Have you ever wondered what it's like to transform from a physics teacher into a CrossFit gym owner and coach? John Warnick, the powerhouse behind Iron Cross Athletics and CrossFit Phoenixville, joins us on our latest episode to share his extraordinary tale.
The world of competitive fitness is ever-changing, and John Warnick has witnessed its evolution firsthand. He takes us through a journey of the CrossFit Open's growth. We also get an intimate look at the choices that led John from the classroom to the gym floor, where the principles of constant improvement and dedication have become his guiding stars. His approach to coaching is both an art and a science, where structure, clarity, and ongoing education are as critical to success as the weights lifted and the records broken.
Have you ever wondered what it's like to transform from a physics teacher into a CrossFit gym owner and coach? John Warnick, the powerhouse behind Iron Cross Athletics and CrossFit Phoenixville, joins us on our latest episode to share his extraordinary tale.
The world of competitive fitness is ever-changing, and John Warnick has witnessed its evolution firsthand. He takes us through a journey of the CrossFit Open's growth. We also get an intimate look at the choices that led John from the classroom to the gym floor, where the principles of constant improvement and dedication have become his guiding stars. His approach to coaching is both an art and a science, where structure, clarity, and ongoing education are as critical to success as the weights lifted and the records broken.
What up dogs? Welcome back to another episode of the Hungry Dog Barbell Podcast. I'm joined by another awesome guest here. I'm lucky enough to have another CrossFit affiliate owner here. I have John Warnick on. I guess I should have asked you this before Did you guys go through a rebrand over there? Is it Iron Cross Athletics? Is it CrossFit Phoenixville? What is the name of your gym?
Speaker 2:So we are Iron Cross Athletics, the home of CrossFit Phoenixville Awesome, yeah. So we started going by Iron Cross Athletics way back in the day when we started, because we were always a little bit concerned tying everything we had in our name to really one guy and that ended up, I guess, becoming useful at some point. But yeah, we go by Iron Cross Athletics. Most people call us ICA, but we are a CrossFit affiliate ICA.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's why I always refer to it too, on top of just hearing about your gym and then having some cross routes here. I've done the battle on Bridge Street before multiple times. That's a real fun cop. I know you guys have that coming up soon. You just made the announcement recently, right?
Speaker 2:Yes, yeah, one of our longest tenured coaches puts that on every year and it's wonderful for my end, because I basically have nothing to do with it. He tells me what I need to do, what I need to have on hand. I show up that day and he tells me what events I'm going to judge and but yeah, dave Boker runs that and he runs a heck of a show. He's one of the most organized people I've come across.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dave's awesome and he's just a good time too. He makes the environment a really fun one when you're there to compete, you know yeah, he tries to make it a pretty laid back, fun competition.
Speaker 2:I think he does well with it.
Speaker 1:I love having that take away from competitions or even when I just go to someone else's gym too. So, john, let's talk a little bit more about you. We were just talking about how I read you were a thrower before, like in high school. Then moved on to do it a little bit later on, like were you an athlete your entire life. Like what was middle school, john like?
Speaker 2:Oh man, like middle school and grade school John I was. I was never like super overweight, but I was definitely like a softer kid and I remember I think it was, I think it was 11. And I was just bouncing around the house with too much energy and my dad was like hey, do some pushups. And I was a little bit arrogant so I was like I'm going to do like a bunch of pushups and I like flopped on the ground for three and was demoralized and that like started me. I didn't miss a day working out, probably from then until I was like 22. Just started doing pushups every day. We had like pull up bars just kind of anchored around the house. So we do like constant pull up competitions between my dad and brother and I. I was going to say are you an only child? Where?
Speaker 1:is your older brother. Just one of them. I was the youngest by by good bit.
Speaker 2:I was the UPS baby. There was a. My sister and brother are significantly older than me.
Speaker 1:My brother's also I have one brother. He's seven years older than me man, so I know that feeling.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that it makes it tough to keep up with them, but it was good, it pushed me a bunch, yeah, yeah. So I, I got into fitness, kind of that was really the start of it, and and then I just loved doing everything fitness. So in eighth grade I was running home from school each day. It was like two and a half to three miles and a person just pulled over on the side of the road and started yelling at me. It turned out to be the middle school track coach. I didn't even know we had a track team and she asked me to come out to the track team and yeah. So then I, it turns out I was running home.
Speaker 2:I went to Catholic school. I was running home with like Catholic school uniform and like the group in this area, like in Pennsylvania. Yes, yeah, I went to a visitation not too far from here. Nice, yeah. And yeah, my knees blew up like halfway through that season. I was like is there anything else I can do? And like shop put, sold, and then on I just loved it and I did that up through high school and through my first two years of college.
Speaker 1:That's so crazy, dude. What events were you running before you went over to shop, put I?
Speaker 2:was a mile runner. Wow, yeah, that's crazy. Not a particularly good one, but it was all right I was. I was hitting sub six anyway, right, the really good ones. Yeah, that's good. That's five and eighth grade. Yeah, and it was funny because I was this height. In eighth grade I was like 5'10" and I probably weighed 125 pounds and was just running all the time and doing pushups and pull ups. And then I moved to shop put and got into weightlifting and just put on a whole bunch of weight rapidly, yeah, and and then it was great. I loved shop put and the technical aspects of shop put were always intriguing to me, so I really geeked out on that. Yeah, hell yeah.
Speaker 1:That's one of the reasons why I really love weightlifting. Now, you know, weightlifting and gymnastics like things that you can always delve deeper into. You know, always break down even more and keep working on a more basic unit of it. You know, oh yeah. So tell us more about your high school, collegiate career with throwing like. What are some of your biggest highlights? Like memories that you love, not necessarily like the best memories you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, gosh, I had a lot of fun. I was an upper middle of the road thrower, right Like I would win local meets and then if I went to a big invitation I'd get stomped by someone. But it was very much. I very much enjoyed it and it was cool. I was kind of a jack of all trades which transferred nicely into CrossFit later on. I would throw shop, put discus and javelin and there weren't too many throwers that would throw all three. And then in college I got to throw hammer as well, so I could play around with them all. I think I did well, like in the league championships one of the years, but for the most part, like I said, upper middle of the road, I would do pretty well. And I was at high school. I was 5'10 and 200 pounds, which is big for a high school kid but not big for a high school shop putter. Those guys were giants. So it's pretty funny they call me like mighty mouse standing in the lineup of guys and they're all like 6'4.
Speaker 2:And then there's me. But yeah, I had a ton of fun with that. I had some really nice coaches that were very influential on me back then. A really good guy in eighth grade. That kind of prompted me to push hard and keep working out. It's funny I got to learn so much through trial and error and one of the, I guess, fondest in retrospect memories was javelin. My senior year I didn't have a javelin coach, so I was just running up and hucking a javelin over and over again in practice and I heard my knee pop on one of the throws and I fell over, writhing in pain and like just twisting on the ground. And I sat there for a good 10 or 15 minutes and I just think about like the mentality of a 17 year old boy because after a while I was like you know what, if I do it again, maybe whatever pops will pop back, which is a terrible plan. You were made to be a crossfitter right there.
Speaker 2:I ran up, planted my foot, popped again and this time it hurt real, real bad and I was like I'm going to get down. It turned out to be a partially torn ACL. Thank you, that's like the worst line of thought I could come up with.
Speaker 1:And I went with it.
Speaker 2:And I'd like to think I've learned a lot since then. But that one does. I do remember that With some degree of fondness, just in the humor of it, but it took me back a little while.
Speaker 1:It's just like encapsulate what it means to be a teenage boy. Teenage boy athlete too, you know. So, like with that story, do you consider yourself a competitive person, and how long do you think you've been that way?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I am exceedingly competitive. But I'll say in a very positive light, like I have no problem being beaten by anyone and I'll throw my hat in the ring in virtually any situation and I've gotten to throw my hat into some decent rings and it's. I will go as hard as I possibly can but again, no problem if I get beaten and I'll smile and shake it off and have a good time. I'm generally smiling at any competition. I'm a part of that's awesome.
Speaker 1:You know, that's the mentality of a warrior, I guess.
Speaker 2:That's yeah. That's been it since ever we. The biggest competition I've been a part of recently was the Rogue Record Breakers Challenge. The first year they introduced it was 2020, so COVID hit but I got to go out and do the max 315 deads in two minutes as like a sideshow in between the strongman competition and that was amazing. But I got carted out there in front of you know, in between the mountain doing his deadlifts and everything like that, and all the people in my gym were following along and just cracking up because I just walked out under the stage with this giant grin on my face and like, yeah, man, let's do this thing, yeah, hell, yeah, you know, dude, I love that.
Speaker 1:That's great. It's like just loving the experience of it, like and some people miss out on that part when they go do those kind of things they're so worried about like oh I need to perform this well, like instead of just enjoying the experience.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, the running joke amongst my friends is I'm more competitive than I am fit. So when you put me in those situations I'll go all out and hopefully my fitness will keep up somewhat.
Speaker 1:That's funny. Just full send it, you know? Yep, so before we even keep moving on here, I want everyone to know out there that Javelin is like probably the most highly technical of the three throws that you mentioned so far. And I went to have a horse, I mean we had a pretty good track team, track and field team, you know. So we had a high level Javelin coach there and he like he would have like auditions or tryouts at the beginning of track season and he would straight up tell something, whereas they were not allowed to come back to the Javelin pitch. Like you go over there with the shot, the shot putters, the meat heads, just throw your round ball, you know. So you teach it yourself is like that's crazy, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that was a really cool sport and all the aspects of to your point earlier, like weightlifting, crossfit, all this stuff. Even my hobbies outside of this are like fly fishing and archery hunting. It's all just stuff where you can geek out on the minute details and just try and constantly improve and the throwing events were perfect for that Hell.
Speaker 1:yeah, Nuance. Nuance is everything you know. Yeah, you can take it on either side of the parallel, you know, like up and down, which is one of the most fun parts about the things that we do. So how did you continue on here Like? You went to college, played sports there. What was your fitness like after that? When did you find CrossFit? Did you have any lulls in the middle of that?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I did. I was a thrower up through my sophomore year. Prior to running the gym, I was a physics teacher. So my junior year I was in four upper level physics courses and some nasty math class and I was like, ok, my time for working out three hours a day and being part of the team is no longer really an option. So I quit the track team my junior year and just kind of got bogged down in my studies but again loved working out. It was everything I was going to do.
Speaker 2:The year prior to that, my good friend and training partner from high school he had come back from he had just gotten back from, I guess, buds. He had formally become a Navy SEAL Nice and I asked him the classic question like hey, man, what do you bench in? Now? Because he had put on all this muscle, he was like I don't really bench. I do this thing called CrossFit you probably love it. And he took me through a workout and just it was like a makeshift CrossFit workout. I was like running stairs and doing burpees and stuff and I was just a mess after it. So that kind of piqued my curiosity. So I'd hit a workout from CrossFitcom every now and then and that was 2005, I guess that I started messing around with that and then when I left shop, put I wanted to be a competitive lifter of some sort, whether powerlifting or Olympic lifting, and back then YouTube wasn't really a thing.
Speaker 2:If it wasn't, it wasn't anywhere near to the degree it is now. So if I wanted to be able to teach myself, it was going to be very hard to find all these videos, and back in the day CrossFit just had a list of linked videos just homemade videos that they made of how to walk on your hands, how to snatch, how to overhead squat, how to do ring muscle ups, all this stuff. Oh gee, dave, I was just yeah, I would just go onto that and look it up and try and figure out what I was doing and piece it together. So really immediately, once I stopped track and field, I went immediately into CrossFit and just did whatever CrossFitcom told me to do for the next I don't know six years, something like that.
Speaker 2:And then eventually I found CrossFit King of Prussia. That was the first CrossFit gym I ever stepped into.
Speaker 1:So you had that six-year block of just kind of do it on your own.
Speaker 2:You know what I bet? It was four years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, somewhere around that timeline, yeah, and actually on my own. It was. It's so funny. When I got out of my eighth grade track team I started doing ninth grade track. I would stay after to coach my eighth grade team.
Speaker 2:When I was in college I coached a high school team. When I was a teacher, I coached the track and field team and all along the way when I started doing CrossFit, people would see me in the gym doing things and they'd ask me what I'm doing. I'd explain it to them. So in college I had anywhere from 10 to 15 people that I'd meet up with every day and I'd teach them how to do this stuff. Like just barely ahead, right, like I figured out how to do it and then I'd teach them how to do it. Yeah, and then we had this whole group just kind of rolling through and then, even as a teacher, the whole science department at Abington High School was probably it was probably about a quarter of the science department we all chipped in and rented this nasty little garage and outfitted it with like gas line pull-up bars.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:You are Craigslist barbells and stuff and we'd meet up after school and work out. That's awesome, so kind of all. Along the way, I was always doing CrossFit and then gradually always coaching it as well.
Speaker 1:Always coaching, always teaching. Yeah yeah, that's crazy. So like ninth grade on, that started to develop here. Did it come naturally to just share information that you had learned with other people?
Speaker 2:Yes, and I'm not totally sure why, but even I think that's just how some people are right, like you geek out on other people doing well with things. So we just had a woman get her first bar muscle up Saturday morning and she'd been working on it for a year, like putting in diligent work, doing the slow, like upper body strength work, and I lost my mind when she got it. I mean, I was so fired up I couldn't be contained and the people in the back of the passage are just laughing at me because it's what I do. But I took so much joy in her getting that and that's kind of that's how it's always been, that's great.
Speaker 1:That's like a great description of you. You know like don't, don't just like show me competing, like at these high level competitions and stuff. Like see how fired up I get after 10 years, 15 years of doing this and a new member gets something. You know, that's awesome to see.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's, that's that's so much fun. Yeah, those are the moments. Oh, absolutely, yeah, that's. I imagine that's why we do it right, that's why we enjoy coaching.
Speaker 1:That's so dope you. You taught at Abington High School. Yes, oh, that's right by where I grew up. Yeah, I was going to say the the hat bro portion.
Speaker 2:we would always play against against hat bro. Yeah, and I was, I was, I was, I was, we were some of our big rivals there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I remember back in the day when Barry came to HH in the beginning and he was doing some more things to you he was working corporate wellness at the time and then put the funds together to open, like the open, the first small place, and I believe it was in Abington, actually before they moved over to hat bro, you know, yeah, so it's crazy. All of these routes are just so intertwined.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's really cool and yeah, especially amongst the old heads like Barry's been around since ever. You know he was crazy. He was the one that started most people on their CrossFit journey.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like so many people, he started me. You know, then, like we've gone on to help start other people's like timelines or 10 years in in the space there. So, as a competitive athlete, right, you start doing CrossFit. What was the first time you did the CrossFit open?
Speaker 2:The first one I did. It's so funny. I can remember checking the game site the year they created the CrossFit games and it's. I can remember seeing him like man, no one's going to do that, I'm not going out to California to compete in this. And like it took three years before it was huge, right, yeah.
Speaker 1:So People don't understand that right now. They think that it's just been huge forever. You know, I'm like no, I remember those first few years.
Speaker 2:It was so small and sectionals was. That was held at King of Prussia. That was 2010, I think. So I did that and I came out. I don't know, I've always been a very hit or miss athlete. Like I'm fairly powerful, I am not very well conditioned, so my, my marks are all over the place and so that that first sectionals, I think the top 20 got to move on to regionals and I think I was like 30th. I wasn't super close to 20th either. There was a gap between 20 and 30.
Speaker 1:Dudes and then like the straight superheroes. You know, that's how it usually goes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and but my wife she was, I don't know fifth or sixth that year. She got to go do it. Oh, she didn't, though that was the year we went team. That was the year that King of Prussia sent a team to the games and I was lucky enough to be a part of that and that was a lot. And then the next year was the first year of the open and it was gosh, the year we opened our gym. I think was the second year ever at the open. Wow Of the open. And then I've done everyone since and it's pretty cool. I just went through and looked through all my previous standings. You can see the outliers of where some workout caught hold of me and really woke me pretty good, yeah.
Speaker 1:It's. It's man, I kind of take it for granted that you could go on and look at that. You know, like someone I was just out for like beers on Saturday night, actually in Phoenixville with a friend for a birthday and we started talking about the CrossFit open and quarterfinals expanding, and she was like, yeah, like I was nowhere near close last year, Like I was 74% and she's not a person that follows the games. I'm like, well, this year they're taking the top 25. So you're like one percentage away. She's like, wow, if I like like try real hard, I can qualify for quarterfinals and we'll revisit this conversation later. But like that right there is putting it in my head, Like that's pretty cool, you know, like just $20 and you could go on, see all of your progress and then like, push a little bit harder and qualify for something, even if it doesn't mean much, to like maybe Matt Fraser or Tia, like the quarterfinals could be something for your everyday athlete. You know, and it's not small but it's important, I think.
Speaker 2:Oh, I, yeah, I loved it. The quarterfinals was pretty demoralizing to me back when it was, I think, top 200. Yeah, and it was still cool, like I was still going to take a shot at it, but I mean I was finishing 5,000th or something, you know, it was not not close and then they went top 10% and I'm always right around that cusp. So if things go well, I can get in, if they don't, I won't. But I remember it. It motivated me like crazy. It's funny I don't think I've even taken part in quarterfinals. I think I qualified two years ago and did not take part, or I might have loosely taken part, because at this point, like we have athletes that are doing it with more kind of skin in the game. So I am there to help facilitate and if I can get a workout in, awesome, but it it matters a lot less to me because again, I'm vying for 91st percent.
Speaker 1:You have a role that you can put in more value to. If you, you know, do something else you know. So that's where your priorities lie right now, which is awesome. It's going to happen for a lot of the OGs. I think we see that being the wave, the sphere that a lot of people are going towards right now. You know, like, hey, one thing we'll talk about later on is the masters and like masters teams, I want to get like your opinion on a bunch of those things. But before we go to that point, you were saying, like, the first year of the games, right, when it's out of Dave's rage and it's like everyone just come out. If you could make it here, you could come compete. You gave us your feelings on that. But what about the first time you heard about the open and an online competition? Like what were your initial feelings on that? Did you think it was going to work? Do you think it would be like people were going to cheat? Like do you remember how you were feeling?
Speaker 2:Oh, by that time my views had swung so hard where I went from no one's going to go to that to I'm going right, and it was totally delusional, like I had no chance at qualifying for the game but I was going to go really hard and the yeah, I was sold in the first year. So many people like logged on the moment they post the workout that they crashed the site. They had to postpone everything a week, so they had to. They gave everyone a whole extra week to do the first workout, like multiple times over, because hell yeah, their site was just not ready for how many people were going to do it. And each year after that, like I very much enjoyed it, and then honestly Probably 2015 to 2018, I struggled with the open because we had, at that time, two small children. The gym was big enough to occupy a lot of our time. The open all of a sudden became a really challenging endeavor.
Speaker 1:Probably the peak time in that time period.
Speaker 2:Yes, it was so hard. The open was five or six weeks long at that time. Five weeks, yeah, with real hard workouts. It was just rough from a logistics standpoint. Then, after 2020, the infrastructure of the gym was a little bit more fluid, our kids were a little bit older, life settled a little bit and then it became very joyful again. Especially, I think the three-week thing was the greatest decision they've ever made. You can find the best athletes in three weeks and not burn everyone out on getting all revved up over each week.
Speaker 1:Dude, five weeks man. I'll look back to specifically I think it was 2017, when the fourth week, I think they repeated that 55 deadlifts, 55 hands-in push-ups. It's like doing that in a fourth week of five weeks is just like draining all that engine and then the squatting at the end Dude, just drained so much out of you so hard. Then, when they announced the three-week, I was like, thank God, this is so much better.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, it's so much fun. The first week there's a ton of excitement. The second week, you're still riding it. Then the third week it's starting to wane but it's the end, so it's like a finale and everybody's revved up. I thought that was one of the best decisions they've made.
Speaker 1:They usually end with a finale too, when they went to that three-week thing. So it's really good. Tell me now your favorite open workout ever, what one like you're like? Oh, I love this and I could really get after it.
Speaker 2:I guess the one that I it was probably not one of their best tests, but the one that I loved was the first year of the open. It was five minutes of max squat, clean and jerks at 165. And it was that's some of the most pain my legs have ever been in. But and again, like it wasn't a great test, I don't think, because just the nature of single-modality five weeks two, so you're fine.
Speaker 2:But I very much enjoyed that one. And then, honestly, somewhat obscurely, the more recent one that was 19 wall balls and 19 calorie row, over and over and over again for like 15 minutes. We just redid that one in our gym recently and for some reason, even though cardio usually ruins me, that one I found enjoyable. I guess I could just kind of turn my head off and go there's not a lot of skill in it, it's just kind of a different way.
Speaker 1:We did that one recently here too, and it was my first time doing it because that was one of the years that I took a break from the open. I don't think I coached at a CrossFit gym or something like that at the time, and I was. I'm not a huge cardio guy either. So I was like this is a great workout, you know, it's like a really good test, like for the open here. It really hurt me but like I could do stuff afterwards, you know it didn't take my soul away, you know.
Speaker 1:So, on that note, what's a workout from the open that just like absolutely destroyed you? Mine, like my worst case scenario. I have two for you. It's like 17-5, I think, the one that had the nine rounds of double unders and thrusters and it made that a games workout later on. And then my absolute kryptonite. I will never forget this workout when they first introduced the dumbbell and they did the dumbbell snatch and the burpee box jump over. That took my life away and that's one of the few workouts that I've. I redid and did worse on and I was like I'm not ever redoing again. Like that workout you could just have it, you know. So what's that workout for you?
Speaker 2:Both of those were pretty nasty. That, interestingly enough, I was revved up to do that double under thruster one and, for whatever reason, that day had other plans. The second round my blood sugar crashed and I mean the guy judging me was like should you be stopping right now?
Speaker 1:And I was like no, You're the professional, but what should you stop? You know?
Speaker 2:But the one that got me, the one that stands out, was years ago, maybe 14 or 15 range, but it was overhead barbell lunges and then like burpees over the bar and there might have been chest bar pull-ups.
Speaker 1:There was a gymnastic with it, but yeah, it was one of those workouts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I remember that one. It just beat me up really bad and on top of that it was really hard logistically in our gym to run it, so you had to lunge. Still, you were like nose up against the wall to get the required distance and then you drop the bar and you like roll it out of the way and start doing burpees. And I remember just genuinely being beat up by that one. That was pretty rough.
Speaker 1:I remember that was one of my first or second opens. I like those layouts, like now, since they become a little bit stricter with the floor plans and stuff. Those workouts do kind of scare me when I see them pop up, but at that time I like like moving and doing things like different places. That's a perfect segue. How do you feel about a lot of the recent changes that HQ have announced? We started off kind of already with the top 25%. We like that one. It gives more of an opportunity for the athletes. But something that's being said right now is they're trying to kill the games again. We kind of lived through that before. Do you think that that is a good plan to kill the games and put CrossFit Health first, or is CrossFit Games one of our best marketers? What's your opinion on that one?
Speaker 2:I'll come at this from two angles. I think it's I really like putting the best in the world on a pedestal. I think that's cool, like I'll never make the games, but it's I like just being able to throw my hat in the ring with the best in the world. Right, no other sport allows that. But even from like a marketing perspective like Rich Froning's abs have probably done as much for the sport as many other Any red shirt right, you know? Right, yeah, like people see him on a magazine. It's like, what does he do? That's CrossFit, you know. So I do think it's really good to have the top.
Speaker 2:Now, I don't understand, obviously, the logistics of the finances behind it and I'm hopeful they don't take it away just because it's a cool community builder. It's a cool way to get people on the outside to see the sport. Right, you start putting it on ESPN, more people are going to see it and then, selfishly, we have a young lady at the gym that's very competitive and has been very good to this point and she is so focused on going to the games and it is. It would just be a crime to see someone who has dedicated so much of her life already to it that have that just robbed on one random day because they decided to shut it down.
Speaker 1:But I'm aware they could do it, yeah for sure that's part of you know the businesses of CrossFit. It's supposed to be grassroots and stuff like that, so smaller brand in it, so sometimes things have to go by the wayside. Now, like speaking of having competitive athletes right and the CrossFit Games season, do you think that the process and layout is I don't know if easy is the right word or easy to follow for someone like, especially a teen athlete that's trying to make it to the top levels? Like our instruction is clear in the open. Is the layout like easy to set up for people that like, probably can't do this full, full time, you know, like our steps clear for the next process, quarterfinals and semifinals. How do you feel about, as, like, a coach of an athlete?
Speaker 2:So, having put her so, our young athlete has gone to the games two years in a row in the Teenage Division and has gone to Wadapluza three years in a row now. So, and we've done a couple of other qualifiers as well, here and there, and I'll say the open does a very good job of laying out expectations. That is really helpful. Like Wadapluza, I love the event. It's a ton of fun. But the qualifier is terrifying because you don't totally know what they want you to do. They're not super clear on some of their standards and the problem is like you did your workout, you submitted it two weeks later they're going to judge you on it. It's too late to do anything about it, right? So if you did something wrong, you're just out laying down expectations on what you're supposed to do. The challenge is with any of these online competitions is exactly what I said before, where if you are doing something wrong and you're missing it by the time it is discovered it's too late to do anything about it. So I know like my athlete will do anything. I ask her to do right. If I need her to face a certain way for the camera, if I need her to use a wall ball target that she doesn't usually like to use because it's better for filming. She'll do all of that. So then it kind of shifts the pressure on to me in my mind of if her video is invalid for any reason. It's probably something that I did and that stuff messes with my head a little bit, but I think they're pretty good, like we've never had an issue.
Speaker 2:But it is something to see a teenager's like emotions of. Like I don't even know if this counts. I don't know what is acceptable and what's not. Most of it's pretty standard right. Like your hip crease goes below your kneecap Okay, that's pretty easy. But like the standards on. Like the farmer carries and you can't quite see their foot from the camera angle where you are, which is way far away. It's like I know she went over the line. The video may not look like she went over the line, but when I was standing there she did and that's way across the room. That stuff spooks me. But I mean, I think they're pretty reasonable in understanding that it's. It's a limitation and I don't think it's one you can get around very easily.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a perfect world. So you know they're trying to do the best they can. I mean, we all hope that the best is clear, present for everyone every time they step up to play. Oh, now this year they have. They're going to change the teen version of the finale the CrossFit Games for the Teens. What are your feelings on that? Well, I should say what were your first feelings when you first heard the announcement.
Speaker 2:I'm very much of the mindset that I operate within this framework that I have no control over, so I'm going to do what I can with what's given to me, right? So in this case, like I don't get any say in what they do with the games, I will say I think the cool factor of like warming up next to Tia Tummi is irreplaceable. That is just so cool for for the kids to share the same athlete village as the elites and like the camaraderie that's there and that's that's going to be missed. The thing I don't miss and I I should be cautious in saying this, but Reese hasn't finished outside of the top 10 in a qualifier since the first two months shot where she did CrossFit, which two months in is when she hit her first open.
Speaker 2:So now that it's 30 going, the intense pressure of like making sure everything is perfect kind of comes down a little bit, which is kind of cool because now, so this year we're going to take a real hard shot at adult semifinals for her and see, you know where she stacks up in that realm and understand we can take risks there that we otherwise probably wouldn't have taken if they were only bringing, you know, a select few through the ranks for the teams, but now, now we can take some shots. So more people in the field. And I do like statistically to have a lot of people in the field because I think you get, I think you start to hone in on better overall athletes at the very top when you have a larger field, so that if someone has a significant weakness, that gets, I guess, penalized more. If you're strong at everything, it's even more impressive. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like we said, you try to do your best right. When you get to this point, it's how precise can you be? The required precision is the field shrinks, shrinks, shrinks. You know it's like throwing a dart at the dartboard. You want to get the highest level points. You get a very little that you can miss. So what about for you when they're opening the field up more for masters? Would you throw your hat back in the ring, buckle down and try to make it there?
Speaker 2:I think if I went really hard and dialed in my nutrition and focused more on sleep and really focused on my training, I think there's a chance I could be top thousand in the world in my age group, and that's a far cry from it.
Speaker 1:And all those things are all the things you sacrifice as a business owner.
Speaker 2:So, yeah, I'll take a swing at it and I imagine I'll come out somewhere between the 88th and 92nd percentile, which seems to be where I come out most years, and then I'll have a whole bunch of fun. We have an intramural style, as most gyms do, so I just sent out the email to the team right before this podcast, kind of rallying the troops and getting everybody ready for this Friday, so that's going to be more my focus. Yeah, I like being in it, but that's all.
Speaker 1:Laurel is right. The interviewer opened beating your buddy from last year.
Speaker 2:Yes, yes, Fun fact a guy that I knew from preschool. I haven't seen him since preschool and his name has been popping up in the open repeatedly by the local gyms and I've been watching him. He's pretty good.
Speaker 1:It was. That's a really good time. So a lot of my buddies from high school they like I'm matriculated across it over the years, you know. So I started seeing their names on the leaderboard too and I'm like, ah okay, I see you, I got you a week too. You know I'm coming for you, and stuff like that. So let's talk about the old days a little bit more here before we wrap it up. Like you guys, when is the team 2011 of the CrossFit Games? Was that six person? A year back then, that was six, yeah, that was a six person year.
Speaker 1:What was that experience for you? Like any biggest takeaway from it, like any biggest learning lessons from the games.
Speaker 2:The regionals that year was just an unbelievable amount of fun. It was in some like random field, so we had to do a max snatch in just a grass field where they hadn't cut the grass in quite some time. Let's go. And it was like wet from the night before.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And everything about it was just that right. It was like just a mess a bunch of people hanging out.
Speaker 1:That's so fun. Imagine telling people these days, oh my God, they would throw a fit if they showed up to an event and that was going on.
Speaker 2:Oh it's crazy. And I felt bad. Like strategically I knew I could do some stuff in that snatch event that, like you, would never do in good conscience in a competition. But it was basically like I knew I could throw a split snatch and just drop my back knee right into the mud and it wasn't going to hurt Somebody else. That had like really good snatch forms getting wiped out doing it in the grass and I was like I'll just close up my grip a little bit, get a little pressed out at the top drop my knee, get it going, hell yeah.
Speaker 2:But that was an unbelievable amount of fun. And then going to the games was really incredibly inspiring, just to watch the people. That was the first year Froning was in it, but he couldn't climb a rope to win the last. You know, he lost the last event and then lost first place overall. Because of it and watching that, I came back really renewed and ready to go after it. But honestly, the next year, I feel like, is where the rest of the field stepped on the gas and it just I put in a whole bunch of work. I was in the best shape of my life and I think I went from. I think I went from like 59th in our region to like 600th or something ridiculous and that's where it really blew up and I was like whoa this is serious now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's awesome to see how everyone else gets fitter every year too. You know like you work real hard and you're like, oh, I'm crushing it. And you see like more people do it. And you're like, oh, these people all got fitter too. This sucks, but you guys are supposed to take the year off so I can do better this year.
Speaker 2:It's crazy. Yeah, they got fitter and then it drew more people in, you know, and all of a sudden you've got these like former division one athletes that were really competitive and they're out of their sport. And now now you're seeing some of the best athletes in the world take their shot at it. That was cool. It was also cool statistically as it got larger to see, like the idea of Frazier, toomey and Froning winning so many years in a row. Mathematically that's something else, like to win by the margins that he did.
Speaker 1:That's hard, yeah, yeah, to limit the edge of a percentage for that long, right, yeah, like you are in the 1% of the 1% for years, extended, like all the things that go into that. Just fathom that is like a whole lot, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's really cool to see.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and so you said that you lived a life for a long time where you always were doing some kind of teaching and kind of came natural to you too. What about being a business owner? Like when did that start to develop, when did you start to think you want to open your own gym? And like how was the beginning of that process?
Speaker 2:Yeah that it kind of made sense to me that I was going to end up in a gym in some capacity, just because everything that I was doing was coaching based. I really enjoyed it. And then it's so funny when I was in college, I think CrossFit Philadelphia opened up I think it was called CrossFit Philadelphia at the time and I remember thinking I'm like, oh man, I missed my chance, that's going to be the Pennsylvania CrossFit. And lo and behold, there are many CrossFit gyms in Pennsylvania. But at the time I thought that that was going to be it.
Speaker 2:And then I was teaching out in the middle of the state and I moved to Abington to teach and I sat through discussion with the principal and the answers he gave about that gave me an idea of where education was heading just didn't sit well with me and I went home that night and booked my level one seminar and I was like I've got to find a way to eventually get out of this. I very much enjoyed teaching but kind of the admin end of it was going to be a challenge and I very much am grateful for that because it seems to have come out the way that I thought it was. And then I actually, once I dove into it some, I kind of realized I was like, oh, I have no business running a gym. I don't have the organization, I don't have that skill set. I'm pretty good at teaching someone how to lift.
Speaker 2:And my wife actually wanted to open the gym and I remember, right before we open I'm like, look, nikki, I just I'll back you up, anyway, I can't. I'll build the equipment, I'll coach the classes, but I can't run the gym. I just don't have that in me. And she was like that's fine, that's my skill set. She's hyper organized, she's very gifted that way. And then she built out enough procedures and systems and I'm like, oh, I could do this like this If you set it up so nicely for me. Yes, I can in fact do this, that's also fine that partner like that right.
Speaker 2:You know it was huge, and the plan was always for her to leave her job. And then, a few years in, we were both still working our full-time jobs and it became evident that one of us was going to have to leave, and it ended up being me. So I got dropped into the gym and then there was a long learning curve of me understanding the difference between being able to coach someone on a squat and running a business effectively, and that's something I'd imagine I'm still very much learning about day to day.
Speaker 2:But, I enjoy it.
Speaker 1:That's the best way to go about things right. You always want to be a lifelong learner, you know, because when you feel like you have learned everything, then the learning ceases and you're just staggered at that point, you know.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gets boring and more than likely you haven't learned everything, so you're missing stuff and yeah. So, yeah, I've gotten to learn a whole bunch, especially, I'd say, since COVID has been the biggest magnifier of where our shortcomings are and were. But it also is a nice reset because we're given three and a half months to change anything we didn't like and come up with new systems, and after that I think we were. A lot of our members will tell us that COVID was the best thing that ever happened to our gym. Things cleaned up a lot after that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you guys have expanded since then. Right, you guys opened up another side to the gym, got more members Like how was it coming out of COVID for you guys?
Speaker 2:I'd say COVID, and immediately after was quite challenging. No gym was like yes, this is great, you know Right.
Speaker 1:This is the best time ever, yeah.
Speaker 2:That was very difficult to manage, but our classes had gotten very large prior to that. We'd have up to 22, 23 people in a class and the original room that we had was not conducive to that and it was looking back on. It was very difficult to coach. We'd only have one coach on for that class and it was not effective. So then we went to the system where everyone has a squat rack, a rower or bike, a set of high gymnastics rings, a pull-up bar, you know a whole lot of space to themselves. And now everything got more enjoyable to coach because now if you want to do ring muscly up progressions, you can have everyone set their rings at the same height, put bands across them and practice, you know whatever you want. And then that became a lot more enjoyable. It came with its own logistical kind of headaches with weight listing classes and kind of holding hard caps on the classes. That poses its challenges, but in the long run I'm very grateful for that change that we made. That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's taking being prepared to the next level. You know, every single time you taught people how to move and everything. But what was it like to then go teach coaches how to coach? You know, even if not being on seminar staff, you still have to bring people on as a business owner and have employees. So how has that process been for you over the years?
Speaker 2:I'll say again, prior to COVID, pretty helter-skelter, right, Like we would bring people in that had a good personality and were kind of clear leaders in the community. And then I was very much at the mindset that I want them to coach to their style and be as good of a coach as they can be. But I keep so little framework within that I knew how I wanted to class run, but I wasn't even clear in conveying that. I had a very good friend and mentor that to date is one of the smartest human beings I've ever met. He dropped the line on me years ago and he said John, I know you think you're special, but the sooner you figure out you're in algorithm, the better off this whole place is going to be.
Speaker 2:At the time I was like no, I'm special. Then I put more thought into it. I'm like oh yeah, here are the things I do well, here are the things I don't do well. How can I make all of our coaches do more of these things that I do well and do less of these things? Once I was able to put a clear thought process to it, I think everything got a whole lot better again. There's just way more clear expectations on what the warm-up is going to be and how that class is going to run from a timeline perspective. Now we're diving more and more into more in-depth. It's hard in my mind to impart very deep knowledge to coaches. There's one thing about seeing the basic points of a deadlift, but there's another thing about just nitpicking every little piece of it and trying to identify things on a very advanced lifter and then right behind them, a person that's never deadlifted before.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we've started holding these coaches clinics, where I actually go around and video athletes in the gym of a lot of different common faults that you'll see. The first one we did was just on snatches and just tried to get coaches comfortable with, okay, a really advanced lifter. Here's what we can look for. Here's the low hanging fruit that even the most advanced typically still struggle with. Then the next one coming up is going to be deadlifts and toes to bar. Again, I'm compiling videos and just that. I think that's what we've gotten. Feedback from our coaches has been very helpful. It's going to be very time consuming. It's three years from now we will have a really solid library of work and everybody will continue developing, but in the meantime it's not like teaching everyone in a two-day long thing. It's all right. We're going to hyper focus on one or two things for a night and then forget it. Let's move on to the next thing three months later and let's hyper focus. So that's our newest initiative and that's going to work out.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's awesome. I mean a lot of change from that teenager who was throwing the javelin with no plan. Let me just do this and see what happens. You know like now you're very well thought out, methodical in how you're going to approach things. We talk about the seminars and they're great to get people started and they're great to touch base again on how your coach is going.
Speaker 1:But just deep diving on one thing teaching someone hey, this is what you can focus in on, no matter what kind of lifter or what kind of athlete walks past you. You know like holding the coach's eye, that just comes through repetitiveness, repetitiveness. You know like doing it over and over and over again. So that's really great. Like a lot of people, they have the knowledge, they give a fuck. You know that's what CrossFit tells you to do. That's where you start off with just caring and stuff. But then they lack the relentlessness to keep going back and keep working on someone. You know like I find myself failing on that all the time, like damn. Like I know you watch that God move for four years, but if you coach him, if you cue him right now, he will lock the barbell out.
Speaker 2:You know, yep, and we have some of us the best of us fall back on that, so absolutely, as I call myself, walking past one of our coaches in class the other day and she's just a phenomenal mover. No one's a perfect mover, right, but I just walked by her and I was like all right, go back, because I know the last week I walked by her and I didn't give her anything and for her I like had to pull out my camera and video her lifting, because I'm like I can't see anything live time. So let's slow this down and see what's happening.
Speaker 2:It's good to have tools you know, yes, yeah, but it was to that point. It's so easy to fall into. I'm used to seeing this person for the last however many years, and then, yeah, that is one of the best things to me about any of these CrossFit certs is like yes, there is a wealth of knowledge, I learn a ton every time, but coming away with a renewed sense of like I'm going to fix stuff, I'm going to be relentless, that was the next.
Speaker 1:Light the fire.
Speaker 2:You know, yeah, that's one of the best things for me in those courses. That's always great.
Speaker 1:So at the end here, I think I have just two last questions for you. This first one is like Nikki you said has helped you with a lot of planning and being more logistic minded, do you have any like processes that you go about to? I don't know if you need to start planning for something. Maybe you're trying to get your creative juices flowing. Do you take notes? Do you journal? Do you do anything like that to kind of empty your brain?
Speaker 2:I'd say my brain moves exceedingly quickly, if not tremendously accurately. So there are issues there. Throw a lot at the wall and see what sticks. Yes, and I can remember going through these like brutal physics exams that they'd give us two and a half hours for and I'd be done in 15 minutes. And it wasn't that I aced that test, but like I was able to go through eight different things, I was able to go through eight different potential ways of answering the question very, very rapidly, which serves me well when I'm faced with a problem.
Speaker 2:Right, it often takes me a while to identify a problem within the gym, but I'll see a problem, something that I don't like, something that I think we can improve, and then my mind just starts racing kind of uncontrollably for several days, right, and that's where I'll start. If I get to the point where there's enough branches to that solution that I need to organize, I usually just go into and make a spreadsheet and come up with like, hey, here's five different things that I think are possible solutions. Let's go right down the list of here's the biggest pitfalls in this one, here's the biggest benefits, here's the likelihood of it being successful, and then eventually, usually several of those branches lead to some sort of kill switch, and then I'm left with only a couple of real options. So that's probably the process.
Speaker 1:And you better refining it down right, just like we're talking about with the coaching thing, like, okay, like now. These are all the options. I have to try to counteract that here. These are the ones that actually make sense, these are the ones that could get done, these are the ones that could get done in the time frame that I want to. You know, like going through that process.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and my brain just kind of races through hypotheticals of all right, what's the worst case scenario? Best case scenario. And that I'm really grateful for the time I spent studying some of those classes, like the physics labs, where you just had to identify every possible variable and everything that could or could not go wrong. That was really helpful. Now that I'm in this setting where some problem gets posed, sometimes I take it too far, though Sometimes I need to step back and just let someone else do stuff.
Speaker 1:We all do. That's what I got at the level too. Hey, just get to the point.
Speaker 2:I just took a whole toilet apart in the gym and took it off the base and it's like I probably should have just hired a plumber. But I just geeked out and I'm like I bet I can sell this quick and I got it done, but my time probably would have been better, since it's better served doing something else Do it some other way.
Speaker 1:literally I'm sure this happened to you too, my level too. The instructor. Literally I was doing my circle breakdown and she's like watching the clock the whole time. I'm like no one's what she's going to say to me. Like, faster to the point, take a step away out of your progressions.
Speaker 2:I got ripped apart for that man. I went so long on that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it sucks, but it made me a better coach. I took the progression away. I was like I'm going to do this faster in my class. Then at the end here John question. I ask everybody when we were four years from COVID now, good standing at the gym here, athletes that are starting to progress on, do well in competitions and stuff like what are you hungry for right now?
Speaker 2:I'd say a short term and long term. Short term, I really do geek out on coaching Reese through these higher level competitions. I have never been challenged so much as a coach as having to refine every little thing, doing everything I can to help her get to what she wants to do. That is pretty much on my brain these days. Then I'd say bigger picture I've always I used to be a teacher, I've coached young teens and whatnot in the past. We have a pretty fun teen program at the gym.
Speaker 2:One of my long-term goals is to basically make our entire teenage program completely free. I want to have it be like after school and later evening, to the point that people just come directly from the local high school to the gym and then make them stronger and faster Because while adults, they can formulate their own thoughts and they can decide what's going to be good and bad for them. I think teens have less choice. I don't like saying that Every teen can make a choice. Every teen in any situation can make a choice, but it's harder. They have different influences. But if they can see a clear path toward getting stronger and faster and healthier, it's amazing To your point, max, and your gym earlier, when you see that fire lit in a kid that changes their life. Max, his parents are awesome. That kid was going to be in a good spot, but if you get kids that aren't in a good spot and you can light that fire, you can drastically change the course of their life.
Speaker 2:Our Thursday nights are totally free. I almost have to keep it under wraps because anytime it gets talked about, it floods, which is cool, but we need to be able to actually run it. There are several steps to be taken where we can have a class after school every day and just have kids get there and become monsters. I think there will be many steps between here and the program being entirely free, but we are starting to take them and I'm really fired up for that. I think four years from now, I would guess we will have a really cool program running.
Speaker 1:That's amazing, dude. Back in the high school, college days, were you ever a person that thought in four-year time frames, like four years out from the day that you were living?
Speaker 2:Yes, but weirdly so. I'm a weirdly motivated man. That's awesome when I say weirdly motivated, not like excessively motivated. I'm motivated by strange things. In this case, I can remember planning out my whole life, my senior year of high school, and I would like to fish as much as I can. I'm like okay, what job do I need to do to?
Speaker 1:fish as much as I can.
Speaker 2:I was like I'll be a teacher and I was like, okay, what will be the easiest teacher job that I can get, so that I can choose where I want to work and be able to fish for whatever I want to fish for? And physics teaching was the easiest job that you can get as a teacher and that was the framework. That was exactly the path I went down and it worked right up until we opened the gym and now the time gets taken off for the other things.
Speaker 1:But he found something else that you're super passionate about. That's great, man. I am super happy that kids out there your area have you as a mentor, especially with the last thing you just said right there. My brain goes to that a lot too, like, hey, z is what I want to accomplish. I need X and Y to be able to have Z. So this is what I'm going to go do and I try to formulate my plan from there. But, john, it's been an awesome conversation. Man, thanks for coming on and talking with me today.
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you, tyler, it's been a pleasure.
Speaker 1:Yes, sir John, listeners out there, have a great rest of your day. I'm off to get back to coaching. Peace. Yes, see you. I'm going to end this recording.