Ben Garves Podcast: Fitness, Nutrition, and Activism

‘Aging’ is the topic of the day, as a research article published mid-July found an association between older participants’ physical fitness and their bone mass and structure. What does that mean? Older people who stayed physically fit had healthier, stronger bones.

 https://youtu.be/ppcMmcUujWc 

The study looked at 129 participants between the ages of 70 and 81 and found the correlation to be stronger in men than in women, but the vast majority of the participants were women. Just an odd observation I made when reading it. 

The write up states:

“Aging results in a progressive and generalized impairment of several bodily functions, an increased vulnerability to environmental challenges, and a growing risk of disease and death [2]. The aging process entails a decrease of both muscle and bone tissue, which may increase the incidence of osteoporosis and the risk of suffering falls and fractures [3].”

It may seem logical, but the research showed active seniors were in much better health and an improved state of well-being when compared with their inactive counterparts. Researchers say these improvements do appear to be related to their physical fitness levels.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow. 

Today we are talking about a story in TIME, titled “The Pandemic Is Turning Americans Against the Gym. That Could Be a Good Thing for the Nation's Health.”

 https://youtu.be/cy36oiFHnKQ 

What? Yes. At the very core of it, many of us are learning how to be healthy within our own four walls. A study commissioned by LIFEAID found that a quarter of Americans never plan to return to their old gyms. A survey in June run by Healthline found that the same number of people don’t miss working out in a gym or studio. It’s a good indicator that, among sentiments about the safety of any short term return to old fitness habits, Americans are finding another path.

TIME spoke to a number of fitness instructors and researchers and heard only variations on the same core opinion: that people will miss human contact and return for the sake of having access to a greater variety of equipment.

But what this pandemic has done, for the greater majority of Americans not previously members of gyms, is make fitness more accessible. Digital workouts are everywhere. Exercise equipment is being scooped up faster than it can be produced and stocked. Running trails are being beaten down by countless additional footsteps. Among these trends are a new kind of fitness fanatic: those who never went to the gym in the first place. 

I’m going to take the easy way out and read this quote directly from the article, because I don’t know if I can phrase it any better. TIME writes:

“The ingrained idea that people need to go to the gym to get fit is part of the problem. There are countless reasons for someone to dislike gyms. Maybe they can’t afford membership dues, or their local facility doesn’t offer child care, or they don’t have time to drive back and forth, or they feel self-conscious exercising in front of people, or it freaks them out to see a bunch of humans running around like hamsters on wheels. If they’re a person of color, non-binary, older or bigger, they may feel unwelcome in environments often overwhelmingly inhabited by young-ish, fit, white, cisgendered people. The list goes on.”

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Today we are talking about a recent statement from the American Heart Association which found a link between housing stability and poor cardiovascular health.

 https://youtu.be/SvhxWmsYygU 

The review of research on housing’s impact on heart disease found that the steady stress from lack of quality housing increases important risk factors for some heavy issues, like strokes and heart attacks. It impacts everything from someone’s ability to eat healthy and sleep consistently, to their ability to seek medical attention and fill prescriptions. 

Mario Sims, a professor at the University of Mississippi Medical Center, says these factors prevent people from getting adequate treatment which would ultimately decrease risk factors like high cholesterol, smoking, and high blood pressure.

The standard for this term “homeless” follows how it’s defined by the federal government: those who live in temporary housing like hotels, shelters, or with friends, those living on the street, and serial renters who move often.

In the research, they found 60 percent of heart disease-related deaths were correlated with smoking and 25 percent suffered from a mental illness which may have contributed to delayed diagnosis and intermittent medical care.

Another contributing factor was air quality in low-quality housing. Homes falling apart or with heating and cooling issues expose people to mold or other pollutants like first-hand or second-hand smoke. 

Core to this is what the article called “residential segregation and bias” - that people living in older public housing and low-income housing are more likely to have heart disease. It looked at how foreclosures during the 2007-2010 great recession highlighted disparity in healthy, safe, consistent housing and poor heart health. If found both that Black and Hispanic communities in areas at risk of foreclosure had higher rates of heart attacks and strokes among some age groups and higher rates of high cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Food for thought at a time where we’re talking actively about racial equality in this country.

Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you tomorrow.

Welcome to the first episode of the newly-pivoted podcast. It will no longer be known as the WODDITY Podcast for News About CrossFit. You’re now listening to the Ben Garves podcast, a daily show helping you center yourself on a fit and nutritious activist lifestyle through technology, psychology, philosophy and education. 

My name is Ben Garves, and I am your host. I have a boring day job in the tech industry while working on the side for my YouTube channel, a number of progressive causes, and I am a former CrossFit trainer.

Things you will hear on this show every day include anything promoting a lifestyle that gets you happier, healthier, and more centered - whether physically, emotionally, or financially. We’ll do this while promoting the latest fascinating findings, tricks, and tips in health and exercise science. We will be an ally and active voice for Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ+, and many more causes involving basic human rights to equality. You’ll also hear me providing advice for navigating life experiences like relationships, mental health, and even surviving quarantine.

Thanks for returning to the podcast. I’m excited to be bringing it back, but obviously wish it was under better circumstances than having to pivot away from CrossFit. This show is now truly a labor of love, with no advertisements. Everything you hear me talk about and endorse comes entirely from my love for it and the good it does. Please be sure to like, subscribe, provide a five-star rating, and write a review. It’s free to you and means the world to me.

For full show notes, please see WODDITY: https://woddity.com/our-last-episode-about-crossfit/

Good morning everyone. I want to apologize for being silent yesterday. I was frustrated and, honestly, just speechless. I needed the 24 hours to process my thoughts and let those frustrations quell before I opened my mouth and spoke again.

So here are my thoughts, and full disclosure, at the top of the show, this will be our final episode about CrossFit for a while.

If you haven’t heard the big news, Greg Glassman has decided the answer to what’s going on is to appoint Dave Castro as the CEO and to step into retirement. CrossFit then released an open letter titled “Why Didn’t CrossFit Just Say Something?”

Here’s my instant evaluation: 

1. Glassman is still the owner of the company and he pulls the strings. The apology needs to come from him if you truly want to heal the void you’ve created. And it can’t be one of these emotionless letters. It has to be him in front of a camera. We, as a community, have been clear about that from the start.
2. You cannot consider your “Why Didn’t CrossFit Just Say Something” letter to be an apology. Your wording was very creative and what I can only describe as “maliciously clever” in avoiding the exact phrase “Black Lives Matter”. 
3. You took an action. That’s an amazing first step. It gives me hope that the soul of the organization is still in there and you could still take better steps to heal this void.
4. At a time when racial tensions are at a peak, Dave Castro may have not been the best option for CEO. Your best option would’ve been to select someone from outside the organization, particularly someone with a good history of diversity in their leadership.
5. Casto and I may, philosophically, disagree on just about 99 percent of how the world should be, but I think he’s smart, I think his heart is in the right place, and I think he will be good for the brand. *If* he can run this company independently of the musings of Greg Glassman. We’ve seen what it looks like when Glassman pulls the strings of a CEO. 
6. I’ve shared a video, and many of you have seen it at this point, of Dave Castro ignoring a question about racial diversity in the sport. The question was poorly worded. Castro was not the person in his training and Games role to address diversity. But, from the lens of leadership, the response he had was exactly what we would expect from Greg Glassman. And that’s not what the community has asked for. We don’t need another Glassman but under a different name. 
7. As a community, all of us need to have conversations with and support your gyms. Stick with them if they’ve decided to de-affiliate. Talk to them if they’ve decided to stay. Tell them why you would prefer they not have a relationship with CrossFit right now. The only iota of power we have to help (and I use the word “help”) this brand change is to vote with our money. You can influence your gym with your money. Depending on where you work out, it only takes 10-15 members to speak up for an owner to know it will outweigh the cost of their affiliation fee.

And that’s it. I like Dave Castro. I don’t like the circumstances. I like that change happened. It wasn’t the change that we wanted or needed for immediate change.

We will not have a podcast episode tomorrow. I have to figure out what this show is going to be about while CrossFit figures out what their new identity will be, and then we will re-evaluate.

I’m going to keep it short and sweet today because my intent is to try to communicate to Cody Anderson why his statement about bullying and cancel culture is wrong.

While he did say he does not agree with or support the things Greg Glassman has said, he has criticized our movement for perpetuating “cancel culture” in the way we’re separating ourselves from CrossFit. Anderson wrote on Instagram, “Does anybody else see the hypocrisy in preaching unity and love across all people and then raising metaphorical pitchforks at somebody the next week when they make a stupid comment?”

Later in his statement he writes, “Cancel culture is not ok, it’s bullying and excludes all opinions except it’s own.”

Well. Cody. First of all, you spoke up and said that you want to embrace love. Which all of us agree with you on. For sure, everything we’re doing here is in support of love and in fight of hatred. But what your statement ignores and fails to address is a society that is systematically oppressing, arresting, hurting, and killing black people. Greg Glassman has had two weeks in the spotlight for this, and millions of moments he could have changed his stance, spoken up, or walked back his hatred.

Racism does not go away just because we say, “oh, silly Greg Glassman. You’re such a goofball. We forgive you.” We don’t. And we’re not leaving his brand because we don’t have forgiveness in our hearts. We’re leaving his brand because he isn’t changing. We’re leaving his brand because we already have problems with equality and the brand, under Glassman’s leadership, and he’s not providing a solution to the problem.

You’ve called us bullies. Is Glassman not a bully here? Are you saying we should pay Glassman $3,000 a year of our lunch money so we can stay friends with him while he terrorizes black people? The answer is no.

Will the oppression of black people go away if we forgive Greg Glassman? The answer is no. Will the mass incarceration of black people go away if we forgive Greg Glassman? The answer is no. Will the beatings of black people go away if we forgive Greg Glassman? The answer is no. WIll the killing of black people go away if we forgive Greg Glassman? The answer is no.

Will someone see the example we made here and, as a leader, learn that it’s not okay to perpetuate the systematic oppression of black people? The answer is yes.

This isn’t cancel culture. This is a cultural course correction and Greg Glassman is the iceberg.

See full show notes at WODDITY: https://woddity.com/the-weekends-aftermath-a-unified-community/

If you sat me down with a pen and some paper and told me to write down the craziest 72 hours I could imagine in the world of elite fitness sports that would result in over 250 gyms de-affiliating from CrossFit, I could not have come up with, in a hundred tries, on hallucinogens, what has transpired over the past three days.

Tired of reading the comments yet? I am. But let me say this. We all woke up this morning feeling lost. Feeling unsure about what the future looks like as the brand we’ve built our lives upon crumbles around us. Here’s my piece of advice. Do what you do every day. Go do your workout. Go provide your critical service to the people in your community. Go be a good human. Don’t get drowned in the tidal wave of questions about the future. You can control the now. It’s why I’m recording the podcast episode right now. I don’t want to say the word “CrossFit”, let alone the 19 times I’ll end up saying it over the course of this episode. But what I do here is bigger than that brand. What you do is bigger than that brand. I don’t care if you’re some guy in his basement or the owner of thirty gyms. Your work matters and your work goes on.

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about elite fitness sports. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing fitness news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Monday, the 8th of June, 2020. Don’t forget, links to all of these stories are in the show notes of your friendly neighborhood podcasting app, as well as on WODDITY.com.

A quick summary of events, in case you’re lucky enough to have dropped your phone in a lake or something. The world has been speaking up about racial injustice in the United States. Notably silent was CrossFit, Inc., even when major affiliated brands, like Reebok, LifeAid, and Rogue weighed in on the topic. As gym owners and community members reached out to CrossFit to ask for moral leadership, an email surfaced from founder and Chairman Greg Glassman calling a gym owner in Seattle evil, and saying he believed COVID had made her delusional. In the midst of the uproar on Friday, Glassman coyly tweeted “FLOYD-19” to a group studying racism as a health risk for black Americans. At this point, gyms started to announce de-affiliation with CrossFit. On Sunday, I weighed in with a video talking about our community’s relationship with race, and stating WODDITY would no longer be CrossFit-adjacent, while de-affiliation gained momentum.

 https://www.instagram.com/p/CBJCSoggKmJ/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link 

As of now, there is a list being circulated with 245 gyms, representing over $730,000 in lost annual revenue for CrossFit. Major sponsors like Reebok, ROMWOD, Rogue, and LifeAid Beverage Company have stated they’re ending their relationship with the brand pending ongoing conversations about CrossFit’s leadership behavior and existing contracts.

On the list of gyms ending their relationship with the brand include 12 Labours -  the gyms behind the Strength in Depth Sanctional, Invictus - with a longstanding history of competitive teams and athletes, NCFit - a gym and online training platform built by 2008...

So here’s the core point I’m trying to make. Following the example of Petworth Fitness and hoping we can continue to be the voice of change in our community, WODDITY will be formally denouncing CrossFit, and its silence, until specific actions are taken by the organization to begin healing race relations in its community. The full announcement will come on Sunday’s Elite Sports Insider live show on YouTube, talking through what you can expect from WODDITY in the future and what steps CrossFit can take to make changes. I know CrossFit won’t miss our 11,000 podcast listeners, and I know some of you will not be taking this journey with me. But it feels disingenuous to report news about an organization so out of touch while real people are suffering.

I know WODDITY stands alone as a media organization in this moment. Companies like Morning Chalk Up have major sponsors like Black Rifle Coffee Company, which in itself is an outwardly bigoted organization. This is a journey I know we embark on alone.

It’s not the end of the podcast, it’s not the end of our elite sports coverage, it’s an opportunity for tremendous growth and thought leadership in a space that we can blatantly say has not been thinking, nor leading.

No news today, so instead we're sharing this great resource on how to better-understand how to begin having a conversation about racial inequality in our community. Audio is courtesy of Uncomfortable Conversations With a Black Man by Emmanuel Acho.

The full video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8jUA7JBkF4
We recommend you subscribe to his YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3DoYiL7X_N1Ta1o4HE9Mlg 

For full show notes, please go to: https://woddity.com/crossfits-noticeable-silence-on-racial-inequality/

CrossFit has been awkwardly and very noticeably silent on racial injustice, EZ Muhammad makes some podcast appearances, and Rogue Invitational’s digital competition is coming soon.

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Wednesday, the 3rd of June, 2020. Don’t forget, links to all of these stories are in the show notes of your friendly neighborhood podcasting app, as well as on the new WODDITY.com.

What to Know: Rogue Invitational Digital Event

Not this weekend, but next weekend will be the digital version of the Rogue Invitational. 37 athletes, from Chandler Smith to Katrin Davidsdottir are participating, including 2019’s Fittest Man and Fittest Woman on Earth, Mat Fraser and Tia-Clair Toomey. Cash prizes for athletes range up to $50,000 for first place finishers and the event can be live streamed on Rogue’s YouTube channel. 

Now - what will this entirely digital event look like? Will it be pre-recorded workouts put side-by-side? Will athletes somehow all be simultaneously streaming workouts over a Zoom call? I have no idea. But if we know Rogue, we know it’s going to be good. Stay tuned on the WODDITY Podcast for updates as we have them.

CrossFit’s Silence During Racial Turmoil

One of the most heartbreaking moments of yesterday’s BlackoutTuesday was the ongoing silence of CrossFit, Inc. While hundreds of prominent CrossFit athletes and media members, brands, and nonprofits shared in the campaign, CrossFit was noticeably silent on the topic. It appeared to be business as usual for the organization, as they touted the launch of a new Twitter page and campaigned for a book that paralleled their health cause. 

Each day that passes is another opportunity for CrossFit to speak up against racial injustice in our country. They have the ears of millions of people around the globe. They’ve weighed in on everything from corruption in our nutritional guidance to the importance of gender equality and a transgender athlete’s right to compete in the division of their true identity. We understand that this is not an easy topic and it may take time to find the right words. But continued silence from the organization will say tenfold about the future of the community and its relationship with racial diversity.

In the community, I personally shared any BlackoutTuesday post from major athletes to WODDITY’s Instagram story, which ended the day with over 100 blackout posts. Also a quick reminder - if you are an ally but not actively participating in protests, please avoid the use of the #BlackLivesMatter hashtag to make sure it is preserved for individuals organizing on the ground. 

Now Is a Time to Be Loud about Injustice

Yesterday’s event was a great start, but it’s important to remember the work doesn’t end with a moment of silence - there’s real work ahead of us. It is no longer enough to just think “I am not a racist” - our ability to change the world depends on us speaking up and reaching out. If yesterday was a moment of silence for many, then let today-onward be a moment of LOUDNESS. If there’s one good thing we can learn as a majority-white community in this moment, it should be that it is not okay to be quiet about racial injustice. It is our job, our moral responsibility, to be LOUD about this...