like the gym looks amazing. Like you have so many members like, and I just opened and like all this stuff. And about. Three years of this went on. Where people would ask me the workout. I got to the point where like, I'm, I'll never forget. I had a phone call from someone in Norway. Asking me what, what the workout was for the gym that day. I was like. You're from Norway? Like, why?

• 1:05:32Speaker 00

  One, I'm probably spending money on this phone call, but I don't want to be spending.

• 1:05:35Chris Williamson?

  Have you reversed the charges here, Mr. Person from Oslo?

• 1:05:38Speaker 00

  And like. Why do you care that much about the workout? And I started to realize that I made workouts much, much different than everybody else. I didn't really spend time looking at other people's websites. But when I realized what I was making. I realized it was much, much different and I had a drop in who this, this lady would drop in the gyms all over the world for work. And she was like, this is my favorite gym. It's the best program I've ever done. You really should put these workouts online and charge people. And I was like, all right, I'll give it a go, you know? And I was like, I'll charge everybody like a hundred bucks a month or something. And my friend was like, nah, I might not want to do that. That's kind of a lot, like maybe like $20, something really cheap.

• 1:06:19Speaker 00

  And I'm like, $20? You know how long it takes me to do this? Like, you out of your mind? And then all my friends were like, well, you're probably going to get like a, you know, you might get like a hundred people that buy it. And I'm like, well, that would be cool. I guess, I guess I could settle for that. Make extra $2,000 a month. I was making like $4,000 a month at the time.

• 1:06:40Speaker 00

  Like that was my salary for the gym was 4,000. I'm like, if I had a hundred people on this for $20, I'd be stoked. So I make it $20. The first week that it's out, I made $4,000. And I was like, holy fuck. I was like, I just doubled, I just doubled my salary. And I was like, this is insane. So I still didn't even market it because I was kind of embarrassed to be the guy who didn't go to the CrossFit Games and I'm marketing CrossFit programming, you know, like, because you have like Invictus and like, you know, Rich Froning, which he didn't even have Mayhem at the time, but Invictus had a bunch of athletes and they had programming. They didn't even charge for it.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  And then like Comp Train with Ben Burdon, he wasn't charging for it. And like, now all of a sudden you have CrossFit Chalk, which is the guy who threatened to murder someone who wants $20 for his programming.

• 1:07:35Speaker 00

  It's like, dude, I don't know about all this. And I'm like, well, fuck, I just made $4,000. I think a lot of people really, whether, whether I'm this person who murders people or not, like people really like,

• 1:07:46Speaker 00

  people really like my workouts. So.

• 1:07:47Chris Williamson?

  They're good workouts, yeah.

• 1:07:49Speaker 00

  A couple of months went by and it went from like, I was making $4,000 a month off of it to like $10,000 a month. And I was like, wow, like, maybe I should market this thing. Maybe I should actually talk about it. And I still like was like hesitant. So I would, I would do a couple posts like, hey, I have this programming and blah, blah, blah. If you guys want to follow it. And before I knew it dude, like even just casually would start bumping 15, 20,000 dollars a month. And I'm like, holy fuck, this is insane. You know, like I'm making five, six times what I'm making in the gym. And it's really not any extra work. It's the workouts that I'm already doing, but the workouts kept getting more stressful

• 1:08:31Speaker 00

  to make for me. Because now I'm like, well, now it's not just my gym members I want to please. I want all of these people to look at these workouts and be like, fuck, that's dope, you know? Even still, like I've owned the gym now for six years. I'm the only person who's ever made the workouts. And it went from taking me a couple hours to taking me like an entire 24 hour day to make workouts now. Cause I'm so like, I need them to be fucking insane. And now I have three programs. It started off as just CrossFit and then I, I added this sweat program to it, which is the conditioning program. Cause I started to see that a lot of people weren't really stoked on CrossFit all the time. And they, they still wanted to come to the gym and do that, that circuit like training, but they didn't want to lift all the heavy weights. So I created the sweat

• 1:09:14Speaker 00

  program. And then a lot of people were like, well, hey, what do I do when I travel? So I started making this thing called the daily D, which is the daily dumbbell program. And it's just dumbbells, jump rope, pull up bar, that's it. Um, so now I have these three different programs. I want all of them to be awesome. So I'm making like 21 workouts every Sunday for the week. And it gets to be pretty hard. But anyway, I started marketing the program more. And it got to the point where it was making, you know, make almost like seven figures in a year now on just online program on that. And then it kind of just took off on its own. I, I even still, I barely ever talk about it. Like if you follow me on social media, you, you might see me like post or repost someone's

• 1:09:56Speaker 00

  thing. And it says like, hey, you can swipe up if you want to join. I talk about it more often on the chalk Instagram, but on mine, it's like very, very rare. I don't like to be very salesy with it. And like now it's at the point where people just talk about it and it kind of just flows.

• 1:10:12Speaker 00

  But then the challenges started, right? Like, I wanted to make, you know, things cooler for people in the gym. So I started doing the nutrition challenges. And then it was the same thing. People wanted to do the challenges and it, then I, I opened it up to everybody. So then you have the challenges, you had that. My knee's getting worse and worse because it, it was, when I was about thirty, it was when my knee was really bad. And I was, I was pretty much deciding if I was ever gonna compete again. Because my knee was, I, since I was like twenty-seven, my knee had been bothering me. I had a really bad snowboard accident and tore my ACL. Had full reconstruction in my knee. I tore like everything in there.

• 1:10:49Speaker 00

  And throughout like all the lifting, through bobsled and skeleton and CrossFit, doing pistols and squatting every single day and doing crazy shit and running marathons and all sorts of stuff. My knee was just shot. And even now, my knee is just like totally gone. So I started training differently in my own training. And I started bringing in a lot more bodybuilding stuff. But I loved the sweat of, of CrossFit. And I loved like the bikes and the assault bikes and just straight, just dying. So I started mixing together some old ideologies I found in some old articles from this guy named Pat O'Shea from the seventies.

• 1:11:28Speaker 00

  And it's, it's kind of the original methodology that Greg Glassman took over and created what, what we know of as CrossFit today. So I started taking a lot of these things and I mixed it with bodybuilding and I started creating this thing called high intensity interval bodybuilding. Because I loved that term, HIIT training. It was like the most Googled term. And I was like, well, how can I spin off of that? So I was like, alright, well, I'm gonna take everything I love about CrossFit and everything I love about bodybuilding and I'm gonna mix the two together. And I'm gonna call it high intensity interval bodybuilding. I'm gonna call it HIIT instead of HIIT. And then that fucking thing exploded. So I kind of like stumbled upon everything. And when people ask me like how everything actually happened, I tell them that I actually just wanted people to stop emailing me and stop contacting.

• 1:12:11Speaker 00

  So like, the CrossFit program was just people to stop emailing me and stop asking what the workout was. So I made that. The nutrition programs were all because people kept asking me if they could do what we were doing. And I was like, alright, well, I need to figure out how to stop all these emails. And then people asked me what I was doing with my programming. And I was like, alright, well, this is what I'm doing. So here you go. Here's an ebook. You can buy that. That was like my first ebook. And then all that shit just took off and it was really just a way to get people to stop talking to me.

• 1:12:42Speaker 00

  And then lo and behold, I've become a podcaster. Now I talk for a living.

• 1:12:47Chris Williamson?

  I know. Yeah, man. So I had, um, I did a podcast. I did a podcast quite a while ago. That was about a reality TV thing that I went on and it was precisely the same. It was the fact that loads of people would say, Hey man, so what was it? What's it actually like on Love Island? And I was like, right, I'm going to do this podcast. And now for the rest of time, all that I ever need to do is send them one YouTube link. It's like, there you go. That's an hour and I've just scaled the, the response. Um, one thing I really want to delve into is what makes your programming different? Do you have some principles that you stick to? You know, there'll be a lot of coaches listening, a lot of guys from the UK, a lot of guys from the US. And they'll be thinking, fuck, I want to, I want to upgrade the way that I program for my gym. I want to make the, the members feel gassed when they step in. It's going to be different.

• 1:13:33Chris Williamson?

  What is it?

• 1:13:33Speaker 00

  So, yeah, and I actually just made a video about this on my Instagram yesterday. I don't know if you saw it or not.

• 1:13:38Chris Williamson?

  Link will be in the show notes below.

• 1:13:41Speaker 00

  So basically, I'll never forget my first time that I genuinely wanted to get good at making workouts. I don't remember the age that I was at, but I know I was in college and I remember the movie 300 came out. And it wasn't just Gerard Butler who was all ripped, like, you know, you know, like the main character. It was everybody in the movie, like everybody was ripped and everybody was like, what the fuck are these people doing?

• 1:14:06Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:14:06Speaker 00

  You know, it was the first movie where everybody was ripped and everybody was like going crazy. It was on the cover of Men's Health Magazine and everything traced back to this guy named Mark Twight. And Mark Twight owned a gym called Jim Jones, which is another famous kind of branch of gyms. Well, there's actually only one gym, but they do seminars and stuff, kind of like CrossFit.

• 1:14:24Chris Williamson?

  To, to interject there, sorry, anyone that's listening, who knows who Mark Twight and Mr. Blevins, his partner are. They have a seminar in the UK in the middle of April. And I've finally got a reply off Blevins himself and I might be able to get him on while he's over here, which would be really, really cool. So that'd be a nice stuff.

• 1:14:42Speaker 00

  Oh, that would be cool.

• 1:14:43Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, he's a, he's an interesting guy. If you've not checked out the dissect podcast, which is their thing. They're, they're cool guys. They're underground. They're kind of anti-marketing. I really, I really like their vibe.

• 1:14:54Speaker 00

  Dude, I wanted to go to their gym so bad. Like at the time in, when I was living in Utah, you would see Jim Jones shirts. But you never knew where the gym was. And when you went to the website, it actually said like, "We will not disclose location because we are by referral." And you have, or if, if it's not by referral, you need to tell us why you want to work out here. And like, they only accepted people to work out there.

• 1:15:19Chris Williamson?

  It was so badass.

• 1:15:21Speaker 00

  It was so badass. I was obsessed. I was like, "I have to work out here." And like, I would send them emails and like, my responses were never good enough. And like, it was ridiculous. I was like, "Fuck this place," you know, like, "This is insane."

• 1:15:34Chris Williamson?

  Yeah. So make him work out. 300. Men's health.

• 1:15:37Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, I start looking into what he was doing and he, I wound up actually meeting one of his trainers, because I never could work out at his gym. And I, I started asking them about, you know, what they do and what their, you know, what their secret sauce is and blah, blah, blah. And they start talking about this thing called IWT training, interval weight training. And I looked that up, and that was basically invented by a guy named Pat O'Shea in the 70s. So I, if you look up now, like the principles behind Jim Jones, you can just Google it and it talks about IWT and Pat O'Shea. And basically, a lot of the stuff that they were making was, he was the first person, Pat O'Shea in the 70s, making these like high intensity interval workouts with compound lifts. So,

• 1:16:20Speaker 00

  I know all this information at that time. I'm going to school through exercise physiology. I understand the body. When I'm done with school, like, I'm pretty smart.

• 1:16:30Speaker 00

  I wind up being on the Bob's La team. I wind up doing 10 years of CrossFit. I wind up owning my gym for six years. All these different factors that come into play. I trained tons of different athletes, football players, wrestlers, UFC fighters, all sorts of stuff. And I come to like one conclusion, right? Over time, we're all gonna get injured. At some point, if we're gonna be sport specific. If we're all gonna do CrossFit, we're gonna get injured at some point. We're all gonna do UFC, we're all gonna get injured at some point. If we all just do bodybuilding, we're probably gonna get injured at some point, but lot lower risk. Because there's not a lot of like rapid movement and stuff like that. More of like an overuse injury than anything.

• 1:17:12Speaker 00

  But all of us are in this weird place where we all mentally like to be fucked. We all like to be in this crazy ridiculous conditioning base where like we just like to die. Right? And that's why I'm listening to this podcast. Probably everybody who's part of this has at some point been on the ground full covered in sweat. And all these other athletes, they like doing football and UFC and all these things. Cause there's a lot of grind to it. So I, I, I mix together the old school IWT stuff, the, the things I liked about CrossFit. The things I didn't like about CrossFit, I got rid of, right? In my, in my training, you don't see a lot of overhead squats. You don't see a lot of handstand pushups. You don't see a lot of muscle ups.

• 1:17:53Speaker 00

  I have them as advanced options for people who are like, they really want to be good at CrossFit. Like my CrossFit programming, there's advanced options almost every day. And I, I like to fancy like both crowds. You know, the competitor and the person who's just doing this to look good. And they just love functional training. So that's what makes mine so different. And I'm also a big fan of maximizing my time. Like I always thought it was weird that people spent 15 minutes doing a clean and jerk. And then they would have a 15, 20 minute conditioning piece. So I'm like, well, why don't we do an EMOM where we're doing like the other day. I, we literally just two days ago, my, my workout for the day was on the first minute, you do 15 burpees.

• 1:18:38Speaker 00

  And on the second minute, you do three clean and jerks. And then after three minutes, you go to two clean and jerks. And then after three minutes, you go to one clean and jerk, but you're always doing 15 burpees. So in like a 20 minute window, you had done 150 burpees and you had built up to a 100 max clean and jerk. And then other days I'll do something where it's like a front squat and a rope climb. Or like a front squat and like a lateral lunge, like a leg superset. Or I'll do like, the first piece will be, we'll do like five heavy strict press into like 10 dumbbell bent over rows, into 50 double unders, minute rest, and you keep going through that sequence for 15, 20 minutes. So it's like a whole compounding superset.

• 1:19:21Speaker 00

  So I'm a huge fan of doing superset. And the reason for that is,

• 1:19:27Speaker 00

  People are here because they want to do a workout that takes limited time and gets them out the door. But you're my responsibility when you walk out the door. When you, when you tell someone where you work out, I want you to be proud of where you work out. And when you say my name and my facility, I want to make sure that we're doing the best that we can for you to look the best you can. Because if you look mediocre, I'm gonna feel mediocre when you tell people you work out at my gym. So I'm not gonna just give you some little 15 minute piece. I'm gonna give you like a 15, 20 minute compounding piece with a bunch of other stuff. And then we're gonna do the same conditioning that everybody else does, but in my own format. Even when I think about conditioning, I think of way different factors than other people. I can't stand when someone has a conditioning component, and there's something in there that slows you down. You know, there's like, there's

• 1:20:11Speaker 00

  like 15 wall ball, maybe it's like 15 wall balls, 15 toes to bar, 15 power cleans at 135 or something like that, right? It's like, alright, well, 15 wall balls, I get. 15 toes to bar, you're not gonna have very many people hanging on the bar for 15 reps. So let's go ahead and take that down to like, maybe seven or eight. And then power cleans, like 15, is kind of a lot in that aspect, because you're gonna be sitting there doing one at a time. And let's say it's a 10 minute AMRAP. Now you've only got like, three rounds of this workout. Like, for most people, right? So let's go, you know, 15 wall balls, seven toes to bar, five power cleans. And then I'll go RX plus option, and I'll do 15 wall balls, 10 toes to bar, seven power cleans, and I'll make it 155. You know, something

• 1:20:54Speaker 00

  like that. Rather than just write that original workout, I'll write two different versions of it. And I think that that it gives it the stimulus that it needs for both crowds.

• 1:21:05Chris Williamson?

  What's the sort of, what are the sort of adaptations that you're seeing from this sort of a workout? Because there'll be some people, you know, you got a powerlifter who's, who's listening, or a weightlifter who's listening, and they think, well, you're gonna, you're gonna drop down that top end power. You're not gonna be able to do a true one rep max if you gotta do 15 burpees in between each round. Or you've got someone who's maybe more into the monostuctural side of things, and they're gonna think, well, you're not gonna be pulling so much on the rower if you gotta do wall balls, or deadlifts, or whatever in between. So what are the sort of adaptations that you see?

• 1:21:32Speaker 00

  So that's kind of like what Pat O'Shea's thing was back then, was that you could actually lift maximal loads, even with the conditioning component mixed in. And I just did, you know, Wendler, have you ever heard of the Wendler template, which 531 method? I just did a Wendler 531 method. Granted, I've had this gym for six years.

• 1:21:53Speaker 00

  I've had members online for about two and a half now. And I created my first Wendler template that was mixed with IWT format from Patterson from the 70s. So the first week, for instance, you have your deadlifts. It's 60, it's 65, 75, 85% on your first week of lifts. There's a little bit heavier percentage on week two and three, and then week four is your recovery.

• 1:22:22Chris Williamson?

  So you're even, you're even programming the deloads in there as in 531?

• 1:22:25Speaker 00

  Yep. So the first part, like on, on, on week one of this particular template, I did every four minutes by four rounds. So I put a time cap on it and then I also added a conditioning component in. So I did every four minutes by four rounds. I did 400 meter run buy-in and then your deadlifts at that percentage that you were supposed to do that day. And then the next week I did a 20 cal assault bike buy-in and then your percentage is for your deadlifts. And then week three, I did a 500 meter row buy-in and then your percentage for that, for the deadlifts for that week. And that's the max out week.

• 1:23:00Speaker 00

  So the first two weeks I did every four minutes by four rounds. And then the last week I did every five minutes by five rounds. I added an extra round, add an extra minute of rest. I got more PRs than I've ever seen in my entire years of owning the gym, online program. I mean, there's literally gold stars on my Wattify account, like just, like just ringing straight across the board. So people are using the conditioning. What I think it is, is a lot of people under warm up. So you have these long conditioning pieces mixed in with the lifting and it's actually warming them up to the point where they're actually doing things right for themselves. And then also the stress of time is actually letting them do the lift in an appropriate manner.

• 1:23:44Speaker 00

  Cause a lot of people will either take too much time off, right? They sit around and talk to their buddies for five, six minutes and do the lift and it's heavy as fuck all of a sudden. Or they don't take enough time off and they're lifting it too soon. So now, when you have this window, you want to be at the end of the window on time, right? Cause you want, you're like, oh my God, I'm pretty tired from the row or the run or whatever. I'm gonna wait. So they wind up waiting and they wind up without knowing it resting just the right amount of time to do that lift. So for me, it's actually a really smart way of doing it because if, you know, if you knew exactly what you were doing every single day, you probably wouldn't be coming into a classroom setting, right? You're probably there because

• 1:24:25Speaker 00

  you want some guidance. So I'm trying to figure out the best way to guide people. And when people find my programming, they realize that I'm really doing it in such a way that I'm maximizing the amount of time they're there, I'm maximizing their strength gains, their results, all these different things off of just stealing a whole bunch of ideologies and just making them one.

• 1:24:46Chris Williamson?

  Very different to CrossFit when you think about CrossFit, especially traditional sort of CrossFit stuff. Like it's very different.

• 1:24:53Speaker 00

  Well, I'll do high intensity interval bodybuilding days, like the stuff that I write in my eBooks. I'll do days of that stuff in the middle of a week. That's like very CrossFitty and I'll just have like one day where we kind of do a bodybuilding circuit, but it's in a conditioning format. And not everybody loves it for sure. Like they're there to do strict CrossFit, but not everyone's getting hurt all the time. You know, like I have a very, very low rate of people getting injuries and it's because we spend time doing like isolated movements on certain muscle groups and letting those muscles get stronger so that when you're doing a dynamic portion of that lift at some point with those muscle groups, they're not going to get hurt. Like me, but my, my torn bicep, like that's probably overused from a lot of years of doing hundreds and hundreds

• 1:25:37Speaker 00

  of thousands of muscle ups and thousands of snatches and you know, just a ton of different things.

• 1:25:43Chris Williamson?

  There's not a whole lot of people now that I know who absolutely love CrossFit. You know, so the gym that I train at has 800 members. You would absolutely love it, man. It's like a playground for fitness, like.

• 1:25:54Speaker 00

  Eight hundred?

• 1:25:55Chris Williamson?

  Eight hundred members. Yeah. Reebok CrossFit Tyneside in the north of England. It is a LECO certified, a LECO weights placed in bars calibrated, the comp plates, the weightlifting plates, the powerlifting little steel plates, all the bumpers, like a 60, 70 foot rig in two rooms. It's, it's just, it's beautiful. Um.

• 1:26:14Speaker 00

  Is there an open gym? Is there an open gym?

• 1:26:16Chris Williamson?

  Six AM until nine PM every day except for weekends and you can always open gym. There's always open gym. Some of the classes, class size tops out about 40, 40 people.

• 1:26:29Chris Williamson?

  And yeah, Jordan, interestingly, the guy who owns that, he went through like. I'm gonna get this wrong, it's gonna kill me, but I think he went through like seven sites before this one. So he was the first version of the gym owner that you described. The start in a studio, move up to a slightly bigger studio, then a garage, then under an arch, then a industrial unit, slightly bigger industrial unit. And now he's got something underneath a carpet shop, the whole basement underneath a carpet shop. And there's a full bodybuilding side to it, there's a full weightlifting side and-

• 1:27:02Speaker 00

  Oh, that's so cool.

• 1:27:03Chris Williamson?

  It's legit. I'll send you some, I'll send you some videos on email once I'm done. It's, it's beautiful, right? But with that, even I see now in those classes, I think the removal of regionals has played quite a lot into this. But people aren't in love with CrossFit. I think they're in love with the sweat, they're in love with the community, they're in love with a lot of the things that CrossFit really brought together and created as a community. But you know, those, you're right, the overhead squat workouts, the real high skill, under load and fatigue workouts where you know, even the best athletes, the most robust athletes that are in the gym know, I'm, I'm probably dicing my death a little bit here with regards to maybe where my shoulder position is,

• 1:27:48Chris Williamson?

  or maybe where my lower back feels at the moment, or maybe how my knee feels at the moment or something. You know, people doing like deadlifts, running, like heavy deadlifts, like coupled with running, coupled with box jumps, stuff like that, you're like, fuck man, like, you know, there's something risky going on here a little bit. And I wonder how much you can sacrifice on that pure CrossFit side. You know, the golden era 2009, 2010 programming CrossFit, sacrifice on that. And then get back in terms of safety, get back in terms of, you know, the hypertrophy response, which is what everyone, anyone who says that they do CrossFit and don't want to be an unbelievable condition, is lying to themselves and lying to the people they're talking to.

• 1:28:25Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can't stand that shit. They're like, I just, I just really want to feel good and, you know, whatever. And I'm like, you're telling me that you don't want to look better? There's no fucking way, you know what I mean? Like, there's just no way. Like, everybody wants to look good, you know what I mean? And I think that, I think that's a, that's a big reason people like my programming too, is because I do some of that bodybuilding stuff in there. I am all about people looking good, right? Like, when you say my name, you say my gym, I want you to look good. So that is a thing that I definitely concentrate on. And I don't think it takes an exercise physiologist or an athlete who's been competing for 10 years to look at a CrossFit workout and say, "That's fucking dumb."

• 1:29:03Speaker 00

  Like, "Why am I gonna do 21, 15, 9 of overhead squats and something else as fast as I probably can?" Like, an overhead squat is absolutely 100% meant to be, like, concentrated on. Like, making sure you're in the right position, making sure you're not just, just doing something, you know what I mean? Like, even snatches, like, when in the world have we ever done 30 snatches for time, like, in history? It's always been like, you never see a weightlifter do more than five, maybe, at most. And even those guys, when they get older, they're fucking limping around and they're all fucked up, and we're doing 30, sometimes 100 in a workout, right? Like, if it's lighter. I'm saying 30 as in term of, like, Isabelle,

• 1:29:47Speaker 00

  like, Isabelle is a workout, but it's a lot of impact on your joints and your cartilage and all the stuff on your body. And I know that CrossFit this year really wanted to make it, they wanted to get back to old school style and really, like, come back to the roots of, like, why Greg Glassman originally started it. And then they fucking throw pistols in the open. And I was like, "What the fuck is this?" Because that's another movement that should be done, like, slowly and methodically, not, like, fast. And, like, yeah, you can do it slow and methodically, but you're gonna get last place. So...

• 1:30:19Chris Williamson?

  Well, look at regionals. Look at regionals when, when everyone's chests, everyone was popping a chest.

• 1:30:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:30:25Chris Williamson?

  You know, that was, like, 2018 or something like that?

• 1:30:27Speaker 00

  That was my last, that was my last regional I competed in.

• 1:30:29Chris Williamson?

  Okay, but you came out of it with a, with a chest still attached.

• 1:30:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 1:30:33Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, but a lot of people didn't.

• 1:30:35Speaker 00

  They say that everybody who tore was, like, potentially on steroids. So I was like, "All right, I passed. Again, I passed."

• 1:30:43Chris Williamson?

  That's the litmus test.

• 1:30:44Speaker 00

  You guys never believed me!

• 1:30:45Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, I know, until now, when I still got my pectoral attached. Yeah, interestingly, there was a, a couple of powerlifters I'm friends with, and they said that a pectoral is like a Route 1 identifier of someone who is on PEDs, especially when they're, so they're going into the squat bench deadlift, right? But yeah, you, you're totally right. Like, there is some stuff, and I just think, "That's dumb." Like, it just doesn't really work. I was talking to Dr. Stuart McGill, back mechanic, so, good friend of mine, I went and stayed with him in Canada last year, and I was talking to him, and he said he once saw a CrossFit athlete who had nine bulging discs. I think the total number of vertebral bodies that you have is 17. So it's like more than half of the gaps between, and that includes like all the shit that's

• 1:31:30Chris Williamson?

  right up here, right in the back of your neck, like more than 50% of, and he, this was just compounded over time. And you think, what the, what the fuck is going on here?

• 1:31:41Speaker 00

  Dude, I remember one of my first, probably my third or fourth regional event, we had to do a three rep max overhead squat off the ground.

• 1:31:51Speaker 00

  Do you remember that?

• 1:31:52Chris Williamson?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:31:53Speaker 00

  It was the first overhead squat in history that we ever had to do, but we also didn't have a rack. So we had to clean it, throw it on our back, then pop it up. Dude, people were getting so fucked up trying to throw it on their back. I'm like, and have you ever done so many handstand pushups in your life? That was just like one example. Here's another one. Have you ever done, have you ever done so many handstand pushups like in a workout? Let's say you did a hundred, where your neck is like fucked up?

• 1:32:18Chris Williamson?

  Yep.

• 1:32:19Speaker 00

  Like, I don't think we should do kipping handstand pushups ever. And then I also don't think that we should be doing, I don't even think we should be doing handstand pushups, to be honest. Like, there's presses, I think, are such a great movement. And there's no need. I mean, I think if you're doing strict handstand pushups and you're doing them correctly, I think they're okay. But most of the time, it's for time. So like, even if it's strict, you're gonna fucking hit. And it's like, why are we doing this? I don't understand. Like, I-

• 1:32:47Chris Williamson?

  Walked away from this workout half an inch shorter than when I walked into it.

• 1:32:52Speaker 00

  I mean, how cool would it be if the CrossFit Games was just like a one mile run for time? You know, like a 400 meter sprint, like all the max lifts, like, and, and a few conditioning workouts that had a whole bunch of, you know, pull ups and toes to bar and shit in it. And like, maybe a swim and like a bike and stuff like that. But like, general events, like, what's wrong with that? There's really nothing wrong. Like, and, and you can, you can vary them a little bit. Like, maybe one year it's a 5K run, and the other year it's a mile, and the other year it's like an 800 meter sprint, or whatever. Like, basic track events, and then, you know, basic lifting, some powerlifting, some, a little bit of gymnastics work that's not like devastating to your body. Like, there's a, there's a better way to do it.

• 1:33:33Chris Williamson?

  Is that sufficiently, is that sufficiently exciting spectacle for the, for the people that are there to watch, do you think?

• 1:33:38Speaker 00

  It can be, dude. If you had all your favorite CrossFit athletes doing a 400 meter sprint for time, I would love to watch that.

• 1:33:44Chris Williamson?

  That would be fun. That would be fun. Or like a 2K, like a 2K, uh, row.

• 1:33:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, 2K row or a mile run. Fuck, a 500 meter row would be amazing to watch. Just because like the tens of a second.

• 1:33:57Chris Williamson?

  Skidding the Concept 2s all over the place.

• 1:33:59Speaker 00

  They would be dying. Or you're seeing like the indoor cycling where they go around the circle. Like get everybody like that would be fucking rad.

• 1:34:08Chris Williamson?

  Fully gassed, yeah.

• 1:34:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, it'd be awesome.

• 1:34:10Chris Williamson?

  I wonder how much sort of CrossFit set its stall out because it has been going so long and there is this sense, right? That you got to do more, better, different, harder, faster, stronger, all this shit each year. I wonder if there is a risk there of things getting too intense. Think this constant requirement to one up the year before, you know, this year we're going to let the audience get involved. This year, we're gonna get an octopus to pick the balls out of the thing and he's gonna tell us what the workout's gonna be, you know what I mean?

• 1:34:45Speaker 00

  I mean, I don't, I don't know. It's hard for me because I always feel like the last like two or three years, I'm like, man, CrossFit's getting smaller and smaller and smaller. Like I feel like the excitement level of someone to do CrossFit in my gym is getting less. And the people just want to come in and do this like crazy workout, kind of.

• 1:35:04Speaker 00

  Is getting less and less. And I keep thinking that CrossFit's getting less. But there's still just as many people who want to go watch the CrossFit Games and buy all the CrossFit shit online. We're just not seeing them every day. But I keep thinking at this rate, I'm like, they have to stop all of this. Like CrossFit Games has to stop. They have to be spending an enormous amount of money for the Games and all these things where it's, it's not a lucrative scenario for them anymore. And I keep thinking it's gonna happen and it hasn't happened yet.

• 1:35:33Chris Williamson?

  Keeps on ticking over. The machine keeps on moving, man. It's interesting because you've got CrossFit as a sport, competitive sport, and you've got CrossFit as a training methodology, right? And there's nothing else. No one says, I'm training UFC. They say like, I'm training, well, the people that don't know what they're doing might say that. But they say, I'm training MMA. You know, I think that it's the fact that you have CrossFit as a competitive sport is one thing, but the more GPP kind of foundations of why Glassman created CrossFit is something else. And you're totally right. Anyone who follows, is it at CrossFit Health? I think, if you follow that on Instagram, it's like they've got models of an old lady's front room and some 60 year old guy bending over with a two gallon milk jug, like doing bent

• 1:36:18Chris Williamson?

  over rows with a two gallon milk jug because it's they're setting their stall out. It's like, look, we're getting back to GPP. We're getting back to the fact that this just makes you better at life. Fitness for life, not life for fitness. And it's interesting, man. I wonder, I wonder where it's gonna go. Look, Ryan, I could honestly, man, I could go on for, I could keep, I could dig back into this. If you've got time, I'd love to get you back on at some point soon. I want to delve into a million other things, but we've

• 1:36:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, 100%.

• 1:36:44Chris Williamson?

  We've done an hour and a half, man. And it's like,

• 1:36:46Speaker 00

  I know.

• 1:36:46Chris Williamson?

  You're gonna have to go to work.

• 1:36:49Speaker 00

  No such thing as me going to work. I just start working.

• 1:36:52Chris Williamson?

  Oh, yeah. Well, this is part of work, right? Look, where can people go? They want to check out some of your, your eBooks and your platforms and stuff. Where should they go?

• 1:37:02Speaker 00

  They can probably find everything on my Instagram, which is Ryan Fish, R Y A N F I S C H. And I have one of those little link trees in my bio where it has the connection to pretty much everything. Or if you want to follow just strictly the gym stuff, it's just CrossFit Chalk on Instagram. We have CrossFitChalk.com. And then my personal website is JimRyan.com, which is G Y M R Y A N. See what I did there?

• 1:37:24Chris Williamson?

  Nice.

• 1:37:24Speaker 00

  Kind of took the Jim Jones kind of deal.

• 1:37:26Chris Williamson?

  Yeah.

• 1:37:27Speaker 00

  But then also, like, everything for me started with a gym. So it has some,

• 1:37:33Chris Williamson?

  I am Jim Ryan.

• 1:37:33Speaker 00

  has some secret underlying. Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of cool. Yeah. So.

• 1:37:37Chris Williamson?

  Man, it's been, it's been absolutely awesome. Thanks so much for your time.

• 1:37:40Speaker 00

  No problem.

• 1:37:41Chris Williamson?

  We'll see you again soon.

• 1:37:42Speaker 00

  Yes, sir.