On today’s episode I sit down with the amazing Constantine Mouzakitis, a hybrid athlete, trainer, and regional NY business developer for Hyrox. The hybrid fitness comp that’s taking over the space!
Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed by the ever-changing media landscape? We navigate the tricky waters of news consumption, guiding you on a transformation from passive consumer to proactive content producer. We also explore the often murky depths of social media relationships, underlining the importance of authenticity and transparency in this digital age. From crime to cleaning to content creation, we've got you covered.
We then venture into the thrilling world of high-intensity functional fitness events, like Hyrox. Sharing our experiences and observations, we underline the importance of strategy, pacing, and conquering fear. We also draw parallels between martial arts' culture and fitness events, highlighting the critical role of respect and sportsmanship. We wrap up this episode by discussing our favorite cooking confessions and dishes, and exploring community and support at OG Training Academy. So whether you're into gripping crime stories, cleaning tips, or competitive fitness, this episode promises a captivating blend of enlightenment and entertainment!
On today’s episode I sit down with the amazing Constantine Mouzakitis, a hybrid athlete, trainer, and regional NY business developer for Hyrox. The hybrid fitness comp that’s taking over the space!
Have you ever found yourself overwhelmed by the ever-changing media landscape? We navigate the tricky waters of news consumption, guiding you on a transformation from passive consumer to proactive content producer. We also explore the often murky depths of social media relationships, underlining the importance of authenticity and transparency in this digital age. From crime to cleaning to content creation, we've got you covered.
We then venture into the thrilling world of high-intensity functional fitness events, like Hyrox. Sharing our experiences and observations, we underline the importance of strategy, pacing, and conquering fear. We also draw parallels between martial arts' culture and fitness events, highlighting the critical role of respect and sportsmanship. We wrap up this episode by discussing our favorite cooking confessions and dishes, and exploring community and support at OG Training Academy. So whether you're into gripping crime stories, cleaning tips, or competitive fitness, this episode promises a captivating blend of enlightenment and entertainment!
There's a lot of people that will filter the fuck out of their voice, just like they filter their faces. Let's be, let's be clear about that, uh huh. But just like they filter their faces, they'll filter their voice and they'll try to add more vibrato and depth to it.
Speaker 2:That reminds me what was that one woman's name, the one that just got, she just got sentenced. She had this big company where they were like testing blood and it was like all a scam, like she didn't actually have a product. I can't remember for the life of me what it was. I'll have to, like, look it up. You need to get one of those guys that can look stuff up on the Google.
Speaker 1:I know I need a Jamie. It's usually my dog, but he's not very good at looking shit up. No, no, he just kind of sits there, stares at me and I'm just like it's probably the opposable thing, Like whatever man. I just go back to taking a nap.
Speaker 2:It's cool, they're useless, but they're so cute, oh they're amazing.
Speaker 1:They're amazing. Like I was saying, you just see shedding everywhere and I just haven't had the time to get the Dyson in here. Which Dyson? I'm not thrilled with my vacuum. I gotta be honest with you. All this hype about, you know, no loss of suction and all this stuff, I should have went with a Hoover.
Speaker 2:Sure, I'm at a loss there, buddy.
Speaker 1:I should have went with a Hoover I didn't get my own cleaning.
Speaker 1:Oh man, I got I. That was like my first big boy purchase. I got my apartment. And the second that I got my apartment I said, oh man, I need a vacuum. And I started looking up all the cool bells and whistle vacuums and the Dyson. Just, you know, their marketing is gore. It really goes to show how good marketing can be and it's just they're showing the all the different ventricles of the of the vacuum and all the different suction points and this and that I said I gotta have that. I didn't have to have it. I could have. I spent $1,000 on that vacuum. I could have bought. I could have bought a $400 vacuum.
Speaker 2:Probably would have been just as good, yeah, or a $50 house cleaner.
Speaker 1:You know what I have? A my apartment is a one bedroom, one bath. It is not that big, it really isn't. It's my living room and my kitchen are probably. They're combined front to back. It's probably a little bit bigger than this room, maybe a little bit deeper, okay. So it's a good size, but it's not, it's not that big. So that plus a bedroom and one bathroom little tiny bathroom every time I have a clean person come over they go 150.
Speaker 2:What.
Speaker 1:I'm like 150 for what? Right? Like okay, I get the dog is dirty and you got dog you know whatever, but that is crazy. All I need is somebody to come in mop the floors a little bit, wipe the windows, clean the counters. Just do the stuff that I lack doing every single day. Yeah, because I'm tired.
Speaker 2:Not only tired, but like I'm not clean in toilets man, I don't care if it's mine or somebody else's Like I'm not cleaning a bath like a bathtub, you know it's just like it's.
Speaker 1:Everything's a hassle, it's like it's annoying. You got to do one cleaner to get in there, then you have to wait, then you have to do the other cleaner in there to do it, and then you wait, and then you got to hit the brush. You got to do it. I'm with you. I'd rather just pay somebody to do it, but I also don't want 150. No, it's too much. Buck 50? I don't think I ever have, never. No, it's insane. It's insane to be paying that much money. Yeah, I'm trying to look up that woman. What did you say she was doing? What with blood?
Speaker 2:So she had a company that would, that would, that would test blood, but it was supposed to be like an instantaneous you know a thing.
Speaker 1:It was like a Instant blood test.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, basically, but she started this company and she, she was building out this product. That wasn't fully built out and I don't know if it ever actually was, but they were bringing in millions and millions of dollars through seed investment.
Speaker 1:I have it. Elizabeth Holmes yes, elizabeth Holmes, left is escorted by prison officials into a federal woman's prison camp on May 30th of 2023 in Brian Texas.
Speaker 2:So there's there's document, there's documentaries about her, there's um, there's there's a movie that just came out I forget who the actress that played her but did a fantastic job and there was a transformation throughout, like when she started the company, to when she started to like, I think, lose her mind. What happened was she was in this world where she was constantly competing with these men, so she started to deepen her voice and sound like and talk really funny. People that knew her when she was like in high school and in college were like why is she talking like that?
Speaker 1:Hmm, yeah.
Speaker 2:It was really really strange, but in the movie they actually did that. Did a really good job with that, sorry not in Thursday.
Speaker 1:Entered I'm trying to find like the exact thing she begins her sentence homes leaving two young children, a sunboard in July, Lots of money.
Speaker 2:Build up to the startup.
Speaker 1:Uh, while she was building up Theranos homes that's what it was Theranos, yeah. Theranos, yeah. Um grew closer to Ram Rammish Sonny Balwani, who would become her romantic partner as well as an investor and fellow executive in the Palo Alto California company. Can we just go on record and say that generally these companies that keep spreading up in Palo Alto aren't that good? They're really just not. It's a stretch man, especially these days.
Speaker 2:I mean they're they're really kind of pushing the line. These tech, these tech people are really pushing it. Yeah, uh, and stay out of my agriculture tech people.
Speaker 1:Yeah, leave my farm and my, my things alone. That's it. Well, that's what they want. They want they want to be able to just be in control of everything, and, and I heard legislation about how much, how many vegetables you can and, and all this different stuff that you can grow. Bro, go scratch, dude, I do not play, I do not subscribe to that shit. I don't need lab. Yeah, I want mine cut off of Exactly I want my, I want my shit fresh.
Speaker 1:Uh, the hype surrounding that. Uh they were. They promised to revolutionize healthcare with a technology that could quickly scan for diseases and other problems with a few drops of blood taken with a finger prick. I mean great idea, great idea and premise I'm very promising.
Speaker 1:I'd be like hey, I don't like blood tests, so take a couple of drops. But it all blew up after serious, dangerous flaws in Theranos technology, right? The Theranos, yeah, Theranos technology, uh were exposed in a series of explosive articles the Wall Street Journal that Holmes and Balwani tried to thwart. Uh, let's get to the point. Land of playing guys, Uh they broke up, don't care.
Speaker 2:Uh, it's a big. It's a big part of the equation, that relationship. I think probably just because he was one of, like, the major investors or one of the one of the people responsible for helping her get investors to the, to the program Gotcha, and he was kind of implicated in the entire thing because he apparently knew that there wasn't a product yet and they were. They were basically just trying to fake it till they make it kind of situation, but with a lot of money.
Speaker 1:I mean he was convicted on 12 felony counts of fraud conspiracy and a trial that began two months after Holmes, after that conspiracy, in a trial that began two months after Holmes ended. That's not written properly. That's not written properly. He is serving a nearly 13 year prison sentence in Southern California.
Speaker 2:That sucks. They were made a big example of for sure Interesting, yeah, Maintaining uh. I'm surprised you haven't heard about any of this.
Speaker 1:Nope, I gotta be honest with you, I don't read the news anymore. There's been a very big switch in my mindset and um, it's not to say that it's the right way to do things or the wrong way, but, generally speaking, what I've seen from news outlets as of late is just a ton of negativity. I say, you know, especially since COVID like it's just, it's too much, guys, it's, it's, it's too much, um, it's too much. I hate using the word, I really do, but it's too much gaslighting, it's too much fake shit.
Speaker 2:It's signaling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, just like and and and making things, making stories out of things that don't really need a story and that aren't real, and it's just sensationalism.
Speaker 2:Well, that's media from the beginning of time. Yes, Right. So ever since they invented the newspaper, they've been inventing ways not only to create ways to get the attraction of people, they get the eyes of people and that's obviously going to be something controversial, something a little bit outside the norm. Nobody wants to hear about the lady that cooked, you know, shepherd's pie down the street, Right, they want to hear about the lady that cooked shepherd's pie and burnt her house down, you know, and that's that's the unfortunate part about it. But the signaling part is is also just become and social media has had so much to do with spreading that like wildfire.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a tough, it's a. It's a tough view on almost on all standpoint. So for me it's just I've, I've tried to become I said it on the last podcast, I've said it on a bunch of them, because I've just been banging the podcast out so it feels like they're all linked together sometimes but I've tried to become more of a producer of content versus a consumer of content. So I put things out there and hopefully my message or whatever their guest that was on has to say, or whatever video project that I was working on, hits the mark and people are excited about the product or the person, whatever it might be. And that's it, man. Yeah, I I.
Speaker 2:I Set it and forget it.
Speaker 1:That's it. I'm trying to really just forget about having to constantly, because I mean, we're we're all guilty of it. We pick our phone up and what's the first app we go to? It's either messages or Instagram. It's weird. It's weird how you're, just your brain has been rewired by an application on your phone which your phone was meant to make calls, text messages and and you know, do business type of things. And Instagram is a business application for a lot of people but at the same time, most of the stuff that we're doing on there is not business related.
Speaker 2:No, even if people try to. I mean, I think that you can be on Instagram at any given moment and someone's trying to sell something on Instagram just through content. It's not even an ad right, yeah. Like all, of Instagram is an ad.
Speaker 1:Yep, yep. And now I don't know if you've noticed, but I've been getting ads in people's timelines. So if you go to someone's feed and you scroll through a couple of photos or videos, whatever they have, all of a sudden there's a random ad in there and you're just like, really Like you, just, you just really thrown it at me from all angles.
Speaker 2:Yeah, not just the ads. Now they're pushing threads through there as well, which which I, you know I can't stand. They get me sometimes too Like something that I might be interested in and I'll click on it and all of a sudden it'll just open up threads. Yeah, like I wish I never signed up to this. Yeah, I signed up.
Speaker 1:I signed up with threads when I first came out and, just as I predicted, I like, a couple of days later, I put a thread up and I just said everyone's still using this or are we done with it already? Fucking ghost town, and ghost town Generally a ghost town. I think Jaco Willink, his team, is posting on it. That dude, Alex Hermazi or whatever his name, is the entrepreneur dude and yeah, that's really all I see on there and it's just kind of it went from wow, you can actually talk to the people that you've been trying to talk to for so long and connect and actually connect, instead of just being sent into the DMs to like no, we're not, we're not using this anymore.
Speaker 1:It's so weird how everybody just like immediately flocks back to Instagram. There have been a lot of attempts at dethroning Instagram and getting them off and there's like a slow introductory period of people like going oh no, this is it, this is it. And then within a month or so, it's just people just go right back to posting stories, right back to just feeding into the Instagram machine.
Speaker 2:I'm curious what it's going to take to actually bring it, because it's a behemoth, I mean, it's huge. And I remember when Instagram first came out, facebook was still very, very like, relative like to everyone, and then obviously you started getting to grandparents on Facebook so everyone was like, all right, grandparents are here, it's time, yeah, yeah, we have to mass exodus, we're out, yeah, and that's when the euthification of our society started to really happen right when, like grandparents, started being on Facebook, they started using emojis.
Speaker 2:You know it was. You know when you get an emoji message from your grandfather. That's when you know, okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm like grandpa, I didn't know, I didn't even know you knew how to bring up that keyboard.
Speaker 2:Right, but I am curious to see, like, who's going to come up with the next big thing Around the time when Instagram came out I don't know if you remember this and I don't even remember if there was like what the name of it was, but I do remember that it was an Australian company that did it, an Australian tech company they came up with a very similar media platform like Instagram, and it had a sound on the background, so it was still photography. So you can take a picture let's take an example of you're on the beach, waves crashing, birds flying overhead, okay Right, and there would be a little snippet of that sound that would play in the background of that photo. I do remember that it was brief and it was quick. What was the name of the app? I don't remember for the life of me, man, it was an Australian company. We don't even have to look it up because I'm sure that they probably just got bought out by somebody that it's.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I do remember that, because I mean I started with Instagram back when it was like oh, nine 2010,. Something like that, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, nine 2010.
Speaker 1:And it was sold, like I think, less than 18 months later for a billy October 6th so about a month ago, for, like the anniversary, october 6, 2010 was the was the first time, and then it racked up 25,000 users in one day. That's pretty crazy for for 2010.
Speaker 2:It was huge because it took it took the elements of Facebook that people were really interested in and just featured that, which was just the photo and a little bit of content. Photo, a little bit of content. That was it, and that's what everybody was responding to at the time. Unfortunately, I'm old enough to remember that.
Speaker 1:Instagram me too Instagram. What would even be the term, what would even be the term you'd look for?
Speaker 2:I don't know. It was like I said, it was an app that very specifically focused on still photographs, with a snippet of sound on the back end of it, so you'd hear the, you know the birds, you know chirping in the background, you'd hear the waves crashing, and it kind of just set a mood for it. It was. It was so brief.
Speaker 1:I'm so curious as to what it was, I'll have to look it up too. Yeah, they said it's all threads, they're, they're trafied me. I'm like, nope, that's not what I'm looking for.
Speaker 2:On a on a on a macro scale. I've always been interested in social media and what they're doing and what they're about. You know, and I've watched them carefully, even from back in the day, like I was definitely one of those people that kind of attached himself to people like Gary Vaynerchuk, like original, like you know, that like especially back in the day when he was going through the process of figuring it out and, at the same time, explaining it to the rest of us that we're just like scratching our heads and and he had some really really great foresight on what was going to happen, just like the foresight that he had with the selling of Instagram. You know, at the time I think everyone was kind of like a billion dollars, how can you sell, you know, an app for a bill? Like there's no. And this was back in a day when Facebook wasn't even making their own money yet, they hadn't introduced ads yet you know, it was all let's see, let's see down the line, what's going to happen.
Speaker 1:I knew. I knew that we're going to go towards, you know, some type of a paid platform. I mean, I paid for the check. I paid for the check for the first four or five months and you know, they promised a lot with that thing. They promised that you'd have increased exposure and you'd have a team that was ready to talk to you if you needed backup or assistance or this, and that I didn't see any of it. I didn't see any benefit to paying for the check mark anymore, so I stopped paying for it. Now I don't have a check mark anymore. Oh my God, life is over.
Speaker 2:They got ready your check mark.
Speaker 1:They got rid of my check mark because I stopped paying the $15 a month. Oh no, what's going to happen? It's like it gives a shit. Like, for me, the big play right now is YouTube. So, with the podcast, with everything that I do, the clips, what not interacting with people YouTube is my play. So, like that's my long play. So the last two weeks since I've been in this office little yeah, just about two weeks it'll be, um yeah, a little over two weeks I I've been hammering YouTube content, like just going in on it, just tons of reels, and there's somewhere I'm sitting there and I'm hovering over my fingers, hovering over the publish button. I'm like I just I know that this clip because they're only going to take it at face value for the clip. I know that there's going to be some you know, not great comments when I wake up, but whatever it's going to do you even pay attention to?
Speaker 1:exactly it's going to be engagement and whatever. So I said fuck it and I post it next morning. Not great comments, but regardless.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so it's, it's been great because what do you mean by not great comments, like you don't have to even put like a specific no?
Speaker 1:I mean what? What I mean basically what happens is when you do podcasting, it's like an interesting thing because everybody believes that you're just trying to be famous and like, without question. It's like am I trying to get some notoriety Without? Yeah, of course I'm trying to show that I. I have experiences and a lot of different things that I've done in life that can maybe help other people. Am I all in it for the money? No, because I would have taken on the people that offer me sponsorships for the show already and I would have taken the money and started charging him. But I didn't because it didn't align with me, with what the show is, with what who I am. I'm not just going to take money. To just take money, it's just. Then I'm a sellout and I don't. I don't like that shit. I've always stayed true to just being super transparent, honest, right up front. Exactly how you see me is exactly how you're going to get me. It's just. I can't be fake, I can't pretend.
Speaker 1:Like I told my mom this morning I was on the phone with her. She always gets she. She's older obviously. I mean she's older in terms of, like, her thought process with social media and stuff. And I told her. I said I there were. I have almost something like probably lost some followers by now. Oh no, I gained followers. That's weird. It came like 10. I did like a mass exodus of like unfollowing 500 people this morning. Just it, just to clear the con. I got to clear it. It's just, it's over. Like we don't fuck with each other. Like it's not that we hate each other. I do a perjury month, that's what I'm saying. Like I don't like your content, you don't like my content, whatever, it's cool. Like maybe we, maybe.
Speaker 1:He was a person I met at a show one day, at a bodybuilding show years ago, and they're like yo, nikki Rizzles, like when I was working with a rush. Yo, you do videos for a rush, or you do videos that, yo, this and that. And they follow me and I have, I have some type of weird compassion, type follow back where I go. Okay, well, the fact that they even knew who I was, that's like flattering and I'll follow back, because I always hated when I would be a fan of someone or something and I'd follow them. And you know they DM me and be like yo, thanks, man, great picture. And then you just wouldn't get a follow and you're sitting there like okay, but you know whatever. So I always wanted to like do the follow, but now I get it, because after a while everything drops off and you're just not interested in each other's content. So it's cool.
Speaker 1:So I did like a mass purge. I got rid of a ton of people, ton of dead weight, like I'm just, I'm over Once again. We go back to realness. We go back to being transparent. I've always been so. It's like why are we going to sit here and fluff each other's numbers? I just I can't sit here and preach realness If, like, every time your name is on a post or I see your name, I just go oh God, nah, man. And it's nothing against you, it's not that I hate you, it's just I'm just not interested anymore and just like. Just like people growing and out of genres of books and movies and video games and whatever. It's just like we're in different chapters and we're not as we're navigating through this life.
Speaker 2:I had this conversation with my wife recently, because I'm on this.
Speaker 1:It's mean she's like, she's like, don't unfollow them. I go no, because we're not doing business together and I didn't want to cut you off, but we're not doing business together.
Speaker 2:You nailed it, we're not doing business together?
Speaker 1:We're not, we're not, we're not hanging out on the weekends. It's not. It's not an emotional thing.
Speaker 2:It's cool, like, whatever I like, almost every post that comes through my feed Same. But because if I follow you means I'm going to like that content, yes, and if I don't and I find that you're constantly coming through my content and I'm not hitting that like button there's a reason for that it means I don't want that content. So I'm just going to purge, I'm just going to take you off. And in a lot of the times too, it's like I'm learning stuff you know from social media, or at least I tried to. You know, I tried to pick up some, some things you know here and there, whether it's like a cool little, like doodad about history, or if it's about the industry that you know that we're both in or have been in.
Speaker 2:All of that information, somehow I can and this goes back to like old school, like bartending days for me when I was younger, you know, I always wanted to like read constantly, all the time where there was newspapers, magazines, anything, to keep up with the people that were coming into the bar and I wanted to be able to relate to them. Right, you want to talk about Wall Street? You want to talk about sports? I hated sports growing up, I be honest to God, football, soccer, basketball, you name it if it was organized and it was like a team environment, wasn't? I wasn't, I was out, I was out, I was like and also I didn't understand it either. You know, I'm saying I still don't understand off sides on soccer.
Speaker 1:I don't, I don't get it either, or on hockey, or I go. What do you mean?
Speaker 2:He's like he had a breakaway. I don't understand, I don't even. I'm like where's the puck? I don't even see it. They're moving way too fast. Yeah, I don't get the sport, but, which is tough. Now, living out in Long Island because I grew up in the city, living on Long Island, I see how big the sport actually is when it's growing up in the city, like, there's not really many people that care about hockey. Yeah, lacrosse, football, lacrosse is huge on Long Island. I mean huge. Basketball is huge in the city just because there's courts everywhere and everyone's playing when they grow up and stuff.
Speaker 1:But you know which is dope, because that's like the summertime jam and vibe. You're just walking around. You see everyone hooping. You see the dudes playing handball.
Speaker 2:It's like going on the West Wall Street in the city. Let's see how excited you can get about basketball. Oh, packed 100%.
Speaker 1:Packed Everyone's around. They just want to see everyone just doing their thing. It's a spectator sport now, when you think New York vibes, that's what I think of. I think of that shit. I think of like the community, everyone just being one hanging out, just don't matter. Like race culture, it doesn't. Everyone just comes through and just like vibes, and that used to be that way, used to be. Yeah, it's, it's, it's. It's very different. New York now yeah, I don't go to New York now.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, not many people do. I don't go back very often, yeah.
Speaker 1:I stay, I stay, I stay on the island, or I go to my trips and I do my thing, and that's pretty much it. Man, I'm happy in my bubble.
Speaker 2:I'm a pandemic long island guy, you know so.
Speaker 1:Oh, you're, you're, you're, a transplant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm a transplant, but when I, when I moved out here, I was in Brooklyn actually not in the city, but I grew up in the city but I was living in Brooklyn right before I moved out here and my wife and I, after many, many years, we've known each other for years and we got together online and and and then I moved out here and just never left yeah, never left. I was like I was like close to the beach, that's what.
Speaker 1:I was going to say how was the vibes for you? You really loved it.
Speaker 2:Great, Fantastic. You get to be outside all the time. There's a preserve right outside our house, basically like 10 feet from our front door, and I get to go in there and just run. And you know, do you know what I do? Just to kind of like be outdoors and just enjoy, enjoy the time and any direction that you go. There's a beach everywhere and just being on your mail, I love the people are just salt of the earth. You know, we live in Massa Pico Park and and I love it, Massa.
Speaker 1:Pico is dope man. It's a nice little area. It's great. I'm not a South Shore guy. I dated a couple of girls from the South Shore. I wasn't. I've never I've never really been a South Shore guy. Yeah, I've always lived on the North Shore, so I think it's like you're just used to. I think it's more crowded down there. When every time I drive on Merrick Road, I just want to put my head through the window and just start raging, I just I can't. The driving is tough out here. I can't deal with it, man, when you know when the Gilgo beach thing was going on with the, with the murder and everything like that, three blocks from my house.
Speaker 2:Yeah, right, there, Right, it's creepy. Yeah, yeah, Walking like when it happened because my wife's really into like you murder porn, you know like.
Speaker 1:Why are women? Why are women into that shit? I don't know, but they are. It's so crazy.
Speaker 2:It's a thing. It's a thing Like, like all my exes, they all love that. It's so strange. The second it happened, she was like you want to walk by there? And I was like, all right, let's go. It's raining. I'm like, all right, let's go. You know, we walked down and, oddly enough, I was surprised that we were even able to like walk by, because I mean, it was surrounded by cops and barricades and everything but people, just because it was neighborhood.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's just whatever I mean. I can't stop everybody.
Speaker 2:Yeah, From what I understand, the family's still living there, which is really wild. You can like walk by at any time now and like watch them just.
Speaker 1:Just watch them like your bird watching.
Speaker 2:Like they're on the porch. The funny thing about Nothing's going down. Well, the funny thing about had bodies in your backyard and shit. All town, long Island like Massapequa like area, some of the things that I saw like on the news and I heard people saying like there was this one woman who got was being interviewed about it and she was like you know I always do. There was something off with that guy. He was always hanging out in his backyard, it was like, yeah, that's strange.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how dare you go enjoy outside?
Speaker 2:It would be strange if he was hanging out in your backyard.
Speaker 1:Yeah, right, like not in his own Again. Joe, get out of the backyard, go into yours. Exactly yeah, my couple of my friends that don't live in the state. They were like yo, you ever see this guy? I said, bro, they this dude looks like every guy I've ever cut off on Merrick Road. He looks like every guy I've ever cut off at Merrick Road and told him that you can't fucking drive. So I know he doesn't look familiar. I probably have flipped him off before, though.
Speaker 2:I've been living three blocks away from the guy for the last three years. Never seen, I've never seen him. Yeah, never seen him.
Speaker 1:Definitely not walking around. No, the density on Long Island is kind of crazy, man, it really is. So, yeah, I've always liked the North Shore and that's why, when I decided on, my office was in Roslyn that's where it used to be, yeah, so the Roslyn office was cool, but it was very small.
Speaker 2:I mean very compact and I'm still getting familiar with, like the geography, Like when you're talking about North Shore or South Shore. I'm like I don't know what you're talking about.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm just like. Like there's just the hand, almost like the split of the LIE.
Speaker 2:That's really what it is One thing you should know, and I don't know if it's for everybody. So I'm sorry, all New Yorkers, if you're, if you're, if you have a problem with this. When you grew up in the city, you have a very hard time understanding direction, Like because everything is a grid right. So you know where 22nd Street is, because it's right after 21st or right before 23rd.
Speaker 1:Yeah, three over this way.
Speaker 2:That's it, you know. And as far as, like, east and West is concerned, well, that's easy too, because if you're on the West side, then you're going this way, you're going to go East, that way, you're going to go West, right, north and South the same thing. But when you're out here, it's not that simple.
Speaker 1:You know, like this is the closest to the wilderness you've ever been.
Speaker 2:This is this is the Wild West. For me, man, this is the Wild West for sure, this is Montana, man mountain ranges. No, like we have a couple of rivers that you know we're surrounded and we're in this little cluster of place, you know, yeah, you can get lost in Central Park if you're a city boy. You know yeah, and when you were talking earlier about, you know, like vacuum cleaners and like all this stuff. I needed any of that stuff. Done, man. I just called the super downstairs you know oh yeah, oh you kidding me man.
Speaker 2:Yeah, my wife makes fun of me all the time because she, you can't. You'll never see me with a tool in my hand. I'm not the guy that you call when you need a mirror hung you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like my dad, my dad was an iron worker and I'm just none of that handiness was, like, ever handed down to me, so same yeah, I can't. I can't grasp the concept of like even look, do you see those two nails right there? I got too nervous trying to hang something and I stopped midway, so now there's just two nails in my wall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because you put nails in the sheetrock wall. I mean that's. I mean I know that much.
Speaker 1:I mean, I just got to, fucking, went right in yeah.
Speaker 2:There are sheetrock screws for certain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I was just kind of like all right, and then I stopped. So I was like I'm just not going to do it. So once I get my sound panels, I ordered a bunch of sound panels and tiles for the room to.
Speaker 2:This place is great though. Thank you, bro yeah you got an incenture located. I love where you are out here, Like. This area is some place that we actually visit quite often. Oh nice, it's got a great little cluster of restaurants. I got one of my favorites out here. Shout out to Frank Antoinette Baby 1653 Pizza. Oh.
Speaker 1:I've heard, you know, I've heard amazing things about them. I've never gone.
Speaker 2:I've been living here for over a year now and I just I haven't gone there yet Mike is partner of the pizza chef pizza eola, you know whatever they're calling those guys just has this unbelievable gift making like, like I think I'm sure he'll probably remind me if he ever watches this and it's like a Roman style, like pizza oven, you know, kind of like a little bit smaller, like individual, kind of like pot.
Speaker 1:Which is good, so you're not being a total fatty.
Speaker 2:Oh man, they're so, so delicious.
Speaker 1:Or it's just, or you become more of a fatty because you eat more of them, you know what.
Speaker 2:you're still going to have the appetizers out there, but yeah, some really, really, really good food. Yeah, that's right next door to Rust and Gold, I think, because Frank owns Rust and Gold as well. Okay, that's cool, but it's a great little spot like right there and we and there's a bunch of different places out here that we love going to all the time Dude.
Speaker 1:I love it up here. I really do If I was to continually stay on Long Island, which obviously for now it's it's home.
Speaker 2:You grew up here. Yeah, I grew up here, yeah.
Speaker 1:And I've been around the world. Man, I've been around the world, I've been around the United States and I just I haven't seen anywhere else that I could just go go. This is home. I haven't felt that way anywhere else yet. So until I do, I'm just. I have a lot of people that I know that'll just go up up and go. They'll just be like, okay, which I? And then they come back and they go back out and they come back in. I just don't want to do that. I I'm a big, I'm a big believer of just like I got him, it's got to be right. Like I don't want to. I don't want to just do things, just to do them. Grass is greener effect. You know, shout out to Tyler I love my boy. T Tyler's like on this kick of I want to just move to Colorado for a little while, and then he, now he's now he's off of it again, but it's like I can't just cause he did it or no?
Speaker 1:he's never even been so it's like that's what I'm saying, so it's like I couldn't do. I couldn't do those things. I have to go be a transplant for a little while. I have to live there a few weeks. I have to. It's like. It's like a relationship man.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:You know this. This is, this is a long term relationship that you're getting invested in your business, your life, just everything about it, Instead of just doing it whimsically and maybe it'll work. I never understood that. I couldn't understand how people could do that. Maybe it'll work.
Speaker 2:I'll give it a shot.
Speaker 2:I'm like yeah, God, what? Before the pandemic I noticed, you know, and for years before that I noticed, that a lot of people would never, especially from here, moving from the East coast to the West coast, like to California, LA. They would always end up moving back the other way around. It wasn't the case. It would actually end up sticking around for much, much longer, maybe eventually going back to California when they were like old enough to, you know, enjoy the good weather and not have to like work as much as they did. I'm not a fan of the West coast as much. I think people for the most part think that they are just because of how beautiful it is, but I'm not.
Speaker 1:I'm going to tell you a secret, and for people that listen to the podcast regularly, they're going to know this already and they're going to know it's coming, but so new people that are listening right now LA is a shithole. Okay, shocker Said what I said. It is what it is. It is gross out there, more so now than ever. Oh, the picture of the golden city that has been painted for everybody for years through Hollywood. It's up in the hills. Hate to say it, it's yeah.
Speaker 2:And out of most people's reach.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in Malibu and Calabasas. Good luck, it's not in LA. So you know, you go out there with the dreams of just it's going to be the most picturesque thing in the world, and then you're confronted with smog and dirty streets and homelessness and it, just it winds up making you more depressed than and the weather is not going to counteract that depression.
Speaker 2:Actually it does the reverse in that manner, right Like in the wintertime here, and we have a big homeless problem in New. York, obviously right and but there, because the weather is so mild, everyone is constantly outside. They're always outdoors. So it's great from the perspective of if you want to live out, you know, be outdoors and have more of an outdoor kind of lifestyle.
Speaker 1:If you're in a less fortunate situation and you are homeless, then it's better to be out there than it is to be in.
Speaker 2:Detroit, especially since they're just letting you pitch a tent basically anywhere you want.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they're doing whatever you want and you just don't have to pay property taxes.
Speaker 2:They're giving people money. Yeah, they're giving people money. You know which you know in turn. I'm not saying that every homeless person out there has a drug problem, but if you do.
Speaker 1:Well, I mean, if you're just handed money and you got nothing else to do all day, then what else are you going to do? Yeah, I'm not going to invest that money, I'm not going to put it away, you're not going to start a business.
Speaker 1:You know, it's just. It's just, it's fucked up all around man. There has to be. There has to be more. Also, as a civilization, there have to be better ways of handling things and and and confronting these problems, instead of just like patting it on the head and putting a bandaid on it and going it's okay. This is what we're going to try, for now it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, no. We have to have these tough conversations. We have to be able to spearhead tough issues. You know, if the homeless population can't help themselves, there has to be something that we can do to help them, not not open up safe injection sites for you to do dope, and if you overdose, there's a nurse waiting there for you.
Speaker 1:Now what's crazy to me is I am not a drug guy, and that's not the crazy part. But I'm not a drug guy. I've never had been. I don't, I don't. I smoked weed a couple of times, like it's just. It never sat well with me. And then the increase of potential psychosis from smoking weed increases as you smoke more and more, according to Andrew Huberman. So don't quote me, quote a Hubs Right and what?
Speaker 2:that's what he says, right. He says like if you already have an underlying kind of like problem with, even if you don't, even if you don't, even if you don't, it'll just trigger.
Speaker 1:You can have a random psychosis, psychotic and psychosis type of vent that then triggers you and you're in it now, like that's it, so like.
Speaker 2:Roseanne Barr's life in the last dozen years, Basically basically.
Speaker 1:So it's just to me. I've I've woken up lately and it's tough because you look around you and you just see everyone else is either getting to that point they're there or they're just they're. They're not interested in being awake, which is okay. I mean and when I say awake I mean understanding what's going on, like not just world, not just government, but our food, what you're putting into your body, the amount of physical activity you're doing that's the biggest issue the stuff that you're consuming mental, physical, like all of these things they you don't have to be awake.
Speaker 1:Like when people say, oh, I'm awake now, they think like, oh, you're against the government or you're this that? No, that's not what it means To me. It means I'm understanding life as a whole. Now I'm starting to see things in a larger scale versus just like when I was bodybuilding, and my biggest, my biggest concern every single day was I have to go hit arms. It's not that low anymore, man. There's a lot more stressors. There's a lot more things going on in life that we have to be concerned with because they directly and indirectly affect us.
Speaker 2:And the one thing about waking up for a lot of people is that it's incredibly scary.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:Like if you were not scared before, it's just because you didn't have your eyes open, right, and fear is one of those things where it's going to exist. You just have to learn how to combat it. You have to learn how to kind of like balance that in your life. And if you're the kind of person that in the face of fear, just kind of crumbles, obviously you haven't been challenged enough in your life so you don't understand how to come back from that. But you, it's something that you can learn, it's a learned skill, you know, just like coordination, just like bodybuilding, just like anything else. It's a learned skill, right, like I don't know what the educational process is for that, I'm not writing the workbook on that, but I've been in a place of fear a few times in my life. Right, fear of starting a business. Right, especially when everything's on the line, fear of going into. You know, certain areas that you're uncomfortable with.
Speaker 2:Like you have done a lot of traveling. I've been a business owner going to places that are foreign, not just foreign places, but places that are truly foreign. You know, in nature, like I've been to places in Africa like Burkina Faso, for example, or even in Mali where there could be a war and doesn't even have to be that far right. Like I was, I went to Costa Rica when I was like 16 or 17 years old on a little like surf trip, and they were in the middle of a war with Nicaragua at the time. So we're surfing while 400, 500 yards down the beach, you know, there's gunfire tanks, people running at one another with weapons, and we're like what do we do? You know, just getting the water and start yeah, next wave, next wave's coming. Exactly, next wave's coming. Yeah, but that's the joy of being a 16 or 17 year old. I'm saying like you could.
Speaker 1:You know really you can, you can, you can assess danger, but you can't really understand it until You're drawn to it.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, you're drawn to it, especially at that age. Certain people, some people will, you know, kind of shy away from it, but a lot, a lot of, a lot of what people are facing. As far as fear is concerned, now, I think happens to do with like the transparency, that or the that waking up that people are experiencing right now. Right, because everything is becoming more and more transparent.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, we're presented with information on a daily and second by second basis and these things can you know? Let's say we're both prominent figures and you know we have an argument in this room. That information could come out within minutes of us having the argument, even though it's only us two in here. All it takes is us saying it to one person. Then that person says to somebody else and that's it, it's tweeted, it's Instagramed, it's everything like that. Oh, what's this drama between Constance Jr and Nick?
Speaker 2:Everybody wants to be first first on the scene. Yes, you know, and it's the same thing. Like all media was like that right, they would always send people out to you know wherever that fire was.
Speaker 1:Which I get. They want the break, they want the breaking news, the story as it unfolds and, if you can, break it, you get the most eyes. Yeah, or the first eyes, yeah, and the first eyes are sometimes the most important.
Speaker 2:The most important and actually ad revenue is.
Speaker 1:But how are they shaping said story for those first eyes? That's the problem.
Speaker 2:I'll tell you exactly how they're shaping it. They're shaped because I have the inside scoop on this. Now I don't have the inside scoop.
Speaker 1:You're just, you're awake, exactly.
Speaker 2:What I do have is a little bit of like rationale, a little bit of like logic, right, it just makes sense. We want to take what we want to capture, whatever the story is, and enhance it in any way possible to be able to get that attention. And we do the same thing. You know we always blame the media. But I mean, you can just go on a date with somebody and the same thing, right, our representative always comes out first. You know, we drop a few less F bombs.
Speaker 1:Maybe we're a little bit more careful, a little more cautious with what you're saying, oh yeah, If somebody listened to my podcast and then they go out on a date with me, they'll be like, oh, he's such an angel. He doesn't see us, never cursed, he doesn't say anything like that. They listen to the podcast and they go whoa, who is this dude? It's just when I'm comfortable and I'm chilling. They just fly, man. It just it happens.
Speaker 2:I don't know what your mom is like, but I'm assuming that that episode probably had a lot less cursing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, so so I think I got. Some moms are out there. Hey mom, sorry I got. I think I got it from you. I grew up in her office and she's a mortgage broker. I used to hear her sling them left and right. Oh my God, yeah, long Island girl, yeah, west Hamstead, franklin Square. She grew up so like right on the border, like that new Hyde Park, queens area, and just yeah, she's, she's, she's been a hustler since day one of my mom.
Speaker 2:They make them a little bit tougher. Out here man Just real, real people, real human beings, yeah.
Speaker 1:And you know what I think it has a lot to do with. It has a lot to do with environment. It has a lot to do with the people and the things that you're exposed to when you're around. Obviously, the experiences make the man, experiences make the human being. But I would, I would say you know, if we're going to compare, we're going to compare different areas and the people and how they, how they develop. You know, you're always going to get a real product on the East Coast versus the West Coast. And it's weird because the West Coast people will just like smile on your face even if they hate you, but generally the East Coast people will be like I don't like you, please get away. You know, get away from me. Yeah, it's just, it's just crazy how these different areas I lived in the South for a while- oh did you.
Speaker 2:I lived in Charlotte, north Carolina, for a little bit and then I moved to Charleston, south Carolina.
Speaker 1:My buddy real quick. My buddy has been trying to get me to move to North Carolina. That's my thought process exactly. He has been trying. Yo, vinny, I love you to death bro, but you're a hammer, and you know it. He fucking. I went down to visit him because I was like you know what, let me just go down and see my man. I haven't seen him in a minute. Him and his girl, they're getting married. I said, you know what, let me go see him hang out.
Speaker 2:And he's just like bro. It's amazing down here the dating scene.
Speaker 1:He's talking it up. He's being, he's a news anchor. That's what he's doing. He's talking. That's exactly how. I got caught up into it, he asked me up and I said, all right, cool. So I went down there and I looked around and I went it's all right, like it's not yeah it's not like me going this has been right here this whole time. Right, I got to get out, dude. Right, I'm booking a flight, I'm canceling the flight back.
Speaker 2:You're excelling the pyramids, you got yeah. Exactly, you got pez yeah.
Speaker 1:I got sand castles on on from Jones Beach.
Speaker 2:Yeah, less you got white castles.
Speaker 1:Not all you got, so I got, I got farts.
Speaker 2:Just steamy meat.
Speaker 1:But the funny thing is when he's telling me that and I want you to hear your experience of North Carolina because I'm assuming it's pretty similar to what I'm saying then when I'm talking, we're at dinner, we're at this nice spot downtown Charlotte and a beautiful girl comes over to the table. She's the waitress and she starts talking to us and you know, of course, he's like see, see. I'm like, oh yeah, the one super hot girl we've seen in a few hours, okay. And so you know she's talking to us and we're like, oh, how long you been here. She's like, oh boy, I raised this and that, but I can't wait to get out of here. And we're like I said, oh really, why is that?
Speaker 1:She's like the dating is trashed down here, isn't that? I said. Hmm, so it really isn't a grass. It's really is a grass is greener, type of fact. It can be generally the same everywhere. The grass is actually greener where you water it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so be happy with where you are, and what you're doing, and I think that I was, because I spent a lot of time down there and we're talking about, like, in total, about 10 years, oh damn.
Speaker 1:In the in the South, oh damn.
Speaker 2:I did a lot of traveling while I was down there as well, but I have a very similar story into how I got down there. But my experience and I'll say this first and foremost I actually did enjoy some of my time while I was down there it seemed dope.
Speaker 1:I'm not going to say, I'm not going to pretend like it was a trash. It was a trash.
Speaker 2:I paled around with, like a lot of them were, or actually, imports.
Speaker 2:A lot of them, oddly enough, came from the upper transplants Transplants, yeah, exactly Transplants. But even though that, like a lot of people, I was very familiar with them when, when, when I got down there. So I was in the restaurant business before I got into the fitness industry and as a restaurant owner, I was lucky enough to have some success very early on and I sold my businesses back in 2008, 2009, roughly around the time when the market was taking a huge shit in its own pants and I was lucky to get out at that time. So I always wanted to travel and I knew that there was, you know, a means to an end with the restaurant business to try and make some money in order to be able to kind of like provide that for myself. I went down to Costa Rica for a little bit just after that the sale of the restaurants and I was I mean, I would tell you like I grew a beard, I was wearing a sarong and only a sarong, basically for like six months that I was like it was hipped out.
Speaker 2:Oh, I mean, I was, I was, I was, I was done. I was the guy that was like never talk to anyone, constantly alone, and you can imagine like after like a dozen years in the restaurant business, you know where you're always on right, Always on.
Speaker 1:It's tough man, it's like retail. It's retail with, with consuming items.
Speaker 2:It's retail with schizophrenia, because if you have a hundred people in the room, you got to have a hundred different personalities or be able to kind of like pivot and switch every single time because everybody has different needs and they want you to to. They want you to act a little bit differently with them. Some people like conversations, some people want to be left alone, some people want.
Speaker 1:Here's the specials, and then let me know what you want, exactly right.
Speaker 2:But at the time I was just kind of like done being on, I wanted that off, switch on the entire time. So I was there, I was enjoying my time and every once in a while I'd go into town, right Cause I was right on the beach and I would, you know, go to the internet cafe, check out, you know, check some emails. I didn't have a phone anymore, I was done with that. So I would, I had kept my phone on and I would just check my voicemail, cause at the time people were still leaving voicemails. And I got a call from a buddy of mine who lived in Chicago and he had a, a bar and restaurant there, a few of them actually, and they were opening up this huge monster of a spot in Charlotte, north Carolina.
Speaker 2:And even though I had done some traveling during that time, I had never really traveled around the United States very much at all. I'm a New York kid, you know, born and raised, and my very first question was where the fuck is Charlotte, north Carolina? Like it might've been, like North Dakota, you know, like it didn't, it didn't register, huge at all. So he was like man, listen, you guys do me a favor, just pack a bag and come down here. You know, and he had it set up that weekend was like they're they're not near the ocean, right, like it's actually quite far than North Carolina coast from Charlotte. They're very like inlet. And we went to the lake. Lake Norman is kind of like where everybody kind of hangs out and we're on the boat and the boat is just packed with like just gorgeous, like Southern girls that are super sweet with that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you're not. You're not accustomed to being up in New York. It's different.
Speaker 2:Right, you don't have these like harsh, you know, kind of like girls that are just Fuck you looking at.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Ah, my bad, Like these super sweet doxing just made them even sweeter. And it was kind of like Miami, you know, in North Carolina, and he, I mean, and he knew, you know that that that was going to be the picture that he was painting, right? So you know, I get there and I was like this is fun, like this looks like a lot of fun, like we could I'm only going to be down here for a year, you know like I could do this so I packed a bag and I went down and I believe I went down there like around February or March, I remember, because it was like right around like St Patrick's day and we opened up this, this restaurant. It was like 10,000 square feet, three floors, food, alcohol. There was four bars total in the entire place, right when we can have anywhere between you know, three and four bartenders at each huge monstrosity place and it was just packed every single night and it was. It was a huge success, it was great. And then that success led to another opportunity for me with the epicenter in Charlotte, north Carolina, which was kind of like this big, huge strip mall of restaurants, bars and clubs and a bunch of fun stuff, and I was able to be involved with that from an operational perspective, which was really really cool. And then, of course, the North Carolina Music Factory, which also housed, and still does, an amphitheater, an outdoor amphitheater there. Originally I think it was called the Road Runner Amphitheater. I don't know who has the sponsorship for it now, but that was a really, really big project in North Carolina that I really enjoyed.
Speaker 2:Oddly enough, I thought that Charlotte North Carolina was Charleston South Carolina, just because they both start with CH, and I was unfamiliar with it and I always used to tell everybody when I first moved down there that I was like where's like the beach, where's the ocean, where are all the boats? And they're like what are you talking about? And I'm like I always thought it was like, you know, like the Ravenau Bridge and like all that stuff. They're like, no, no, that's Charleston South Carolina. I was like all right, let's go there, you know. And I went and I fell in love with it.
Speaker 2:Charleston South Carolina is an absolute gorgeous place, but, just like most gorgeous places and I'm sorry, charleston South Carolina, this is not for everybody the people ruin it. Yeah, you know, and I say this about my homeland too right, my family is Greek. You know, they come from Greece. I'm first generation here in the United States and even when I traveled to Greece, you know, in the summer, when we were children, I loved it. It's gorgeous. There's, no, there's no place more beautiful than Greece, you know, from the beaches, from the culture, all of it. But the people sometimes tend to kind of make it a little bit less savvy. Right, and it was the same thing down in Charleston. There was a little bit of a race problem still.
Speaker 1:You know what? That's what a lot of people had said. When I said I was going down there to visit, they said that they said North Carolina, like Charlotte's very racist. I'm like really Huge, really Huge.
Speaker 2:Yeah, for sure, but also in the same, in the same breath, though, the places that have the majority amount of problems with race are also seem to be the same places that are integrating quicker. Right, there's a lot more relationships that are integrated relationships, people of mixed race that are down there, that are happy to be with one another, and I'm sure that they probably face, you know, a lot of issues, but the old school generation, which are slowly leaving us, just are very unforgiving. They're setting their ways. They're setting their ways, and they're setting their ways in a manner and this is going back to the original part of the conversation just here, at least in New York you know, when somebody doesn't like you In the South, they'll just say something like oh, bless his heart. You know, when they're trying to say what a fucking hell. You know, I'd much rather the latter.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just let me know how it is. Just let me know what it is. Yeah, don't fluff me up, just let me know how it is. If you don't fuck with me, it's cool. Just don't pretend that's cool. We don't have to hang out. There's plenty of people. It's one less person. I got to send a happy birthday text to. We're good, don't worry about it.
Speaker 2:We can unfollow each other, yeah, we can.
Speaker 1:The whole point of this whole thing. We can unfollow each other and on that note, everybody welcome Konstantin to the Pocket. Imagine that was the whole arc of everything.
Speaker 2:That was the intro.
Speaker 1:That would be phenomenal. Well, first and foremost, you know we're getting into a little bit about you, but I did want to thank you for coming down and hanging out with me, Thank you.
Speaker 1:You're the fucking man. I love that we have this bond through OG going and training and doing our thing. It's pretty cool because when you start doing more camaraderie type activities and sports and events, you get to meet some really cool people. For me I was a bodybuilding guy. We talked a little bit about it. I was a bodybuilding guy. You can train with people but it's really you sport. It's just you doing your damn thing and that's it. But when you have an OG or a group fitness type of class or event like Hirox, it creates this team event and you get really amped up to champion one another or champion the people from your gym. It's like going to I was talking about this with my boy, nick, who works a lot with the fighters for PT and physical therapy.
Speaker 1:It's like the tribal effect of MMA gyms. Just like all the dudes at Saras will go out when one of our guys is fighting or doing a Jiu Jitsu tournament, we'll all go out and support that guy, just like all the people at Wing Jitsu down on the South Shore or Soka or Long Island MMA. When they have their guy going in, everybody goes out to champion that one person. It's really cool. It is cool. So it's cool when you get to see all these different people.
Speaker 2:I love that. You made the connection and you instantly went from Hirox to combat sports, whether it's Jiu Jitsu or it's MMA or even more specialized Muay Thai, that sort of stuff. I love that stuff. I can't get enough of it. I'll be honest with you, that's like my passion in the background. I follow every single fighter. I follow every single fighter as much as I possibly can and I do really enjoy it. But the similarities have come to me often I find that the fitness modality doesn't really matter. It's like old school karate tournaments where you have like Obra Kai.
Speaker 1:Obra Kai.
Speaker 2:You got the Daniel Sun, like Miyagi.
Speaker 1:Do karate.
Speaker 2:So whether it's Tiger Shulman or any of these other, guys.
Speaker 1:Surprisingly, tiger Shulman at the last fight at the space in Westbury had a ton of fighters. Really, I was like Tiger Shulman, really, yeah, I was actually I mentioned it as a joke because I Wouldn't think it, but they had a ton of fighters. I was like, okay, cool, you saw a lot of that. You saw a lot of law, mma.
Speaker 2:It has that same kind of feel right when it's like there's I equate it like this the modality which is, let's say, mma, and then there's the UFC For Hirox. Hirox is the UFC and then the modality can be however you decide to train for it. So there's a lot of guys out there that are training CrossFit. There's a lot of guys out there and ladies, obviously they're training for interval style, weight training, og style. They got their own style for sure, right. And there's other functional fitness gyms that will train. There's Orange Theory that focuses a lot on that cardiovascular stuff, without a whole lot of the strength training, but they all come together to test their fitness at this one event and that event is Hirox.
Speaker 2:It's Hirox exactly, and so and that happened probably just because of how well organized it is and the branding and the actual I say spectacle, not in a negative way, but just from a production perspective the value of that production is so huge and it's fun to be there and obviously all the communities come together there. But it's the same thing. You see, the Cobra Kai's come into the room. They all got the same shirts on and stuff, right. The last event that we had in June in New York, everybody from. I think we had 40 people that raced from OG, which was really amazing and shout out to those guys for putting together.
Speaker 1:And they have the events on Sunday, all the events on Sunday that they do the Hirox training specifically for Saturdays. Is it Saturdays or Sundays?
Speaker 2:Saturdays, okay, saturdays, yeah. So they do it on Saturdays and they also have their strong classes where you can go, and I know that Taylor will absolutely He'll come up and grab it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, first of all, I haven't met one person in that community that I can say anything bad about. Not one person. I don't mean just from ownership, I mean everybody, right. But Lenny, coach, ev, taylor, kim I mean all of them I mentioned them down the line unbelievable human beings and I'm so happy to know them. They have such a really. They have such a great First and foremost. They have such a great idea that they move through their plan with and everything, even though it may seem like it just happens. Nothing is by mistake there. Everything is by design, but it's done in a way that's so casual, right, that it's a natural progression through living with what they do and learning what it is that they do, and I love learning from people like that.
Speaker 2:I'm a trainer myself and I train out of gym. Shout out to everybody over at Active Move Performance AMP in Amityville I love those guys. Those guys are my family, first and foremost, and I've been with them for three years now, basically since the beginning of my journey into fitness, and they're the best. But when it comes to my high rocks training, I have to say that being at OG and being surrounded by that community has pushed me to limits beyond my own fitness that I ever could have known, and it's all due to how they softly, kind of like, shuttle you through that process. It may not seem that way when you're in the class, because those classes you've taken them and they're tough. They're tough, but that process all the way through is so seamless and it's so nice in the community. The way that they've developed it is unbelievable. So people should definitely look at there's going to be classes taught on how they're doing what they're doing at some point. I can tell you that for sure.
Speaker 1:It's nice to do functional training. That's really what the switch that I've had and it actually started before OG. It started with my boy, tom. My boy, tom DeJuli. I don't know if you've ever seen Tom.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was actually going to mention Tom earlier. Tom's a scary. You can have people training with just kettlebells and landmines and they can also become elite high rocks athlete.
Speaker 1:I'm a scary motherfucker. That dude has no off button.
Speaker 2:It is so scary, it's all gas.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, every day he lives and breathes it, and it's just like that in real life.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah yeah. Before he opened up, this is strength Strength factory. Yeah, before he opened up the strength factory, he actually had a weekly class at AMP at the gym that I trained out of. Now is when I first met him Unbelievable the way that our clientele and our members went like just got behind that whole program just because of his enthusiasm.
Speaker 1:The landmine stuff, or did he do the pace it was?
Speaker 2:all landmine stuff at the time. Landmine university, landmine university, that's right. I think that he was just kind of going through that process himself and then he figured out his style as far as the program is concerned, and I love what he's created over at strength factory. Oh yeah, very similar to like OG, where they're just like creating savages.
Speaker 1:I've told him I need him to have a gym that's four times the size of strength factory, because I know he needs more space.
Speaker 2:He does need more space, but at the same time, I think more people need to also fall in line with that modality, and it's something that with more space comes more rent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, of course, you know the overhead stuff.
Speaker 2:But I can see that modality living together in another area Right. Like, let's say, for example, there was a kind of like a cohabitating space that had a Jiu-Jitsu studio in it, that had a functional fitness program involved and also had a strength factory kind of thing. I think all those can really live together as well. Now, that would take a lot of collaboration and that's a problem in our industry that there's not enough collaboration.
Speaker 1:The problem is that there's not enough, and it happens in the creative space too. Everybody's worried that everyone's going to step on each other's toes. That's really what happens. I wish it was that Well for creatives and stuff like that. I can see this as gym owners too, though, just being around a lot of gym people. People just want to be top build. Exactly, they want to be the top dog. They want to be the one that makes all the decisions and all this. It's like you can.
Speaker 1:I've told clients this before too. When I shoot videos with clients and we're doing a project together and they go how long should this video be? I go well, based on what I believe and what the algorithm says and what people's attention spans warrant, which is why you hired me Exactly my experience, exactly, this video should be X amount length. Then I'll send the video to them when it's finished, and this just happened recently. There's nothing against this person. It's just the understanding of like, and I had to remind them this is a collaboration between us. This isn't just like you tell me what to do. That's not how this works. This is us working together to create a product, because I've worked with a lot of companies. I've worked with a lot of athletes. I've heard from the top dogs about what works, what doesn't. I'm able to help you at the mid to lower level not to say this person's a low level, it's just going from like a monster energy. There are millions of dollars a year. This is what's working for them on large scale.
Speaker 2:I applaud you for even being able to balance that, because the truth is, I've never been able to understand that the same company that does the marketing or does content creation, now right, new marketing for big companies like a Coca-Cola, for example right. How can you say to a company that isn't Coca-Cola right, that's a little bit further down the list how can you say if Coca-Cola is a million dollars of my creativity, how can you say, oh, I can give you $500,000 of my creativity, or $500 of my creativity. How do you scale creativity in that sense, if you're creative, you're creative, right. There's no way of like, holding back, oh, I'm going to do better work for these guys just because they spend more money. That balance is wild to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean. What it comes down to is just like working within budgets, I can't do everything. It's like when I have-.
Speaker 2:What goes?
Speaker 1:first when the budget drops. It depends. It depends on what's needed. It depends on what the job is. Is the job tutorial videos? Is the job a campaign for a product? Is it? Oh well, you can't pay X amount for this.
Speaker 1:Well, we don't have any money for VFX. We can't hire somebody to do extra stuff. We're talent for them. Exactly. We can't have models come in, we can't have. You know, the unfortunate side of what I do, and the fortunate side, is that I'm able to bundle a lot of jobs into one. I mean, when you think about it, what I do used to be and I've said this numerous times what I do used to be 10 to 15 jobs, but now it's all wrapped into one. Now, the issue, though, that you run into is I can only be good at so much, like truly really good at so much. I can't be the best at everything. No one is so like. I can't be the best editor and the best shooter and the best photographer and the best drone operator and the best colorist and the best sound designer and also find copy too at the same time.
Speaker 1:There's just too many hats to wear, so some things get sacrificed. And sacrifice doesn't mean that it's shit product or that it's going to be you know something that's bad. It just means that there's only so much that I've been able to teach myself or do that I only have this much to offer, so I have to work within the means of that and because projects come so frequently, you know the balance of work, gym life, relaxation, dog, family things start to like kick out and there's only so much that you can do. So you have to be Still trying to manage that, and you know what we're life balance. We're always going to be, because we're never going to feel like there's enough hours in the day and we're always going to feel like there's more that needs to be done, no matter what.
Speaker 1:There's another client that needs a video clip, there's another person that is waiting for an estimate from me. There's another podcast that I have to export and shop up. There's laundry, there's house stuff, there's life, and you want to try and give all those things the same amount of money.
Speaker 1:I want to give 300% to everything but I can't. So I think what winds up being like let's go back to like a budget standpoint when someone has a client that pays X amount on the large scale, I think that they just know that what the product they're going to get, there's not much back and forth. It's like they're going to get photos and videos of X amount of content per month and that's what they're expecting and that's what they get and they're happy with that. But the client that comes in and says well, I have a brand that I'm starting and this, and that there's a lot more hand holding, which, in turn, you have to kind of be okay with, but you have to be able to just go listen.
Speaker 1:There's a lot more content strategy that I have to do with you. There's a lot more planning. There's a lot more things that are going to chip away at this, but I also don't try. It's tough because it's business, but I try not to be a stickler too. So like if we go over an hour on time, just kind of like. Sometimes they're just like okay, I work with people.
Speaker 2:A lot of the bigger companies that do, though, and they charge a good amount of money for anything over oh yeah, yeah, no, no, no, there's their sticklers.
Speaker 1:But that's the point where you have to think about, like, are you just getting dollar signs? Are you just trying to cultivate relationships? Are you trying to be a good person or are you getting taken advantage of?
Speaker 2:You also don't know, especially with some of these like smaller companies, where they're going to end up and you kind of want to be in the right place at the right time with some of that as well, going back to to to Hierarchs as well it's. It's kind of how I got involved with with that. Outside of being interested in the event myself and I was interested originally, actually it was more a business decision than anything else I wanted a different way to be able to engage with my clients and one way that I found was if I can get a goal in front of a lot of them, the ones that that wanted and were curious to test their own, you know, fitness, the ones that I'd been with for a long period of time. I knew that they could do this event because it's built for everyone. There isn't, it's not like CrossFit in the sense where you need years of training to get to a proper clean or snatch right Like. Those are skills that require a lot of time to develop If you have a decent enough fitness level.
Speaker 2:Lunges, everybody can do. Ball balls, everybody can do pushing heavy weight, pulling heavy weight, rowers, skiers, burpees, broad jumps, those sort of things mostly everybody can do to the degree that they can do them is really just what their fitness level is right. So there's some people that are gonna finish in an hour. There's some people gonna finish in an hour and a half, so people that can go over two plus hours to finish the actual event. The average is somewhere around like an hour and a half for most people. The elite people are doing it in under 60 minutes. The top female can complete it and has Megan Jacobi. She holds the record right now 58 minutes 58 seconds.
Speaker 1:Okay, so let's backtrack. So high rocks, is every workout different? Every time you do it?
Speaker 2:It's the same events, the same eight events, with a kilometer run between each one. So you start with a kilometer run, then you go right into the ski erg for 1000 meters, another kilometer run. You come back, you go right into one of the toughest stations of the event, which is a sled push. Now, if you're in the open level or if you're in the pro category, the weight can be a little bit different, but the distances are the same. For that right, which is 50, right, 50 meters. So everything is kind of like European has started in Germany.
Speaker 2:So you're looking at a meter to a yard, roughly about the same, about half a football field right, pushing heavy weight. Same with the sled pull as well. Right, which comes next after that. And then you go into burpee, broad jumps. You go into the rower lunges, farmers carries sorry, farmers carries and lunges. And then finally with the wall balls. When you finish, it's 100 wall balls. Right, I can hate walls. Yeah, they're tough, they're tough. I mean you'd have to do 100 squats and 100 thrusters, basically, right? No, it's not like you're doing it with super heavy dumbbells.
Speaker 1:No, it doesn't matter, though. It wears on you hip flexors. Not only does it wear and you said the- end of the event.
Speaker 2:It's the end of the event. It's the last thing that you do before you cross the finish line, right, and it's not like you have to do them unbroken, even though some people do. It's a matter of it's a timed event, so the person who wins is the person that does it in the fastest time. Yeah, the fastest amount of time, so the events don't change, and I don't ever foresee them changing.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was gonna ask, so it's just the same thing every single event.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it's those eight events, it's those eight stations, and why people continue, I think, to do them often, even though it's the same exact event every single time. So is the marathon right? It's the same. It's 26.2 miles, a matter where you do it, you know, some events might be a little bit more hilly, some might be a little bit more flat, some you're closer to the coast, some you're more inlet. What matters, and what changes, you know, in that is your strategy.
Speaker 2:So many things can go wrong. Right, half of the actual event is running, right, so there's 16 exercises that you do. Eight of those are all running. So you have to have a really decent running base in order to be able to do it. But anything can go wrong during any of that time.
Speaker 2:I'll give you an example of my first race. I'm not a naturally gifted runner. Never happened, right, you can see I'm, you know five, nine at best. I'm built like a mini gorilla, you know like, you know thighs, and so I'm not like lean and I don't gazelle myself through runs, right, I look like you ever see Yoel Romero run.
Speaker 2:No, first of all, he's got a fusion in his spine, so he kind of like runs like a robot, but he's just like this thick piece of meat. That's just like running down the road. It's not pretty right, but a lot of really successful people in higher rocks have a good running base and for me I knew that a lot of the strength stuff was gonna come a little bit easier right. The sled push was definitely one of the things that I knew that I could crush. My first event. I did that in two minutes and 20 seconds, which is like very good, but my next run after that, trying to use your legs in that capacity, yeah, you pumped up and the lactic acid that you have after that is just so.
Speaker 2:if you, don't exactly so if you don't train your legs to do that in the off season, while you're training to get ready for these events. And that means doing exactly that, doing something that requires you to get that pump and then quickly, immediately go into no rest, go right in, go right into a 400 meter run or 200 meter run, just so that your body can feel it. It's the last time that you wanna feel that is on race day. You don't wanna shock your body like that. And even if your next run is equivalent to your first run because, remember, the sled push is just the second station You're gonna feel it five, six stations on the line. It's gonna catch up on you.
Speaker 2:Whether it's the burpee, broad jumps or the lunges, it's gonna catch up to you eventually at some point. So strategy is very, very important in that and how you actually pace yourself through the event. So there are some little tricks here and there as far as like getting through some different things, and there are a lot of rules too, from from higher rocks that don't allow you to do certain things, such as you have to hit your knee down at every single lunge. It's not one of this is obviously-. Maybe the knee has to tap the ground, it has to tap the floor on every single lunge, right?
Speaker 1:Do you have judges following each?
Speaker 2:person. You do, you do. It's not a perfect science, just like most events that have thousands of people that join. The one in Birmingham just recently out in the UK was like 6,000 people. I don't think you can have enough judges to kind of get everything done as accurately as possible. But not everybody is racing for money. The elite people are, for sure, but most everybody else, like not everybody gets $150,000 to race at the New York City Marathon. Well, what?
Speaker 1:happens Like a chogi does. Well, what happens with like the top guys Like is there ever a tie? Do they ever come in like the same times?
Speaker 2:I haven't seen a tie just yet. I have seen guys get passed at the finish line like literally coming in second and then all of a sudden being fourth because two people, just because they didn't pay enough attention. A lot of people will mess this up, right, because the wall balls are the last station. So you think once you're done with the wall balls, you're done. But you have a timer, a tracker, that's around your ankle and you gotta make sure that you hustle from that station to the finish line, right, and that's where it ends. It doesn't end with your 100th wall ball.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool. You've got a little time tracker that stays on you and then, right when you cross a line, it stops it.
Speaker 2:It's actually one of the best things I've ever seen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool and if I haven't somebody sit there with like an inaccurate stopwatch, well, they do for the wall balls, right?
Speaker 2:So if you're sitting there you have a judge that's counting every single one of your wall balls and hopefully you're not no-wrapping on any of them because you don't wanna do any more than 100 if you have to do 100. The girls for the open is 75, it's 100 for the guys. But the tracker and what makes it amazing is that it tracks every single one of your run so it tells you exactly what your 1000 meter effort, your kilometer effort, is for each one. It also tells you your time inside what they call the rock zone. So the track is all outside the actual event area and you run around that. In most places it's two laps to get to the 1000 meters.
Speaker 2:New York was a smaller space. We were actually at the Meadowlands we're a little convention center next door where the Giants play, and that was a little bit smaller venue. So it was four laps for that one. That gets a little bit tricky but it tracks your time on those. It tracks your time in the rock zone, right Going from station one, station two, station three. So you wanna always make sure it's a timed event. You gotta hustle to those stations. You can't be spending too much time in that rock zone, just kinda like you know dilly-dallying, right Like so. You have to use your first event, I think, as a way to manage and understand how you're getting around the landscape right. See how the race actually goes. Most people are usually around up to 10 minutes off from what their capacity is on their first race, just cause they're figuring everything out. You know, it's the same thing with me too. When I did my first one I didn't know how hard to go on the slip push. I just went all out and I paid the price for it afterwards.
Speaker 1:Was your first one. Was that your first one trying it? And then you were a part of the team for High Rocks, or you were already part of the team and you said, let me just give it a shot and try one.
Speaker 2:I didn't become a part of the High Rocks team until very recently, actually in the last couple of months, and that process happened just from being able to meet everybody. I started a little podcast where I was interviewing the elite athletes from High Rocks. I was very interested to hear from them and there wasn't anything really like that that was happening on the East Coast. There are some things, obviously, that are happening in Colorado it's huge. Even California is huge. A lot more outdoor areas where people are more into and a lot of the transfers, people coming from OCR obstacle course racing, which I've never been into myself to be honest Spartan races.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm not really interested in.
Speaker 1:So Rain did an event at one of the Spartan races and we saw we were there the day before and all the athletes went around the course and just did some of the pinnacle areas of the course, like the mud pit and this and that, and then the electric fence the dangling things.
Speaker 2:At the end I'm like fuck, is this bro? I don't wanna roll around in the mud.
Speaker 1:Everyone's laughing. I'm like I don't know if I like that. I don't know if I like just. Oh, I gotta run through this and get shocked People love it.
Speaker 2:I don't understand it. I'm good on that, I like fitness events and look, there's some people that look at fitness events and are like I don't see fitness as being yeah, look at these nut jobs doing fitness. Yeah, fitness is not a sport, it shouldn't be a sport, or they think that I do find it. When you're actually at the the Hierarchs event and there are spectators, I do see excuse me, I do see a lot of people that are there. They're just cheering everybody on. I'm like this is so weird. Everyone's cheering me on for working out, you know, cause it's a workout, you're going through a workout.
Speaker 1:Well, then again you have mad people cheering on. Joey Chesson says he's just taking down those glizzies. Man, he's just gotta.
Speaker 2:I guess the working out part is makes a little bit more sense when you think of it like that People like to watch other people do fantastic things, and it doesn't really matter what it is, whether it's bungee jumping or a crazy fitness event like this or throwing spears at a Spartan race. I think people just like watching people do fantastic things, and that's why the CrossFit Games became so popular and so huge. Crossfit Games are interesting to me. It's different. It's different than Hierarchs in the sense where CrossFit as a modality came first. As a system it came first, and then the CrossFit Games came after that, and it was a great way to kind of like tie everything together and to actually test and see what all the different quote unquote dojos were doing and who was the best.
Speaker 2:Everybody wants to know who's the best. It's the same thing with, like UFC. You have all these like trainers and in those training camps you have five, six, seven, eight, a dozen fighters and then they all are either gonna be fighting for the UFC specifically they have a contract or they might go to other lesser events. Elator, elator, things like that. The hybrid fitness race community has other sports. Connor McGregor just came out with one right Called the. Yeah, it's called the McGregor 3K. I think it's called. Don't quote me on that, but he's in the game as well and it's through, I guess, a company that he started a while back called McGregor Fast, which was kind of like his fitness app. I guess you wanna call it yeah, mcgregor Fast 3KO.
Speaker 1:Yep 3KO the world's most notorious fitness competition in the world.
Speaker 2:Yeah, which it's notorious and it hasn't even happened yet. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or maybe it happened recently. First timers, champions and everyone in between, that was so inclusive.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's other guys, even Spartan. Spartan has come up with an event as well, called DECA. That's very similar to Hierarchs in the sense that it's traditional hybrid fitness as opposed to obstacle course racing right. And DECA, instead of being eight different stations, is actually 10, with a run in between each one, and now they have three different events that feed off that. You can do the DECA fit, which is kind of like a 5K in total, so 500 meters of running in between.
Speaker 1:That'll be throwing me off with all these K's, man. Yeah, I need miles. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:That'll be throwing me off with all these K's. Well, 1000 meters is.62 miles, right, so maybe you can base it off that. But they all go off of K and running is always done, that you know. But then they also have the DECA mile, which is a.1 mile for each one. Right Times that by 10 stations you get a mile. There you go, and there's the DECA strong, which has no running in it at all. It's just the strength components, right, but obviously there are some, you know, there's the bike on there and stuff. I should do that, I should do the strong.
Speaker 1:You should no running. You don't run at all. No.
Speaker 2:No, no, I run hitting and out.
Speaker 1:It's yeah. I mean, since I joined OG and I started dropping weight, I mean I've been able to do more.
Speaker 2:Cause I, I. It's amazing what you can do with 20 less pounds 20 more.
Speaker 1:I dropped. I was 230 in March. I'm 188 now. That's impressive, yeah. But and you know a lot of people go, oh, og, og. I'm like, without question, og helped and they started me off and I did a lot, but it's nutrition and it was the jujitsu. You know what OG does. Oh, yeah, we'll get it. I'm telling you, man, the grappling.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you just sweat, dude, the first couple of times, man, you start to, you start to really get in the trenches. You know, jocko, you see all these videos on your on Instagram, these these cool, badass compilations of dudes just man handling each other and like you're just like okay, it's, it looks, it looks dope. And you know, you see, jocko, go, oh yeah, you know, swimming with sharks out here and you go all right, no, I got. Now. I say that I go going into the shark tank because it's just a collective group of bad motherfuckers across the pendulum I mean, it's just across the plane. It's just like dudes that are just super strong, dudes that are really athletic, dudes that are D one wrestlers, dudes that have been doing jiu-jitsu for years and years and years and just they're just they're just chilling and just like twisting you around. You're like what the? How do I get the? And they're just like okay, whatever, they almost look like they're just like sleeping and doing the moves. You're going talking about strategy and pacing.
Speaker 2:Okay, a whole lot of patience with that.
Speaker 1:A lot of patience and and, as a white belt, as you start to progress, you, you slow down. It's weird, like when I first went in, it was all about strength for me. I didn't know, and they said that that's what's going to happen. I have really good grip strength, amazing grip strength. I've always dead lifted without wraps. I've always super tight grips on everything that I've done. So it's like for the first couple of weeks there, I mean I would grab onto dude's keys and they wouldn't be able to get away from me. Even higher belts, like. But then they'd start putting me in different moves. I'd extend my arm too far. You only do key. No, I do no key to. Yeah, yeah, I do no key to. But what?
Speaker 1:Basically what happens at Serras is you have to. You technically have to do the fundamentals class. So if you're a white belt, fundamental class, the only class you can go to, except the mixed class too. They don't say it explicitly, but you're not going to get ranked up as fast if you just go to the mixed class. They want, they want to see you at the fun. Like I talk to Matt all the time. Matt and I have become very close. He's super dope, so he's still involved.
Speaker 1:Oh, he's there, Like he'll he'll see me, he'll, he'll walk by, he'll go, nicky Rizzles, on the fucking mats.
Speaker 2:Let's go we love Jiu Jitsu Like he just. He was on Rogan just recently.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, he's, he's. He's such a character, exactly how he was on Rogan, exactly how he is his person. He's amazing, amazing, he really is he. You know what it's. You talk about people and their passions. He loves Jiu Jitsu and he loves teaching people and showing people the way he really like. He calls all of his black belts Jedi's, so they're like Jedi Joan, jedi, jedi man. He like all these guys that he that are his black belts under Sarah. He calls them Jedi's, so he really is like Yoda.
Speaker 2:He's like the sensei, he's the guy. But is it only grappling and Jiu Jitsu with them or they do Muay Thai.
Speaker 1:I tell you they do box. I think they have a boxing class too. This dude, beethoven, who unbelievable human being. We call him Beethoven cause he's deaf. Okay, we call him Beethoven grapple. He's unbelievable. He does the wrestling class cause he was a wrestler his whole life. And he's unbelievable. Wrestlers in Jiu Jitsu are scary Ooh. Well, that was my first. I've never wrestled, so my first experiences with going up against wrestlers was at Sarah's. And listen, I, I, I knew what was going to happen. I knew that I was going to get my ass kicked. I knew that I was going to have to shrink myself a little bit, cause this is a new world for me. And bodybuilding.
Speaker 2:What a great place to be, though, right Like unbelievable, yeah, when you. I don't mean just like that, that that place, but I mean what a great place to be starting from the bottom again and learning like from these amazing human beings, but also savages people that can literally yoke you up.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, and and you know it's tough sometimes because you know the testosterone is flowing in the veins you you catch yourself going oh no, I could, I'm not letting this motherfucker get me and you just go Nope, nope, nope, chill, chill, chill, like. This is how you get hurt. This is how you fuck yourself up. Just relax. Easy to get hurt. Yeah, it's cool, bro, never try it. Guess what? Tap and you get out of it and we start fresh. Please tap. So please tap. Yeah, because I, I made the mistake only once. Nothing happened bad, but it was just like but it can varies yeah, he was just in, I was, he sunk in me quick and I just I should have tapped earlier. But I sat there and I went nah, I got this shit. I said I'm going to get out of this. And he just clamped down even harder and it was across. It was like a cross face, it was more like a crank than a choke and my whole job was like getting pushed out and I said, okay, okay, take it. How could be got McGregor?
Speaker 1:Yeah, and that last very smushed in and cranked, didn't have the neck at all, it was just in the face.
Speaker 1:And it's tough, man, because you know your whole. Everything's getting pushed back and since starting I've gotten sore in so many areas that I've never been soaring in my life before my toes, my neck, because dudes are, because dudes are constantly clamping on the back of your neck and trying to break your posture down, especially in no-gee Okay, cause they don't grab the gi to pull you down, they grab the back of your neck, wrestling style. So they try to cup your neck and they try to.
Speaker 2:There's also techniques, too, where you can. You can not. You know. It's easy to imagine yourself and I was just either watching a podcast about this or read it somewhere but there's one thing where you can use somebody's gi against them oh yeah, you could choke them with your own gi. Right, With their own gi, With their own gi. It's crazy. The part that actually I think is even better than that is the guys that use their gi oh yeah, to choke them Against somebody else, where they want you to pull on it Right, so that they can then kind of wrap you up in it. And I've seen guys in the way that kind of like get into these wild positions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you got to watch motherfuckers, and they're sneaky with it too. They'll like dudes that know what they're doing. They'll bait you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, They'll bait like they'll be like good.
Speaker 1:A lot of dudes like does it? I mean everybody that that knows Jiu Jitsu, knows Gordon Ryan. Of course Gordon Ryan is the king. I think that if you don't know Jiu Jitsu, yeah, gordon Ryan is the king of grappling. I mean, you know PED or not? He talks openly about it he's a coach Dude, I've got to go to her. Yeah, john is unbelievable. I mean, I would love to go to Roka I think it's the name of the gym that they train at in Austin Texas but I got a ways to go.
Speaker 2:I got a ways to go before I go To train with Donna, just to train, just to train.
Speaker 1:I still got a ways to go. I still like to get a blue belt and then I can start feeling a little more confident like that. But even still, I still won't know anything comparatively.
Speaker 2:I just realized recently how young Gordon is.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but he looks old because he's on the PEDs and he's also he dies. The beard white, bleach white. Yeah, but it looks cool.
Speaker 2:It looks, cool it looks like a young Santa. Well, I think he looks more like a James Bond villain.
Speaker 1:Okay, he does look like a James Bond villain, like just this stoic face with, like this, blonde beard and he'll go like this A lot of times, like the wrestlers and the dudes that are baiting you and they know what they're doing. They'll go like this and they'll make you look down at that hand and that's when they grab you with the other one and you, just because in your primate brain, is so triggered that there's an attacker and someone in front of you that you want to focus on everything they're doing. So if they try to get your attention over there, you have to snap. You look quick, but you have to snap yourself out of doing that and you have to just keep that eye contact. So like when we, when we clinch up, and I grabbed the back of the neck and they grabbed the back of my neck and we're both fighting for inside control of the arms, you know, if I see that arm come in, I'm stuffing that arm.
Speaker 1:So now I have the person like this and it's like okay, what are we doing? What move are we? What move are we going to do? And usually you have to try to break them down, get into a guillotine, something. But my neck started having problems and then, when I was rolling four or five days a week, when I first started, I was doing OG every morning at 6 am. I was rolling midday or at six o'clock at night at Sarah's, my ears started having issues. I started getting the ear.
Speaker 2:No shit.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I was rolling. Is it a flower?
Speaker 2:ear.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and evidently it's genetic. That's from what people have told me, because there are people that have grapple for years and years and years and never get it. Even Evan, evan, I think he said he grabbed it a little bit when he was younger. He's like I used to try to give myself cauliflower or I'm like bro, my shit already started and it was crazy. I mean, it's not. You can't tell now because I let it heal.
Speaker 1:So basically I don't know if you can see like it's a little bit puffy in here versus in here.
Speaker 2:Bad reference that I didn't. I don't know what it looked like before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it's more. What happens is the ear fills with fluid, so they have all these capillaries in the ear. Oh, it's not scar tissue, it is and it isn't so, as mostly what happens with white belts is they pull their heads out of choke. Now, I never did that. I always knew that if I got put into a choke you have to work your way out of it and then, once there's ample room, you can move the head out.
Speaker 1:But dudes that are pulling their heads out and they're crunching the ear back and forth, that's what happens. So it doesn't just happen where you crunch the ear and then all of a sudden you have cauliflower ear. You crunch it a bunch of times and it starts to get achy. So I would sleep, I'd lay down on the pillow and I'd be like this. I'd be like, oh God, my ear is so achy and itchy and red. It was burning red the whole time Inflammation is so.
Speaker 1:And then all of a sudden my boy got me in a guillotine and as he put me in the guillotine under his armpit and he sat back, I felt I guess he caught my ear kind of halfway and I felt it go crunch and I went oh, is that it, and then it was super puffy on the inside. It started to build up. I didn't ice it and rest and not allow it to just heal a little bit. If I had that happen one more time, what happens is the capillaries lose blood flow and then the blood surges into the ear and if you don't drain the ears, that's how it solidifies and it stays like that then that's how you don't get it back.
Speaker 2:Listen. I for one am very happy that that happens to elite fighters, because it gives me the signal don't fuck with this guy.
Speaker 1:I know, but I'm still not good at jujitsu yet. It's like if I got the ear and I wasn't good at it.
Speaker 2:But that's the thing is that these guys that are very good, they don't get cauliflower ear you'd never know.
Speaker 1:Oh, you'd never know.
Speaker 2:If I see cauliflower ear, yes sir.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was fighting it in the beginning and I was all weirded out by it. I was like I hope I don't get it. I hope I don't get it. Now. It's weird how it's transitioned. A little bit I'm like I wouldn't mind it getting a little worse. Kind of cool, it's a look. It's a look. But in all seriousness it's been a very amazing mental and physical hill.
Speaker 2:Things like jujitsu and what you're explaining right now, and I'm gonna bring it back to OG, where we started this conversation.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and high rocks, and I do love talking about OG. I just I love those guys so much. They have to know that the way that they've built out what they're doing there, it promotes consistency, and I think that's why you're experiencing what you're experiencing with some of this loss in the excess fat that you've had, or getting leaner and going all the time. The jujitsu, I'm sure, has definitely helped too, because that's another sport that promotes consistency.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, when you don't go every, when you don't go at least three to four days a week I was just having this conversation with my buddy you lose it like that you get rusty and then all of a sudden you're getting flipped every round. You're like holy shit, what is going on?
Speaker 2:Well, you start to lose a little bit of the intimidation, that ring rust that everybody kind of talks about, and the longer you're out of the ring, the longer that you're out of that modality. Then you still have to get comfortable when you get back in again and you don't want to spend way too much time away from it. I feel the same way about OG. It actually has been a long time since I've been back and I had definitely had to go and see those guys soon. We lost my mom recently, unfortunately.
Speaker 1:I'm sorry, you're right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's all good man. She was battling Alzheimer's for years and years. So yeah, it's a tough disease, but I took the time that I needed to kind of like go through that process and stuff. So I definitely am ready to kind of hit the public again around the same time as when I started with Hirox as well. And if you don't know what I do with Hirox is I manage a regional effort for our affiliate gym members. Og's an affiliate gym member here on the island. So whatever they need, I'm basically like a concierge to those guys. I helped them, we'll do events. I help them from a customer service perspective as well. Anything that they need. I'm there like a local rep basically, and then any events like we're doing. Have you heard of Strong New York? I have.
Speaker 2:I don't know much about it, but I've heard of it. It's only their second year. It's coming up November 18th and we're gonna be there with Hirox, obviously. But Strong New York is a fitness and wellness expo I think one of the only it's only kind in New York and it's slowly growing. They did it at the Chelsea Piers last year, they're doing it at the glass house this year Kenny Santsucci out of the strength club in Manhattan and they put on a really great event. They have speakers that come in and talk about different things that are upcoming in fitness and wellness, some great educational stuff, which is really, really cool. But all that community. It drives the one thing that's the most important for people and the one thing that I think people struggle with the most, which is consistency. Like you wanna be involved in it as much as possible and it's a lifestyle change.
Speaker 2:I've spent almost my entire life like 25 plus years in the restaurant business, connecting people through food and wine. The very first place that opened up was a little wine bar down on Lower East Side. I love wine. I still love wine to this day. I love it.
Speaker 2:The same way somebody that loves any kind of collectible style item, like baseball cards, for example. People like geek out on that, I geek out on wine, and the way that I found out about that was when I was doing some traveling when I was younger. In Europe especially, I met or was lucky enough to meet people from these very prominent vineyards, like in the Piazza Monterey region in Italy, for example, and there are these really wonderful, amazing farmers that just make delicious wine and I've been able to create a career out of that. Some are doing really, really well where they've been around for a few generations, so hundreds of years, and some are new, just kind of like popping up a little bit more esoteric style, kind of like small batch yeah, a little bit like small batch. Small batch homemade yeah, not exactly out of a bathtub, but their process is definitely that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, sophisticated but still on a small scale versus Pindar or something like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah exactly and at the time and even New York wine at the time back then, because I opened up the wine bar in 2001,. So this was a very long time ago Our experience with wine here in New York, at the very least, was very snooty, right, a lot of men in bow ties and swirling wine and using some really crazy words and stuff, and it felt like an environment that I didn't belong in, right. I skateboarded, I had tattoos, you know, I was a T-shirt and jeans guy with a baseball cap on backwards, greedy little like New York kid. I grew up listening to punk and rap and that's all the influence that I had and I loved it. Life couldn't have been any better.
Speaker 2:But when I found wine, I found it from people that were actually similar to me and less similar to the people that were peddling wine, you know, here in New York at the time. They were farmers that also liked punk and rap and hip hop. They had tattoos and dirt under their fingernails, you know, and I could relate to them and I was like, oh, this is what. This is, right, I'm gonna go back to New York and I'm gonna introduce wine in the way that I'm enjoying it with these people, which is a little bit more true to nature, and I think that other people will enjoy it as well, people that are more like me. So I opened up a wine bar on the Lower East Side because that's all we can afford at the time and we played punk and we played rap and hip hop and we served delicious wine and, you know, little bites like a small plate, it's kind of like a menu, and it went really, really well.
Speaker 1:Was it a hit right out the gate, or did it take a little while to get that crowd in there?
Speaker 2:Luckily, yes, oh nice, luckily, yes, I was young enough to like not understand that process as much. If I were to try and do something like that now, I would be very, very scared because you it's there's no guarantee that you're gonna be successful. But I think where we were and the uniqueness of the concept cause, like I said at the time, wine bars in the city were on the upper part of Manhattan. Right, they were far away from the creatives, only people that could afford wine. You know, we're really enjoying wine in a restaurant environment, right, but there are a bunch of esoteric style wines that people could enjoy. Now, connecting people through Wine and food is no different than connecting people through fitness, and that's basically all I'm doing now, you know, with hierarchs just on that scale, specifically for this event. It's just creating more awareness about this event and one of the reasons why I'm happy to like be on here and talking about it now, because I know that there's people that watch this that are constantly looking for different things to get involved with in this lifestyle. You know, the club scene that we remember back in the day is gone for people to get together as a community. Now you have run clubs, yep, you have events like hierarchs and things like that. You have the gym, luckily, you know, which is great, and I'm so happy that people are more focused on their health and their wellness now, and recovery for that matter too. There's a big conversation now, obviously, about recovery and that's and that's huge, you know, for people's wellness as well, and and and it's gonna take a couple of cycles for people to be able to put all of those elements together and eventually I would too. My love for agriculture, for food, for the process of food and creating awareness of that with wellness and fitness Will eventually come together, because that's just the interest that I have, you know, and also my, my love of being able to introduce less availability in certain communities.
Speaker 2:Right, because there's food deserts out there, everywhere, to the idea, if there's a lot of, you know the kids in New York, on Long Island, in Manhattan and all the way around that you can give them. You know, four or five vegetables and a piece of protein, whether it's chicken or a stick or whatever, and don't know what to do with it. They don't know how to process it. They don't know how to cook it. They don't know how to they did not. They don't know how to make it taste good and to enjoy it, and not that food has to be gourmet all the time. For you to enjoy it I'm you need to know the basics. You need to know the basics, you know. You need to know temperatures, you need to understand that sort of thing, and you know how to chop up. You know certain vegetables and certain things have to be chopped up in certain ways a fan of julienne cut.
Speaker 2:Julian is my favorite. That's where I've lost a lot of a lot of you know Over.
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure I got. I. I picked up that only if you see the blister on my finger, I picked up the pot last night. I put well, dumb move, I put the pot. The side note, by the way, sorry, interrupt. I put the pot lid on the back burner and I was getting everything ready in this and that and I'm like looking in the pan I'm like why isn't everything sizzling? So I go to grab the lid. I had the burner on that. The lid was on, not the burner on the pot beautiful.
Speaker 1:So I picked it up. It was a searing hot lid and I just went. That's it lost the skin on that finger.
Speaker 2:It's over like that comes all the time. If you get professional chefs who are cooking every single day and you raise their sleeves up, there are just oven marks.
Speaker 1:Oh of just scars on there mandolin is always the creepiest thing for me. That thing is that some nightmares with that thing is the creepiest thing to me.
Speaker 2:I would never be able to use it for people that don't know what a mandolin is, by the way, it's basically just a razor sharp tool that you use very, very fast.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's the work you just go.
Speaker 2:It's a great piece of equipment. Just get rid of your knuckles like that, yeah, but if you want to lose skin on your hands, that's the best way to do it, that's the most.
Speaker 1:You want to get ready for a bank heist and you want to get rid of your fingerprints mandolin.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and the smallest cuts are the ones that bleed the most. Uh-huh and it's just like you can slice your finger one of those things and it looks like murder.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm believe it was your favorite dish. To make my very first dish, I think that I was taught. My dad was a chef, which is why I think I'm a lot more comfortable in the kitchen than most people. But he taught me this one thing and basically what he said was if you learn how to make this, you're never gonna go hungry. And he was a hundred percent right.
Speaker 2:And and the dishes actually, now that I think of it from a fitness perspective and a wellness perspective, it had the right components to it, right, which was basically protein, carbs and fats, and a little bit of vegetable hit the macros right. He hit the macros right after bat. I don't think awesome. He even knew it, you know. But that's just kind of like where he comes from. But it was basically just all in the same pot a little bit of olive oil, obviously, greek garlic also obvious, and just to kind of like flavor things up and just kind of let it saute down, just sweat the, the garlic in in the olive oil, and then you add little chunks of chicken until they brown. You chop them up your own way, whatever, if one take a chicken breast or from chicken tenders or something like that Just kind of like chop them up in chunks and let them kind of like brown up and toss them in that and you cook that. You're boiling a little bit of pasta on the side. Whether you know you pick your favorite post.
Speaker 1:I was pretty much a favorite Type of noodle honestly, I like the ribbon pasta the most.
Speaker 2:Okay, Like what is it? Like a tagliatelle, I think is one of my favorites and you know, one of those you can just kind of like, really kind of like spoon it up.
Speaker 1:We're big for silly guy, are you a fool? Oh man, there's something about those corkscrews, man.
Speaker 2:I hate the ones like, like I hate penny Okay, I was gonna say you. I feel like I'm constantly chasing.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I hate penny. Yeah, I thought you were gonna say you hate fusilli. I was gonna be like doors right there, please. I'm looking for a great episode. I'm a fusilli fan. Okay, good, then we can have you say but, but yeah.
Speaker 2:So it was basically that a little bit of broccoli and and just the olive oil. No sauce, no, nothing, just an olive oil, garlic, pasta and chicken dish with a little bit of broccoli.
Speaker 1:I'm sure it's slaps.
Speaker 2:It's delicious. Yeah, it's fresh. You have it right on the spot. You could be eating Seconds after it's done. You don't have to let it sit or anything like that's the only thing I hate about steak.
Speaker 1:I got sit there, I sit there and I wait. I'm just like sitting there, just like how long do I let this rest? And I'm just like after, after 30 seconds, I go fuck it.
Speaker 2:I just start cutting into it. That dish got me through college. That dish got me through. You know plenty of dates. You know, grown up, when I couldn't afford to take somebody out to a nice restaurant, I'd be like, come on, I'm gonna make a delicious dish, and it would be that one, you know for sure. But yeah, it's, it's my go-to. I don't make it anywhere near as much as I, as I used to. I'm more of a ground beef and rice kind Of guy now.
Speaker 1:But yeah, man, it's like simplicity.
Speaker 2:It's like whatever. It's like all my ground beef cereal just a bowl, a cup of jasmine rice.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you what's good man. What I got on tiktok was um, and it might seem like just regular to everybody, you know to other people, but you do brown rice. Oh, no, white rice, I'm sorry, brown rice is horrible.
Speaker 2:I never do brown now.
Speaker 1:You do brown I can't process. I can't be fine man. Not brown rice, okay, do white rice ground beef. I do mushrooms every now and then. I do some mushrooms in there, wild mushrooms, I don't keep them in the house. My wife, oh, oh, like she. Oh, she hates mushrooms. Yeah, I just got them from. I just got them from the grocery store, like the wild ones. It has a bunch of different kinds in it.
Speaker 2:It's super dope.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so you put all those in of the woods, head of the woods, yeah, hen hen of the woods, yeah, what does that mean? That's just the type of mushroom.
Speaker 2:That's the type of mushroom you like. You should try it. Yeah, when you saute those down a little salt and pepper, it's like eating a steak. It's so delicious. I'm looking up hen of the woods for, yeah, they look. They look really wild, but they're delicious, especially if you cook them the right way. I don't know if that was in there or not.
Speaker 1:It might have been there.
Speaker 2:You're not gonna find you might actually find them in a whole foods. Yeah, it was not in there, you're not gonna find in a shop, right, these guys.
Speaker 1:So you do all that and then you put one tablespoon or two I usually do two of the non-fat Greek yogurt and it almost makes like a burrito bowl. Oh yeah, that feels like I see that that feels like the sour cream in it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, let, yeah. And yogurt is so interchangeable with like, especially like the complete fat free, like the Greek like. Yeah, that's right, I do. I give it to my dog for the probiotics. It replaces Mayonnaise and any recipe that you can imagine.
Speaker 1:You can just add protein to it if you want to add the protein powder and then mix it all up and it's the flavor protein powder. Now it's perfect. It's delicious.
Speaker 2:But yeah, that's my go-to is is a bowl of jasmine rice ground beef and a couple of fried eggs. If I'm feeling a little squirrely, yeah, the runny egg inside all that stuff right, it's, it's, it's, it's a.
Speaker 1:It's become more and more of a staple for me to have eggs like every day. I have at least three or four eggs, whole eggs, every single day.
Speaker 2:That's it. Oh, that's it. Yeah, I'm just like I can. I can eat a dozen eggs in a day.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, without question. Yeah, I see Taylor stories, oh yeah. His new nickname for me is big feta, because he's got feta on everything now does. He's been liking the so, I call him big feta, so that's everything. Every time I hit him up, he went from egg lord to the big feta. Yeah, big feta.
Speaker 2:Oh, I like that.
Speaker 1:I got that, put a lot Hold on.
Speaker 2:Yeah, the last person that you would expect ever to be enjoying feta as much as he does.
Speaker 1:My voice notes to Taylor ready. Uh-huh, big cheese, big feta, what up?
Speaker 2:I love it man.
Speaker 1:He dude, he was really toasting the high rocks man.
Speaker 2:He's doing fantastic man. He's got the ability to do it, he has the discipline, you know, in his training. He's not he's not uniquely built for events like that, but but when he really kind of started to pay attention to his running, I think we all saw, you know, a huge, huge transformation there for him. We know. I first met him, you know, and it's kind of hard to to To tell with him, you know, because he's such a solid piece of muscle. Yeah, you know that, like he, he leaned down a lot because he moves, kept a lot of that muscle and I think that that's all due to just his Discipline with nutrition.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's, he really is and he knows his shit. It's funny because it's funny because when I went in there I knew Evan and then I was. Obviously I was friends with Evan. I told I told Taylor this too and I used to see him in and out. I didn't really ever converse with him at first, so it was like that was the exact opposite way. Oh you were.
Speaker 2:Taylor and you weren't with Evan. Taylor was the first person that I met at OG and just the one that I kind of Like hit it off with. I never saw Evan only because he was there mostly in the early mornings. Mm-hmm, I think the schedule kind of like changed around a little bit and he was there in the afternoons a little bit more now and I was able to see him. I have a I have a trainer schedule, yeah. So for me it's like I'm working from early in the morning until about noon, and then after that it's basically just Do do what I want to do for myself during that time, and then it starts getting busy again anytime after like three, four o'clock. Yeah, I changed my schedule around now just because of my responsibilities with hierarchs. I'm still training in the morning until like 11, 30 or noon every day, and then after that is basically just all hierarchs.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, yeah, it's, it was. It was funny because then I met Taylor Mm-hmm and I was like yo, come on the pod, yeah, I'd love to have you on, and he goes, okay. And then you know, I, everybody told me he's like the quiet one, he's not really gonna talk much and this and that's great on the podcast it's almost three hours. It was almost three hours of the podcast.
Speaker 2:He was he was fantastic. They both were actually. I watched. I watched the one with Evan as well, and and I and I love that one, especially because, like you, dug into Some questions that I had you know that, like I was very curious to know what his background was and you know some of the things that you don't feel very comfortable just asking people, you know, in a gym environment, you know, especially to the person who's training you know, and I wanted to find that about his background.
Speaker 2:I wanted to find out the, the concept, you know, idea behind you know OG, and I think that a lot of people still, maybe even the people that go there on a regular basis there's something there, there's a magic there that's happening because those three guys came together and decided to do this at that time and and the support people that are around them that also help to develop this thing and make it that, give it that touch that it really has is something very unique and a lot of things have to come together.
Speaker 2:All the stars have to align at the same time in order for that to happen, and it really did for them. I saw them when, when they first I started training there Pretty early on, you know, when I, when I, you know, really wanted to do like the higher-ock stuff and I've seen it grow, you know, from there and and one of the things that that just by nature, I don't think the day promote it vocally. I think it's just the the community does, is it creates that, that possibility for you to become better. You know, yeah, and, and everybody that's in there and I can, I can understand why somebody from the outside looking in, I know that they get a lot of shit, especially on, you know, the comments and Instagram and stuff, people saying, oh, you know, it's like a cult over there and well, it's clicky.
Speaker 1:I say this all the time it's clicky and.
Speaker 2:It is. But I can tell you one thing like I said earlier, there's not one person that I've met in that community. I mean, they are a magnet for awesome, awesome people and Everybody is just so welcoming and they, they, they want to be pushed, they want to help to push you, if that's what you need. I mean, they're they're an unbelievable community. They're doing their secudos to those guys.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean, listen, it goes back to the tribalism effect that we talked about, right when we started. It's it. They have their own tribe. That's what it kind of. That's what it comes down to. They all, they all work together, they all support one another with the things that they're trying to do, but it's like the same thing. It's like Sarah's is clicky and the spots that you go to, like all these, but law, mma, railongo and Chris Wideman's gym beds, where I came from. Yeah, that gym is fucking clicky. Magorys the pub was that okay.
Speaker 2:It's clicky. What's that? It's a crappy little bar, the beer Olympics, exactly like you know. I mean every, every Community has a click. I'd much rather that click than the click where I'm having Jameson shots until four o'clock in the morning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, I mean I, I haven't. I haven't had any alcohol since March. Now haven't had any alcohol since March. I gave up totally yeah just wasn't, didn't want to do it anymore. Yeah, it's like I'm good on it.
Speaker 2:I like it, man. I like a nice little cocktail every once in a while. I've never been the kind of person that went too deep into it. I didn't either.
Speaker 1:I just I was never a drinker though I was never a big drinker. I like whiskey. I did. I liked whiskey and this and that, but bourbon got myself. Yeah, you know what after I like the Japanese whiskies. And after a while I just kind of said you know what I just it's not really doing anything for me. I'll have one or two drinks, I'm exhausted after I have one or two drinks and then the next day I feel fuzzy and I'm feeling all, not only the next day.
Speaker 2:How are you 32, 32? Okay, so you got some time still, but I'm 49 and I could have, you know, two bourbons, which is not as many as I used to have there, and it'll it'll last for days.
Speaker 1:Those were the right. Those are the entrees. That was those, the appetizers before the entre. Definitely appetizers.
Speaker 2:I was like in my restaurants, for example, like back in the day, like and you got to remember to like I opened up my first restaurant when smoking was still allowed in restaurants. Okay, you know that was 2001. It was only a couple of years later that it actually changed and we all tried to fight it right because I used to smoke some cigarettes myself Back in the day, for sure, and marble man.
Speaker 1:I was a marbles, I knew it. Red, I knew. With a exquisite beard like that, you had all the miles and everything I don't. Always you had the miles from the packs. Did you have the jacket?
Speaker 2:No, no, no, no. Okay, collected that stuff. I'm a city boy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're a transplant Southerner.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's true too. Yeah, so I didn't get into like the NASCAR, yeah, jacket Marlboro thing now, but and for a while I tried American spirits. To there you go. They were good for you. Cigarette, yeah, yeah, good for you here, a complete bullshit. But yeah, I was like Dean Martin man, I would just I'd be. I always have a bourbon one hand or glass one one hand and, you know, usually a cigarette and the other, and I'm happy that those days are gone.
Speaker 1:I find there's a big movement on people being more sober now with everything everything, everything.
Speaker 2:I think people are focusing a little bit more on on stuff, habits, I think, like like drugs, for example, right, like hallucinogens and things like that, or even like THC or CBD, for that matter, without the THC things that that somehow bring a benefit to their life and serve them a little bit better. But I just found that like that kind of lifestyle just didn't serve me. It doesn't serve me anymore. The second that I have like a couple of cocktails I know for a fact it's the same thing with pizza too. You know, I know that I'm gonna, I'm gonna feel like crap for at least the next couple of days, and I just don't have the time to feel like crap. I need to, I need to go, you know I. You know my schedule is busy, just like anybody else's. I don't have time to to play the hangover role. You know I can't. I can't today.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 2:I can't get shit done because I have to sleep it off. No, man, I'm up at 4 am Every day. My first client is usually near time, between 4, 30 and 5, you know. So I mean I gotta be, I gotta be ready to go. Yeah, my wife makes fun of me because usually by like quarter to nine I'm like is it bedtime yet?
Speaker 1:Well, that's you know what, and that's what I found happens since I started waking up at 4, 45 or 5 am and I started doing these early morning things. I start looking at time so differently because I'll look and it'll be 10, 11 o'clock. I'm like all the day's over. It's like not really man, it's like it's kind of just getting started for a lot of people.
Speaker 2:It's so you may think it's over, but it's not the amount of time that is wasted in a day, like you could literally have a whole separate career. Yeah, you know, like most people and I see this a lot they're done with work by that. By time it's like 3 o'clock in the afternoon, you know, and then between 3 and 9 that you go to bed. There's so much time to do so much. Now, look, I get it. Man, most people have families and stuff and you got sporting events and things like that or school shopping. You know, you have responsibilities, you have things that you got to do and there's a way, I think, to manage that. And a lot of the times when somebody tells me they just don't have the time for it, I'm like, look, if the CEO of Target can make it to the gym every single day, I'm pretty sure you can. Yeah, you know, and I don't know if the CEO of Target goes to the gym at all.
Speaker 1:I don't even know what the CEO target looks like. I would tell you right now if they go to the gym.
Speaker 2:You can tell just from a picture, for sure, but there are people, I think, that have very, very busy schedules, maybe, maybe not going to the gym, brian. Cornell is that who? The CEO of Target, my man's?
Speaker 1:got a little bit of a turkey neck. Yeah, he might go tough. He might go, maybe Pilates. He looks okay.
Speaker 2:He looks I maybe he goes to a couple of mobility classes a week.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he looks I he's not bad, he's doing good. Yeah, he's not bad.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they might have photoshopped him. You know what? I bet you he's a runner. I Mean, look here he's like dashing for the deals. There he is. Look, he's not busy enough. Take that you're dashing for the deals. The CEO of Target, she'll target.
Speaker 1:Shout out to what's his name? Something crying Brian Cornell, shout Cornell, yeah, brian Cornell, come through, man, come hang out with us. I'm through, bring some deals.
Speaker 2:Let's talk fitness Please, by the way are delicious.
Speaker 1:Yeah, shouts to rain, I appreciate them. I appreciate you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I appreciate that that very good at one grape that I had snuck in the back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you really hated every other flavor. I just I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't, I couldn't land the ship, I never hate.
Speaker 2:I never hate, but I've always kind of just something about the flavor profile of tropical fruits Like pineapples. Man goes like. That sort of thing just never appeal to me. Okay, I don't know, I don't know why. And you don't like oranges? I mean, I like, I like all those fruits, like the actual fruits. I love them because this one tastes exactly like I believe you rainbow sherbet, but there's just something about drinking an entire drink of that flavor, rainbow sherbet. That just doesn't do it for you, doesn't?
Speaker 1:do it for me.
Speaker 2:I can't, I can't rainbow sherbet yeah all right, I'm not a. What is sherbert, anyway? Is that like sorbet, but with yeah, it's like a sorbet. I think Don't, don't, don't look at, I'm not that I got. I need to look it up because I want to know now what is?
Speaker 1:what is sherbert classified as?
Speaker 2:what we have to get you a young Jamie. For sure you need it.
Speaker 1:I need it, we're gonna get there. Yeah, sherbert and sorbet are both frozen desserts. There you go.
Speaker 2:I think one is like cream base or has dairy.
Speaker 1:No one doesn't sherbert's a frozen dessert made with fruit juice or pureed fruit Water and dairy ingredients such as milk or heavy cream. So there you go. That's the difference. Boom, cool, that was. That was the chef in you. You started going. What's the flavor profile?
Speaker 2:of sherbert. Well, look, I've never been a chef. I've never. I've always been a front of the house guy. You know, seeing how you know, my dad was a chef for many, many years and it's in your blood. It's tough, it's a tough living. You know, I wanted to be the one that was like in front, the one that gets all the glory with none of the pain. Yeah, no, I jumped behind the bar the second that I was old enough to kind of be in the restaurant business. My first gig, you know, as a bartender was that. You ever hear of Mustang Sally's Avenue in the city, right like right by FIT.
Speaker 1:I feel like I have, but I might not. I might be making that up Mentally. I feel like I've heard the name, but they have just hearing two names together.
Speaker 2:That just sounds somewhat similar because you know, the song from back in the day, maybe these Irish guys from like Yonkers opened up their first bar in the city. They had a place called, I think, aces, aces and eights out in Yonkers for a while and they opened up this bar called Mustang Sally's on 7th Avenue and I was, like I don't know, probably 17 at the time. I was living alone already in the city. My parents had moved out to Queens and I was like I'm not doing that. And when I got the job, you can bartend when you're 18 in New York but you can't drink until you're 21 and that's just the way the rules are, which is really strange. But but the opening night, one of the their bartenders just didn't show up and they were very busy, it was opening night, it was huge, and they were like hey, you, you're 18 right now. It's like absolutely. And they're like, all right, you're behind the bar, right, and they showed me a couple little things, you know, and back then it was not like the cocktail culture.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was the crazy shit that they're asking you for it was vodka.
Speaker 2:So does vodka, cranberries like that sort of thing, gin and tonics, like super simple stuff, and mostly obviously it was like a lot of tap air and I could do that. So I jumped behind the bar with them and I worked a whole night bartending and this was back in the day like a cash was king, right, nobody paid with credit cards and I Was stepping on money like remember those old, like fold out bud Budweiser cases? Yeah, we had like a ton of those underneath the bar and we just kept throwing money underneath it and we were cleaning off the bar at the end of the night and underneath the ashtrays we're like Stuck $20 bills, $50 bills, because you know back in a day you just put your money on the bar, let's walk away, and you'd walk away, nobody would mess with it, right. But every time you ordered the bartender would just take money from that pile and put your change back.
Speaker 2:Whatever usually was left over is what you got as a tip, and Usually that was a lot of money because people would get drunk and just leave their money there. And after my very first night of bartending I walked away. I think it was like 1400 bucks in cash. Damn, I was, I was that was it?
Speaker 1:you were hooked. You were like fuck this is it and this?
Speaker 2:that's how I basically got myself like through like the next 10 years of my life, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean like all the way through college and then obviously writing the personal training coming up afterwards, friends, yeah the one lesson that I did learn from from that, especially with personal training, was just my ability to be able to relate, you know, with people and obviously, like I said earlier, just connecting people through an experiential Like thing, right, like taking people through an experience which is very similar to two restaurants, right, everything is kind of like this nice little story that has a beginning, and hasn't it, you know?
Speaker 2:And, and even with my clients too, like I tell them all the time, there's gonna come to a point, if I do my job, right, there's gonna be a point where you don't need me anymore and I look forward to that point. Right, we shouldn't spend our whole lives together. Right, I want you to get comfortable with the barbell, I want you to get comfortable with these movements and, and to a point where it becomes your lifestyle and it's how you want to do it. There's one of the reasons why and I know there's a lot of not controversy, but I know that there's a lot of like going back and forth now with the idea of hybrid fitness I, I love it for what it means to me and and if we're just gonna break that down.
Speaker 1:I was just say what does that mean to you?
Speaker 2:Yeah, what it means to me is is Not even an equal amount, but a good amount on both sides of endurance training right, and that can be cycling, it could be swimming, it could be running and strength training, and I love both those things in a very functional way done together. And which is why, when I decided to train, you know, and take hyrox seriously as an event, as a race, I loved training with Taylor and I love training with Charlie. I don't know if you've met Charlie Maldonada, I have, yep, yeah. So I mean guys like that, they, they speak to me, you know. In that sense, it's a very relatable kind of experience and we love pushing ourselves and challenging ourselves and I like surrounding myself with that, that sort of style. I like to feel like I got a good workout and I don't get me wrong, I I grew up very like I wasn't a bodybuilder, but that's the kind of style of training that I did, because that's style training everybody was doing.
Speaker 1:That's. That's the one that everyone was associating with Arnold.
Speaker 2:Yeah, when you thought you have bodybuilding, when you thought of working out, you thought Bodybuilding you didn't think hitting the skier, or there wasn't even one no, no, no, no, no. You definitely didn't think of things like that.
Speaker 2:You definitely didn't think of things like CrossFit until CrossFit came out, you know, and I watched it kind of come up and and that's the feeling that I have with hyrox right now it has that same feeling like when CrossFit hit the market, you know, where some people Couldn't wrap their head around. It, couldn't really understand, well, what is it? It's it's like working out, but it's not what it is working out. You can do that and and build muscle at the same time, and so I think it has to go through a couple of cycles for people to really kind of like get it.
Speaker 2:But the difference there is that hyrox started out as an event. It's a race. I can never see it. It'd be very, it would be very difficult to turn that into a modality. The modality is hybrid fitness, the race is Hyrox, right, the modality for UFC is MMA, the sport right is UFC right. Or the event is UFC, the sport is MMA, and that could be like this. You know the difference for everybody. Every school of Training is gonna be different. Like I said, I would love to see eventually, you know, like a Tom de Gaulle, you know, group of yeah, I hope I'm saying his name right, by the way, julie is it to Julie?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's okay, it's okay, like it's on the Julie, where you know he's training people with that modality, but he's creating fitness, he's creating a Way to get stronger and to create endurance as well, just because it's also a purple belt in the jujitsu.
Speaker 1:He's also a bad motherfucker from the mats.
Speaker 2:Well, the way that he trains actually, I think, is very suitable for jujitsu.
Speaker 1:Well, I I bought a bunch of stuff during COVID for the garage and it's at my mom's house. It's not, you know, at my apartment because I don't have anywhere for it here when I buy a house. Eventually, that's what I want to set my garage up for. I want to set it up as like a little gym. But one of the things that I really love and I want to do is the sandbag training and the Bulgarian bags that I used to do With Tom. The sandbag train translates so well to jujitsu having to, you know, scoop and Clean and over the shoulder type movements with a heavy sandbag.
Speaker 2:I translate to having to pick up and double shoot a person a lot of the Explosivity and like landmine training as well, and kettlebell, you know, flows and stuff like that, all the moving the body in ways when it's not so linear. We were always taught when we're bodybuilding, yeah, you know, just this very linear kind of like you know thing where the spine wants to move in so many different ways and you gotta you really have to train it to do that. And also, testing your, your core through different ranges of motion is never gonna be Unimportant, right, like it's always gonna be important to train the core in different ranges of motion, because life ain't linear. Yeah, I mean, like, at the drop of a dime, you may need to, you know, react in a certain way with your body. Your body should be prepared for that.
Speaker 2:Yeah and yeah and yeah and that kind of style, I think definitely you know, speaks to it. But again, there's so many different modalities and I'm seeing a lot of these people and they're all creating little teams and then when they show up to the hierarchs events, it's easy to kind of, like, you know, tell them apart. I mean, obviously with OG, especially since there's so many people that are doing it and we're definitely the loudest in the room.
Speaker 1:Yeah, about it all. How? Where are the bad dudes from like? Where are the bad groups from like, the really good ones? Where are you guys finding, you know?
Speaker 2:I think that remains to be seen just yet, because all this is kind of just starting right now, but I think it's it's the communities like OG that are taking a seriously training lab in in the city that also has a very unique way of creating savages. Alpha Fit Club out in New Jersey as well. I'm speaking my region very specifically, northeast yeah, which is out in New Jersey. They also have the garage gym out there, which is great concept. Fitness here on Long Island as well.
Speaker 1:Where's that?
Speaker 2:Concept Fitness is in, I guess, ocean side Okay yeah, just right by like the water and stuff and they have some really great classes, a lot of rowing. They train a lot of people on rowers and stuff. I think they actually are right on the water so they do like a lot of like a rowing training. Oh cool for teams, which is kind of cool. I've never. I haven't been yet myself. I'm looking forward to actually meeting those guys.
Speaker 1:Let me know, I'll go down. I'll go down to a class. It would be it would be fun.
Speaker 2:They do, and they do like a, like a small group kind of like training as well, which is kind of fun, and and I did one just this past week at a place called Beach Fit, long Island, which is actually a TRX gym, and they everything that they have in there is all TRX, from their med balls to the TRX straps and everything, and they do like a Nice little like circuit, nothing too crazy. It's not like don't expect like heavy barbell work, yeah, things like back squatting and stuff like that. Like you're not gonna get that there, but they, they.
Speaker 2:If I were to suggest a place for a runner that wanted to focus on some strength training, right, because as a runner, you don't need to create too much hypertrophy, right, you don't need to build that much muscle, you need to make sure that your, that your Muscular system is strong enough to support your skeletal system yeah, right, and so that you can prevent injury pretty important, exactly, right, if you want to stand up straight, not be a big bag of bones, right? So I Would definitely recommend a place like like that, which is really cool, and they just did a high rocks, a little mini high rocks event at at their spot and I love doing, you know, events like that to get the crowd, you know, just riled up. But we had a bunch of people from OG that showed up to that event and there was six medals right, three first place medals for the men and three first place medals for the women and those medals all went to OG people nice, and is that the one that?
Speaker 1:Oh my god, amanda, she went. Amanda did not go to that one. Yeah, which is the one that she went to. She went to one Like a high rocks light event or some shit like that training lab in the city.
Speaker 2:Okay, yeah, and they all did that. That was called a stairway to high rocks and they do that because I don't know if you're familiar and I actually just became familiar with it myself but a lot of the gyms in Manhattan are not ground level, like on the floor. They're actually like on the second, third, fourth and fifth floors of these buildings.
Speaker 1:And they're most the bodybuilding gyms that I know in the city or in the basements. I could see that, yeah, it's this way. They don't have to hear the people deadlifting.
Speaker 2:I guess above them, yeah yeah, I can definitely see that, but they're they're moving on up, but they're definitely not on the ground level, you know, but they either one puts baby in the basement, they either have really patient, you know, neighbors downstairs.
Speaker 2:They've created some sort of like a system where you know that people don't don't hear it, but yeah, they're running views amazing, like group classes. The strength club is another one too, you know. They're right there. Now to get back to your original question, though, like who's who's the baddest, that kind of remains to be seen.
Speaker 2:I look there's an elite 15 and how long has been going on for now, 2017 was when the company started, and a guy from Germany who started at the founder Christian. He used to Be involved with like triathlons and bigger events like that marathons where he would. He would design the courses for things like that and he saw a gap in the market for a fitness race. That was hybrid fitness. 2019 was when it hit the US and they did a a New York one Back then in 2019 and then obviously the pandemic hit and everything got locked down so they didn't resurface, you know, in the US, especially until 2021. Okay, all right. So between 2021 and now it's grown substantially. For example, like I think the very first New York event back in 2019 was probably somewhere around a thousand people. Second one was 2500. I can definitely see this one that's coming up in June, you know, for New York Especially the next one is in June for New York.
Speaker 1:I know Chicago is this coming month. Chicago is coming up next week, next week, next week in Chicago. Yeah, who's it? Who's competing in that one that you know of?
Speaker 2:Well, first of all, it's gonna be. There's there's an elite competition for that one, because I it's definitely one of the the events that Gets you to the world championships, and those are in burn a fine race. Not always now. They change them all the time. Last year it was in Manchester and the UK and we actually had a few people from from here.
Speaker 1:From a.
Speaker 2:G that went. That went to it, including Taylor, which was really, really awesome, and they got in very last minute. They went to the very last event in the US, which was Miami, and that was like one of their outdoor events. That was really cool, but I mean it wasn't cool for them because they had to run in the sand, but it was cool as a spectator to kind of watch that online because I didn't go down there with them, but that they all got in at that event and we're able to go to the world championships and I think, you know, being able to see competition on that level because it was like the best of the best I went to. That, I think, was a switch there, the same switch that most people have, I think, when they finish a race. That's as challenging as as hierarchs. It opens a door to another level of fitness that you never knew you had or you could do is that extra?
Speaker 1:It's that extra Channel in your brain that unlocks the next competitiveness it changes everything.
Speaker 2:It changes everything. And it's the same thing with, you know, completing a 26.2 mile run like a marathon, you know. Or if the biggest challenge you ever had is like a 5k or a 10k, you know, whatever, whatever that is that opens up that door and says, oh wait, I'm, I've never hit a hundred percent capacity. Right, I am usually at around 40 to 45 percent. Yeah, which is what most people you know are, you know, in their fitness levels that think they might have gotten that route. Well, try a triathlon, you know what's the next step. Try, try high rocks, try any, you know, fitness event that you want to try, even an obstacle course if that's what you're, what you're into. But I think those are a little bit more fun for, like, groups of people that want to. I don't know, obstacle course racing for me has always been kind of like the bachelorette party have of Fitness events no interest.
Speaker 1:I've seen that, like we said before, no interest. Mm-hmm, just it was kind of like man, I don't know not, not for me, yeah, and that just could be me.
Speaker 2:I've never done one, so you know I'm not gonna. I'm not gonna try and shit on something that I've never yeah, I'm not hating, but I'm also not interested.
Speaker 2:Yeah, exactly, it never drew me to it. We're as high rocks. The second that I saw it I Was like I was sold. I was like I have to try those. This is gonna be a new way to be able to engage with my clients. I think they can all do it and it should all get behind it. I'm still very hard to get them to commit, but you know it doesn't mean I stop trying every single day, and the more I talk about it, the more I, you know I kind of get the word out about it. I think the interest is just gonna grow from there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and what should somebody know?
Speaker 2:going into it like what's one of the biggest challenges, not just physically, if I were to tell anyone who's just starting to get into any kind of like hybrid fitness is Be patient. Be patient because if, unless you come from a running background and you have a good running base already, you're gonna have to build that up. Can I teach somebody how to push heavy sleds and how to you know progress in a squat build or progress in a bench or anything like that? For the most part, I can get somebody to do that in a matter of 12 weeks. You can see some really big progress in that time. With running it's a lot longer. Right, to build a good cardio engine you need to be running for years, you know, and, yeah, you can get good in a small amount of time or better at the very least. But To be able to compete at that level, if you if competing on that level, is.
Speaker 2:Some people just want to do it just, you know, just for kicks community, you know Something to kind of like get behind at their fitness level, and that's okay too, that's great. But if you want to compete on a higher level, the running is the most important thing, right there's Because of running is such a big part of the race. Right, half of the race is running. Right, there's 16 Workouts eight, actually, eight of them are running, yeah, you know. So you want to make sure that your cardio is really really good and that, honestly, patience in that as well, because to become a faster runner you have to run slow. And and that's the part I think that people kind of miscommunicate in their mind when they think, oh, I got to run fast, go out there and sprint all it takes, time it takes time.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know and and you know I tell people all time my 80% of your running has to be Zone two, just basically like conversational pace is what I would tell somebody who's just kind of starting out and mix in a little bit of like interval sprints and things like that throughout the week to kind of like do it, but that's maybe 20% of what you're doing. 80% of your running should be Should be conversational pace, without a doubt, and then obviously compromise running, compromise running, training. Compromise running is Crucial because, like I said earlier, you don't want to be shocked the day of the event as to how your legs are going to react After doing like pushing a sled for 50 yards right, 50 meters, with you know, especially on the turf that hyrox uses, which makes it feel, makes 350 pounds Feel like 6,000.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's gripping it. Yeah, you know it.
Speaker 2:It's like the equivalent of telling you to do. You know 100, you know squats at 225 and then run. Yeah, Not easy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the stuff that we've done at OG, where it's more so having to do something Squat based and this and that, and then get on the assault runner. It's like, oh god, my legs just feel like shit man. Yeah, even if it's not, it's just a short run, it's only five minutes let's say it's like oh dude, yeah, and that legs just weighing me down, they feel like thousand pounds, yep, yep.
Speaker 2:And that's the feeling that you're gonna have on on race day and you want to be prepared for that. So, as much as you can do that, so, whether that's like, do 50 wall balls and then run, you know. Do you know? 100 alternating walking, lunges and run, you know. Do you know? 50 burpee broad jumps and run, you know. So you want to be able to mix as much of that as possible into the, into the, into your training, so that you, you make sure that come race day, it's not a shock to the system.
Speaker 2:On the leg, you know like you, you can compete on that level.
Speaker 1:I found that when I do jiu-jitsu now with some of the newer guys. I would go balls to the wall right out the gate, burning through my energy, burning through it, and then, yeah, just like muslin and and going like crazy and just like trying to out power Cardio before you started. All that not good. I mean, I was a bodybuilder. I never really did it, unless I was getting ready for a show. Mm-hmm.
Speaker 2:So, and that was usually inclined walking on a treadmill. I was mostly stair master. Oh, okay, yeah master to for sure stair master for an hour. Mm-hmm 120 steps a minute for an hour fast yeah, yeah, it sucked, but net, but never really going above. Like your, your 100% steps 100% steps a minute was fast.
Speaker 1:100% steps a minute was fast. See, the issue is my coach. My coach wanted a guy that was on gear. He wanted a guy that was on steroids. I was not right so I made up for things by doing a little extra. So you know where he said keep the level at like 80 90. You know, on the on the scale, I would go to like level 120 and that would be 120 steps a minute. Yeah, uh, on the stair master, which is pretty quick. Yeah, jun Jun, jun, jun Jun is pretty quick but an hour straight is brutal.
Speaker 2:Well, it depends like if you, if you're gonna come out of that aerobic zone of zone two and go into like an anaerobic you know zone you're working a different energy system, you know, not one is wrong and one is right, it's just a different energy system.
Speaker 1:Yeah but it wasn't one that benefited me in the long run for cardiovascular health. Yeah, you want to know.
Speaker 2:Now, with the grappling, yeah, that heart rate down.
Speaker 1:So, like there was a drill that we did last week, I don't know what we're gonna do tonight at jujitsu. I have a buddy of mine from Bev's coming. We're gonna drill together and then I'll roll their first time, yeah, first time ever doing jujitsu, oh, wow. So he's gonna come, so I'll drill with him and Basically, like last week Was it last week? Yeah, last week, last Friday there was a class that I went to and it was the person on the bottom I got into mount. The person on the bottom has to get me off of them.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow and he's a smaller kid than me and so I just I locked in and I was talking to him, I was basing out both sides. Every time you try to throw me one way, you grab his head and you walk your arm back in and then you rebase out.
Speaker 2:So I'm constantly like how much of that is actually taught Through through a teacher at the class, like through an instructor, and how much of that is intuitive both.
Speaker 1:It's both both so kind of like an equal, you know because I would never have thought to use their head as a, as a guard. I would have never have thought like if they throw you over, you're automatically you're gonna base, so you're gonna grab right, but like Using their head to stop your left arm, let's say, if you're getting thrown this side, kind of like a control that yeah, to then walk your arm back in and go, and then they throw you the other side and grab in the right side of their head and then walking yourself back in, going out and basing, and you know the other thing, that that you, you want to take space away.
Speaker 1:So you know, intuitively You're not going to. Intuitively you're gonna want to like, stay upright or you're gonna want to push off of this person or this, and that no, no, no, no. You want to get close to them. Yeah, if I'm close, they can't do anything. So it's like when I'm, when I'm on mount or when I'm inside control, something like that, I have them pulled all the way into me. So this way they can't move and I'm not just, I'm not just Staying on. Let's say I have the person like this, they're laying on their back, I'm inside control, I'm not just like on my knees on top of this person. No, no, no, no, no. My chest is chest to chest with them. I'm throwing all of your way my way is on them.
Speaker 1:I have to stay heavy, yeah, otherwise they'll just buck out and they'll, they'll, they'll roll out or they'll roll like wrestling and you have to like kind of like constant pressure, constant, constant, constant pressure and changing positions. Yeah, so the kid. So the kid was on bottom and you know we're working it for like probably about a minute and I just told him I said you're burning yourself out, bro. I'm like you are, take your time. I'm tell I'm talking him through it. Yeah, because, like I'm not a dick when I roll, there are guys that are assholes. Like there was a kid, there was a new kid that I really did not like what he was doing. I'll tell you about that in a second. But anyway, so he, he's going like this, he's like okay. And I said, bro, I said okay, so Push, push my knee out, like push my knee out and then try to scrape across with your other leg to then get on your side. I said, but don't roll over too much.
Speaker 2:I said keep your butt basically planted.
Speaker 1:You can take their back. Yeah, I said, keep your butt planted but roll that side out.
Speaker 2:So this way you can start working the arm and this and that I said all of my jiu-jitsu Education comes from either watching the fights, listening to the commentators we got to get you to come, or why or watching it might prevent me from being able to, but we'll see who knows or watching fight companion on on rogan. Yeah, we got to have you come through. Yeah, I don't know. I have a c5, c6 Situation going on right now where, like I, have a pinched nerve due to a bulging disc that's Completely atrophied in my right arm. Okay, you know like to the point where, like I can, I can curl a 40 pound dumbbell for wraps in this hand. I can barely do that with a 10 pound dumbbell.
Speaker 1:So there's a guy, there's a kid, andy, in my class who was born with a birth defect. I knew you were gonna go there. Yeah, and he's got, and he has a. He has a bad arm. Yeah, he's a bad arm. Now, don't get me wrong. I thought you were gonna go with like he only has one arm. No, no, no, no, he's got less strength in that arm. Yeah, and I'm gonna. I'm not a dick, though, so, like sometimes, if I see that that's the arm, I'll be like yo, are you good, do you want me to continue? He'll be like no, no, no, keep going, I go, okay, just making sure, like I don't want you to think that I'm taking advantage of that specific side. Okay, that's my big thing my big thing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so come through to whenever dude. I'll definitely take you up.
Speaker 1:So I I asked people every time before we start rolling. I asked people, I go hey, what's soar on you? Is there anything I need to know about? Because if there is, I want to make sure that I'm consciously looking for that and not touching it Like if they say my supposed to most other guys who would probably go for it, but you know what we're practicing.
Speaker 1:Yeah what we're not a tournament not everyone's like that they're not so like this kid, this new kid. There's a lot of new kids. They don't know that they don't. They're either, they've either never done this type of stuff which I never do this type of stuff but they don't have the respect factor linked into it, right, and so they. They really do act like it's a doggy dog battle and it's like, bro, you have to know who you're going against. Are you going against another, a d1 wrestler? Then go in, go in, bro, because they're not going to give you any space to chill. Are you going against the older guy that's just trying to learn a martial art? Right, and chill a little bit and just get some physical activity. And there's a difference. So this young kid, he's like, probably like 1920. And I didn't. I really didn't like what I was, what I was watching.
Speaker 1:My leg has been shot for a few my left knee, I. It might be a hamstring injury, I don't know what it is, to be honest with you, but every time I bend my knee all the way in, like in, I get a pain in the back of my not even in the knee area. It's like the back of the hamstring slash side could be precise. It could be. Basically, what happened was I got taken down at class it was the mixed class in the in nogi wrestlers super dupe, super dope wrestler guy and he we were. We were going back and forth and every time he clinched me up I'd like slip out and I'd counter and he'd get me back, isn't that? He just got tired of like going back and forth me for a while. So he double shot the legs and he took me down very hard, which was fine, but he hyper extended the knee. I hyper extended.
Speaker 1:What happened, was it? It Smashed against the mat. As I hit my back on the mat, it smashed, perfectly bent and foot was perfectly flushed to the mat. Oh, wow, and my, my foot went and like banged off of the mat and instantly I went oh, what was that? Didn't like? Wasn't a knee problem? You couldn't, couldn't understand what was injured. You didn't have to stop. No, I kept going, yeah, but I, but I stayed on my like. I couldn't, I couldn't, I didn't want to push off of it Because I didn't know what was injured. I knew something was injured. Ever since then I can run, I can do things. I wasn't with this kid that you were just talking. No, no, no, no, no, no. I can grapple, I can do all that, but if the knee comes all the way in, it starts to pinch now. So I don't know if and I couldn't extend it all the way out, that was my problem. So I might have hyper extended it, yeah, so anyway. So I was watching, never got an MRI for it.
Speaker 2:No, no, of course not. Well, I don't want to know what it is that's. That's the easiest way to not have a problem.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I don't want to know what it is, because if it's, if it's something that's bad and I have to, I have to really stop training. I'm just not going to listen. So, um, I'd rather just like milk it and I don't roll hard, or I roll now, I roll with people I trust Mm-hmm. So like now, because I'm not a hundred percent I. You have that option in an open class though.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:I know the guys that are not going to be assholes. I'm like yo, you know, I'll go to them. I'll be like yo, we get the roll. They'll be like, yeah, okay, that's cool, yeah. So Long story short.
Speaker 1:Uh, there's this older dude. He's a nurse, super dope guy, a little out of shape, but he's getting into shape. He's he's tough roller when he really puts us all into it, uh. And then there's a new kid and, um, the new kid had to pass his guard, so he wrapped his legs around him. They were going and what the new kid was doing wasn't, wasn't wrong, but it was like you don't do that, just like, chill out, bro. So I'm watching, because I'm not rolling live with people I don't trust. So I'm watching the side and the kid is standing up while the while the older cat is, uh, on his back and he's got his legs wrapped around him still, and he's grabbing the older guy's gi From the top like this, and he's not trying to do a children like that he's pushing his fist, oh, into the dude's neck while he's on the ground. Yo, new kid, respect your elders that. And I'll tell you what man. That shit fires me up because it's like oh, so you want to roll hard.
Speaker 2:I'm not listen. That's gotta be an experience, right that he's doing that.
Speaker 1:I guess because he doesn't know what else to do. But at the same time, it's like you're pushing your fist in someone's throat throw. That's not, that's not what happens in this class. Like you need to relax a little bit now. I'm a white belt, I don't. That's also not jiu-jitsu. Exactly like I'm a white belt. I don't know a lot, I still. You know people look to me because I have some knowledge. Now, if you tried that with a really experienced person, oh it was really experienced, they would go fucking nuts.
Speaker 1:They would. They would, they would roll dirty with him. Like just give him a couple of like dirty jabs, like just to show him what it's like. Like chill out, bro, that's what happens. Like you, you, you, they test with the higher belts and the higher belts aren't mean, but they'll put you right back in your place. So so you know, I'm watching that and he finished and he was holding on, the oldest cat was holding on for a while and then after that, after after the kid walks away, he passed the, he passed his guard and he looks at me and I just went to him. I went, I gave him a high five, like I picked him up. I said you know, I just want you to know, like once this needs better. I said I'll roll with him and I'll let him know what Really not nice rolling is like that. And then, when he's done, I'll be like yo, just so you know, like I was rough with you because you were like that with him. That time Don't do that shit.
Speaker 2:You don't need to do.
Speaker 1:Yeah, don't do that shit. Be respectful, like it's not that serious. Dude, you're not an 80 cc. We're not doing a tournament right now. This is just practice. I had I had a this kid shown who actually become friends with. Afterwards I yelled at him in the class we were doing uh Guard, pass again. I was supposed to pass his guard. Now I'm trying to pass his guard super good wrestler, like just very good wrestler, strong kid, really talented and as I'm trying to pass his guard, all of a sudden he Locks my leg. He's sitting down and I'm standing up. He locks into my leg and I look at him and I go, what are you doing? And he leans into my mcl and it starts to fucking kill. So I, so I like tap him on the head like this I go, I go, I go, I go, yo bro, I go. We don't do leg locks in the white belt class.
Speaker 1:Right, he's like, well, it's a single leg lock, no, no, no, no, you're not listening. I go. We don't do that shit in the white belt class. I go. You could do that in the mixed class. I go we don't.
Speaker 2:How do you learn that? How do you find out about that?
Speaker 1:like somebody say hey, we don't do leg locks either they say that or you just Injure somebody or something like you. Like you don't leg stuff. They don't teach you in the white belt class, so you. That's why I didn't even think that he was gonna grab my leg like that. But when he did, and then my mcl was sore for weeks, so it's like and you've already had it, and I and I told him that, like I said, you know, I walked away and I was heated for a second. I didn't let it get the best of me. But I went yo, bro. I said if you do that to my leg again, we're gonna have a fucking problem. I go, don't do that shit to me ever again. Like I'm just letting you know. I love that.
Speaker 1:You smacked him in the head like just like I know, I know what else to tap. I just went right in the top of his head. So then afterwards, like the next day, I said hey, can I have a conversation with you real quick? I said I just wanted you to know. I said that shit was clean. I said you were doing it right. I said but let me ask you. I said you wrestle and he goes, yeah, I said okay, so you're not a white belt, you're a blue belt, right right, you don't. You know, this is not a new world for you.
Speaker 2:To some extent, the moves, the intricacies of things, but also if you go into a class Knowing there's a certain amount of things that you have to defend against, and then somebody starts doing something that you're like whoa, whoa, I don't have to defend, like shit.
Speaker 1:Like I had no idea for a second I'm not there. Now I do. It's weird because now I'm picking up things so like I roll in town. Um, the dude mark that owns the spot, ohm zen garden mark, is going to come on the podcast. He's a brown belt out of 10th planet, super dope dude, really cool.
Speaker 2:That planet's really blown up.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they are, they're on patch on the one out there. But he teaches in in Huntington village too. He's got ice baths at the facility, he's got big open mats, he's got infrared sauna. He's right on main street, oh, right here, yeah, right on the entry. So every now and then he does well, not every now and then he has regular classes. But I'll go down there and I'll roll. Yeah, and I rolled with him last time and he got me in an arm move where I was on my back and I couldn't really, and he started put putting the arm down to the floor. And you know, early on, nick, back in may, I would just either tap or sit there and just try to wiggle out of it. Now it's like cool, because I'm starting to see how I'm absorbing some of the knowledge I. I took a backwards roll over him oh wow, to unhinge my arm from that position, and then we kept going and I was like oh yeah, but it's not something that you just like.
Speaker 2:Instinctually know that you can do that.
Speaker 1:No, you start to absorb it, you start to see other dudes how they're getting out of things. You start to getting into situational awareness and understand what your body's capable of doing. Yeah, and you know, one of the biggest things that I tell a lot of people is that you know, the first time you have somebody take your back is a very, very creepy, scary moment, even though you know where you are and you know there's no technical Danger um but you can't throw elbows.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can't throw elbows, and but just like having somebody fight, as they're just very calmly on your back, having somebody fight, slip their fingers in under your chin and start choking you. You're just kind of like whoa, whoa, as it starts getting tighter. You're just like, uh, but Situational, now you're used to it. So now somebody starts taking my back. I go, keep going, keep going because I'm trying to figure out how to Work through it and repetition, and turn and look at them and pass the knee over their leg and then turn Because if I'm looking at them they can't choke me and it. There's these things that I've learned over the course of my months training there and it's just cool to see the progression of things. You know, matt, matt, I was rolling one night and matt's walking by and he goes. You know, I really want to be able to say jedi rizzles one day. I'm like, hey, man, I, years and years from now, maybe we can do that.
Speaker 2:That'd be cool, and I'm in no rush, man, some of these guys that are like the pros, like in the ufc, like the guys that are like winning the big events, like who was recently, who just won, and he became a brown belt right on the spot. The coach came and put the brown belt around his neck I don't know, and I was like I don't have brown belt.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, some dudes are very competitive at it. And you know what? There's a lot of gyms that promote quickly at which I don't love the idea of that. It's like, okay, so you want to have a bunch of brown belts, you want to have a bunch of black belts, but are they actually brown and black belts? Yeah, you know, sarah promotes very slow, which is cool, man. I mean, some people would look at that as like uh, you want to keep people in your gym longer to keep them paying, whatever it might be. I don't think I don't look at it like that. I would rather get these things slow and be able to say like yo, I'm a real blue belt, I'm a real like. I dug this shit out for months, years to get to this point, and you know, then I go to other gyms because when I was in North Carolina I rolled down there.
Speaker 2:I was actually just gonna ask you that man, because I know that there's like a big community of guys that when they travel or the vacation, they'll try another school to kind of like to test at that school and it's like training at another gym, right. But they also welcome you into that environment, but they also don't want you to just be like, hey, I can just come in here and just, you know, roll these guys under the rug or something like that.
Speaker 1:I'll tell you. I'll tell you what. The dudes at North Carolina that charlotte jujitsu, they were phenomenal human beings, super dope, super welcome. They were just like yo come in this and that the the head guy, the owner, he didn't even charge me. He's like no, bro, you're good, I just want you to enjoy yourself and have fun. I go yeah, you're here. I said hey, listen, let me take some pictures of you guys while I'm here and I took pictures of them when they were all growing. And one of the kids, josh. One of the kids, he's an older guy, one of the dude, josh, is the one that won ultimate fighter and he had a fight a couple months later. He won his fight.
Speaker 2:Oh, you mean the one that's out right now, like the one that they're.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was training at that gym when I was there. Oh wow, so it was pretty cool, man it was. You get to meet some really cool and amazing people.
Speaker 2:It's a big community. The first time that I kind of like noticed, you know, jujitsu being a um, a like a prominent thing for fitness specifically, was when I saw the transformation from anthony bordain. You know, because he was just a regular dude who um, focused mostly on like uh, heroin and cigarettes for years and years and years, amazing chef. But then I guess somehow, through I think maybe his, his first wife Found jujitsu, because I think she's big in the whole jujitsu game and uh, and when he started rolling, I remember somebody took a picture of him walking on the street somewhere in LA and he had, like His shirt open and he was just ripped.
Speaker 2:Yeah you know and like like, developed a muscle and this isn't his 60s, and he didn't, he didn't weight train.
Speaker 1:It's a different kind of fitness, man, when you're the resistance, when you have another human being that you're wrestling off of you, it is a different kind of fitness and it is awesome. Let me tell you, you feel, after I get off the mats and I've done a bunch of rounds, like the competition class on saturday, sundays when you got the guys that are actually competing at ADCC and all these different IBJ, ibjjf or IBJF Whatever the numbers letters are right um, you get those guys that are like really hitting it. You go against some bad Motherfuckers. So you just start, you're drenched, I mean you're fighting for your life on these mats sometimes and it sounds more dramatic than it might actually be. But when you're in that situation you go oh, now I understand.
Speaker 1:Yeah, everybody starts at white, right, everyone starts at white. Yeah, everyone starts at white belt. It's just a matter of how quickly you get promoted. So after four stripes on your white belt, you get you can go to the other side and you can go to the advanced class. But it's weird because, like, I go to the mixed class, so it's basically the advanced class.
Speaker 2:Okay, because some of those guys are in there too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I go against the brown belts, the black belts, the blue belts.
Speaker 2:And sometimes what are they doing? They're just rolling with you because they they kind of just Want the repetition they want to cut. Yeah, you know a lot of times.
Speaker 1:John Donner uh, gordon's coach, yeah, he talks about how important it is to roll against lower belts before a competition. Um, he says that that actually helps your game more than you going against all the high belts every single time.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah that's got a lot of value, especially from somebody who who doesn't believe in Stop it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean he train every day, every day. I mean he's, he's, he is like the godfather of just jiu-jitsu and that stuff and it's so cool to see. I mean, you know the graces. You think of the actual godfather.
Speaker 2:but you know, john is just some he's special man and there's something different when he's so calm about everything as him, kind of attaches themselves to a passion, it becomes this thing that that they're they're obsessed with everything that they do. I can't, you know, I I gotta look at, like this, the, the stuff that he writes down, like his programming, is probably like a mad scientist, so you probably wouldn't even understand them. You know the majority of it, but when it all comes together as far as, like, the training is concerned, we see what the result of that yeah right, because gordon ryan is is what the best of the best monster dude there's just, there's no, there's no one better than him, really not, not, yeah, I mean his brother, nicky, is really good.
Speaker 1:Um, I forget what they called. A bunch of guys broke off from john's gym and they went into like an underdog gym they call. They call themselves like second team or something like that, or the oh a b team. That's what they call themselves b team because they were never as good as gordon. So they they all do compete under b team now. Okay, so it's like a weird kind of dynamic and gordon was out for a little while because he had some intestinal issues and stomach issues that he was having. Saw that man, yeah. So now he came, you off the gear and now he's back on, though Now he got big again. Yeah, he did quickly, quickly, clickly, but yeah, it's cool, we got to get you down we got to get you to come down.
Speaker 2:I definitely want to try it. There's no doubt about it at all. I'm not gonna, you know, ask the orthopedic doctor if, if there's any concern, because there's concern, obviously, I have l5s1 herniations.
Speaker 1:Yeah so and honestly, truth be told, the the way that I strengthened them up and I fixed it was with sumo deadlifts over the years. Yeah, I can see that strengthening the lower posterior chain, lower back lumbar, everything like that, and just like the pain went away With hypers and stuff. I used to have Radiating pain down both legs from my and that was at 19 years old knock on wood.
Speaker 2:Man, I've never had that and and with the exception of like this, because it wasn't even an injury. You know, I woke up and I just kind of had like a stiff neck and a stiff shoulder and just Started to like grow and naturally that the pain went away but the weakness Started to develop, got you and I just kind of started to like lose. You know, like they're different sizes, my arms are two completely different, yeah, you know, and Um, and, and that's the most frustrating part, I'm I'd almost rather the pain I can manage. Pain, you know, yeah, at least it in in in my head, but it's. It makes. It makes programming for myself as far as my training is concerned, tricky, you know, because I don't want to use two different weights.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, but sometimes I have to yeah, you know you gotta, you gotta take the situation and just do what you can out of it.
Speaker 2:I'm so I'm starting my wife actually just recently, because she she came off of a, a partially replacement that she did, so she got some bfr and I'm I think I'm gonna start using that, that bfr for for my right arm. What's the bfr? What's the bfr? Uh, the blood flow restriction.
Speaker 2:Oh, uh occlusion, occlusion trading, just like it's a cuff right and it, it's all digital. You know, you put the machine on and it and it and you leave it on for a little bit and it kind of like and then take it off and the blood rushes in and supposed to push more regeneratives Nature's back in and it kind of goes into like a complete restriction, almost like 100, and then it backs off depending on the size.
Speaker 2:That actually will take a measurement of it, you know, while it's doing it in a digital sense, and then and then it'll. It'll basically go to, I think it's like 60%, all right, and you can literally take a five pound Dumbbell it feels like a nine thousand pound dumbbell.
Speaker 1:Oh my god.
Speaker 2:Like, like each rep just feels like your your bicep spots explode.
Speaker 1:I gotta get you, I gotta get you to my boys to do some pt work with you.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they would. Yeah, scott and dr Nick would be phenomenal. Derlin's a great chiropractor. There's a lot of people. Yeah, okay, yeah, scott, scott, scott's long island stretch. He's actually coming on the show wednesday, oh cool, uh, nick, uh, so just finished his doctorate and finished schooling and his clinicals. He now works for scott. They're out here, yeah, the Hicksville, okay. And then, uh, derlin is in smith town, smith, so derlin's the chiropractor. Yeah, it's a little out east, so it's like two, it's like three towns over, okay, that way. Yeah, but we'll get you.
Speaker 2:We'll get you some appointments, you know gps, it's all easy to find. It's easy yeah.
Speaker 1:Compatibly to have to use fucking maps like a treasure hunter.
Speaker 2:But I'll definitely roll with you, man. You just gotta let me know whenever you go.
Speaker 1:I don't know 6 30 every night is the beginner class. So if you come down, whenever you say that you want to come down, I'll make sure that I don't roll midday or I'll do a double I've done plenty of doubles and, um, I'll let you know and then we'll we'll get after it. Um. So in closing, uh, is there anything that you wanted to cover for hyrox or that people should know?
Speaker 2:The only thing that I want to say man, if anybody's watching this and they're, and they're interested in you know what they're, what they're hearing, or it hit the radar already and they're just kind of like on the fence about it. Um, the easiest thing to do, honestly, is just reach out to me. Constantine on instagram constanteen Uh, just because I couldn't find, constantine was already taken bastards. Yeah, just weird, because I was like the first one I couldn't even get. My name is Constantine musicidas and I couldn't even get fire names. Fuck a warrior. I'm still trying to learn how to spell everything. Um, it's, uh, it like I couldn't even get my gmail account. You know like it's. It's like I'm, like I.
Speaker 2:I moved to long island, I'm, I, I'm. This is not a fucking joke, I'm being dead serious. I moved to long island and went to a cvs locally to pick up a prescription Under my name and the lady I came up but she was like oh, what's your name? I was like Constantine musicidas. She literally looked at me and she was just like oh, I saw the prescription come through. I saw I thought it was for this other guy that comes in here and I was like are you telling me that there's another, constantine musicidas. That comes to the cvs, and she was like yeah, and I'm like Fucking imposter haven't met him yet, but I'm like what are the chance? Like it like Not john smith.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean niggah riso. He's a lot of niggah risos. I can see that yeah. I'm just gonna change it to rizzles, just. I'm just gonna go full-blown with it with the nickname Just make it my real name.
Speaker 2:I mean the amount of names that everybody probably calls you at this point.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Nick, res, res, res rizzles nicky.
Speaker 1:You know nicky before the before I say it often before the uh video work and before the podcast, and before you were always nicky. I was always nick. Yeah, nicholas, like nobody called me nicky except my grandmother. So then when nicky rizzles came out, like people started calling me nicky rizzles, everyone just thought my name was nicky and they all started calling me nicky. I was like I'm cool with it.
Speaker 2:A bunch of friends who were like called michael. When we were younger, we all used to call him mickey. Yeah at a certain point they were just like can you stop calling me?
Speaker 1:No, I don't. Yeah. Yeah, I understand, but for me it's just like I don't even give a shit. It's like I'm cool with whatever. Just don't, just just don't. Call me the wrong name.
Speaker 2:So Constantine on instagram, uh con dot stan dot teen. Or Constantine at hyroxcom fire.
Speaker 1:I want to thank you for dropping by. We'll have to do it again for having, because we could talk forever, dude.
Speaker 2:I'd love to come back. For sure, we can definitely talk about anything you want to talk about, because I'm into it all.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we'll do. We'll do another episode. We'll uh, maybe we'll maybe fucking do like a hyrox cast. We could do something at the you, at the event at some point That'd be pretty cool, man.
Speaker 2:Listen, now would be great, man. I mean, hyrox in New York is coming back june, um, you know. So anybody that's that's thinking about it right now it's on the fence. They got plenty of time to get the training so much time six.
Speaker 1:So hit one of the go, hit one of the affiliate gyms. Oh gee, what's the other gyms?
Speaker 2:Ocean, side there's a bunch, man. You got beach fit in ally. You got um in ocean side as well. You got concept fitness. Then in the city, we just signed the very first crossfit affiliate in the world Nice, just crossfit nyc. They just signed on as an affiliate as well and they're doing some really cool things called black box hyrox that they have going on on saturdays as well, um, and in a ton other ones, man, that there's so many, you know, gyms now that are getting behind the program and they're realizing that they can Engage their communities, you know, in a different way and challenge their, their members, in a different way. And uh, hyrox is getting out there, man, so I know that it's going to hit people's radars eventually.
Speaker 1:Yeah just a matter of time and just getting getting in people's faces and whatnot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, it's still. It's still very, very new and and as a modality you know, hybrid fitness in general is still. People are still figuring it out. We're getting there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, plenty of time. Thanks for having me, brother. No, for real. And on that note, this is episode 73 with my man, konstantin 73 73 man, we bust through these.
Speaker 1:That's it, I love that and and nine is my mom's lucky number, she was the last episode and that and seven plus two oh no, that's weird how that works out. There's always a way to find out. Yeah, exactly, so hit my man up, go train, get your ass in motion, go do your damn thing and go run, lift train and have fun with the community and everybody involved. On that note, please share, like comment, all the Pleasure of list. It helps the algorithm, it helps us get the message out, it helps my man. Just continue to kill it and do his damn thing. And high rocks to be On par and continually Pressuring crossfit, because I love when shit comes out and starts pressuring other companies to just continually be better, because it makes everything better, hala. On that note, peace.