Special Guest: US Navy Veteran & Crossfit Never Broken gym owner - Cody Hajek

With a background in training Navy Special Warfare, Cody Hajek shares his journey from the nuclear field to owning CrossFit Never Broken in Edmond, Oklahoma. In this episode, we discuss his time in the Navy, his unexpected path to special warfare recruiting, and how he transitioned into the fitness industry. Cody opens up about the challenges of starting a gym, the realities of training elite and everyday athletes, and the importance of building a strong fitness community. Whether you're interested in military experiences, entrepreneurship, or fitness, this conversation offers valuable insights.

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we were kind of a solo mission we're all by ourselves we're going where people don't know where they are prior Olympic athletes NFL football players like best and brightest people there talk about dive physics while you're doing 100 burpees for time and proceeded to just do all of these crazy things to try to sabotage our business I was in the nuclear field and I he helped me immensely his name was Eddive Pan was just laying on the ground like man when can I do this again so full circle you went from like wanting to be special warfare to recruiting special special warfare what the Navy taught me was like just crush you with negative feedback so it sounds like a lot of your personal training experience was like with elite or soon to be elite so for talking like people training to be Navy Seals yeah if you wanna go ahead and just introduce yourself um and you know who you are where you're from and and everything that LED you to join the military okay my name is Cody hey Jack I'm 36 I was born in San Jose California I grew up in town called Buda Texas which is just south of Austin um pretty much grew up around Austin and um signed to join the Navy when I was 17 um went off to the military when I was 18 um I was in the nuclear field in the Navy um which I mean a little backstory there I originally joined to try to get a buds and be a seal at the time they did not have a direct path back in 2006 you had to um sign up for another job and then screen once you got to Chicago for boot camp but what my recruiter failed to tell me was uh by signing up for a nuclear billet I was not eligible to try out to go to buds um so yeah I kind of put a bad taste in my mouth when I very first joined the military tried to screen pretty much the entire 10 years that I was in got out even subsequently tried to get back in the Navy but ultimately it just I guess it wasn't in the cards for me to go so I was on subs I was on the USS Georgia which was out of Kings Bay um let's see here just a little background on like training so yeah I went to boot camp in Chicago uh went to Kings Bay or sorry to Charleston South Carolina for nuclear a school and power school then I went to Balsen Spa New York to train at the they actually have a couple of nuclear reactors up there that you go work on and learn how to operate a nuclear reactor to go to a sub or a carrier uh I sub volunteered so that's how I ended up on submarines uh I also volunteered for a school called Engineering Laboratory Technician and essentially what that is is a glorified nuclear water chemist um so when I showed up to the boat I was uh your primary role was machinist mate and then uh had collateral duties as a chemist um pretty much spent the entire time I was on the Georgia as a chemist uh qualified LDLT there uh did a bunch of qualifications ended up getting the opportunity to go to dive school in Panama City Florida um one after that um I had three years left and when I transferred I transferred to Oklahoma City uh to be a recruiter and then I got the opportunity to be a Special Warfare recruiter um did that for the last three years that I was in the in the Navy and that's how I ultimately ended up in Oklahoma where I live now um I was a recruiter in Edmund Oklahoma specifically and that's still where I live now um voice then it went it went like full circle you went from like wanting to be special warfare to recruiting special special warfare yes irony of that yeah yeah it's funny how that worked out too because I showed up to the command as a recruiter we actually had a PRT which is just a physical readiness test and the seal mentor was actually at he facilitated the test and he saw my performance and was like who is this guy and so he asked my he asked I guess my office if he could steal me to be the the spec war scout uh and I he helped me immensely his name was Eddive Penny um and him along with another guy named Ken Graves did everything they could to help me get the opportunity to screen and go but I won't I'll spare you the bureaucracy of it but yeah ultimately I just could not go and I wore that as a chip on my shoulder for a very long time because I wanted to do it since I was like probably 10 or 11 years old um and so that's kind of how I got into the fitness industry I guess you could say um while I was still in Kings Bay um a girl introduced me to Crossfit there um I initially I had heard about it um I was like that just sounds like really stupid and expensive and he was like whatever just come to a class you get your first class is free you can check it out so I went one time and I was hooked I mean it completely destroyed me and was just laying on the ground like man when can I do this again so sign up at a gym there um it was actually Jacksonville Florida but that's only like 20 minutes from Kings Bay um ended up going to get my coaching certification while I was still there uh coached a little bit at the um there's a base in Pensacola so I got to teach some classes there while I was tty for another school um when I moved to Oklahoma I immediately started doing Crossfit there because I had no relatives in Oklahoma pretty much all of the recruiting command that was up there with me was married and didn't have much uh in the way of a social life like I couldn't go out with them and do anything so sign up to a gym called Crossfit OKC um asked if I could coach there they were like we have a waiting list to coach uh so I reached out to a couple other gyms and uh this guy named Derek Mcelroy across at home base uh he asked me if I wanted to coach at his gym and so I started coaching there uh little to no experience looking back on it I was probably like a terrible coach at the time uh because all I knew was uh really what the Navy had taught me and what the Navy taught me was like just crush you with negative feedback and uh see how you're on to it yeah those early days of coaching was a lot of just telling people they sucked and they're a piece of shit and they needed to go harder and stop with the excuses he was an army guy so he loved that he was all about that um and then this other guy came along called Rick Ward who owned Edmund Crossfit uh I started coaching bear as well and uh that's where I met um my previous partners which I'll get into but uh Blake and April Chambers so they were both members at Edmund Crossfit uh my coach there for about 2 years and Blake came with me came to me with the idea to maybe try to buy the gym from Rick and um Rick what he uh he had a 14,000 square foot facility he had a lot of really top tier equipment really nice stuff probably one of the nicest gyms if not the nicest gym in Oklahoma but his membership uh numbers were just not there to support that so when we asked him about buying he had just this astronomical number that he wanted for the gym uh so we were both just like uh well I guess that plans out Plan B is maybe we just try to go open our own spot um so him and I both put some money down uh we opened up I don't know probably two miles down the street from where Edmund Crossfit was uh which Rick obviously was not very happy about um and proceeded to just do all of these crazy things to try to sabotage our business like um let me see here uh so we had to open an FBI investigation into cyber attacks to our gym website and I you know I can't confirm that that was him but I I don't know who else goes after some little local Crossfit gym website um when we first he was playing dirty Jeez he was he was he uh okay so I was 1099 as an employee for him uh he sent something to the IRS uh that said I made some ridiculous amount of money this year like trying to get a bunch of me to have to pay uh on what he said was like $300,000 that I made coaching at his gym which was not correct uh so I had to fight through that um our first I don't know probably month he would fly his drone over our gym to see who all was there it was just it was just like one thing after another it was it was crazy like holy cow that's a I've heard of crazy stories about that with competition opening up close and the existing businesses kind of playing dirty going to the city and I've never heard anybody trying to attack their website like and you know usually they circumvent federal offenses but looks like your your boy went straight for the jugular he did he uh and so the reason that we got to open the investigation is cause our gym website was on the same server as like this uh this multi million dollar a day company and so when when our website got attacked it dropped the entire server so that company was obviously really pissed if they lost yeah you know however much money um they never figured out confirmed uh who did it but uh yeah I yeah I would hedge some money on the fact that that's what happened um Dang that's crazy yeah um so I wanna break up real quick though just just because I I've had a couple other folks who have gone down the special warfare path I'm just curious I know I'm bringing you all the way back to the beginning of your story here but what what did your parents say like what was that like when you told them that you were gonna go be a Navy seal uh they were hardcore against it uh oh really oh yeah yeah they did not want me to do it um yeah hardcore against it I think they would always be like we know that you're capable but we don't want you going out there and like dying I guess and I was like I understand that but like this is what I wanna do this is how I wanna serve I think this is how I have the best capacity to serve which um going back to like when I was in a school um nuclear power school for people that don't know it's like one of the more difficult um schools academically that you can go to in the military um and it was it was very hard um so I remember I'd call my dad everyday and be like dad like this is not what I wanna do I just wanna quit I because if I quit then I get rolled into some other job and I would get the opportunity to try to get a butts and he would tell me like every day he'd be like just make it through one more day you know make try to try your best if you make it through this test you know keep going um and yeah I've never been a very good quitter uh so even as I said it I knew that like I'm just gonna try as hard as I can uh and let the cards kind of fall however they fall cause I felt like if I just quit then I be a freaking turd um so made it through the school um always went into even doing the job you know it wasn't something that I wanted to do and the the command uh knew that I was very outwardly expressive about the fact that hey I wanna put in a package this is what I wanna do uh some of my leadership really appreciated that transparency and others like utilized it as an opportunity to try to just shit on me and get me in trouble and and things of that nature um but yeah I I have a friend who's a nuke well she was a nuke her and I were in boot camp together that's how how we met she ended up getting out and getting this like awesome job working for a company that makes like isotopes for chemotherapy or something and she ended up she doesn't do that anymore I think her husband who was also a nuke um again an mm or machinist mate same thing but I know a lot of people who go down that path end up going to do some like crazy shit working on a nuclear reactor and yeah and obviously didn't wanna do that no no I mean cause they do they make very good money uh they tried to recruit me to go work at a plant uh after I got out and I just was uh wasn't passionate about the work itself and uh I was not a big fan of most of it until you get to a certain qualification as rotating shift work uh which is not a good time uh kind of you know they say all the studives taken like decades off of your life and all those sort of things so that wasn't uh very appealing to me no I mean I was surface Navy so we used to laugh at the nukes we always knew who were nukes because they were like ghostly like they hadn't seen the light a day and she was on a ship she's on an aircraft carrier so she was in like the reactor it was like her thing it was her work center and I laugh every time I see her I'm like girl you I can see right through you like go get some sun Lady never come up for for air but you know they get you with the star re enlistment right they give you this like crazy bonus automatic E6 and like you know that they make nuke seem like a sweet deal which I'm sure that's the picture your recruiter painted for you something like spectacular oh yeah yeah I mean well and he was just basically boldface lying to me the whole time because he didn't even he didn't really tell me about the job he I was just like I just know I have to pick this other job uh so I can go to buds like that was my mindset so I was like yeah whatever dude yeah like sign in for that I was like I'll get to boot camp I'll screen for buds and then they'll just move me over there um so I didn't really know a whole lot of what I was getting into my dad he looked into it quite a bit and was like this is a great job you know this is a good backup this is why you should pick this job um and I was just naive at the time and didn't do enough digging on my own to realise that I was stuck yeah I I always look out cause every time I talk to people about their recruiting story it's always like some crazy recruiter who's coming in like JJ Wentworth lawyer just lying to you telling anything you wanna hear and completely opposite and like I went into my recruiter's office Brian Lugravier was my recruiter shout out to him like I'm still friends with him and I was like I want to do some cool shit like it was the thick of the war so I was like yo send me I'm from the South Bronx I'm like I'm getting shot at anyway like I might as well do it for like for my country at this point so yeah he was like well women can't really do the things you wanna do there's no jobs for you yet he's like but if you wanna go work on my cool ass weaponry you can go be a gunner and I was like let's go yeah so yeah so I was like so my recruiter was always really honest with me and getting piped for as close to boots on ground as I possibly could unfortunately I was able to deploy but you know it's always interesting I'm curious what was it like being on a sub especially as a nuke uh I mean they're they're bigger than people think um our sub was 560 feet long uh three levels and um nine man birthing so nine of us all slept in between um a bunch of Tomahawk missiles um the your living space was very small I mean it's uh it encompassed the area of like where you slept which was the size of a twin bed and then it had a pull up rack and most of the things that you brought with you were stored underneath there you had one additional like pull out drawer and that was like your living space and at the time I wasted so much space on like cases of Red Bull that I lined the bottom of my rack with and um my assortment of uniforms and things like that but um once you once you're underwater you just kind of forget that you're underwater unless you're doing some sort of angles and angles where you're like going super deep or super shallow or the the boats at some extreme angle Umm hmm um cause yeah subs don't have windows uh they operate off a phone R so like you just you just get very familiar with piping systems and hallways and theme systems um I mean I could still probably like mentally walk from my my rack to my watch date and uh cause yeah you just you were out there so long you would just start kinda going crazy a little bit yeah I mean I know that so every time that we went underway again surface Navy when I was on a ship I will for starters I used to always do this submarine workouts they had like the Navy Fit command had all these workouts you could do in like a like a 3 by 3 space and I love those cause I could do them in like my work center it was on the the Navy Fit app I was a command fitness leader so I was always looking for ways to work out on the job not having to go down to the gym but I don't know if I again you don't know until you actually do it but I spent a lot of time outside underway I loved being on the water like if there was any moment in time that I could be dangling off the side of the ship fixing something which I usually was or like just if I can just observe the ocean that was my favorite place to be at night when you're not really supposed to be on it on the on the flight deck or like um anywhere outside for the most part cause nobody can see you I was outside I was outside just like looking at all the stars I just I loved it so being on a sub is so foreign to most people not just for sure maybe but like yeah for sure and um I've said earlier I was a diver so anytime that we surfaced for anything I always got to go topside and I agree I always appreciated that uh that I would always be one of the people that would get to see the sun or uh on some of the operations we did where we would like helo somebody in or or a rib would come out and meet us it might be the middle of the night and like the only light available was the light off of the the masked um and you're I mean it's you're never gonna see more stars anywhere uh than out in the middle of of the ocean like that um some other cool experiences on the surface were like transiting like Suez Canal going through the streets of Gibraltar um coming into Crete that was that was really cool I remember that vividly cause it was the first time I'd ever seen mountains that just come straight out of the ocean yeah um so I remember pulling in the air and it just being like a whole new world being like wow okay like this travel thing part of the Navy is kinda cool um we so we were on a guided missile sub I um if I had done another rotation I think I would have requested a fast attack submarine mmm hmm because they get attached to the surface Navy so they get to pull in to all of the places that the carriers go and that battle group gets to go so they get a lot more travel opportunities than we did we were kind of a solo mission we're all by ourselves we're going where people don't know where they're to gather all sorts of Intel on people yeah so super secret squirrel missions of a tube in the sea yeah exactly I remember once I was I was in working in combat um in the CIC on the ship and I was a sea with tech but you know shit's happening like my gun goes off last like things have to be really fucked for for me to actually have to fire sea with so absolutely so I'm like you know talking out other people all the operation specialists that are you know you know observing other radars and whatever else like the fuck is that like are we not concerned about that thing following us like oh yeah this like random sub like it's a US sub you know we're doing like a joint exercise and then they're gonna go off and do their own thing I'm like where the fuck did they come from cause yeah like so it was pretty cool to kinda see me I get to see this but like to see it on the monitor I was like damn that's stealthy as shit so it was it was pretty cool to to have like a moment of realizing that there is a whole entire operation happening training exercise happening and I had no fucking idea like even the training was so covert but um you know I just I was a friend of mine who was actually on that ship with me the mirror the America she was one of the first female she's like part of the group of five females to be first assigned to subs and uh she was an LS she fucking loved it she loved it um integration was was interesting but if anybody was going to integrate seamlessly with the crew that's predominantly all male she was the best person for the job she was a good candidate for it yeah yeah they did a really good job in choosing her she was drama free did not play any games I honestly barely know anything about her personal life that shit did not come to work and uh she always got along with everybody so and for my conversations with her after she left the um like subworld I wanna say she end up going like recruiting or something and she just had nothing but good things to say about it she loved it more than the surface Navy but so yeah let's real quick so you're diving so you were a diver did you maintain that qualification after you got out is there like a the government civilian certification that you get yes you get Paddy certified which is just a lifelong certification so I got that actually got to do a little bit of um like recreational dive mastering while I was still in uh the Kings Bay area which was a blast I mean we'd go out uh guide dives we'd spearfish and like shoot fish while everybody else is out kind of checking out whatever we were diving um and we on a surface interval you know you'd come up you'd clean the fish uh serve it up a number of ways to kinda I I don't know uh give them a unique experience which it it was a lot of fun that's fucking cool as shit I love to fish I'm more of like a fly fishing person but um the if somebody was like hey we're gonna go these divers are gonna fucking spearfish like let's fucking go yeah yeah that's awesome and dive school itself was a lot of fun too cause they had a lot of that going on uh like on our training dives and things like that um pool hits was probably the coolest part of dive school itself where you'd be swimming along the bottom and they test you by like um acting like they were some rough sea so they would just come over the top of you and like rip your mask off rip your hose out tumble you all around the bottom of the pool and then you gotta try to put you put yourself back together without any air um oh that's interesting I've seen that um I had for a while tried to go PJ with the um with the Air Force and that's one of their training exercises when you actually get through the first like buds essentially um and yeah it terrifies people I've seen a lot of people drop out just because they can't get over the anxiety of being like underwater with no gear yeah it's I mean it took some getting used to for sure but they would mess with you so bad I mean I remember they'd rip your stuff off and then you'd like go to put your goggles back on and clear them and there'd be like two big dicks and grease pencil like drawn on your on your goggles and they'd be just constantly like insulting you and shit and telling you you're not gonna make it and um it it was blast I I loved it yeah I am I went so after I got out oh not after I got out after I was out of the like my first little sea tour I went search and rescue swimmer and I was in that pipeline when I eventually decided to get out cause they wanted me to oblicer of in order to go through the SAR school and I just didn't wanna do I was already in for 8 years and I was like I don't wanna do another 4 with the potential of like I would lose my rate so I would go through it wasn't like the star school you go to that if it's like a collateral if you're like us if you're collateral a star swimmer attached to a ship that's one thing but if you're a part of like a squadron that's your designator and they were like you won't be enough see anymore you'll be need to the Navy at that point I was like fuck that I'm an E6 I'm not trying to be in a brand new E6 yeah like I'm not gonna get you yeah I'm gonna get you that way no no I was like I was having a really good like my career was awesome at that point so we would do like these training drills and we would see guys who were training it's kind of like a mentorship program so you get your like second class swim call and then you know we split up and there were some folks that were trying to go like Diver EOD some other special warfare so there's like these mentors that are helping you that are usually in that field and I used to see the Speck War guys just getting fucked with just like the divers too just like they could not just swim they're like hey do the breast stroke you know the 20 20 yards or whatever come back do this stuff and like in the middle of doing that someone's like jumping in the fucking pool like putting their shirt over their heads like just messing with them just to get them used to the uncertainty of being in the ocean yeah oh yeah yeah they had all kinds of games I remember you'd walk in the the staff instructor office and they had this uh this wheel of pain is what they called it if you'd go in there to like report for one thing or another and they'd be like hey videos or hey Jack how about you spin the wheel of pain so you'd spin it and have you know some calistatics exercise or something and you'd be having a like talk about dive physics while you're doing 100 burpees for time and um they they made it terrible and fun all at all at the same time yeah that's awesome sorry I uh I didn't know that there were divers on sub so that's actually like news to me I'm familiar with you know Navy divers but especially during like degausing it's really when surface really interfaces with divers training exercises and stuff like that but yeah so mine was a collateral similar to uh how you described the the SAR Swimmer so that wasn't our primary build it was just a secondary and anytime we pulled in we'd have to be the uh we'd have to do whole inspections so we'd dive check the whole for like Olympic Mines and um make sure people weren't trying to sabotage our intakes or the discharges um a cool you're like under the sub you're like that's fucking terrifying sorry it was so in Kings Bay Georgia it had like the worst viz of any port that I ever dove in it was just it was Blackwater diving I mean guide by hand feel only you can't see shit and in Kings Bay they train these attack dolphins uh that basically will intercept people that are trying to um gain access to the port from the water um and I remember a couple of dives we would be diving doing a training dive or something and um I'm down like towards the bottom and something's like jabbing me in the kidney and I was like and you have a buddy you have a buddy diver that you're roped off to so I'm like assuming that he's like hitting me or something uh so I'm just like man what the fuck is going on uh and I surface and um sure enough that the Dolphins were out training and they were like oh yeah he was probably just coming to say hi or whatever and it's the weirdest thing it's getting booped by a dolphin like damn that's I mean I've seen so I've seen submarines in person only a handful of times like actually seen the submarine not just on the monitor and the last time was it's you don't see them often unless you're looking for him really cause you can totally miss him if you're not looking for him but I was in Point Loma in San Diego and I was on top of the hill at the where was I at I was at the security office and I'm like out looking out at the water because again that's like my my favorite place so I'm like looking out and I'm like that fucking submarine so I drive my car down and um I had to go through a second security I was like I just wanna go look at it they're like okay yeah they let me they let me through cause I'm obviously like non threatening I'm like legit being like yo I've never seen one before like can I get closer and they're like yeah okay they actually had somebody meet me there you can't just like go walk up to a sub right but even if you're on base they're like okay like drive there and then like someone will meet you they were really nice about it and I I got to I couldn't go on the pier but I could like see and I'm like oh my god it's a lot really small they're like that's not the whole fucking thing yeah exactly yeah that's just like 10% of it yeah yeah they're like look at it from like this angle and I'm like holy shit I thought that I thought it was a like a dip in the um in the depth which would make the water darker yeah that's that's the fucking submarine I was like yo it's fucking huge um but I remember seeing that I just extremely interested because it's just it's a part of the Navy like I consider sub like the sub mariner stuff and special warfare kind of like in these categories that are so far away from surface Navy you you know you hear stories cause you know what do people do with us if they don't know they just make up shit right exactly yeah come up with a cool story about it yeah yeah but anyway no that's that's pretty awesome so I had to I'm like let me ask more about this sub stuff cause it's so interesting to me yeah I mean even though it wasn't special warfare it still seems pretty cool no it was it was cool and the community aspect of it was exactly what I was looking for I mean the crews 150 guys um so we were all super tight uh the officer to enlisted dynamic uh from what I hear is very different than it was surface I mean to a large extent they were like one of the guys and you were one of the guys if we pulled in anywhere we'd go hang out with them um and yes it was just a really cool community um I think the coolest um way that I ever got to see the submarine was we were doing some uh dry deck shelter certification ops in uh the Florida Keys and so I got uh I'll just give you a little more information so the two front tubes on a SSGN are lockout chambers so they can put guys in there they flood it out uh and then you can leave the leave the sub while it submerged um so I got to lock out with the with a seal team get in the dry deck shelter into what's called the seal delivery vehicle and we got to like cruise around on like this little mini sub doing circles around the big sub um and viz in the key viz in the keys is like insanely good right like hundred hundred hundred plus feet of visibility so you could see the entire sub just kind of ominously going through the water you can see the prop just slowly spinning um and it was it was badass yeah that that was probably like the coolest view I ever had there was a movie that just came out that kind of showed that um seal delivery system on a submarine and I was watching I think it was like a wired review where they had a Navy seal retired Navy seal rate Navy seal movies he like he like looked cause the entire time he was like looking at the camera but he looks over to like the producers like are you guys allowed to show this so like it's a fucking movie but like I didn't know that people knew about these seal delivery things he's like for us that's like that's like not a thing that we talked about because especially since it's part of the sub community like no they made a movie about it he's like yeah oh shit so that was the first time I've ever seen it but the clip in the movie is like 10 seconds you don't really get to see anything so that's that's actually really cool um yeah so that's that's pretty interesting so what happened so you're um so when you went recruiting as a Speck War recruiter do you what is I mean I know there's not there's certain things you probably can't talk about but what is that look like when it comes to assessing candidates when you have somebody who comes into your office like most people will saying I wanna be a Navy seal oh yeah yeah that happen all the time so weekly I would facilitate a physical screening test uh which for people that don't know is just kind of like the entry physical exam to even be looked at as a candidate um so I'd facilitate that in like Norman Oklahoma or lot in Oklahoma and I'd kind of float all over the state facilitating these tests for recruiters that had candidates that were interested um if they passed the test um that was kind of the minimum we had um I think they still do it this way but essentially there's a draft every month um and so they put all of these candidates in there that have uh they put their PST in there they put their azvab score in there uh and a host of other attributes of the candidate and then the seal or other speck or community will select a certain amount of people a month from that pool of people uh and that's who they would contract to get to go to that school um and so most of the time those people that you're talking about that would come into the office and be like I'm gonna be a Navy seal blah blah blah blah blah they would just get fucking smoked by the test uh and then you probably don't ever hear from them again cause they're embarrassed or something like that um occasionally you would get somebody that comes at there get smoked by the test uh show up to these other workouts that I would host uh every week and then they could rescreen um I think I host it like twice a month at the same location and so you really got to see like which guys had some sort of resolve which guys really wanted it um we had several girl candidates for SAR and diver as well and um you got to the point where you could talk to to a candidate for like 5 minutes and realistically tell if they had any sort of chance of um having what it takes I have a friend he's special warfare now so I won't name him but he he was with me in the Navy he all he wanted to do was be a Navy seal finally got into buds I saw him like and then do like disappeared that pipeline is just like unless you're near buds and you can see him running to school like you don't see him again so I ran into him at medical I was dropping off um one of my one of my girls and he was he was there with another buds candidate who had been injured turns out he had like blown his Achilles had missed like two cycles but the guys loved him so they kept him at the schoolhouse like doing stuff and not just like sitting around actually had him like doing things that they wouldn't normally have a candidate do until he was healed and then he ended up getting out of the Navy before he could ever go through buds again and now he's a Green Beret so like yeah he did not he did not stop so I I was never a recruiter but you could just tell and this kid I was a Command fitness leader just smoke it I barely hit my my stopwatch and he'd be fucking done like yeah just a beast and I never got to see him swim but I'm assuming he obviously did pretty well now he's Green Beret but anyway um so the the training exercises that you would do where they just like mock like Prts or uh it would just be a host different things like we'd host workouts where we would just focus on uh the combat side stroke some sort of drownproofing that uh they would expect in the schoolhouse that they were in um sometimes we would just do like calistatic beatdown type workouts to like see if they had some sort of mental resolve um track workouts because the run like if somebody could pass the swim they typically struggled with the run and if they're really good at a run they typically struggled with the swim like not a whole lot of people that came through had both on lock it was just like one or the other and so they had to kind of clean up their gaps on which one that they struggled with yeah when I was attempting to go down the Air Force pipeline I went to those workouts that were held by the recruiters they had a little bit of like a mentorship program and I was really good in the pool I started work on my time which there's obviously the discrepancy between performance or of performance between men and women is is there so I had to be like the absolute fucking best but luckily I'm a fish in the water but I am a brick in on the track yeah I'm not aerodynamic like I can get the run done like if you want me to go run a half like a half Marathon cool you want me to run as fast as I fucking can for three miles not happening but there were guys there that just exactly like you're saying they were just gazelles on the track and just would just couldn't fucking swim yeah no that's pretty cool that you guys that you guys do that because there are I do have listeners that come from that community or are striking for that community and oh yeah and they I mean they've done such a a better job of kind of preparing candidates for what to expect instead of just like throwing them in blind I mean they realized that like we potentially had a good candidate here if he had any level of preparation so they've added quite a few layers whether it's um before you leave for the Navy coming and working out with us when they get in the Navy you know you got indoc and things like that that are kind of an introduction to what the pipeline is gonna be like uh and I mean they have some of the best in the world uh whether it's running coaches swimming coaches uh prior Olympic athletes NFL football players like best and brightest people they're giving pouring into these candidates with a wealth of knowledge so really it's just on them to like take that on and prepare yeah I'm a part of something called the Operators Association it is a mentorship group for anybody looking to to enter Speck War and not just the highlights right not just seals and Green Berets like even if you wanted to go you know diver or um search and rescue anything that was a part of a specialized community so the guy who runs it is a former Green Beret and then the people that are inside of the group they go by pseudonyms because they are all still active Special Forces but like I got assigned a PJ mentor he wasn't near me but he like hooked me up with like getting access like Deep End Fitness and it's definitely a great resource now and you're right the the support system and resources for people going into that field are definitely there um so it sounds like a lot of your personal training experience was like with elite or soon to be elite so we're talking like people training to be Navy Seals how does that and I can understand like the beat downs like to me I still am motivated by somebody telling me like get the fuck up and go do this oh yeah so so you took that experience as a recruiter and doing all the things that you were doing and just time in the military and applied that to Crossfit I don't know much about Crossfit I know the stereotypes oh yeah everybody knows I love watching the Crossfit games but that's like trying to learn football by watching the NFL there's a lot of like high level stuff that's happening but it's and now they have that new that new series right do you know I'm talking about I forgot the name of it it's in Australia there's a chick who retired from Crossfit Games like one of the elite athletes and she's now performing in this like subset it's almost like Crossfit I think you're talking about like the Global Fitness Project that might be it it's like it's a different um all the workouts seem to be the same hmm um there are actual machines there like rowing machines and things like that it's I think you're talking about you're talking about high rocks is that what that is I just I just watched like a short little clip on her YouTube channel of her leaving Crossfit but now going to do this other thing and she's from Australia so got it yeah I mean the only difference between that and Crossfit is that event is the same every time that you do it um oh interesting Crossfit so it's like a Crossfit is the unknown and the unknowable that's like what you're preparing for right um so the whole idea behind it is to prepare you for things that you can't anticipate which makes you just a more better capable human whereas high rocks it's just a single stage event with a bunch of running skiing rowing with some other like Crossfit esque type implements like sled punches um wall balls things like that that's right yeah I saw that I had no fucking idea that Crossfit Games was the unknown so I was super naive to Crossfit and I just recently started looking at it because I caught a Crossfit game while I was at the gym it was playing at the gym I was like bro that's fucking insane so you're telling me that these athletes prepare to go into a world like world stage of competition and they have no idea what's gonna be expected of them yeah there several of the events will be announced ahead of time but like you know several of the workouts they're learning about the workout the morning of or in some cases you know right before they walk out on the floor wow okay I think this might be the connotation that a lot of us share meaning when I say us I mean folks that are naive to the Crossfit world as you see someone Kip once and you're like the fuck is this oh yeah absolutely so help me demystify some things about Crossfit so can you explain the Crossfit workout like structure and and why people Kip and and what is what does that look like if you're because I know some of your workouts have like names yeah so you have benchmarks and things like that so as far as the Kip goes it's just a tool that Crossfit utilizes to increase the volume of work that you can do right because uh Greg Glassman defined fitness as increased work capacity across broadtime and model domains um so by incorporating the Kip you don't sustain muscle failure as quickly uh and you can get more work done in a shorter period of time um all of the videos that you see on YouTube and then shitting on the Kip uh I think is warranted because a lot of how people implement the Kip in my opinion is incorrect right so Crossfit how it's supposed to be implemented is mechanics consistency intensity right so mechanically you need to be um in let's say the pull up you need to have the prerequisite strength to do a pull up before you have any business trying to do a kicking pull up um a lot of people try to get around that strength piece and so they're keeping on shoulder muscles that can't even really support their body in the first place so now you're supporting yourself with a tendon or something like that and that's a recipe for inflammation at the least injury at worst um so how I structure it is hey I don't even want you to like look at keeping until you can give me some strict work and show me a good strict pull up um then if you can repeat that and do multiple strict reps now maybe we can incorporate the keeping pull up um so we can these higher volume pulling workouts uh you can get through them without reaching muscle failure okay that demysifies it for me cause I remember the first time I saw it I was like I know you're trying to get more out but like why and and that clears that up so the workout structure for Crossfit what is that look like cause I see I have a friend who creates Crossfit and he has a little whiteboard in his garage and he has all of his like workouts and PRs and like today I'm gonna do the Judy and I'm like I okay like I don't know what that is so can you maybe a little bit yeah yeah so another thing about Crossfit that kind of differentiates it is it's measurable right uh so we measure three things which is gonna either be load like the weight that you have on the bar uh the time it takes you to accomplish a certain amount of work or the amount of reps and you that you can accomplish in a certain amount of time uh we use those benchmark workouts to basically test yourself uh repeat a workout to see that hey has my fitness increase have I gotten faster have I put up more reps or have I put up more load than the last time that I attacked this workout um and so it gives you a measurable way to be like yes I am getting fitter than I was uh as opposed to you know some of these more generic fitness methodologies they're just like well I mean my arms look better so duh I'm fitter yeah very surface level so what okay so then my question is my next question is I am been a gym bro my whole life for the most part I started working at Gold's Gym at like 15 so that's been a culture that I've been a part of so but I I've been like side eye and Crossfit a little bit because my friend Tom he just makes it look so interesting and he's so fucking lean I hate him but you like it's so annoying but um like he comes over to do these emo workouts cause I have I have a whole setup in my garage so I have like that here assault I have like the assault fitness like trio so I have like the runner the rower and the air bike and he comes over to to do that ask like that part of his training um but I forgot where I was going with this question um so the if you have someone who comes to your gym cause I I've only ever seen like just the most ripped people at Crossfit gyms so let's say you have someone who is intimidated by the gym and they're not in shape maybe they're overweight maybe they're not they're like skinny fat is what I call them but like they're not in shape and they go into a Crossfit gym and they see this I just say the Judy I just made that up and they have the Judy on the board right and it's like shit like all these workouts how does that work for someone who might be intimidated by just gym in the gym in general uh so a lot of it's just meeting them where they are right um because like you've never done Crossfit right um sounds like you have a decent uh amount of like physical or knowledge about fitness and things that you've done in the past but I would not just have you come in and be like hey you're gonna do um 2159 of deadlifts at uh

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85 and uh handstand push UPS like I would scale I would watch you lift and I'd be like have you deadlifted before yes okay show me with this PVC pipe okay everything looks really good there uh let's give you an empty barbell okay let's see what that looks like okay you've obviously lifted before let's put some load on the bar uh and get get an idea of like what your capacity is with the deadlift then when it comes to the handstand push up I'd be like have you ever done that and you would probably say no I have not uh I don't know that I could ever do that is what a lot of people say I could never get upside down I could never press up my own weight I'm like you can't yet but we can get you there um so I could scale it back and say hey I want you to do uh a dumbbell uh shoulder press uh I want you to do a pike on a box where you put your feet on the box you put your hands on the ground and I want you to try to do a push up like that um all of this stuff is scalable to wherever the athlete is uh with the intention of moving them closer to whatever the written workout is um me specifically like I prefer to train general physical preparedness people like people that just want to be healthy in their life a lot of athletes that I've worked with they have all the expectations uh but they don't wanna pay for it they don't wanna pay for some specialized programming they don't wanna pay for the extra time that I'm gonna have to put in them to uh help them develop to that level uh I'd rather work with somebody that when I ask them why they're there they're like well my dad just had a heart attack uh I look similar to him in body type and I don't wanna end up like my dad I wanna be healthier um I just had a Newborn kid and I wanna be healthy and a good example for my kids um and I prefer to work with them because uh if you meet them where they are 1 the level of progress that happens in the short term is like that right like they get some results like right away whether it's like that um high you get after you did something hard that you didn't think you could do they're just like holy shit Cody I never thought that I could do that you know like well you just did what's next what are we gonna do now um and I love that um specifically with women I love the change in confidence that I see the longer that they do it cause I've had women come in that are uh what I would call like meek and keep to themselves very introverted don't really have uh any outward passion for much of anything and then they come for a year two years and they're like a whole different person you're like who are you and what have you done with this person that joined the gym because I love it like put them away and just like leave them leave them out forever cause uh they're just so much more confident uh they come out and develop like just this outward personality and passion for like yeah I can do hard shit yeah I think that's the part of it that most people don't realize I I was pretty quiet and I would probably say I have a similar like story like going to the gym and like developing the confidence my confidence though didn't come necessarily from my body changing cause I had always been ripped like I there's a picture of me graduating 6th grade and I have full blown ABS like just stupid genetics now that I'm complaining but like I loved people being like hey you did a really good job like you're strong as shit like other coaches and like even working with the coach being like you started this plan only being able to bench press the bar and now we got you know plates on this thing so I think that's the side of it the psychological and like mental well being from fitness that people sometimes don't realize it's more than just more than just that but yeah more than just aesthetics for sure for sure yeah like I right now I'm a I told myself I was like I'm gonna get back into running since I stopped going down the PJ pipeline I just stopped running and I'm like no I need to run like heart health things like that like cardio is important not just being strong but so so I guess my next question is how so you had these problems starting your gym well after you started your gym with your like neighbor but that aside what was it like for you being like I own this like this is my gym what was that like when you finally got to open that gym uh it was super rewarding and terrifying at the same time uh huh uh because like you said I mean I was proud um that Blake and I got to open this thing and like we literally took what we had talked about and made it into reality and like now is this place where people can come and they can pay us money and uh that feeling was great but then you're terrified because you're like well I don't wanna under deliver to these people I don't know everything I don't know uh the entire business side of things and so what if I fail what if this doesn't work out what if you know you fucking what if yourself to death and it can just cause you to not take any action because you're you're scared of well what if that doesn't work and you I Learned quickly that you just have to do something and then a course correct as you go like you're gonna try a lot of things and a lot of things are gonna fall flat on their face and you're gonna look back and be like that was fucking the dumbest thing that you could have done as a as a business owner but Jim still here uh still taking care of people and uh you just learn that like there's not a whole lot of insurmountable problems like if you stay with it and you keep adjusting towards what you see as the right course things tend to um get worked out yeah I work one of the one of my businesses is a business consultant and I used to help small businesses while I used to help new businesses and I kind of got away from that because a new business owner is panicking every five seconds and my phone was blowing up at all they wake up in the middle of the night do we do this what if this happens on my go to bed don't like you're saying like don't play the what if game just you know we'll tackle things one one step at a time but yeah so I know that you mentioned you eventually bought out your partners so what was that like and just from a business aspect like I know how that works but for listeners who are business owners what is it like what do you have to do to buy out a partner what goes into that also um before I get into the buy out what I would tell anybody that is going to have any sort of partnership regardless of how close you are with that partner get an operating agreement like have written a written list of expectations of the role that you are gonna play and the role that your partner is gonna play in the uh whatever it is that you're doing because if you don't inevitably there's gonna be resentment that develops because you or they feel like the other party should be doing more um there's it just leaves it takes all of the um uncertainty out of it right cause then it's on paper uh if they are not holding up their end or you're not holding up yours you can you have something to go to and be like hey like remember when we agreed that we were gonna do this like let's get back to doing that um and ultimately that's that's what happened in in my situation is we did not do that um and so there was just a lot of I think unrealized expectations from both sides like I mean I had a lot of short falls uh they had some short falls I have no ill will against uh Blake at all I mean he still goes to the gym and uh it just it wasn't working anymore from uh the expectation standpoint uh as well as um like some stuff changed on his his end as far as uh where he was working uh where he was having to take on more there and wasn't able to put the time that he needed into the gym um so we just came to the conclusion that like hey um I need to buy this thing so we sat down we kind of talked about it came up with what a realistic plan price and things like that what that would look like and then again we just walked it out let's see here I think I'm on Year 4 as the the sole owner um and like I said I mean we were both clear about what we wanted and so have a have a good relationship even now no that's awesome I um so I invest for a long time I was an angel investor now I just more like a smaller venture capitalist at the moment and sometimes I have to purchase businesses or parts of businesses for equity and I always bake in the operating agreement like I'm here as I'm writing a paycheck I bring this to the table like don't expect day to day operations for me like it's all outlined and then at the end it's like when I leave this is how I leave this is the buyout strategy but no you're 100% correct I think that's probably the best advice I could give anybody at any moment in times get things in writing no matter what what aspect of your life it is business or not in writing is is gold so okay so you guys came to those terms seems what amicably and mutually and now you are the sole owner so you have other trainers at the gym or is it just you how does that how does that work for you now uh so I have a staff of uh six people and uh several of them are coaches and then some uh I have kind of been like ancillary jobs for like uh apparel that they design uh put together all the orders for our apparel within the gym um I have what's called a client retention manager and so she um helps facilitate some retention strategies to keep people in the gym uh to keep them as members and uh to periodically reach out to them just to kind of check in on them and see how they're doing um and then another girl who helps with my social media and event planning yeah I will say now just for everybody out there I don't know Cody we met on a veterans group and I was really interested in his business and I have to say I'm thoroughly impressed by the way you talk about your business because I've turned down a lot of guests on for this podcast because I felt like they were focused on the wrong things and from the jump talking about your business was always how can I serve these people how can I make the best gym experience for them and putting them first and a lot of your anxiety is coming from running the business but also providing value to them and I think that says a lot about any business owner is if you're willing to kind of like pour into the people who are going to your gym and even having someone who's in charge of client retention like that's fucking sweet like yeah you ever need an investor you let me know cause that's that's really awesome a lot of gyms don't have that they don't it's all numbers and money for them so having somebody in that position is incredible so how does that okay so that I guess my next question is do people come in for like 1 on 1 coaching to a Crossfit gym uh so we have it available but um for the most part we sell it more as just like hey come pick up a couple of sessions to like gain the skill that you're trying to achieve or I've had some people that are training for specific events um so we'll tailor some programming for that event or specifically like I've had a couple athletes that wanted to do the tactical games so I would tailor some programming for that uh but really I try to keep the one thing the one thing like I just wanna be the best Crossfit gym that we can be and I see um you know trying to sell personal training or trying to sell um other programs as just deluding the product that is Crossfit and not to say I just knew that coming in I mean I fucked that up like several times over we tried offering boot camps we tried offering weightlifting clubs we tried offering you name it I mean we we try to bring in yoga class before uh and what I found was that uh it did not do great and then it also kind of deluded what we were able to offer as just a Crossfit gym um so I came to the conclusion that like all these things that you think are good ideas are just excuses for you to like be like well if I had this thing that's what's gonna like put us on the next level instead of being like well if I would just make Crossfit great and everybody wanted to talk about it and tell every person they knew how it changed their life that's what's gonna make the gym a success it's not this extra program or smoothie bar or um special treadmill that I bought yeah no that's that's pretty awesome so I guess for me I've always been a little bit intimidated of Crossfit James I've always been generally curious I've written it off for a long time but when the curiosity started to develop especially now like now I'm watching Crossfit games like I'm obviously like curious and I'm sure a lot of people out there are too I know I've talked to some of my friends and they're like Crossfit and I'm like yeah I don't know I don't know what it's about but it seems a little you make it a little less intimidating where you know that you can walk into a Crossfit gym at any fitness level and get a little one on one time I mean speaking to your gym at least it's kind of assess where you're at and then you know progress from there so now so when you go into a Crossfit gym is it class based yes so it's all group fitness based um when specifically at my gym uh when you sign up we if you've never done it before we do intro sessions with you one on one um we also do kind of an extensive like dig into your life interview of well why are you here and what are your goals and try to go way past the surface of like the generic answers I hear all the time is like I just wanna get fit or I wanna lose weight or um I want to get stronger and I'm like okay well how much stronger or how much weight do you wanna lose or what is healthier mean to you um and through process of elimination you keep asking them and you keep sitting there in silence just staring at them waiting that they typically divulge more of what the actual answer is of like well um you know I want my husband to like what he's looking at or I want um kinda getting back to like my kids my kids look at me now and they're like yeah my dad can't do shit or my mom can't do shit or I couldn't uh expect them to help me if they needed to um and it's surprising just how if you ask the right questions people aren't used to that they're not used to you like trying to pull back some layers so people tend to get pretty emotional sometimes about it because you're uncovering these things that they know they're in the back of their mind but they don't really bring it to light and tell anybody about it uh and if you can get to that and you can get them behind that reason um that's a way to get a really high level of commitment out of someone as opposed to oh you wanna lose weight okay yeah start coming to the gym you lose some weight yeah yeah what so when you ask those questions what is the goal is the goal just to help them gets where they wanna go based on the the the facts based on like what's distilled down or cause I've done an interview for a gym before which was so weird for me um they wouldn't let me join until I interviewed but for them it was to maintain the culture and it was a powerhouse out like Long Beach um there no there are no toys for that they have a lot of applications they don't wanna flood their gym or pack their gym out so they interview everybody who's on this like wait list to make sure that they're there for the right reasons but is is that similar to why you guys do it ours have more to just start building some trust and rapport with the client um it show that like hey we give a shit about you we don't see you as just like a number for our membership we see you as a human and we wanna get to know you and we wanna know what you care about um I've never thought about it like you were saying like from a cultural standpoint but I think subconsciously I definitely do that because uh I've turned away people that I'm just like yeah I don't think you're a good fit yeah I think that's really good though I wish more more gyms would do that I think if they did that like the gym that I go to right now is Metro Flex Marietta and there's definitely an old school Rod Iron gym vibe there it's definitely I wouldn't call it a bodybuilders gym but it's very close to that um it's definitely very focused on strength training but the only thing that the only negative I'll say about it and this is a sentiment that a lot of members shares that they're always like you trip over equipment there's so much fucking equipment in this place it's like the latest and greatest toys in there and I I wish if there was a little bit more screening done for one it wouldn't be packed out 24 7 which is super annoying and 2 I think it would protect the culture a little bit cause there have been times where there's a lot of gym drama and I just don't go I'll go to another gym because they yes a new person joined and they're just a douche or the they don't fit the gym culture they don't fit the culture of that gym which is very old school everyone there is very mature it's no games but every now and then there's somebody that'll come in and it's just like you're ruining it for everybody oh yeah no I like that I think that's good though I also think that going somewhere where you're gonna be working out in a group knowing that they give a fuck about you because they know why you're there is I don't know I think that the thing is pretty cool um so other than the other Crossfit gym I don't know much about Oklahoma I did just buy some land in Oklahoma but um what is there other other Crossfit gyms what is the I don't know I think Oklahoma I think Carrie Underwood country like everybody sees like Chakota like that's that's what I know about Oklahoma so yeah is there a job culture there oh absolutely yeah um like Edmund I think there's probably at least four other Crossfit gyms in Edmund that I can think of Oklahoma City there's several of them but I yeah I had very similar uh a very similar vision of Oklahoma before I moved here um but it's pretty rich in culture and food and like music is kind of starting to make uh a really good um like have a really good presence in Oklahoma um I honestly love it there I mean the people would give you the shirt off their back for the most part um sometimes can be a little overly nosy but I see that as more of a pro than a con cause I've lived in new I've lived in New York and people you know would just be shitty to you for absolutely no reason yeah um and then as far as gyms go um I mean there's several different I would call them like niches in the market of Crossfit some people are just like trying to be ultra high level competitive athletes uh you got the GPP like I was talking about general physical preparedness um and then you got kind of like the more boutique like let's do all the Crossfit workouts but not call it Crossfit um and I would say those are kind of like your your three main groups there but um as far as owner to other owners uh I've had mixed kind of uh experiences there like trying to reach out to them whether it be to ask for advice or see what they're doing that's working uh some owners you know accept you with open arms and are nothing but helpful and then there are others that feel like you're encroaching on their territory somehow and so they kind of like you know try to keep you at arms reach yeah you're you're the competition exactly right exactly I'm like bro there's enough people to go around for all of us like chill the fuck out I never understood that so I own a fitness company we're online training primarily like health psychology which is what my my specialty is and sometimes I'll have other trainers reach out to me and there's always this like long introduction first like listen I know where I know I'm a trainer I know this conflict of interest and I'm like dude just ask the fucking question like yeah I will help you there's no competition here these are we are options for people it's up to the individual to figure out who they want to work with who they have chemistry with we are not in competition I'm not fighting over this over clients with you and if I am then we've lost sight of what we're doing so I never understood I mean I get it but I'm also just like come on bro like right yeah you're just like there's enough there's enough for all of us is is how I look at it and I mean I've fallen into the trap a couple of times where I would get you know a little pissed about one thing or another somebody left to go to another gym and I'd be like fuck that gym like God that's healthy yeah those people suck you know and like you said it deviates your focus away from where it needs to be like if you just focus on you your community and what you got going on and how you can make that the best it can be like that other shit one doesn't matter and two you're just leveling up leveling up and even if they started off ahead of you at some point you're gonna surpass them yeah I mean healthy competition is fine I mean that's the whole point the whole point is to have competition because if both of you are fighting or everybody is fighting to be the best gym that just means that people have some amazing options and like yeah I go to Metro Flex but like I have a membership at their like competitor gym which is like just the gym down the road and it's only because this shit's always packed out or like I'm tripping over new machine so if it gets too packed I just go down the road cause it's convenient now I get no convenient alternative but um I also find that that's the case in the jujutsu community which I didn't know about it is very competitive I was training at like a Carlson Gracie and then I went to like another one and it was like you can't if you earned your stripe there or your belt there you can't we're taking a video we're taking it back and I'm like first of all like let's settle this on the mat you can decide if I earned it but like I never understood that it's very taboo in certain gym cultures to go to competitive gyms but um anyway yeah no that's and there's so many parallels with Crossfit and jiu jitsu specifically I've I've done jiu jitsu as well and yeah I mean sometimes the owner works against his own best interest because uh he wants he or she wants to prove themselves or something like that so they get all these members that just beat the fuck out of the new people and then the new people don't come back like cause they're like man fuck those guys I don't like any of them they they almost broke my arm four times in a week yeah I when I first got into jiu jitsu I had gained a ton of weight and I was really intimidated going back into the gym and I went to a Carlson Gracie and there's no levels like the class is the same for everybody the it doesn't matter what belt you are obviously lower belts fighting higher belts you know it just it just depends on on what the what you're doing but it was really hard for me to catch up and it was you know there wasn't a lot of one on one to teach me the basics so and I had come from Krav Maga that was my my background so completely different Krav Maga is extremely like joint manipulation striking things like that so I went to another gym cause they had a beginner's class you'd earn your first stripe but it was like 12 weeks you they teach you the basics they build up your cardio it's a lot less intimidating you with other people who are also new um similar fitness levels in some cases and I felt a little bit um little bit better about that but when I went to go back so I finished that class I went to go back to Carlson Gracie they're like where'd you get your stride like what's this what's that and I was like oh fucking hold on bro yeah you like guys you didn't earn it here it doesn't count I'm like I'm not like transferring college credits like it's not how this works yeah and you're like it's literally a piece of fucking tape like yeah and they all compete at the same like local competitions so you know that's like the biggest thing is like the best Jim is like whoever's ranking highest in the region and that Gracie Jim and the other group Jim I went to which they just recently changed their name they were kind of on the same level so it's not like I went to like the worst gym and just wanted to claim a stripe it's like being valedictorian at a community college thinking you're gonna go to Harvard and have the same report it's like I get it but but that we're not at fucking Harvard so relax and I'm not going to like the best gym but it's interesting that that transcends different disciplines and fitness that you for sure I mean like we have local Crossfit competitions and things like that and it's funny that you made that correlation between the community college and Harvard cause I I talk to people about that all the time I'm like okay so you went and you won a local Crossfit competition like where does that fall on the scale of ear to the Crossfit games and you know they're all gloating around the gym and bragging and like I'm so fit and I'm like bro you won a local Crossfit competition yeah like I was like I'm I'm glad I'm happy that you're excited but uh the fact that those people tend to start talking down to other people because they're somehow now better than everybody else that that roast me the wrong way yeah that's so interesting yeah I uh yeah I I'll never understand that is especially the chip on the shoulder thing cause I uh I see that sometimes in the in the gym it's like dude comes in knowing he can deadlift more than everybody else in there and I'm like let's see your bench though like Brett oh yeah yeah like let's let's let's see if this transcends planes of fitness because impressive but you know humble yourself a little bit we're all here to achieve the same thing but no it's really it's it's interesting do you um are there a lot of other veterans where you're at cause I don't know shit about Oklahoma sorry like uh yeah so it's pretty it's a pretty good uh retirement community purvet and uh Anchor Air Force Base is in Midwest City which is probably like 20 uh 25 minutes from the gym uh so there's pretty good amount of veterans there uh there's a base also in Lawton uh an army uh artillery base out there so I would say there's a pretty good veteran presence of in the state that's interesting I had no idea I I know of some some like DOD presence in Oklahoma but um again I'm not really familiar with the state so for all I know it's like at the handle and you're nowhere near there so I well I don't even know where you're at so but anyway but yeah no that's interesting but yeah so I guess so what's the name of your gym sorry I think I skipped over that uh Crossfit never broken oh sure on your fucking shirt okay that's pretty dope alright so if do you do do you guys do so it's in person only do you guys do anything online or anything like that no we did during Covid um and then uh it was a lot of work trying to put all that stuff together for the online portion of it um so I just got back to doing the uh the in person stuff I prefer anyway I feel like I can develop a a better relationship with someone if I can see them and yell at them face to face and tell them to get off the floor or get on the floor yeah no online coaching there there's a whole new level of struggle there I work with like Sea Suite executives now who have the money they are just always so busy or full of excuses so it's like man I wish you were in person so I could tell you to suck it the fuck up and let's go yeah exactly no that's awesome but I just thought is there anything else that you want to maybe share before we wrap up the episode when I respect your time I know we've been swapping sea stories a little bit but um let me see um well let me like take the opportunity to thank my staff um yeah Caitlin Catherine Josh I appreciate you guys you do a great job coaching Josh is newer but he has been very eager to like hone his craft so all three of you thank you for what you do I could not uh have the gym uh as it is without you you are definitely a big part of what makes Never Broken never broken and then I want to thank Brittany Meredith and Nicole your roles are imperative to what makes the gym continue to go round and round and I am very grateful and thankful for them as well yeah like you you kind of alluded to it before but I just I feel called to serve other people I really enjoy um you know helping people in any way that I can and I found that uh through fitness um I'm pretty well suited for that so uh I would just tell anybody that is pursuing some sort of business uh make sure that you have some sort of passion for it because um 1 passion has a shelf life and I mean uh you do the grind long enough and uh if you're not willing to like just put your head down and get after it uh you're gonna quit so make sure it's something that you really like genuinely love and want to be doing because um whether it's something you're passionate about or not uh it could fail either way so you might as well pick something that you love um and then I would say realize you may be bent but you're never broken so that's like our our slogan you're gonna have times in your life where stuff is just not going your way seems like everything's going the opposite way uh but realize that's just an opportunity for you to get better and you'll come out stronger on the other side of whatever that obstacle is that's awesome also you're the first person to thank their staff on here so future guest take note I really appreciate that I think that really speaks volumes to your leadership so yeah with that thank you so much for being here I appreciate you taking me up on the offer to be on the podcast and yeah now thanks so much for having me Jesse uh and I guess I'll give myself a shameless plug here uh if you're in Edmund Oklahoma I encourage you to come check out Crossfit Never Broken you can find us on Instagram never broken okay uh and I'll get Jesse a link if you don't live in Oklahoma and you want some sweet swag we sell um print the order stuff that you can order online yeah just for the gym go follow you guys I'll leave a link to everything in the description thanks again Cody yeah thank you Jeff appreciate it