Get Off Our Lawn - CF Masters

Have you ever had a conversation with someone where, going in, you kind of figured what you would be talking about then you start listening and realize how much more you can learn about someone? Yeah, that's what happened.

This week we get to talk to Janice Hurley. Janice is a long time member of CF Masters. I knew she had written a book about dental image branding and runs the Crossfit Masters 60+ group, but holy crap she's so much more. She's an in-demand keynote speaker, a management consultant, a doting grandmother - who raised 4 kids on her own,  and she's pretty damn good with a camera. Just ask the Masters who hit the Legends comp last year. By the way, she didn't start the paid speaker gig until she was 50 which is a great reminder that it's never to late to pick up a skill and master it.

I've been remiss as hell at getting this episode posted. The holidays, unemployment, and a myriad of other excuses come to mind - none of them any good. On a good note, I got to listen to this episode several times which was awesome because I needed to hear someone as excited about life as Janice is.

Hope you enjoy the episode.

Welcome back to Get Off Our Lawn! The podcast for Crossfit Masters.

This week, we are going deep into the holidays.

No, we did not do a holiday gift guide.

Just go buy some chalk. You can always use more chalk.

We did get a chance to talk about holiday nutrition with Gwen Holtan, long time member of CF Masters and co-founder of Beyond the Box Nutrition. Who better to ask about surviving the holidays with all of the inherent temptation than a nutrition coach?

You know there will be cookies in the office and holiday parties and food, food and more food. What are some strategies for making it successfully through this maze of temptation and into a healthy new year?

Gwen shares her insights.

We also go into why she started Beyond the Box Nutrition, how her previous corporate life managing and mentoring a team of over 10 sales reps aligns with nutrition coaching, and, at the very end, she shares a pretty badass snippet of what makes her tick. How, at 13, she had to play on an all-boys soccer team because the city her family moved to didn’t have elite girls soccer, and she was determined to play.

One thing about CF Masters is that we have an amazing group of totally badass women.

It was great talking to Gwen, and I really hope you enjoy this episode. If it helps you make it through even one holiday party then we have done our job!

If you want to get hold of Gwen, you can find her at beyondtheboxnutrition.com or on instagram @beyondtheboxnutrition

If you like your content please click 5 stars and share with a friend. I’m guessing there are more than a few folks looking to get through the holidays unscathed.

If you want to hear a specific topic, leave a comment and we’ll try and make it happen.

Thanks. Merry Christmas, and a Happy New Year!

Welcome back to Get Off Our Lawn!!! In this episode, episode 11, we talk to Doctor Sean Rocket, the OG of crossfit Orthopedic surgeons. Angela and I get to ask him a wide range of questions about medicine and crossfit and motivation and how crossfit and nutrition has infiltrated his medical practice. Sean is a great person to talk to, and we really hope that you enjoy this episode.

Look, we all know that Crossfit is no more dangerous or injury causing than any other sport, but sometimes we get hurt, maybe we aggravate old injuries, or, we get a new injury. When that happens, the first thing we do is… ask the CF Masters facebook group to diagnose it for us and then suggest treatment.

Then we go to 321gomd.com to read an article about our injury written by a real doctor.

Sean Rockett is the real doctor behind 321gomd.com

He’s also an orthopedic surgeon. He’s been a crossfitter since before Ben Bergeron opened Crossfit New England, and Sean really, really cares about making people better.

I’ve listened to several podcasts with Sean, and the one thing that I was always interested in is “why?”

Why are you an orthopedic surgeon? Instead of being say an oncologist or a family medicine doc. How did you choose the path to orthopedics specifically?

OK, I’ll be totally honest. One of the things that fascinates me more than anything about everyone is - why are you who you are? How did you get here and what choices did you make along the way?

Thankfully, Sean shared his story with us and his desire to help people started at a young age. Thanks, in large part, to the influence of his parents who were both surgeons.

Early on when we started Get Off Our Lawn, Angela wanted to get Sean as a guest. She made it happen, and you get the benefit.

When it comes to interesting episodes this one absolutely takes the cake.

The only problem, and this is probably due to my WiFi - we lost the recording of when Sean beat Ben Bergeron in a WOD.

We could call up Sean and re-record that segment, but I think it would be much more interesting to send a camera out and record it live.

Enjoy!

On this episode we get to talk to the amazing Leka Fineman, multi-times Games athlete and totally cool person. Plus, Angela gets to fangirl out a bit. 

We talk about training and Leka's previous life as a banana slug, her career in fashion (those two are not mutually exclusive), and, believe it or not, we talk a little about  Crossfit.

This was a really fun conversation. Allison is an old school crossfitter, competitive personality, and cool AF person to talk to. She started NorCal Masters comp with her husband TJ (of TJ's gym) in order to compete against, well, other masters age athletes. Then she turned her attention to running the competition and did so for many years.

This episode is by special request, because NorCal Masters has meant a LOT to the masters community over the years. It was one of the first, and definitely preeminent masters crossfit competitions. It was accessible to anyone, but the programming was not at all reduced for masters - you had to earn it. A lot of people flew in from all over not only to compete but often to volunteer. NorCal Masters has opened the door for other folks to know that a masters focussed competition is not only possible but can be well attended.

Sadly, the competition is not going to happen in 2020, but Allison and TJ are open to bringing it back. The amount of effort they put in over the years to make it happen is crazy, and they would need some help to get the comp going again. Listen to the episode for some ideas that Allison has.

I judged at NorCal Masters one year, and Allison taught me something very important. It was an ascending rep heavy thruster/burpee workout, and Allison was extremely clear, "You can NOT jerk the thrusters." A person I was judging was having a really hard time with the weight, was in no position to be competitive, and I was allowing them to ..... jerk the thrusters. Allison walked up behind me and simply said, "the standard is the standard." And she was right. The standard is the standard. Do....the....work....

I also snuck in a question about high school kids applying to college - because she knows a lot about that, and I have a couple of 9th graders. Ya get to do that when you're doing the interview.

If you need to contact Allison, she can be reached at [email protected]

I hope you enjoy. If you like us give us a 5-star review. If you have comments or suggestions for future episodes, don't hesitate to leave a comment either here or in the CF Masters group on Facebook.

and here's Allison.....

In the CF Masters group on Facebook, we talk a lot about how the youngsters don't understand us old folks. It's true, they don't, but they can coach us.

I pulled in my coach, Cheryl Hargrove to talk about what it means for someone under 30 to coach old people, we talk about how her dad went from struggling with mobility at 67 to watching his placing on the Open leaderboard, and we talk a little bit about mindset and training and nutrition. 

If you want to find Cheryl, you can reach her on Instagram @cherylfasho, and she also programs for Outside the Box (outsidethebox.fit) which is online programming for the backyard, park, garage, and home gym — anytime, anywhere. They make sure you’re in and out in 30 minutes, and that includes a warm-up.

Enjoy this conversation. Yes, kids can coach us and do so quite well. Though they will hear us complain regularly.....

Welcome to Episode 7 of Get off our lawn, the CF Masters group podcast.

This week we have a very, very, very important topic and we have a couple of great friends and members of the group joining us. We’re talking about Mental Health.

You might ask - What does that have to do with Crossfit?

And that’s a great question because, for a lot of folks, mental health has nothing to do with Crossfit. For a few of us, however, Crossfit is a part of the puzzle that keeps us healthy both mentally and physically.

This week, Angela and I were incredibly lucky to have a couple of great guests. Josh Inman and Debra Gordon.

Josh recently started CF Masters Strong group on Facebook. This group is a forum where people can share their challenges with mental health, maybe see some folks in similar situations, and just have an area to know that we are not alone.

We also have Debra Gordon, a long time member of CF Masters. Debra reached out a month or so ago to ask if we could do a Get Off Our Lawn episode on mental health and depression.

Debra has lived with depression for decades and wanted to share her story, and how Crossfit has helped her.

To be honest, it wasn’t clear if we should cover this topic because it’s very, very serious for people, and we wanted to do it justice. We hope that we did.

First off, the reason we are doing this episode is to help, even in a miniscule way, to chip away at the stigma of mental health.

If you are in the United States, and you or a person close to you needs help or needs to talk about suicide, Call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at  1-800-273-8255

If you are not in the United States, and many of our listeners are not, please look for your local suicide prevention service.

Maybe a few of us grew up differently, but most of us in our age group grew up in an era where mental health was shunned, shamed, and pushed into a corner. People who were depressed needed to “suck it up” and “get over it.”

Sure, we never told a cancer patient, “it’s your fault you know. If you had taken better care of yourself you wouldn’t have gotten breast cancer.” But we did tend to think that about people with mental health issues.

Now it’s time to change that. Mental Health IS health.

Also - NOTHING in this episode is prescriptive. Josh and Debra are here to share their experiences, where they are today, and what got them here. These are their stories as they have lived them. None of this information is meant to be used as treatment or therapy.

If you have mental health issues PLEASE seek out a trained professional. If you are thinking about self-harm please call a Suicide prevention hotline.

We are here today to share that everyone can be susceptible to mental health issues just like everyone can be susceptible to being in a car crash or getting a sinus infection.

Also, please note that we are talking as friends here. We are not mental health professionals, we don’t know all the right terms, and we might say the wrong thing. Please understand that everything we talk about is said from a good place. If we mislabel a condition, or if we use a word that is no longer acceptable - we are old and set in our ways - while we are also learning. Let us know in the comments any place where we should have used different words.

For the podcast. Please share this with anyone or any group you think may be interested.

Also, please Like and give us a 5-star review on your podcast app. And don’t forget - Mental Health IS health.

First off - my apologies for missing a couple of weeks. It's been a bit of a shitshow with getting laid off and chasing down job leads and a side trip to hike the Grand Canyon on no training....

But here we are!!!

In Episode 6 we get to know Jim Cordes. I've always enjoyed his whit and input, and it was great to sit down with him and learn his story, from Orange County kid to Santa Barbara attorney. Getting to hear Jim tell his story of where he has been, how he got to where he is now, and what crossfit means in his life and transitioning from Dad bod at 40 to fit as hell at 57.

Jim is a great guy, and I hope you enjoy this conversation as much as I did.

GET OFF OUR LAWN!!!!!

Photo credit: David Kafer Photography

Welcome to Get Off Our Lawn the CF Masters podcast episode 5.

This week, Steve and I got a chance to get to know  Dan “Nitro” Clark

You may know him from American Gladiators

Dan, not Steve. Turns out Steve has done some writing for television too. Amazing what you can learn about people when you get a chance to hear their story.

Well, if you don’t know Dan from American Gladiators, do a search for American Gladiators on YouTube

The main thing I remember Dan for were spandex and spray tans. Turns out, and this is really no surprise - Dan is more than that, a lot more, and I’m really stoked to have had the chance to talk with him. A few years back Dan had a heart attack which changed his approach to life, and he shares that with as many people as he can.

Besides his TV fame, Dan has written screen plays, 2 books, including his latest, F Dying, which is a New York Times best seller and can be downloaded for free from Dan’t website, dannitroclark.net.

We get into life, his story, choices that he made along the way to get him to where he is now, how he looked forward and prepared himself for a life after American Gladiators by taking a myriad of writing classes, we also talk about parenting, why dogs are better than cats….

In truth, it’s a bunch of topics that affect all of us, whether we are larger than life television stars, like me, OK, like Dan, or we are normal people dropping the kids off at school and hitting a noon workout when we can.

We all do what we can to make it work.

You can find Dan in all of the social medias, he’s on Facebook, he is @dannitroclark on instagram, but you have to check out his podcast, Calm the Beast, available on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, and whatever platform you non-iPhone users have.

Enjoy our discussion with Nitro, and if you have a minute, give us a like or a 5-star nod on your podcast app of choice.

If you have another minute, tell us who you want to hear from next

Get Off Our Lawn, Episode 5 with Dan Nitro Clark.

If you don't know who Freddy Camacho is you should. He's about as OG crossfittter as it gets (think 2017 Games at the Ranch. Yeah. He was there). As in ownership in 3 affiliates over the years now Good For You Crossfit in Fremont, CA, as in he's already retired from one job (he was a cop), as in he's been at every Games, except 2013, as a participant in both individual and Masters, as a coach and most recently as a volunteer on the medical staff. If it's happened in Crossfit he's seen it and probably has a story to tell about it.

He's been doing this longer than Billy Goodson, if that's even possible, so if you put the two of them on the line just sit back, listen and laugh. Billy more than holds his own when it comes to storytelling and has a lot to talk about with Freddy.

Freddy tells us what it means to #goodson it - from the time Billy skipped a workout in the Games and still went on to beat Freddy at the end of the weekend. He also talks about training, getting into cycling, and where his life may be headed.

My hope for Get Off Our Lawn, the CF Masters podcast, was to have an excuse to talk to cool people about their lives. This episode is exactly that. Even if I did forget to ask the basic questions like "when did you start crossfit?" and "does the rig burn your hands when it's out in the sun in Carson?"

Oh well. Live and learn.

Enjoy.