Episode Transcript
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living the life you want to
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live. Hey everyone,
2:28
Chris Gresser here. Welcome to another episode of
2:30
Revolution Health Radio. This week I'm
2:32
really excited to welcome Jason Kalipa as my
2:34
guest. He's the founder and CEO of NC
2:37
Fit Gems and Train Hard Online Training. He's
2:39
a CrossFit Games Champion and a
2:42
three-time Team USA CrossFit member. He's
2:44
also a pediatric cancer advocate after his daughter
2:46
was diagnosed with leukemia in 2016, host
2:50
of the Jason Kalipa podcast, author of
2:52
As Many Reps as Possible and a
2:55
Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu Brown Belt. This
2:57
was a fascinating conversation. We
2:59
covered everything from how Jason got started in training, how
3:02
his training has evolved over time as his
3:04
goals have shifted, how he juggles
3:06
being a dad and husband and
3:09
business owner during intense training times
3:12
as a professional athlete, how
3:14
he approaches programming for others,
3:16
both in his in-person gym and with
3:18
his training app, and tips
3:21
for newcomers, people who are just
3:23
starting fitness routines, and tips for
3:25
staying motivated and avoiding burnout. I
3:28
really enjoyed the conversation. I hope you do too.
3:30
Let's dive in. Jason,
3:33
pleasure to have you on the show. I've been really
3:35
looking forward to this. Yeah, no, thanks for having me.
3:37
I appreciate it. I always
3:39
love to start with people's background,
3:42
like how you've had some pretty
3:44
remarkable accomplishments in your life, CrossFit
3:46
Games Champion, three-time Team
3:49
USA CrossFit member, and
3:51
building incredible business, helping
3:54
people to train and really become
3:56
a better version of themselves. But
3:59
how did you get here? How did this all start
4:01
for you? Yeah, I mean I was introduced to fitness
4:03
at a really young age So I was 15. I
4:06
started working at the front desk of a health club I
4:09
then when I graduated from high school and I got
4:11
into college I you really wanted to pursue I mean,
4:13
I was really inspired at that time about making money
4:16
and so I was introduced to sales And
4:19
so I started selling gym memberships when I was like, I
4:21
don't know a freshman in college So whatever
4:23
rap made me 17 18 years old I
4:26
sold gym memberships throughout my entire college
4:28
career and at the time I knew I wanted
4:30
to open up a gym It was just like I was destined for
4:32
it. I had been meeting with the owner of the gym I had
4:35
been learning a lot about business and sales and
4:37
then I found CrossFit when I was like a maybe a
4:40
junior in college really fell in love with the idea
4:42
of a coach a community and Complexity
4:45
like learning new skills. So
4:47
I opened up a CrossFit gym right out of college
4:49
I ended up winning the CrossFit games and for the
4:51
next long time I mean until
4:53
now I will not till now but for
4:55
a long time from 2008 for about ten
4:57
years I competed profession in sport of CrossFit.
4:59
I Also taught
5:01
seminars for CrossFit. I opened gyms globally
5:04
with our business NC fit at the time and
5:07
then In
5:09
2016 I pivoted away from the sport. My daughter
5:11
got sick. So I decided to stop competing there
5:13
professionally and I found
5:15
jujitsu and so since then
5:17
I've been exploring jujitsu running the business. I
5:20
have two children and About
5:22
four months ago. We launched an online program
5:24
We've really been passionate about which kind of
5:27
brings together everything I've learned in the fitness
5:29
space underneath the train hard umbrella So that's
5:31
kind of the synopsis, you know, I yeah,
5:33
I'm just a fitness guy who cares
5:36
about his kids and family Nice.
5:38
Yeah, we'll come back to train art I want
5:40
to ask you a little bit more about that
5:42
But I want to dive in a little bit more
5:44
to you know You went from I discovered CrossFit in
5:47
college and then I won the CrossFit games Imagine
5:50
there's there's a lot of work
5:53
between those two milestones and it's
5:55
a competitive Sport
5:58
at this point, so I'm just curious, you know how,
6:00
what was instrumental for you in taking
6:02
you from, you know, being new to
6:05
CrossFit to winning the CrossFit games? Because,
6:07
you know, what were the things that
6:09
made the biggest difference for you in
6:11
your training, your regimen, your mindset, you
6:14
know, whatever it was that you attribute
6:16
most to achieving that goal? I
6:18
mean, I'd say back then it was just luck. It
6:21
was, you know, 45 minutes away from my house
6:23
was the first original CrossFit games. I
6:25
had great coaches and I was just ahead of
6:27
the game at that time. You
6:29
know, competing then for the next 10 years, I watched
6:31
the sport blow up and grow and I
6:34
was able, I was very fortunate to be at the top
6:36
of the sport for a long time. And
6:38
that, you know, you started really working
6:40
with mindset coaches, exploring new coaches
6:42
and, you know, spending hours and hours and
6:45
hours a day training. But in the beginning,
6:47
it wasn't like that. In the beginning, it
6:49
was very raw and I attribute
6:51
a lot of that early success just to being in
6:53
the right place at the right time and putting in
6:55
hard work and having this kind of mental grit to
6:58
get through it. But as the years went on and
7:00
the competitors got smarter and the competition got
7:02
greater, you had to level up and a
7:05
lot of that happened between the years. But
7:07
then a lot of that also just happened physically,
7:09
you know, breaking up your sessions in a three,
7:12
you know, morning, afternoon, evening sessions, really being aware
7:14
of your recovery, all of those things became really
7:16
important to me. So
7:19
what are now that you're on the other side
7:21
of it, coaching and programming, what
7:24
are some of the basic
7:26
things that are most important to you when
7:29
you're working with someone who's starting out and
7:31
wants to get into CrossFit? And then maybe
7:34
also share some of the biggest
7:37
mistakes that you see people making when
7:39
they're training. I mean, going too hard, too quick. I
7:42
mean, the biggest mistake I've seen, I've seen this since
7:44
I was 16 years old at the
7:46
Health Club, was people coming in at New Year's and
7:49
we see the parking lot just packed and by March it'd
7:51
be empty. And it's because people come in and they don't
7:53
realize like they need time to develop these new habits and
7:55
to make it a part of their routine. So they come
7:57
in and they want to go zero to a hundred. Five
8:00
days a week eating paleo all this stuff and
8:02
they're gung-ho for a couple weeks and they burn
8:04
off And so the initial recommendation I'd have is
8:06
like earn your confidence Start
8:09
off and say hey this week. I'm gonna do two times
8:11
this week I'm gonna go out for a walk then
8:14
the next week try and do a little bit more and
8:16
then say okay for the next Month I'm gonna try to
8:18
do three training sessions a week And if I earn the
8:20
right to do that like if I earn after a month
8:22
that I'm doing three days a week consistently Then
8:25
I've earned the right to unlock a fourth day
8:27
as an example but what isn't the right
8:29
way to do it is Not
8:31
earning it and just say I'm gonna do it But
8:33
then the problem is your mind and
8:36
your body aren't connected your your mind is
8:38
saying let's go do it Then all of
8:40
a sudden your body gets fatigued you start
8:42
realizing like you don't prioritize as much Instead
8:44
just prioritize it twice a week and then
8:46
start building on that I think that's my
8:48
biggest takeaway for new people coming in now
8:52
From a training modality perspective, you know
8:54
My training's really changed from trying to be the
8:56
fittest on earth to now trying to train
8:59
hard So I could protect and provide for my
9:01
family and those are really important key pillars for
9:03
me Like I don't necessarily care about winning the
9:05
crossfit games. I mean, there's no necessarily I just
9:07
don't care at this point It's not my goal
9:09
of mine My goal is
9:11
to be able to run jump climb lift do
9:14
whatever I need to physically to protect myself my
9:16
family Including if I need to self-defense and other
9:19
means but at the cornerstone of that is being
9:21
able to breathe and and Have
9:23
the fitness like if you don't have that you're screwed and
9:26
the second piece I'm really inspired by and I think
9:28
everybody should think about this one is like providing and
9:31
a lot of times we think about providing Financially, I
9:33
think there's definitely something to that for sure, but
9:36
I think about providing experiences You know, my son's
9:38
gonna get home from school today's and say dad,
9:40
let's go do this. This is this this this
9:42
this this this And I don't know, you
9:44
know, do you have children? Do
9:47
they do the same thing daughter? Yeah Mm-hmm.
9:49
Yeah, it's very active now.
9:51
Imagine if your daughter can use like hey dad Let's go
9:54
play volleyball and you're like dude, you're
9:57
like man. I'm so tired. You know, I can't
9:59
do it I always
10:01
want to be able to provide for
10:03
my children experiences, whether that's, you know,
10:05
whatever it might be. And so my
10:07
fitness goals have evolved to reflect that,
10:09
meaning I need to train hard so
10:11
I could protect, and so
10:14
I could always be able to provide experiences and
10:16
never be in a situation where my fitness inhibits
10:18
my ability to do so. Yeah,
10:21
I love that. I mean, I've heard
10:23
the term functional fitness use sometimes, which
10:25
to me has a similar connotation. Your
10:28
fitness is to achieve some kind
10:30
of function, whether that's protecting,
10:32
like you said, providing for your
10:34
family, being able to play
10:36
with your kids or grandkids or great-grandkids
10:38
as you get older, being
10:41
like a fully functional human being, rather
10:43
than, in your case at this point at
10:46
least, competing in cross-fit games or something like
10:48
that. And I mean, I would imagine that's
10:50
probably the goal of most people who come
10:53
to the gym or come to see you. Only a small percentage of
10:55
people are going to get to the point where
10:58
they're competing at a high level and
11:00
want to do that. So how has
11:02
that changed your training
11:05
and your approach to programming? What
11:07
did your training look like before
11:09
and what does it look like
11:11
now given the shift
11:13
in your goals? I'd say
11:15
before, obviously, your goal is to be the
11:17
fittest on earth. So you start thinking about,
11:19
okay, well, what's going to be incorporated? Long
11:21
events, short events, heavy events, this event, and
11:23
you have to train across those modalities, right?
11:27
And you have to train at volumes that are conducive
11:29
to you hitting a week's worth
11:31
of events. And you're talking 20 events
11:33
in a week. Well, you've got to make sure you're not so
11:35
fatigued. You can't come back and
11:37
do another event later in the day. So volume
11:40
becomes a really big factor in recovery. Nowadays,
11:43
my training is not three times a day.
11:45
Nowadays, my training is more revolved around, what
11:47
can I do in the morning to set myself
11:49
up to feel the way I want to
11:51
feel? That's something I think about. Like, what can I do
11:54
this morning to do the
11:56
things I know I need to do to feel the way
11:58
I want to feel? So that could be. sauna,
12:00
cold plunge, cardio, whatever. Like do something,
12:02
go for a walk. And
12:05
then later in the day I get my training. And so
12:07
I just finished a really hard workout now, right before I
12:09
recorded with you. I like doing
12:11
that because it gives me good mental clarity,
12:13
especially when I'm talking to someone like right
12:15
after. And then later today I'll go
12:17
do jiu-jitsu. That's typically what
12:19
my day looks like. I follow our train hard
12:22
app, probably five,
12:24
six days a week. I go for
12:26
long rucks one day a week. And
12:28
then I train jiu-jitsu three days a week,
12:31
in addition to. Nice.
12:34
That sounds like a full training routine.
12:36
And I know you mentioned you're a
12:39
father, two kids, you've got
12:41
a business, you're doing
12:43
a lot. How do you, what works for you
12:45
in terms of juggling all those different commitments? Well,
12:47
I mean, one thing's for sure. Like I have
12:49
to admit, like I have an advantage over
12:52
most people listening that this is what I
12:54
do as a profession. So right now I'm
12:56
in one of our gyms. I
12:59
have a full blown gym at my garage. That definitely
13:01
benefits me in terms of time constraints, for
13:03
sure. So I wanna acknowledge that.
13:05
But I prioritize my fitness. I
13:08
know for me to show up the best I can for
13:10
my kids and my wife, I have to
13:12
get after it. So if that means
13:14
waking up at five when I'm traveling and
13:16
on vacation with my family, that's what I
13:18
do. Because I know I'm a better dad.
13:20
I'm a better husband if I train. And
13:23
so with that in mind, like
13:26
if that's like, like let's just say that's
13:28
like your, that's your
13:30
vantage point. Like my philosophy is that
13:32
I know I show up the best
13:35
after I've worked out. Well then
13:37
that changes the way I look at everything when it comes
13:39
to my family. In that I know
13:42
that I need to prioritize my fitness first.
13:45
Not only so I could be healthy and all that
13:47
kind of stuff, but also just mentally clear and
13:50
in a positive state of mind.
13:52
And so with that, That's
13:55
the cornerstone of how I look at my training. Is
13:57
like, I know I'm the best when I do it.
14:00
That means the my kids of events like my
14:02
son had baseball your say on Sunday I am
14:04
or the day before and I knew that I
14:06
had a wake up at five thirty on a
14:09
Sunday to make sure I trained sir. I should
14:11
have the best I could for him and my
14:13
family. For a six I knew there wouldn't be
14:15
time. That's what I look at it now verse
14:17
before where my training would take parody. now it's
14:20
my trains his party. As long as
14:22
he doesn't in in. Impact. My family
14:24
so I need to work around them. Young.
14:27
Daughters largely power. I looked at it
14:30
to and for similar in the sense
14:32
that I it's kind of a non
14:34
negotiable I have to be active if
14:36
it. If I'm not, I'm I'm a
14:38
desert. Not gonna be the parent that
14:40
I want to be, the husband's the
14:42
friends from the you know person at
14:44
work that I wanna be and so
14:46
I just have to find ways. I
14:48
mean there's a lot of other things
14:50
I cut out of my life that
14:52
in order to make time for those
14:54
priorities are worse. I'm just curious or
14:56
some other things. For you that you've
14:58
let go of her cut out of
15:01
your life in order to be disciplined
15:03
at the about that commitment or mean
15:05
just figure I've been doing this for
15:07
you know. My. Wife and I
15:09
met were fourteen. I've. Been in
15:12
the gym since I was sixteen sisters that part
15:14
of my life for as long as I remember.
15:16
That being said, You. Have to
15:18
cut out like for lack better term like.
15:21
Some. Like the bullshit meaning? like. Arguing
15:23
example. Every. Weekend I host men's
15:25
club or that's every weekend. On Saturday or
15:28
Sunday I get forty fifty sixty guys to
15:30
just go to your hard stuff outside. That's
15:32
what we do and it's free. It's available
15:34
to anybody any guy in the bay Area.
15:36
I just want to be other try make
15:38
an impact on M. Voice That's
15:41
my mindset that I know that on yesterday
15:43
for example we went on a we did
15:45
a work out of six thirty on Sunday
15:47
right? This is early before the all the
15:50
on baseball stuff happened and. I.
15:52
Know that if I plan on getting all these guys
15:54
out there. That. I.
15:57
Can't go out and drink that much on
15:59
Saturday. And so what does?
16:01
He starts prioritizing my overall health and
16:04
wellness because now typically booties on Saturdays
16:06
on this somebody on Sunday is actually
16:08
the base on Saturday. I apologize and.
16:11
When you're going on Friday night, you're thinking, okay,
16:13
I gotta get to bed by on our ten
16:15
eleven o'clock sign on You get up at five
16:18
or whatever to get ready. To
16:20
bring the sandbox do different things and so that's
16:22
that's what Cut Out I've cut out like super
16:24
long nights, the excessive drinking on in in height
16:27
or like identity drink at if we go out.
16:29
I generally try to balance of my life but
16:31
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first order. I
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struggled. I got into this work that I'm
18:07
doing now because I had a very serious
18:10
chronic illness that I recovered from
18:12
and that really shaped who I
18:15
am personally and professionally. And I believe
18:17
that, like you said, you
18:19
know, when we face adversity, we don't have
18:21
control over that, but we do have control
18:23
over how we respond to it. And
18:25
that's the only thing actually that we have
18:27
control over. So I'd love to chat about
18:29
that. But I want to hear a little
18:32
bit more about Train Hard and then
18:34
how you approach programming. I know you
18:36
have an in-person gym and then you
18:38
have the Train Hard with multiple programming.
18:41
So tell me a
18:43
little bit more about your approach to programming at
18:45
this point, both with your in-person
18:47
gym and with Train Hard. Well, at the
18:49
in-person gym, because we have coaches, it's
18:51
a little bit different. So we could
18:53
have more complex skills like snatching and
18:55
rope climbing and musk-lepping. But for
18:57
our Train Hard online program, for people in their
19:00
garages and for just people that want to train,
19:02
protect, provide, a lot of those people don't need
19:04
to be doing heavy snatching
19:06
and rope climbing and musk-lepping. And
19:08
so my philosophy on programming has shifted over the years.
19:11
In the gyms, we still provide the complexity for those
19:13
people that want it because we have coaches who are
19:15
there to support them if they want that. But
19:18
for online, we have three programs, one that's
19:20
called FORCE, which is just really good strength
19:22
conditioning, like pull, push, squat, plus meccons. We
19:26
have one called FLEX, which is more of a
19:28
functional bodybuilding. And we have one called EMOM,
19:30
which is just an EMOM 20, 30 minute a day,
19:33
every minute on the minute program, and it's
19:35
badass. So that's what we have for the end
19:37
user. In the gym, it's more like
19:39
your traditional CrossFit because we have the coaches available.
19:41
And I think where I've evolved is
19:44
like I first got inspired
19:46
by the complexity. I wanted
19:48
to learn a muscle-up. I wanted to learn a
19:50
handstand push-up. I wanted to learn these skills. But
19:55
those skills, if you desire
19:57
them, are very valuable. But if you just want them from like pure, from
20:00
a fitness perspective, I think
20:02
you could do a lot of different things
20:05
that could impact your fitness in a much...
20:08
if you desire to do a muscle up, that's great. If
20:10
you don't desire to, then all you need
20:12
to be working on is strength and conditioning.
20:14
Pull, push, squat, and get your heart rate
20:17
elevated and hit 12 to 20 minute
20:19
workouts and that's really what train hard
20:21
is about and we leave out some
20:23
of the complexity. You can get that through other areas
20:25
or finding a coach in a gym. Right.
20:28
That makes sense and what kind
20:30
of equipment does somebody need for each
20:32
of those different levels of the program?
20:34
Yeah, I mean I think like you
20:36
know obviously I have a full garage
20:39
gym. If you just want the dumbbell
20:41
program we have just a dumbbell EMOM
20:43
program that's just dumbbells and that's great.
20:46
I'd say that if someone was at home
20:48
I'd start off with dumbbells. From
20:50
there I'd probably try to invest in a rack like
20:52
a with a pull-up bar if
20:54
you can't to get that pulling position right and
20:56
then I'd start getting a barbell with some bumper
20:58
plates or weights in general so you load it
21:01
up and then I'd probably start diving
21:03
into some type of cardio tool but in the beginning you
21:05
just run. So for us we
21:07
have you know you would need a rack,
21:10
a barbell, a set of dumbbells and
21:13
some type of cardio. If you could just run that's
21:15
great but if you can get like an air bike
21:17
I think that's a really good option. What
21:20
are your favorite air bikes at this point?
21:22
Man that's a good question. So there's a
21:24
lot of different bikes available out there right.
21:26
My probably seems like there's a ton of
21:28
brands now that it was just a few
21:30
before. I'd say like bang for
21:33
the buck. Rogue
21:35
has one now for like 890 bucks
21:37
the Echo bike. I think it's
21:39
built tough and it's the cheapest although
21:41
I like the assault bikes a lot.
21:45
I love the assault bikes. I also really
21:47
love the C2 bike but that's a different
21:49
different stimulus than an Echo bike. I'd
21:52
start off with like an Echo or assault bike and
21:54
then later on invest in like a C2 bike. Yeah
21:57
I've got a Rogue rack
21:59
and Jim in my
22:01
garage as well. I love their stuff and the Echo
22:04
Bike seems like a good, happy
22:06
medium for most people. For
22:09
sure, for sure. Yeah. And
22:13
talk a little bit more about
22:15
the difference between the programs,
22:18
like who might choose what
22:20
program based
22:23
on what their goals are and what their
22:25
background is. Like if they're relatively new versus
22:27
someone who's been training a little bit more.
22:29
Well, I mean, I think that if you're
22:32
in the Bay Area, you should
22:34
stop by one of our gyms underneath the NC fit
22:36
umbrella. But if you're not, the Train Hard
22:38
app has the Force program, which is really designed
22:40
for someone that wants to like act the part.
22:43
Like fundamental strength conditioning. And you need a decent
22:45
amount of gear, a little bit, right? But it's
22:47
really designed to like help you
22:50
run jump climb lift, be fit, like
22:52
just show up. Whereas Flex
22:55
is really designed to help you look
22:57
the part. So it's definitely more linear
22:59
progressions. It's definitely more functional. It's definitely
23:02
more bodybuilding style versus force.
23:04
And if you are brand new to the game, I
23:06
would just do the E-Mom, every minute on the minute.
23:08
That's probably my favorite way to train. It gives you
23:10
a minute by minute goal that you could shoot towards.
23:13
And especially if you just do a dumbbell program, it's
23:15
a piece of cake. It's low
23:17
gear, highly impactful, and will just give
23:19
you a great stimulus. That
23:21
sounds great. And it sounds like
23:23
people can progress easily through the levels. Like
23:25
if you start with E-Mom, then you can
23:27
move to force if you... Yeah, or
23:30
if you have limited time, just hit E-Mom. Like
23:32
our whole model is like never let
23:34
momentum get to zero. So you never wanna take
23:36
a day that's zero. You need to always get
23:38
something. And so if that's your E-Mom, great. If
23:40
that's something else, go for it. Right,
23:43
so you can actually, is it the sort
23:45
of thing where you could, you sign up
23:48
for Train Hard and you can move between the
23:50
programs? Yeah. Or do you sign up for
23:52
one program at a time? No, no, no. I mean, they're designed to
23:54
be like on their own, like
23:56
tracks, but like for me, I just,
23:59
like, I look at a... workout, get inspired, fired up, I
24:01
hit it. And it's a little bit more intuitive for
24:03
me. That's, that's what I like to do. But for
24:05
other people, they might want to stick with the program.
24:08
Yeah. No, that makes sense. What
24:11
about, um, people who are relatively
24:13
new and you know, like tips
24:16
for staying motivated, uh, you know,
24:18
we mentioned before that one of
24:20
the biggest mistakes people make is
24:23
over-committing and then that generally just
24:25
leads to burnout and stopping. You
24:27
know, like I'm going to hit it super hard. Then
24:30
they do for three days, five days,
24:32
two weeks, whatever. And then that's
24:34
it. You know, that you mentioned the phenomenon
24:36
of the full parking lot in January and
24:38
empty parking lot in, in March and the
24:40
gyms, which is well known. So what's
24:43
a better approach for someone
24:45
who's, who's starting out to
24:48
increase the chances that they'll still be at
24:50
this, you know, six, nine, 12 months later.
24:54
I was trying to think of a good
24:56
analogy, but I think for anyone who's listening,
24:58
who's interested in changing their life fitness wise,
25:01
they have to at the
25:03
cornerstone rely on a why,
25:05
like, why do they want to make this change in
25:08
the first place, like, you
25:10
know, why, why does it matter to you? And
25:13
let's just say it's like, well, I want six pack
25:15
abs. Okay. Well, that's not going to come quick
25:17
and it's not going to come easy. So you have to have
25:19
a strong why first and foremost, like I
25:21
want to be able to be there for my kids. I
25:23
want to be able to, you know, be there
25:25
for my grandkids. I want to like, whatever that is,
25:28
you should write that on a piece of paper, put
25:30
it on your mirror, whatever you got to do, because
25:32
you have to remind yourself on a daily basis why
25:34
it's important for you to change your habits. Cause these
25:36
habits have been a part of your lifestyle for decades,
25:39
maybe. And you've been drinking soda, eating
25:41
like shit and not training for 30 years. You're
25:44
not going to just switch tomorrow and that's okay. It's
25:46
actually a good thing if you don't switch tomorrow. So
25:49
what you should do is just pick something, pick
25:51
something simple. Let's just say it's removing
25:53
soda out of your diet, something simple. And
25:56
switching out for carbonated water or
25:59
start. by saying, hey, every day I'm going to
26:01
walk for 10 minutes a day. But you,
26:03
you, whoever is listening to this right
26:05
now, who has not been training hard
26:07
for many years, pick something
26:09
you feel like is a no-brainer piece
26:11
of cake, 10 times out of 10,
26:13
you're going to get it. And then
26:15
from there, start building
26:18
on that and stacking habits would be the example. And
26:20
everybody's going to be different, right? For someone who's like,
26:22
maybe like right now, working out twice a week, consistently
26:24
for the last 20 years, but wants to ramp it
26:26
up. Well, that's different than the person that's been sedentary
26:29
who wants to ramp it up. So each person needs
26:31
to pick something they feel like is going to be
26:33
a little bit better than where they're at today, but
26:35
that they know they could do. Then
26:37
do that for like a month. And
26:40
then you now have had that new thing. We say,
26:42
okay, well, I've already been doing it two days a
26:44
week. Like I could easily ramp up to three days.
26:46
And then you go from there. That that'd be my
26:49
recommendation. You, you want to get wins
26:51
and you want to get wins early. And the
26:53
problem with fitness is that, especially if it's like
26:55
aesthetic looks, especially for
26:57
women, men, you know, they
26:59
have it a little bit easier to kind of like lean out or
27:01
get to whatever they want to do, but for women
27:04
and men, I should say like, it's
27:06
hard to see results immediately, but
27:08
what you can see immediate results are, is you made
27:10
a commitment to walk every day. And you're
27:12
doing it. Yeah.
27:15
Yeah. That, I think it's important to
27:18
set realistic goals and know what you
27:21
can expect during that, that initial period
27:23
of time. Like you said, if you
27:25
experience wins, that's going
27:27
to build momentum. And then that leads to more
27:30
wins. You build more momentum. And that's kind of
27:32
a basic coaching principle. Um,
27:35
the, you know, we train health coaches and
27:37
that's one of the biggest things is shrink
27:39
to change, you know, like big
27:42
changes are a series of many
27:44
small changes along the way. Exactly.
27:46
Exactly. Helping people to understand that.
27:49
Well, and if you had asked me when I was 21,
27:51
I started the business or 22. I
27:54
didn't really understand that, but now as
27:56
I've matured, I've gotten older, I've met with
27:58
thousands and thousands of people. in
28:00
person and online, I've realized
28:02
like I'm doing them a disservice by
28:05
trying to go too hard, too fast.
28:08
Shame on me for allowing them to
28:10
do that because I've just witnessed countless
28:12
times them failing. And as
28:14
a health provider, as a fitness
28:16
provider, we need to recognize that
28:18
like our duty is to change lives. Our
28:21
duty is to make an impact. You're not
28:23
doing anything if you allow them to go
28:25
too hard, too fast because the likelihood of
28:27
them burning out is like 95%. Yeah,
28:31
yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So speaking of
28:33
burnout, what happens when someone
28:35
does reach burnout? Maybe
28:38
for any number of reasons, they just hit
28:41
a brick wall and they've lost kind of
28:43
motivation. Maybe that's happened to you at some
28:45
point. What's usually the
28:47
best way for helping people
28:50
to get refocused in that situation? I mean,
28:52
this can sound super lame, but
28:54
it's reflecting back on your why. Like,
28:57
you know, when you're competing at the CrossFit Games, it's
29:00
super challenging. And the
29:02
events are grueling. And
29:04
if your why is like, Oh, I want to
29:06
make an extra 100 grand, 200 grand, 500 grand,
29:08
I want to make money, I want to be
29:10
famous. When things get really
29:13
hard, and they will, like,
29:15
you're just gonna fold. And
29:17
you have to have a stronger why when you're
29:19
competing, be also stronger why when you're looking at
29:21
your fitness and health goals. And
29:23
when you do burnout, taking
29:25
a deep breath and being like, dude, what am
29:27
I doing this for in the first place? Okay, well,
29:30
maybe I need to level set my expectations. Maybe
29:32
my expectations if my goal is
29:34
to be, you know, a super fit
29:36
grandpa. Well, maybe I don't
29:38
need to train seven days a week for
29:41
two hours a day. Maybe I just need
29:43
to train five days a week for 45
29:45
minutes a day. And I'm still going to
29:47
be fitter than 99% of the grandpa is
29:49
out there. And so recalibrating your goals and
29:51
aligning that with your training. That's the key,
29:54
in my opinion to avoiding burnout. Because honestly,
29:56
and here's another thing too, like, Once
29:58
you've kind of like built up. Our apartment the
30:00
third day with them I'm of you know
30:03
thomas allow or is both second another day
30:05
and. We're. Time Up This a
30:07
roller coaster effect. When. You
30:09
are new in the fitness. You
30:12
are like it's like a roller coaster climbing
30:14
up with like kick, kick, kick. It's hard.
30:16
Like you're building strength. You're building conditioning.
30:18
It's hard work. Let me do, you got
30:21
into it in your twenties, thirties? whatever. But.
30:23
Once you hit like a certain points.
30:26
You could kind of like. Like.
30:29
Coast a little bit and still maintain a
30:31
lot of muscle and condition your have if
30:33
you put it all that hard work. So
30:35
motivate yourself today. Winner in your thirties forties,
30:38
fifties to build up their hedge because it's
30:40
gimme a lot easier to maintain that on
30:42
that rollercoasters kind of keep cruising. Then.
30:45
It would be to try climb back up
30:47
again. you know is is kinda theory. Yeah,
30:50
I like them and make sense
30:52
earlier. Only mentions your daughter was
30:54
diagnosed with leukemia back and twenty
30:57
sixteen and and I am I
30:59
know that that had you known
31:01
for any parent that so monumental
31:04
change in my son. How to
31:06
How did that impact. You.
31:09
As a person, Your focus
31:11
and how you live your life. A
31:13
display anatomy. Not that changed. My life
31:16
changed all of our lives and it's
31:18
still affecting us today. You know she's
31:20
so going through some some tough stuff
31:22
today, especially with mental health and what's
31:25
going on in the sea. It's just.
31:28
Ah man, it just it changed my perspective a lot
31:30
of things like us as soon as today. I.
31:33
Think it helped me and so does
31:35
I'm to learn to be more compassionate,
31:37
Man be more understanding. Learn.
31:39
That like, just when he seems like
31:41
you're convinced of something like. Be.
31:43
Careful how convince you are of
31:45
something because. You. need to be
31:48
stay open minded like i can't tell you
31:50
the amount of things that i was convinced
31:52
on five years ago and now i'm not
31:54
quite so sure about and i think that's
31:56
important like as you get older to have
31:58
perspective and when when you see sick
32:00
kids, it definitely shifts your perspective.
32:02
And so those are things that I think was
32:04
good about it, right, it taught me a lot
32:06
about family, about building my fitness and
32:09
financial hedge so I could be there for my family.
32:11
Talking about what it means to have good relationships because
32:14
you need them. And then it also
32:16
taught me about like what it means to build
32:18
a great team at work so that when or
32:20
if you ever need to be prioritizing something else,
32:22
you have other people that got your back to
32:24
take care of things. Yeah,
32:27
it can be really be transformative experience
32:29
and it sounds like you've really allowed
32:31
it to impact you
32:34
in some meaningful ways. I
32:36
know you're also a pediatric
32:38
cancer advocate. It
32:41
sounds like you've put some energy into
32:43
giving back and helping
32:45
others who are going through the same type
32:47
of experience. Tell us a little bit more about that. Yeah, I
32:50
mean, my family and I, I like to think that we're pretty
32:52
blessed in the sense that when our daughter got sick, we
32:55
had been embracing a work
32:57
ethic and where we had built a
33:00
financial hedge, we had built a
33:02
fitness hedge and we had built a
33:04
hedge in our relationships and that played huge dividends
33:06
for us. And soon
33:09
after Ava got diagnosed, we said, hey, look, we need to
33:11
be able to make an impact on other people. And
33:14
so my wife started a foundation called Ava's Kitchen.
33:16
We just hosted our seventh annual Ava's Kitchen
33:18
and she's been killing it, killing
33:21
it. I think they've raised, or we
33:23
have all raised 3.2
33:25
million, I think, at this point. And
33:27
the goal of that is to put smiles on
33:29
kids' faces and we donate the money through an
33:31
organization called Never Ever Give Up. And
33:35
really for me, it's just reinstated
33:37
this idea of why I wanna go build
33:39
a successful business, why I wanna be successful,
33:41
what I'm doing is like, the
33:43
more I make, the more we could go give, the
33:45
more we do, the better we could show up for
33:47
others. And I think that when you frame
33:49
it in that way, you
33:52
can't be generous to others if you don't have
33:54
anything. So go out and bust your
33:56
ass, Say you could then go
33:58
do really cool things. You care about?
34:00
That's my theory. Yeah. I
34:03
think that's a great way to
34:05
approach it and you know it's.
34:08
We. Were chatting little bit before
34:10
offline and we don't always have
34:12
control over what happens to us,
34:14
but the one thing we can
34:16
control is how we respond to
34:18
what happened to us and that
34:20
it sounds like you've chosen to
34:22
do that. No way it. It
34:24
will not only benefit your family
34:26
but also your community in other
34:28
people who are struggling with the
34:30
same thing I'd Jason Isbell a
34:32
fascinating conversation. tell people where they
34:34
can learn little bit more about
34:37
train hard, particularly those. You are not
34:39
in the Bay Area and then does
34:41
her are in the Bay Area where
34:43
they can find some of the Nc
34:45
set gems. Yeah, I'm in Mountain View
34:47
and Campbell. We also have a location
34:50
presidio that if you're up not area
34:52
but really it's Ma'am You and Campbell
34:54
On and bear Yes and Train hard.
34:56
So visit T H.sit that's website as
34:58
in train Hard.say it. But th dot
35:00
fit kept it simple for you. but
35:02
your the programs on it. I think
35:05
if you're looking at the I'm Stacey
35:07
profit we agree programs. For you and
35:09
we have a really cool group. People
35:11
like a help on advise you self
35:13
messages and check us out on Instagram
35:16
at Train Hard.fit you gotta check out
35:18
at Jason Kleber on Instagram. We have
35:20
a really cool newsletter. Every week
35:22
to keep people fired up. Inspired us to
35:24
train hard. Street. And
35:27
I really enjoy the conversation. Do some
35:29
good luck to you and all the
35:31
listeners. Keep sending your questions. Chris or.com/podcast
35:34
question will see you next time. That's
35:38
the end of this episode of Revolution Hauser
35:40
Easier. If you free see
35:42
the show on. help me create a healthier and
35:44
happier world sees had. Or would I tunes
35:46
in the Us or do. They
35:48
really do make a difference. if
35:51
you'd like to ask a question for
35:53
me to answer in a future episode
35:55
he can do donna crisscross or.com/podcast question
35:58
you can also lead us to suggestion
36:00
for someone you'd like me to interview there. If you're
36:03
on social media, you
36:05
can follow me at
36:07
twitter.com/chriscresser or facebook.com/chriscresser L
36:09
A C. I post
36:12
a lot of articles and research that I do
36:14
throughout the week there that never makes it to
36:16
the blog or podcast, so it's a great way
36:19
to stay abreast of the latest developments. Thanks
36:21
so much for listening. Talk to you next time.
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