Doug Seamans | Coach & Entrepreneur

Welcome to the platform podcast. I'm your host Jordan Kunde-Wright, founder and head coach of the Twin Cities Kettlebell Club And I'm on a mission to help others build sustainable healthy habits I know how hard that can be because I've struggled and succeeded to varying degrees throughout my life But I've lost over a hundred pounds and kept it off for over a decade now the key for me was discovering my passion for lifting weights in Kettlebell Sport on this podcast we'll talk to athletes coaches experts and everyday people about Kettlebell's fitness programming Nutrition, mindset, making an impact and generally striving to grow and leave a legacy of positive change Please join me. All right, welcome to the platform podcast episode number three I am very excited to welcome my friend Doug Seamans He is the owner and coach at Pride conditioning in Charlotte, North Carolina as well as a team USA Kettlebell athlete He is the author of multiple books including Kettlebell Long Cycle Training, a 12-week progressive training program for long cycle competition and Kettlebell Long Cycle and Powerlifting A two a day long cycle and Powerlifting training program for intermediate lifters And I know he's also working on a couple other books. He owns multiple businesses including rebel screen printing, BFR apparel And he is also the former president of the American Kettlebell Lifters Union, the AKLU So Doug, thanks for being on the show Absolutely my pleasure brother So just a few things going on there in North Carolina, huh? Hey, yeah, yeah any other businesses that you're starting up while we're while we're in quarantine since you have so much free time on your hand Oh my god, so because of the whole like shortage of equipment available like I I have money like I would like to buy some plates some more plates and some more bars and some more Kettlebells and Can't buy anything because everything's out of stock Vulcan pre-order is going on right now just say no from Vulcan strength Oh I literally was just on Instagram right before we got on here and Garage Jim reviews said that Vulcan was doing a pre-order and literally crashed the website I think the same thing happened to kettlebell kings on their first their first re-up. I had a couple Like I had a couple of people that were trying to buy Kettlebells And we're like had them in their cart and couldn't couldn't complete the order because yeah, the demand is so high right now So I'm like Well, why don't I just get me and like three other people together and I'll just order a whole container of stuff from China It's gonna take six weeks, which is the same amount of time is restocking all these websites And then I just start my own website and I'll just take what I need and then sell the rest of it So it's it's a thought but it definitely like it's a long shot on that one. I don't know about that So you heard it here first on the platform podcast Six the business is going to be an import export of fitness equipment I Highly doubt highly doubtful. I have like I look for books that I'm like in various stages of finishing So it's like and it you know, it's one of those things where it's like oh, I got to paint the house next weekend And then you know like oh, I got to paint the house next weekend I'm like like I wonder these books gonna be done like They don't write themselves, bro like you got to you got to get to work Yeah, so tell so tell me about it You've written a couple of books already. I got them got them up on Seamans Mostly good reviews you get that you know, of course you've got the one troll out there who's who's gonna give everything a two star review But I've I've seen your I've seen your programs and you're all about conjugate programming I mean in the world of kettlebell sport a lot of people don't really touch conjugate programming But in the world of powerlifting It's well established as a as a primary form of of training So you know the west side barbell guys really made it really made it famous as far as a term But talk to me a little bit about conjugate training I know that's a big part of of what you believe in and what and what you do So it's so tell the people what conjugate training is and kind of what your approach is to it for For kettlebell sport as well as powerlifting and how those two can complement one another. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So So to get into it the backstory My wife Lindsay obviously used to be a kettlebell lifter And she has like a degenerative Like a genetic problem her shoulder is like deformed She will probably within the next 10 years have to have part of her shoulder like cut off and replaced with like a stainless steel implant thing So she cannot Uh Straighten her left arm overhead like at all Uh, so She left the kettlebell sport world and got into powerlifting now She had surgery under shoulder and of course the doctors told her You'll never put weight over had ever again Uh, we were also avoid high fighters and they were like yeah, you'll never like you're never gonna fight You know, we're gonna put weight over had uh, you can't do pushups and you can't punch props So um and how long did that last? Yeah, that literally I mean like 90 days like she was doing pushups like 90 days later um So she really legit cannot straighten her left arm up overhead so She can't go overhead so no all of the no kettlebell um But she can she can bench um it's one of those things were like She can do it and we know that it's not really good for her but um It's like when the tires are bald on your Mustang and you go Well, let's just burn them off one more time before we put new ones on um, it's basically that Somebody yeah, yeah, so It's basically that situation um instead of getting her shoulder replaced in 15 years like a smart person It'll probably have to be like nine or ten years um because she's just gonna destroy it and I know that sounds like Really really stupid to like a normal person, but uh to us like I know this is our life. That's what we do Um, so anyways, so she is she's the powerluster Like the legit powerlifter um, she's uh her back squat is uh triple body weight um Yeah, uh, I can't I cannot touch her her percentages and her numbers like I can't I can't even come close She's almost Triple body weight on deadlift um, she has triple body weight on back squat Um her bench is like one and a half times body weight so like Yeah, like I can't I can't touch any of her numbers, but her uh Her original powerlifting coach is scotchettler and if you know any of the history of kettlebell sport in the United States um Scott was very close with Christophe and Christophe was uh my second coach scot was really my first scot was the first person that I've learned Uh kettlebell sport from um, and we just kept he's down in Atlanta. We just kept in contact with him and he basically transitioned from kettlebell into powerlustin and We've learned from him and he is uh, he's certified westside barbell Strength coach, so he's done the coaching certification, which is a ridiculous certification. It's the craziest longest most in-depth certification I've ever seen in my life um So all of our Knowledge on conjugate and you'll hear me talk about this in a lot of videos and a lot of what I write about We write about um and racing. It's called heritage and and lifting and martial arts. We call it lineage. So like when we were Moietyle fighters Our lineage was like a direct line from uh the person who brought Moiety to America So in kettlebell sport right we talk about You know my coach was scot or Kristoffie and they were coached by Ivan and Ivan was coached by this person or when I was coached by Gregor or Igor, you know, we could trace that line of who their coach it was and who their coach's coach was. So The westside line is like direct like Louis Simmons like direct to scot and then direct to Lindsay So there's your very lengthy backstory on our History with westside and conjugate programming so next part of the story is Obviously we're very into powerlifting and Conjugate programming from westside and I had Ben toying around with these ideas of how to adapt this these theories and these methods to kettlebell sport and then Of course Gregor Gregor Subacon came out with his programming and You know he called it conjugate and of course, you know, I was interested in it, but I was still training under Igor um, I basically got injured um And once that happened I'd take some time off and to rebuild myself Which I'm still not like 100% but to rebuild myself I went to Gregor and I said you know, I want to It's not just that I just want to lift, you know, I I'm a coach so I want to learn and that's I want to become a better coach and I want more knowledge So I went to Gregor and Gregor explained a lot of the program to me Uh, and that's when I started the whole conjugate programming journey for kettlebell sport Yeah, and for for people that are uninitiated, you know, conjugate training in Powerlifting typically consists of five components right you have a max a maximum effort upper body day a maximum Effort lower body day and then a dynamic a dynamic upper a dynamic lower and then a and then a fifth day for For accessories right am I am I Yeah, you're right. Yeah In the huge broad sense to your uh, you're pretty much there um, we do accessory work for powerlifting is like a daily There's a daily thing. Yeah, that's like 70% of your volume actually, right? Yeah, yet training right so they Westside says 80% it's um, it's crazy You only spend 20% on your main left and 80% on all your accessory work. So it's a little bit different with kettlebell sport for sure Um, but how how I can break this down um, the easiest way and I started writing about so one of the next books that I have coming is um Basically, I asked Ragger if I could use the program to write version two of his program. He gave me permission and he will be kind of a co-author to the book. He just oversaw the program that I wrote and I ran a lot of it by him and he liked it. So that's how that's going to go. The program is already done. I've done it three times and I've had three other people go through it too. It definitely works. So I'm the conjugate program for kettlebells for you're going to do all three lefts. You're going to do jerk, snatch and long cycle. So jumping back over to power left and how this like bridges over. So I'm the conjugate program for power left and basically you want to look at it like this. If you're looking at back squad, you have a one rep max back squad. So there's one item. Then you have a three rep max and a five rep max back squad. So now you have three items. From there, now if I put chains on the bar, now you have six items because now you have a one rep max with chains, a three rep max with chains and a five rep max with chains. Then I can add the box. So now you can have the box with no chains and there's three more variations for max. Then you can have the box and chains put the two of them together. You have three more variations. I could take the chains off and I could put bands on it. Now you have three more variations for your free squad without the box and your squad with the box with bands. So there's six more variations. So you see where this goes. It compounds itself and basically the theory behind this is you can hit a PR on one of those variations almost every week. And that's part of how the West Side Conjugate program works. You have all of those variations and you can max out on those variations just week after week after week. I can't even remember Scott told me like the number on back squad. It's it's an insane number. It's you can PR on a different back squad variation every single week for like a year and a half or something like that is like a ridiculous number. Which like you can't really do because if you're training to compete, you're going to have, you know, like a 12 week cycle to competition. And within that 12 week cycle, you're like, you can't hit all of those different squad variations. This is just not possible. But over the course of training over a whole year, you could hit all of those different squad variations. So now bridge that back over to kettlebell. So let's take let's take just jerks. Well, actually, the better option is to take long cycle. So and I'm going to tell you that jokingly and not jokingly, the better option is always long cycle. Still going like a long cycle specialist. Exactly. So, uh, so if you take long cycle, right? Uh, so basically, you could do like a one minute max, a two minute max, a three minute max, a four minute max, a five minute max. Basically, when I trained under Igor, we never, I never had a max offer. I mean, we did have like a six minute and like an eight minute, but it was very, uh, it was very controlled. It wasn't, um, you know, it, it was max effort, but it was, it was by an RPM, you know. So really between five minutes and ten minutes is going to be a controlled, a very controlled set. Um, five minutes and under you, you're still going to have an RPM goal and sort of a controlled set. But you can obviously go faster than you normally would for a ten minute set. So if we think of it, like if, uh, we go back to the back squat, right, you got a one wrap, a three wrap and a five wrap max. So switch that over to minutes with long cycle. So you have a one minute max, the three minute max and a five minute max is literally that simple. But now I can, I can speak to my, I can speak to my own capability, right? Like a one minute, a one minute max pace for me on long cycle is probably, you know, between 14 and 16 RPMs depending on the, on the weight of the bells. And you start going two minutes, two minutes, then it goes down to 12. And then you go, then you go three minutes. Well, then we're talking, then we're talking eight to 10. You know, you're talking, you're talking five minutes, you know, six to 10, depending on the weights of the bells. Exactly, exactly. Now the key is one of the other keys to conjugate training is to track all of those items. You can't just do it and then have this number floating around and go, oh yeah, in 20 kilo, like I think I can hit 36 reps in three minutes. Like you have to know. So I literally, I have a spreadsheet with like, like hundreds of variations on all of the kettlebells. Oh, and then you're talking my language now, we're going to have to share spreadsheets because I've got my spreadsheet for tracking volume that I use with all of my athletes. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And, and that's, that's one of the keys. You have to be able to track this ship because if, if you don't have the numbers to back up, if you are writing programs, it's one thing if you're just an athlete, right. If you're just an athlete, your coach should be tracking all of the ships for you. So I have sheets for all of my people, Lindsey has sheets for all of her people. We know all of our people's maxes on their different lifts on on kettlebell and powerlifting and the one big lifting. So anyways, go back to long cycle. So let's go, you know, if you're, let's just talk like 24 kilo long cycle doubles. One minute, a three minute, and a five minute max. And then of course, we kettlebell, we have a 10 minute max, which that would be like a 10 wrap max effort back squat, which I do have a lot of powerlifters do not most olifters will have a 10 wrap max for back squat and or front squat. Most powerl, a lot of powerlifters won't I do because you know, I span kind of both worlds. So now we get into the variations. So now long cycle, now add in one swing. Now you have max effort 24 kilo, long cycle plus one swing, one minute, three minute, five minute, 10 minute. Now make it two swings. Again, you have all those variations for those time limits. Now go, this is one of my favorite things for conjugate, you're going to go one swing, two claims, three jerks. So this is a very, this is a very typical thing for like myself and cragger and our program. So now one swing, two claims, three jerks, that you're not going to have about one minute like max on that, because like you can barely, you're only getting like two cycles of that in like one minute. So for that, we're going to go like five minutes to 10 minutes to 15 to 12 15 minutes. So now you have a max for all of those items. Now, your next variation will be like, God, slow long cycle. So, right, you can go slow long cycle with just the holes. So let's articulate what that is real quick for people that don't know slow long cycle, you've got, you've got how many positions and how long are you having people hold them for. Right. So you're going to have four positions. So you've got for a rack, first step, second step, and then overhead hold. So you have four positions. And then then you do three swing, do you do three swings or a specific number of swings before you clean to the rack. Yeah, yeah. So now you've got. So now even within, now even within slow long cycle, you have multiple variations there, one swing, two swing, three swing, right. Now, now you have multiple variations on how many breaths you hold for each position. So whether it's two breaths, three breaths or four breaths, or you can do that under tension too. You can also do it where it's three seconds per position, six seconds per position. If you, if you want to focus on time as well, right. Yeah, I've never, I've never done, I've heard of people doing that. I've never done slow long cycle on a timer. Basically, I mean, you know how it is. Like most of our, most of our RPM is based on your, your breathing. So it's like, you know, I think I think that's where I think that's one place where we differ as coaches. I actually, I actually have people watching the clock a lot more. Obviously, I want people focusing on their breath, but I like to, I like to get people used to working off of, working off of the clock as well so that they're. You know, I can remember, I can remember going to. It was either the Arnold in like 2016 or so, maybe, maybe I've been to the Arnold four times or five times. It was the Arnold or else it was ice chamber and somebody walked in with their own clock. And you know, when you get like a jacked up RPM, if it's like, like seven RPM on long cycle or like 11 RPM on jerks, it's like, it's like this. You can't do the math. It's yeah. There's no way. And they literally had a clock and then they had martyred on the glass of the clock. Like where, like where their lifts were supposed to be. And I, you know, and it was, it was a female lifter, but the hell if I can remember who it was. But I remember like looking at it and I laughed and I was like, I mean, like I can't say that it's like not smart. I mean, like there's your clock and there's your pace. You know, for me, it was always about, you know, how many breaths. I think there's validity to both methods and I actually try and actually try and get my athletes to work with both methods because the clock. The clock is important, especially for new people in my opinion, because it gives them something outside of themselves to look at so that they can, they can just go, okay, you know, I tell them, hey, you, this is a 10, 10 RPM's every six seconds. You need to be locking a rep out and you just focus on every rep, right? Six one goes up at 12, one goes up, right? Right? That works really well, usually with beginning athletes. But then I also like to at some point, I'm an asshole, right? And I take the clock away because I'm like, well, what are you doing? What if you're doing your competition and the clock goes out because that happens in colleges and sometimes, right? So it's like, you can't be freaking the fuck out just because your clock turned off, right? And the first time it happens, it does freak out because if you've never experienced it before, you're not prepared for it. But if you've experienced it in practice, then you are prepared for it. So I very much believe in having both tools in your tool belt, but I always start athletes on the clock. And personally, I like focusing on the clock more because it just, for me, it's simpler. I could just focus on one one more time. I can remember when I first started and I think it was at my first, so I had met Mike Seamans at my, at my first competition here in Charlotte. He came to Cyrus's and speaking of Vulcan and downed websites. So I'm sorry, man. I mean, like Cyrus and I, like, we'll get along in person, but like, I mean neither of us will really mix words about each other and we both know it. So like, it's perfectly okay. And the crazy part is he's literally like five miles from me. That's, that's like the crazy part. But I met Mike Seamans at Cyrus's. There's my first competition. And then I met, I met Seamans again down in Atlanta at Scott Shutlers. And remember talking to Seamans about about the clock and about training on a one minute timer. And he said that I think it was Federaco that he said got him off of that because he said that it made you, it made you anxious. And it would increase your heart rate. And I was like, wow, I'm like, because like you're, there's very opinionated. Oh, you don't say, right? So like, I mean, listen, if you're doing like minute on, minute off, sat's like, I'm like, why would you not have a clock? Like I don't understand Mike. And he had some other like crazy explanation behind it. And I was like, I do whatever. Like he literally stopped using like a timer that like beat. So he literally put a timer on like one hour, which is in general, what I do now, I put a timer on for one hour. And like, I just make sure that like, I'm on time. Yeah, I start an egg, I start like an egg timer or a kitchen timer next to my, next to my clock and much to my athletes. Sugar and sometimes when I'm, when I'm short on oxygen, I don't do the math right. And I'm like, yeah, we've got a five minute rest. Oh, we get four minutes in. And I'm like, all right, here we go. All right. And they're like, wait, what you screwed us on a minute. That's what they, what they do it. And then everybody performs. And I'm like, yeah, now you've done fucked up because now I know you can do it on four minutes. Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. It's fun. You're doing this on purpose. I mean, it's fun. You talk about rest, too. I can remember we're getting way off topic. But I can remember. I posted a video. But I think it was a pride thing. I've got like 600 videos that are like private locked on YouTube of my training. And I sent a video to BJ. And I was doing intervals and I was sitting down on my rest time. And literally, the first thing he writes back to me is, why the fuck are you sitting down on your rest? And I'm like, it's 96 degrees, 90% humidity. And I'm fucking dying on like 28 kilos. And he was like, you are not allowed to sit down on your rest anymore. He's like, you can pace back and forth because you can take a knee, but you cannot sit down. And I'm like, come on, bro, get the fuck out of here. And he's like, it's a mental thing where like subconsciously, this is what BJ told me, that subconsciously, your brain tells your body that the workout is over with. And every time you sit down, it gets harder and harder to convince yourself to get back up. He was like, if you're already standing up, you come from a fighting background, right? So you're used to taking the stool between, between rounds, right? That's not. Yeah. Now listen. Now if you watch, you'll get like once in a great while, you'll watch like a really, really crazy boy tie fight. And they won't sit down. So it's like a, um, it's a mental mind fuck for your opponent, because it's like, I don't need to sit down. I don't need the stool. Right. I don't need the stool. Right. So I'm like, and you are correct. That's exactly where it came from was the boxing boy tie background. We're like, yeah, you sat down on your one minute rest and like, nobody asked any questions. So like, yeah, BJ was like, every time you sit down, it gets harder to get back up again. And I was like, hey, you're actually kind of right on that one. So literally, that was like, at least four years ago, and I've never sat down for a rest time ever since then. Interesting. All right. Well, so that pivots, let's, let's talk about mindset a little bit, because that's something that's, um, I mean, I don't want to go out on a limb here. But I think you're pretty intense, dude. Um, I think, I think most people know that about you that have watched your videos or talked to you or. Yeah, I've definitely like toned down in like the past, I would say like 18 to 24 months. Um, I mean, I just turned 40, but I still get yelled at by friends and private messages like, hey, like you should probably take a rest day or like, um, you know, I'll, I'll basically tell people like, you know, hard and the fuck up. You're, you're complaining about, you know, like you're complaining about heat, and it's like 90, and I'm like, yeah, well, complain when it goes to like 103 and then we'll talk. Like, I mean, I'm going to get you, I'm going to get you up here for a Minnesota winter training session. We'll see, we'll see how you, we'll see how you saw them. I mean, like, I mean, I've gone, I mean, you got to understand I grew up in Syracuse. So, uh, I mean, I, I spent my winters snowboarding in Vermont, New Hampshire. Um, and I still, uh, mind you, I have to buy a new freezer this year. I, uh, I toasted my, uh, I toasted my, uh, ice bath freezer last winter, last summer. I get a new one and I just literally haven't gone to the store to get one and people are like, I see people like taking ice baths and they're like, they're like struggling at like three minutes. And I'm like, okay, add seven more minutes to that and then like come talk to me. I just got to get past the inflection point, right. It's always the first couple of minutes. And then once you pass like the, whatever the tipping point is for you. Oh, yeah. Everything goes in total. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm not, I mean, I'm not going to lie. Like, uh, living down here in the South for 12 years now, it was like, uh, when, uh, when I went to Kazakhstan, I had the layover in Moscow. And I probably, I think it was the second time that I, the second or third time of been Russia and, uh, but it was the first time I'd been there during the winter. And, uh, I got off the plane and like my eyeballs froze. That was what I was like, holy fuck. Like, this is like the coldest. And I've seen like, I've seen like negative so tough. Yeah. Like, I've seen like negative 40 negative 61 shells, like the top of like, uh, you know, uh, mountains out in Vermont, New Hampshire. And it's like, yeah, I grew up in the Adirondacks. And it's like, dude, once you're out of that element for like a very long number of years. And then you go back. You're like, no, this is terrible. I don't want to do this anymore. Yeah, that's why I couldn't, I, the heat and humidity gets to me, you know, a lot, a lot faster than the, than the cold, you know, but I think it's just because, because of what I'm acclimated to. So when, when you, when you go into a competition, um, is your framework that you are competing against the other people on the, on the platform or the other lifters? Or is it just you against yourself? So I would say this is a really, really great topic. And I'm going to tell you, I'm going to tell you an awesome story that you're going to love. Um, so it definitely depends on the competition. And like basically where I'm at with things. Um, when it's, when it's like world championships, it's definitely, it's, it's me, it's just me versus me. And I know that that kind of sounds like ridiculous, because the whole point of world championships is to like go be a world championship and like you have to beat the other person, but like, when I'm in Denisov's weight category, there's no way I'm ever taking him down. I've accepted. Yeah, I mean, I've lifted next to Ivan, like multiple times, and you're just like, I mean, I lifted next to Ivan the last time I went to the Arnold, like three years ago. And I was on, I was on 28th, and I was on 32s, and he was double my pace. And I was like, what the fuck? And like probably like the 4th or 5th time I'd worked next to him. So like, I knew to expect it. What I realized though after the first minute was that he was at 10 RPM, and my goal was 5 RPM. So I just put up a left every other one of his, and I just kept the pace. And it was actually perfect. It was like a perfect, yeah, it was awesome. I was like, yeah, world championships. So like, you know, amateur level, I had been chasing 80 wraps on 24s for a couple of years. And I was fully in long cycle. Yeah, yeah, long cycle. I was fully capable of doing it physically. It was just like a mental thing of like, you know, the stress and anxiety and like the heart rate and like just staying focused. And when I went to Korea, I was like, if I don't hit 80 wraps, like, I might not go home. Like I might just like stay someplace on the other side of the world and hide like forever because I'm going to be so fucking mad. So I made that all about me. And I didn't give a fuck what anybody else left it. I didn't care what anybody else's numbers were. I did not look at anyone's score while I was lifting before I was lifting. It did not care. I didn't give a fuck about anyone except for me in Korea. And it was literally the best set that I've ever put up. So. And we'll have the result. Yeah, I was 80 dead on. I missed. I was super pissed because I missed one minute. It was like minute four or minute five. And I got seven instead of eight. And I was like super mad. And I, but I knew I could make it up on minute time. And I did. I just made next to wrap on minute time. So, and I will say also I have to interject this because it's a massive point of contention with myself and the rest of the kettlebell world three world champion chips zero no count zero zero no counts three world championships. I was going to I was going to ask you how many no counts you had. I know you're I know your record. I have to interject that we can talk about it later. But I don't blame you man. I'd be hanging my I'd be hanging my hat on that too. I've never had a no count in competition. I've certainly had them in in pride. That's that is spectacular. I have had going back to Cyrus's one of Cyrus's lifters. Deb dozer. Deb is a fucking awesome lady. She's blast to hang out with. She's the hardest fucking judge on the planet, but by far. Deb dozer has no counted me twice. And I'm like, oh god, damn it Deb, but like I can't like I can't like I will not if you know count me like it's it's warranted. It's it's legit like you it it's definitely warranted. And I got no counted on like one wrap. I think I got an ice chamber like the second time I went. I think I was on 28th. I think I just I just had a really shitty wrap where I like spaced out like mentally. But anyways, get him back to competition. Yeah. I definitely like world championship level was all about me. National level completely different story. So I'm going to take you all the way back. And we'll see if he if this person ever hears this podcast will be the first time he's ever heard this story. No one's ever heard this story before. So national championships, 2015. I think that was the year that team USA want to go to Germany. I think I'm pretty sure those year they went to Germany, because I think I started my first year lifting was 2014. There's one I went to ice chamber and I think I went to Russia that year too. So I think 2015 was my first nationals. And I was on 28th. And I knew that one was training on 28th as well. One and I had not met each other in person at all. We just spoken a few a little bit on social media on Facebook and that was it. I think it could be wrong. I'm not sure the Instagram even existed back then. I literally had a picture of one taped on to the mirror across from my training platform in the gym. Because I wanted to beat him. And that's all that I cared about. So yeah. And then of course I went to nationals. I did beat one because I caught like 14 pounds to drop down weight classes. And I did beat one, but one has subsequently like throttled me on multiple occasions since that. And the funny part is, of course, after competition, like, you know, one and I hung out. I mean, like, I love the fucking guy. It's fucking spectacular. Whenever I'm in New York, one is one of the great. If you get to hang out with one and Carter, like, at the same time, that's like the best, that's the best brotherly love on the planet from those two guys. So after I beat one, then we were super good friends and I've loved him ever since. And then he's beaten me like 14 times since then. So yeah. So it's definitely is definitely all good. So setting setting aside the particular framework or the lens of a particular competition. But in general, are you trying to be the best or are you trying to be your best? Yeah, I'm definitely just I'm trying to be my best for sure. For me, it's all about for me. It's all about a number back. And part of the reason why that's definitely shifted since the beginning of my kettlebell career. Because I transitioned from Muay Thai into kettlebell, you have a very, very different mindset. And this is why when I hear people talk about kettlebell and, you know, they're like, oh, 10 minutes, you know, it's so hard. The kettlebell's so hard and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, is there someone in front of your platform, punching you in the face with the intent to hospitalize you? No, that's not happening. Then guess what? What you're doing is very easy. Like, is it physically hard? Yes. Like, is it like slightly stressful? Yeah, a little bit. But like, no one is trying to kill you. And what people don't understand is that when you box or when you fight, you get in the ring with someone that chances are, you've never, you've never met before. In most cases, neither of you have said anything bad about the other person because you don't know anything about the other person at all. They fully intend to hurt you if they can. 110%. Not only that, when you go to a kettlebell competition, everyone in the audience, all the spectators are rooting for everyone on the platform. No matter what gym they came from, what country they came from, they're all rooting for each other. When you go to a fight and you walk out from backstage and half the people in the audience are booing you. They want you to lose. And by lose, I mean, they want their boy to knock you the fuck out. That's what they want. It's like a tribal and primal experience. It's something very insane. You for, you know, nine minutes or 12 minutes or 15 minutes, however many rounds you've got for a fight, you have to step in the ring with somebody you've never met before. And you have to hate them. And you have to defend yourself and try to punish them. What people don't understand is, if you've never been in that situation, that's a really, really stressful situation. When you go from that to kettlebell sport, you're like, wow, this is easy. Like this is really played in a slightly different context. Yeah, it's like completely different. Also, you know, like you, you can quit like in a fight like you can. It's not really good. But you can quit. But like, it's a really bad situation if you do kettlebell. I mean, just put the bells down. Just just put them down. Like it's really not a big deal. But, you know, some embarrassment, maybe, but you don't have to, you don't have to stay in the cage with somebody who's kicking and punching you. Exactly. I mean, it's kind of one of those things, like, like, maybe seal training, you know, we're like, they're just trying to get you to ring the bell, like the whole fucking time that you're there. Like, it's the same thing with kettlebell, like, you know, the bells are just trying to get you to fucking put them down. It's like, they don't, the bells belong on the floor. And the bells want you to put them back where they belong. And you just have to fight to not do that. So yeah, when I came from fighting to kettlebell sport, it was a very different mindset. So like, you know, I would go to competitions and like, like, I would pick people out. I would be like, I'm going to beat that guy. I'm going to beat that guy. And that's like, now, after years in the sport, it's like, you know, you become friends with everybody. So it's like, I don't care about beating anybody anymore. Like, I just want to, I want to hit a certain number, you know, and that's it. So it's definitely, it's definitely a shift in mindset over the years. Yeah, absolutely. I think that's kind of the same thing for me coming from a football background where, you know, being an offensive lineman, you know, it's all about imposing your will on the person across from you. I mean, that's literally your job every single play. It's just to move them where they don't want to go and stop them from going where they do want to go. You know, so my mindset was always better than the person across from me. But now it's very, very different because ultimately, whether I beat the person on the platform next to me doesn't really matter. It's really, I can, I can win the competition and still have had a shitty meat, or I can get my ass kicked by Ivan Dennis off and still have put up the best set I've ever done. Right. Yeah. Who else is on the platform at the same time or who else registered for that meat? So it's ultimately me against myself. Right. Yeah, exactly. It's such a weird, is such a strange sport in that aspect. So like, it's really weird. But it's all in this together, but alone. Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I want to talk to you about, we talked about this a little bit yesterday offline, well online, but off the off the mic, you don't, you don't drink and you've been, you've been pretty open about that. And you had a pretty passionate, a pretty passionate post about over hearing someone who missed the training session because they were too hung over to come in. So tell me a little bit about your journey. You know, you, you didn't ever have an alcohol problem, but you just decided that it was, that it was not an alignment with your goal. So tell me a little bit about your journey with alcohol and, and yeah, I just, so when I moved down here in North Carolina, what do you see? I was 26 years old, 2006. I moved down here to be with Lindsey and of course, you know, I came down here and we were together and it was like, we lived in like this super cool, like neighborhood. It was like kind of shady, but it was like the up and coming like cool kid spot. And she introduced me to her friends down here and we all got along so well that they of course became my friends and we were literally going out like Thursday, Friday, Saturday night, like three, like minimum three nights a week. I put out a bunch of weight and I, I had gone up to New York for one of my buddy's wedding and I went up there, you know, for, for any of the girls that are listening, guys are absolutely brutal with each other. So like like we don't hold back like at all. So I went up to New York and my friends like just ripped me like the instant that I stepped out of the car. It was like holy fuck bro put on a few pounds and I'm like wow, like nice to see you too, asshole. So like, and that's totally how guys are. So like, I knew that I had to change. So when I get back down here after that wedding, started hitting the gym. But I was still going out like every weekend and I started lifting with this dude at the gym and he was into boxing and MMA and shit. And this was like, this was like the height of the UFC, like chocolate out, like Anderson Silva, like the golden era. Yeah. And everybody was getting into MMA and fighting. So my buddy, my lifting partner convinced me to start training with him doing jujitsu and boxing and shit. So I was like, all right, cool man. So I was almost, I was almost 280 at that point and I started training, I was still drinking. And the problem became I was drinking Saturday night and then like nursing my hangover all day I'm Sunday and then I go into the gym on Monday. And like I still did not feel great. Like I still had like this lingering, you know, like you're dehydrated and your head's fucked up. Yeah, because on Saturday, you're not the kind of guy that goes out and has like two drinks and then calls it a night. I'm thinking you're I'm thinking closing the bar down two, three a.m. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Like we didn't fuck around like my like my bar tab is triple digits like end of story. Like there's no there's no getting around that. It's like, you know, car bombs like every hour on the hour for like six hours straight like shit like that. You know, so calling line like endless just like we just didn't give a shit like I was making good money at the time. So like, you know, you're you're 28, 29 years old. Like you're not like saving for retirement. Like you don't give a fuck. So it's just like, you know, we're just drinking like all fucking weekends. So Monday, I'm still feeling like shit. So then we used to throw a huge Halloween party. I mean, like big like 100 people. And then we would throw a huge New Year's party. So we throw this huge New Year's party. And I mean, Lindsey and I are sick for like 48 hours. Like it's really bad. So look at Lindsey and I'm like, I think, I think I'm going to not drink for like a few weeks. And she was like, yeah, that's probably a good idea. We should take some time off. I know. So she was starting to come to the gym with me. So she was getting into training. And I was starting to get more into the Muay Thai thing. And I got Lindsey involved with it. And then all of a sudden a few weeks go by. And then a few months went by. And Lindsey's dad came to visit for a birthday or birthdays only six days apart. So we go out to dinner for a birthday and it's April. I have not drank since January 1st. So four months. I had two beers at dinner because it was my birthday. I couldn't drive. Like at all. And Lindsey looked at me and she was like, I don't think you can drink anymore. I said, I don't think I can either. And then that like that was it. Like my birthday in 2009. I stopped drinking and they're like, that was it. And then once I kind of turned that corner to where I like that was no longer part of my life. Then I kind of. It just changed this mindset on me that my focus in life completely changed. And then six months later. You know, I had become a personal trainer and a couple months after that I opened up Pride version one. And that was it. My focus was on training and fighting and lifting. And there was zero room for alcohol at all. And then once basically that became my mindset, then you're just reading a lot of different articles and a lot of different stuff on philosophy. And, you know, living more of a stoic kind of lifestyle where if you, if you can't handle the, the, the stress of everyday life. And, you know, I have clients and I know a lot of people are going to hear this. And they're like, oh, I just need that one glass of wine at the end of the day. You know, take the ad job. And I'm like, that's not how this should work. Like you should be able to handle the stress that is in your life. And if you can't, then either a, you're mentally weak or b, you legit have like just too much fucking stress in your life. Like you need to change like, you know, your job or, you know, you need help taking care of your kids or whatever it is. So that's kind of huge like mental shift. And I know that the worst people in the world to deal with are people who don't drink anymore. They're, they're the worst people in the world to deal with because we're assholes about it. We're just like, I'm just like, what do you mean you need to drink? Like you don't fucking need to drink. You drink to escape reality. And that is a sign of mental weakness. So, you know, if you're like, oh, you know, I don't drink to de-stress. I drink just a, you know, I'm just a social drinker. I drink to have fun with my friends. And I'm like, if the only way that you can have fun with your friends is if you're fucking drinking, then either your friends suck or your personality sucks. Like what are the, like something's fucking wrong that, like, you need to drink with your friends. So it's definitely, it's a different world, man. And I'll tell you right now, if you stop drinking and you let it be known that you don't fucking drink anymore, you will find out who your true friends are. Like real quick, because I promised you there are people that hang out with you only to hang out with you while you're drinking. I promise. And once you stop, they won't call you anymore. Like that, that friendship is over with. I like it, man. It's a very strong position, but I know it comes from, I know it comes from a very, very genuine place. I appreciate your conviction on it because it's conversations that I've had with people as well. I think there's probably some gray in there as far as, as far as my perspective on it. But, you know, that's, that's coming from the perspective of a, of a bartender and, you know, I drink because I enjoy it. Like the flavor, like I actually, like I very much enjoy different spirits and things like that. But I also got to understand what you're talking about. What do you think? What do you think you were? You're deep, that's a huge, that's a huge thing. We were, I mean, we were fucking snogs with alcohol. I mean, it was like, like, we, like, do not ever fucking serve me, like, well, anything out of the wild. Like, do not, like, don't, like, don't even try. Like, we were straight snogs. It was like, we, we, I, we were all in drink the best of the best of everything, you know, whether it was Jan or vodka. vodka, you know, and we tried, we flavored and sampled everything under the sun, and we fucking loved it. And I mean, there are definitely, I will say that. There are definitely people out there, probably such as yourself. There are definitely like that, where you're not even necessarily drinking just have fun with your friends. You're not even drinking to escape, you know, reality or de-stress. But I mean, if you were like us, you literally just, I mean, you just enjoyed it. And like, that was, that was it. I mean, like, and I can't, but I can't fault people or fucking blind people. Like, I mean, I, but to your point, like, when I'm serious about, if I'm serious about cutting weight, the first thing I do is stop drinking because it's just, it just doesn't align with that goal. Like physically, it just doesn't, like, yeah, empty calories. It's loads of metabolism. It's loads of your sleep. Like, if you're fucking serious about losing weight, one of the first things you got to do is quit drinking either entirely or limit it to one or two drinks a week period. Yeah. Yeah. You know, you can get away with that and still lose, and still lose weight. But, you know, anything more than that. And you're, it's, it's antithetical to the goal. I mean, it just, it just is, you know, from. Yeah. You guys do, do you guys do shit with your clients? Like, we'll do like 30 days for like, like everybody in the gym. You know, whether it's like November or December or January or whatever it is, you know, we'll, we'll go, we'll do like 30 day challenges here in the gym. And it's like, yeah, I always laugh because, you know, people will go that 30 days and they'll drop like 15 pounds. And they'll be like, wow, man, I feel great. And then literally like day 31, they're like, yeah, give me a drink. I'm like, I'm like, wow, didn't you learn? I haven't done, I haven't done that with, with any, with anybody from the gym, but it's, it's definitely something I have done personally where I've been like, yeah, I'm going to take, you know, January off or whatever, you know, I typically don't do it in January actually because it's just cliche, but I mean, I've taken six months off of drinking before. And you know, you know, that was, but that was because I was serious about a weight loss goal. Right, right, right. But it is definitely one of those things like if you have a serious goal, usually anything that's, if you have a serious goal that's related to physical performance, I'll call it typically not in line with that, you know. No, yeah, and I can remember, so basically I'd quit drinking and it took me like a year. So I dropped from like 280 down to like, I mean, my lowest, my fight weight was 185. I mean, the lowest I've ever gone down to you're six five, right. So, well, God, no, I'm like six three and three quarters. I'm just barely, just barely under six four. So, okay, but you have, you have the longest arms I've ever seen on, oh, yeah, well, I mean, like we, we could definitely talk about that. So my, so my height is basically, my height is 75 inches and my wingspan is 78 and a half. Yeah, so, so you, so you have the wingspan of a six five six six person. That is, that is correct. Yeah, very advantageous and kickboxing, not so much for jerks. Yeah, yeah, my jerk sets, my jerks sets are absolutely horrific. I can literally snatch like with my eyes closed, like it's a joke. Long levers. Yeah, I can see that. Yeah, exactly, but yeah, when I had quit drinking, I think I went down from, so I went from like 280, I went from 280 down to like 240 to 45. I dropped like near 40 pounds and then I'd quit drinking. So I, it's funny because you can say, you can get away with like a few drinks a week, like still. I actually had factored into, I'd like a meal plan written out on a couple of index cards that I kept on the fridge and I literally had factored into it one Guinness every single night. There you go. But, and, and, and it was still, do you know where people survive the famine? Okay. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, it's bread in a bottle. Like this is, I mean, it's only 140 calories. So it's a, yeah, it was very light on calories actually. Yeah, Guinness, Guinness is amazing. And so I can remember I did that and then when I was like, all right, I want to drop below 200 and that I never thought that I'd be able to drop below 200. I didn't even think that was possible. So when I did that, I cut, I cut alcohol so that's when I stopped drinking and then then it became like a lifestyle thing. So then, then I dropped down to like two, two, 15, 205, something like that. And then I went through another big like diet change to get down to 205. And that's, then I started fighting and walk the walk. So, yeah. You mentioned, you mentioned, and this, I'm going to try and be respectful of your time. I'll make this the last question. But you mentioned you're on, you're on what version two or three now of pride in Charlotte. Yeah. And you're, you're technically under, under governor's orders to be closed, right, because of the pandemic. But you also, you also kind of publicly defied, defied that order in the media. So I'm, I'm just curious. I want to, I want to give you an opportunity to explain your reasoning behind that and kind of tell us what was the response to that? Was there backlash or consequences? And you know, kind of what's going on now? Yeah. Yeah. It's funny. If you could, if you could see me right now, like smile like the ear to ear because I literally love, I love people asking me about this. So yeah, the mandate came down. And I, I mean, I, I will tell people this like straight out. First off, I'm not like, while I love, I love politics, like it really do. I love politics. I'm not a, I'm not good at politics, which is why I definitely like stepped back from the whole like cuddle bell world kind of because people just can't handle fucking being told. I mean, like, you speak your mind and freely to survive in politics, my friend. Yeah. Yeah. Like I'm not, like I'm not going to bullshit you. Like you are going to get 100% of the truth, 100% of the time, whether you want to hear it or not. So the whole, yes, the whole shutdown thing with, with that side, you're going to get 100% of the truth for me. But I'm one of those people where I like having conversations with people, even if it gets to like a slightly heightened argument kind of state. But I don't like like screaming matches with people. But I'm not one of those people that I'm not so much of a hard ass. Like if you, if you have like a legitimate like argument and you can prove you're side, I mean you, I'm one of those people that like you can sway me like to possibly agree with you. Like I'm, I'm one of those people and I'm, I'm okay with that. I'm also one of those people that like I can usually compromise with people and I'll get to that part of it in a minute. So I've gone back and forth on the whole like COVID thing. Like when it first started happening, I was like, yeah, okay, we went through like bird flu and like H1N1 and like really like a couple thousand people died and like it wasn't that bad. So like like a lot of people, I definitely like kind of played it off like, oh, we'll be all right. And then like shit started getting real bad, like West Coast. And then like New York City started getting real bad. And I was like, oh, fuck, like this is this is not a good situation. So at that point, then they started, that's when they started shutting places down. So we're talking like March. So like New York started shutting down, all these cities started shutting down. We were all like, fuck, like Charlotte can have shut down. Like we felt very like we moved from like the rest of the United States on this. It was like we had not been touched yet. Like Macklenburg County, the county of men had like five cases. We were like, yeah, all right, whatever. So like then we started taking it a lot more serious. So you know, we started wearing masks, grocery store, you know, Home Depot places like that. And then the shutdown came. So when the shutdown came, we had a weird situation here in North Carolina where like our county shut down. So Charlotte basically comprises like the entire fucking county. Like the whole county is basically this city. So the county basically shut down like the second or third week of March. And then North Carolina shut down the whole stay like 10, 12 days later after that. And then Macklenburg County and just kind of said we're just going to follow in line with whatever North Carolina says. So North Macklenburg County like did away with their mandate. And now we just follow, we followed the state. So we've basically been shut down since like the end of March. And we legit like pretty much shut down the gym for April. I allowed like half a dozen people to be in here. There's like there's a thing in the mandate that basically like you, you can have people in your business that like are required to keep the business like a float from like going under. So I can be here, Lindsey can be here. I've got like a couple of trainers like they can be here. But we shut down all classes. We still do not have any classes. So that went on through all of April. So then we get into May and we were still again like very, very removed from the rest of the country. We are watching New York City, which we have tons of friends, you know, Juan, Carter, Irvin, all of our friends up in New York. And we're watching our friends in San Francisco from Ice Chamber in O.K.C. And we're like holy fuck like hundreds of people are just dying like like Dale. So but again, Macklenburg County in Chicago like with like a dozen cases. Like that was it. So we started basically taking it. I don't want to go so far as to say taking it less serious because that sounds like I'm an idiot. And I don't want to sound like that. But it was different context, right? I mean, they were at different points in the infection curve than yeah, they definitely were. So now I've got oddly enough, two of the people that I have working out in the gym this whole time. They were probably the two people that I should not have let in here. They work at a hospital. And all the people that I let in here probably should not have let them. So they're in here week after week telling me that the hospital is fucking empty. Like empty empty. Even like they dedicated a whole floor like 30, 35 beds. I see you to COVID. And they were like, we have seven patients seven. And I'm like, why are we shut down? So and I'm very like middle of the roads slightly leftish on politics. So like, I'm not going to politicize this. But like I definitely do not follow like the orange person. So I'm like, I started questioning the numbers. And so now I have my own spreadsheet. And I keep track of the numbers on my own. And it's still North Carolina, like less than 2% of all of North Carolina has been infected. Less than 2% out of that percentage. Still like 98% survival rate in in Charlotte. 50 to 60% of the cases are coming from nursing homes. So I'm like, now I'm like further removing myself again. And I'm stepping back further and further. So I'm like, all right, then what happened state of North Carolina, our governor and governor Cooper came out. And gyms were supposed to be on phase two of opening, which was like May, May 19th or 20th. So governor Cooper comes out two days before phase two and goes, yeah, you know what? We're not going to do a full phase two. We're going to do like a phase two minus. And the minus was gyms. He literally was included in there. So they literally opened everything. Public pools opened. Retail establishments. 10 people per 1000 square feet. Fully open. Okay, restaurants, 50% capacity. And no more than like 25 people or something like that. He left two businesses closed. Barth and gyms. He opened swans, daycares, even massage. Massage went open. Tattoo studios opened. He opened everything except for bars and gyms. Now, we live in a state where if you want to buy a bottle of liquor, you go to the liquor store. Our liquor stores are owned and run by the state of North Carolina. They're not privately owned. They're owned by the state. The state is currently experiencing, of course, because you locked everyone down. And people have lost their jobs. The highest liquor sales in the history of North Carolina of all time. So people down here are very pissed at the governor because he allowed restaurants to open but kept bars closed. Now, here's the question I'm going to pose to everyone. How many times have you gone out to a restaurant that serves food and not ordered any food and just ordered drinks? Because I guarantee you almost everyone has done that. So what's the difference? There is one. So yeah, maybe some bars they're going to pack more people. But again, if you go back to 10 people, per 1,000 square feet, if you get a really small bar, it's only 2,000 square feet, which a lot of bars in Charlotte are under 2,000 square feet, that only allows 20 people. So you're still under demanding. You're still following the rules. But Cooper won't allow people to follow the rules. So gyms as well. We are still kept closed. So my argument was, all right, if you allow retail establishments to open at 50% capacity, 10 people per 1,000 square feet, why don't you allow gyms to open at 25% capacity, 5 people per 1,000 square feet. I have 6,600 square feet. So that would allow me 30 people in here. We generally don't ever have 30 people in here. If 30 people are inside this gym, it's crowded. We don't go over that. If we have 20 people in here, I'm like, wow, gyms kind of fall. The reasoning behind it is, I don't want to go so far as to say it's ridiculous. But you like, no one's cleaning anything inside Home Depot or Lowe's or Target or the grocery store. Nothing's going to clean. So all of those places are open. We clean everything like all the time. That's like half my job as a gym owner and just a fucking glorified overpaid janitor. So like, dude, to say that we should be closed because people breathe harder when they exercise and you're going to spit articles further away. Okay, listen, I won't argue you. I can accept that. I'm a reasonable person. So let me have less people. This isn't a rocket science. But as I am somebody who will compromise in who likes to come up with simple solutions to problems, our governor is not one of those people. So anyways, yeah, we went on record. I have like three or four news interviews between Charlotte and Raleigh. And I just said, fuck it, we're open. There's two other gyms in Charlotte that are actually slightly bigger than us. And those gyms are open as well. They all said we're going to open. I have some friends in high places here in Charlotte and I was literally told no one is coming to stop you. So that was it. I just said we're open. And it's funny because out of our friends and our circle and most people in Charlotte, they're, I won't go so far as to say they're supportive, but they understand the decision. The decision is if you want to stay home, I will not ridicule you or you know, call you a scaredy cat or say something stupid. Like listen, like if you want to stay safe, like stay home. Like it's okay. Like that's fine. But that's your decision. The people who want to go out and are going to be smart about it and take every precaution they can, wear a mask when they're, you know, in a crowded situation, literally wash your hands. If you're not allowed, every single person that walks in this gym, that is there's a massive sign at the front door that says you are not allowed to touch anything in this gym before you wash your hands. It's the first thing that you do when you walk in this place, you wash your hands and the story. So all that I'm asking is that you allow adults to make their own decisions. I mean, I have two guys in here that are over 60. They are like the high risk of the high risk. And they emailed me and asked me to come in. And I was like, I don't know, man, like that's like super risky. Like you should probably stay home. One of them, if he stays home, he's going to start drinking. So he was like, I need something, I need just mentally and physically to not drink. He's like, I need to go to the gym. So I let him in. He's an adult. Like he made his own fucking decision. And that's all that I'm asking people to allow other people to do is to make their own decisions. That's that's it. Okay, so I told you ahead of time that I was probably going to challenge you on some of this. Oh, here we go. Well, I will say I agree with most of your logic. I really do. I can completely understand. And you know, and as somebody that has opened my own gym before, like I understand like what what it means to have your entire life savings invested in your blood, sweat, and tears, and you know, to then have somebody else tell you that you can't be open for business while other businesses are is not highly reasonable, especially when you're like, hey, I understand that there is a risk I need need to mitigate. You tell me what those guidelines need to look like. And I'm willing to work with you. Let's have a conversation. That to me, I mean, literally completely, completely reasonable conversation. Like, well, fucking do anything you want. Like if you want it, like if I had to buy like a thousand dollar, like fucking fog, or fog machine atomizer thing, and like fucking spray this place, like every single day, and like the shit that you put in the machine cost a hundred dollars every time you use that, I would do it. But like there's no, there's no reason. It's just like, no, you're closed. And that's it. Yeah, and that that that is incredibly frustrating and challenging. And I feel I can I feel for I especially feel for the small business owners that are trying to to work with work with government. And when there is no when there is no guiding strategy that that goes, you know, top down and is uniform across different jurisdictions. You know, there's no centralized leadership. I can understand how frustrating and challenging that is. So I can completely understand the feeling and the reasoning behind it. And the struggle I have, you know, from my perspective, I have another I have another lens because my wife works in the ER here in St. Paul, you know, so she so she sees she sees the the infected and she and she I mean, she she gets assigned to the COVID-19 care unit a lot. So I actually at one point slept in my basement office for for three months. Oh my god early on because we were trying to separate ourselves, you know, me and her right right because my son is, you know, has is high risk as well because he has a long condition, you know, so we were trying to do everything we could to minimize and mitigate risk, right? And right. And I see her perspective when she comes home and she tells me about, you know, as much as she can without breaking confidentiality, but you know, she's right about, you know, well, the media is reporting that this is only affecting old people and she's like, that's not true. I've I've intubated 30 year olds that were healthy and CrossFit athletes and got it, you know, she's like, it's not true. She's like, it might statistically be the norm, but there's still, you know, people aren't aren't talking about the other people, you know, so and there's there's that component of it too. And you know, I feel for it like your six-year-old guy that it's like, hey, I need this for my mental health and there's going to be way worse consequences for me if I don't come in. I get that too because, you know, it's such a difficult polarity to manage because people need exercise for their health. And we also know that one of the best things that is predictive of outcome against COVID is healthy habits and lack of comorbidities and all of those things. So it's how do we how do we manage that polarity? And that's that's really challenging. But then there's also just the epidemiological, epidemiological fact of it's not just about you, it's you as a vector. Right. And how many people do you touch that they then touch that they then touch? And there might be four people remove from you that you don't even realize like, oh, that person that knows that person that knows that person also works in a nursing home. And that's how the infection got into the nursing home. And that's the challenge of like the position that we're in. And I wish I was smart enough to have a good answer or in a position to even to even if I had a good answer for it to make a difference, but that's right. That's the struggle of it. And that's how do you balance those polarities? Right. Exactly. And like I said, I'm such a in most situations, I'm such a reasonable person that I'm like, people are like screaming at each other, bro. Like, no, shut down everything. We all need to stay home. You know, like, you know, businesses will come back. You can lose your business, but you can't lose your life. You know, like I completely understand that argument and that side of things. And I empathize with that. And then on the other side, you have people like myself, I'm not going to get into the people that are like, you're trampling my constitutional rights, my freedom of, you know, movement, or like, I won't wear a mask because, you know, you're infringing on my rights. Those people are fucking fruit loops. And they're they're absolutely fucking ridiculous. When when Tucker put the seatbelt in the first automobile, people flipped their ship. The government like completely shut his factory down. Like that dude was fucked because he came out with the greatest safety thing in the automotive industry. And people refused to wear it, refused. And then eventually, after a few million people died, they were like, oh, maybe, you know, maybe seatbelt will save me from going through the windshield. So like, you know, I feel and human stupidity is ridiculously long. Oh, it's so ridiculous. And like, I cannot that side, that argument, I cannot, I can't agree with that argument. So if anyone's listening, and you're one of those people, I'm sorry, you and I, I think we're up to like 17 listeners now. So we, yeah, maybe we'll hit, I bet we'll hit like, I bet we hit 30 on this one. So, but yeah, it's like, I can empathize with that, with that side of things and trying to stay as safe as possible for as long as possible. And my, like, you're not necessarily, I mean, you're right. There isn't necessarily like a wrong argument. This is like, this is like a damned, if you do, damned, if you don't type a situation where like, I don't have conversations like this where we're, where we're talking about the different things that we need to manage, but the thing that that requires is data. And that's the thing that that really drives me crazy is, is where we have fallen short where the rest of the world, at least the developed world is way ahead of us is we're, we're so far behind on testing that we don't have data. We don't know where the infection is and where it's not. So we can't make informed decisions about when people should be open and when they should be closed and how long they should be closed and, you know, etc, etc. Right. Basically flying blind in a lot of jurisdictions because there's just not enough data. 100%. We are fucking flying blind through this thing. And that actually becomes part of my argument for why I opened. At what point do we say we can open? Because listen, the virus is going to be here next week. It's going to be here next month. And I bet you it'll be here next year. What are we going to keep schools closed for a year? Like no education system? Are we going to keep, you know, gyms closed for a year? One of the biggest things, there are a few things that I think have come out of this situation that we can all recognize at this point in time, is that one, the overall health of the population in the United States is shit. Like really, really shit, the overall health of the population. The second problem is your insurance being tied to your job. So if you lose your job, you lose your insurance. That, you're fucked. That is not the right way to go about building and maintaining the quote unquote greatest country and the greatest society on the planet. That's not how you do that. We need to be healthy. And in order to do that, we need health care. And if it's tied to your job and you lose your job, you're fucked. That's not the right way to do things. We need Medicare for all. And I'm going to say that. So that's the second thing. The next problem is you're going to close down gyms for how long? Six months, nine months, a year. This then ties you back to problem number one. The overall health of the population is shit. So you're now going in a circle, where, and the obvious flip side to this argument and people have tried to roast me on Twitter for this. Oh, you can exercise outside. Yeah, okay, I can do a weighted vest walk outside. I can run stairs. Like, yeah, I can do that. Guess what? If you take a population like New York City, and you tell them they can all go exercise outside, do you know what it looks like? You have six million people out on sidewalk. Right. That's the fucking New York City marathon every single day. That's not going to work. Okay. So then you're going to deal with people. Oh, well, you know, you can get workout equipment, workout at home. Yeah. Yeah, like that'll work for like maybe a couple weeks until you're doing fucking jerks in your living room, and you live in an apartment, and your neighbor downstairs from you is banging on the fucking ceiling because you're doing jerks in the fucking living room. Like, I just like trying to get the equipment, but yeah. Right. Equipment's all out of stock, even if you could buy the equipment, right? How much money are you going to invest? Like, in workout equipment? Like, do the concept two-rowers, $1,100 plus shipping. Not everybody has that kind of money. There are people. They get into the the fact that we're tribal animals, and especially for people that aren't already in the habit of working out and being healthy, establishing a new habit during pandemic while you're in the hospital. Oh, my god. Oh, my god. Like, without social support is highly unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, forget about it. You know, it's like, so there are a lot of arguments for and against the gym being open. I mean, obviously, I own the fucking gym, so I'm obviously jaded. So it's like, you know, I'm trying to see other people's side, another people's point of view, but I'm like, how long is this going to go on for? Like, how long at some point in time, you, me, and everyone are going to have to learn to live our lives as safely as possible knowing that this virus is out there. And you can either do it now, or you could do it next month. But next month, as what happened down here in North Carolina with our governor, next month turns into the month after that and turns into the month after that. You know, and the argument that the flip side is that, oh, well, you know, everyone wore a mask. You'd be able to open right now. Okay. So like, you know, everybody wear a mask. Like, everybody try to do their best to mitigate what's going on. But I mean, not to get overly political, you're going to reroute all of this gets rerouted back to the six weeks from February till the end of March, where our government did nothing. 100% of this goes to blame from the top down that nothing happened for six weeks from mid-February to the end of March. Nothing happened. And that is 100% their fault. So that's at the tone for the severity of the early outbreak, which then is what stoked the fear for the rest of the population. And yeah, it's just a domino effect. It's exactly what I was just going to say. It's a domino effect. The domino started to fall. And like, now we are all swimming under a fucking Scrooge McDuck pool filled with fucking dominoes. So yeah, that's the way it is. Well, I really appreciate the perspective. And I always appreciate how open-minded you are to other people's perspectives in these conversations. Yeah, listen, and I'm one of those people, like I said, I have listened probably only one third of my clients have come back. The other two thirds are still working out at home. I loaned out over $10,000 worth of my equipment. I loaned out equipment to people that didn't even belong to this fucking gym. People that were, I went from people that have an eight kilos to 32 kilos in two kilo increments to, now I'm the lightest I have or 22s. Yeah, a lot of my stuff has come back as people have started to come back, but I loaned out $10,000 worth of equipment. I only have that half of that equipment. I will continue to support the people who want to stay home for as long as they want to stay home. And I will support you. And this is just like I said, if you want to worship, say cool, do do your thing, bro. Like if you want to stay home and work out on do your thing, I'll support you. But like you have to understand that there are people on the other side of that that are like I'm going to go to the gym. So that's it. You know, we need to support, we need to support, we need to support you guys as small business owners, you know, and when I say we, I mean, the royal we of, you know, the community and the collective and the government and, you know, it'd be a much different story if you knew that your business wasn't going to be closed because that you wouldn't lose your business because you had a safety net, you know. Oh, yeah, it would be totally different. I mean, we, and of course, this is probably something that we should have talked about. I'll try to keep it short, but we are still charging all of our people membership because we can't afford to cut off everyone's membership and we sent out an email to all of our members and, you know, I mean, I said I'm sorry. If you went out and bought a brand new car and you parked your car in your garage and you went to the Bahamas for three months, guess what? You still have to make the car payment because if you don't make the car payment, when you get home, BMW is gone. The bank came and took it. It's the same thing. If I told all of our people, if we lift all your memberships, there will not be a gem for you to come back to. It will be gone. So, and our people understood that. And of course, I still write workouts for all of our people at home. So we still support all of our people at home. We're trying to provide some sort of value for them and they understand that that value will still be there when the ship is all over. So, in case people didn't gather from this conversation, you're a great coach and you're a good human being. So how can they get at you if they want you know, kettlebell sport programming or they want powerlifting or Olympic weightlifting or weight loss program? How can people get at you to get a program designed for them? So I have like 85 different ways you can get a hold of me. Whatever you do, don't call me. If you get my phone number, like don't call me. So, text literally. And I'll put my phone number out there. My phone number 704-430-8544. Literally anyone can text me whenever you want. I might not answer you real quickly, but I will get back to you eventually. And literally if it's just to ask questions about training or if you just had a fucking bad day, like I will help anybody that needs help. So you're always more than welcome to text me. You can usually, you can get my email off the website, rideconditioning.com, or you can get me on social media. FYI, because of the whole political nonsense and all this stuff, I'm basically not on Facebook anymore except for like once a week. I do have Facebook Messenger on my phone. I keep that because I have a lot of group chats that I talk to people through Facebook Messenger. So you want to get hold of me through Facebook Messenger? You can Instagram, website underscore conditioning is the website for the, or is the handle for the gym on Instagram, right? Yeah. Or Doug Seamans, or we have a kettlebell page that I don't visit a lot. I will admit to that. But the gym page, my personal page, I visit all the time. So yeah, if anybody needs help with anything, we do online programming for several different things, kettlebells for Olympic left-end, power left-end, fat loss, weight loss, all sorts of stuff. So, and with really, really good prices, and with really, really good programs too. Awesome, man. Thank you very much, Doug. I really, really enjoyed the conversation and I can't wait until we can actually get together [100:03] in person. I'll have your, you can have a shelter. Absolutely. We'll continue these fun conversations [100:11] in person and then you can, you can kick my ass in long cycle. Absolutely, brother. Not a problem. [100:17] All right, thanks, Doug. Appreciate you, man. All right, well, man. Thanks for listening to this [100:28] episode of the platform podcast. I'm Jordan Kunde-Wright, right? If you have a question, please email me at [100:33] TwinsittysKettlebellClub at gmail.com. Follow us on Instagram and Facebook at TwinsittysKettlebellClub [100:40] on Twitter at TCKBClub online at TwinsittysKettlebellClub.com. And please help us grow our reach and [100:47] give us a review on Apple podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts. Until next time.