If you're trying to get fit, a lot of people will put together a home gym, do something and find an actual gym to use. But maybe you need a kickstart, maybe you need to go away and really commit. I don't mean forever. I mean, just a little bit of time, and that'll give you something you can use for the rest of your life, just that intense of something.
Well, we're going to find out more about that. That's an English sense. On today's episode of the movement, the podcast for people who want to know the truth about what it takes to have a happy, healthy, strong body starting feet first, those things at the end of your legs, at your foundation. And we break down the propaganda, the mythology sometimes just flat out lies you've been told about what it takes to run or walk or hike or do you go across or whatever it is you want to do and do that effectively and efficiently and enjoyably.
And I'm highlighting enjoyably because you're not having a good time. You're not going to keep doing it anyway. So I'm Stephen Sashan, co-founder of Zero Shoes dot com and host of the movement podcast and we call it that because we, and most all of us, are creating a movement about natural movement, letting your body do what it's made to do, not getting in the way with things that will actually cause problems. So the way that you are involved is really simple.
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There's nothing you need to do to join. Just that's where you'll find previous episodes, other places you can find us on social media. And if you want to find a different place to get the podcast, you'll find other places there as well. Okay.
Well, let's get started. David, tell people who the hell you are and what you're doing here. Thanks for having me on, Stephen. Well, my name is Dave Durranci.
I was a former gymnast back from day. I grew up in New Jersey. I was fortunate enough to get a scholarship out to Stanford University, competed for Stanford. After I graduated, I became part of Team USA.
I was part of Team USA for six years. During that time, I was on a few World Championship teams. I was national champion a few times and then was part of the team that went to Beijing 2008 for the Olympic Games after the Olympics, moved back to Stanford and helped coach a team to a national championship in 2009. And right around that time, I was ending my competitive career, wanted to figure out what I wanted to do next and stumbled into the CrossFit space as someone that wanted to educate people on how to move better and not just move faster.
And so I started our current company Power Monkey Fitness with my partner who's a stuntman, former gymnast and now stuntman. And we've been doing educational seminars and such, which maybe we'll get into around what we do now with Power Monkey, but essentially we're fitness educators now around our little niche sports, trying to help people move better and move for longer with good technique at top of mind. So it's too bad that you didn't have a successful athletic career. I mean, I don't know, someone must have told you.
So I predate you by a long time and sadly, my gymnastics era, there was no post collegiate opportunities and I was two years in the wrong direction. So I was like, oh, well, and I'm certainly not going to compare my all American stuff to everyone. No, I did. I heard that you had, that's awesome.
I actually wanted to chat with you about it. That's pretty, you know, I don't get to talk to many people that also had collegiate messages. So I'm curious about yours a little bit. If you want to mind.
I'm going to skip ahead and I'm going to show you something that for those people who are only listening, they won't see it, but I'll show you this. That's a great talk. Yes. So it was a saying backflip.
That was on my 61st birthday. So, you know, not bad. Now I'm going to tell you something funny about this. I hadn't done a standing back in about five, you know, I don't know, four or five years.
And the last time I did one before that one that I just showed you, I only made it hands and knees and I didn't know why it was the first time I ever missed one and I had abdominal surgery three days earlier. So oops. But the interesting thing about doing that one now, when I said it, I know where I am and then I literally black out until I see my feet head of course ground. It's the weirdest experience in the world.
I mean, it's like time has gone blackout. And then I called one of my old high school gymnast friends and he said, how are your hands feeling? I know I did like 15. My hands were on fire.
Yeah, it's so bizarre. So sorry, again, all these things. But your mind continues to think I can do this. My body understands the pattern, but the body doesn't catch up the way that it used to.
No, it just isn't doing the things that it used to do. But I mean, I probably done this is going to sound hyperbolic, but I mean, it did some street performing. So I was doing 20, 30 standing backs a day. Then when I was just training, I was doing 100 a day just for the fun of it.
And so I probably done 20,000 of them in my career. And so yeah, the muscle memory is all there. Just the circulation gets all messed up. Absolutely.
Absolutely. But just not into that for the fun of it. What was the most? I'm going to give you a best and worst.
What was the best thing about being at that level and competing and heading to Olympics and world championships and all the rest? And what was the, I'll do three things. Best worst, most surprising. Yeah, sure.
So best has always been the team component. I think everyone considers and thinks of gymnastics as an individual sport. I have never thought of gymnastics as an individual sport. I grew up in a boys program in New Jersey that emphasized and encouraged it being a team component.
We were really lucky that we had a really big boys program, which is rare. And so I grew up always wanting to say, okay, my performance contributes to a bigger goal. And so going on to compete for Stanford and going on to compete for USA, it was always, what can I do to contribute to the betterment of the team? And so what I miss the most and what I get the most enjoyment out of thinking back to my memories of the sport is what we collectively did as a team and what the team did in Beijing and what our collegiate teams did and the moments where we surpassed people's expectations of what we were anticipated to do.
And for me, the team aspect is absolutely the most important part of what I look back fondly around the sport. Most challenging part, this might be a podcast all in and of itself, but the mental side of the sport was something that didn't come easy for me. How do you think of the mental side? Yeah.
So around competing and performing the way that you practice. And for years, I always had this separation because I love training. I was more of someone that was more of a gym rat. I loved being in the gym.
I loved taking turns and being in there first and leading last and doing all the work that other people weren't willing to do because I wasn't the most talented guy in the world. So I just appreciated the hard work that went into incrementally catching up on the others that were a little bit more talented. But then taking on transferring what you're doing well in a training session and then establishing that in a competitive setting was always really challenging for me. And basically when the lights were turned on, I needed to learn how to perform what I knew that I could do.
And in fact, you know, I for years had trouble with this idea that if I didn't perform my best, then I was letting everyone down. And this idea of everyone, your parents, your family, your coaches, your teammates are off counting on you. And if you don't perform, you're letting people down. And that's not necessarily the case, but it's the way that I went into competitions.
And it was a big detriment to me being able to perform at the level that I knew it was capable of. And so it took years and years for me to be able to understand how to mentally put myself in a place where I could treat a competition the way I did the training session. And I will tell you that it's not even easy to verbalize how to do it because I think everyone's journey towards finding that is slightly different in terms of what works for them. But it took for my last coach to kind of help me figure that out for myself.
You know, there's a small subset of this, but it might make sense. Like, so once I got back into sprinting, it took me years to stay in my lane. It took me years not to care if there was someone right behind my shoulder or right in front of my shoulder. And in a similar vein, the thing that's interesting about what you're saying, especially starting with your thing about the idea of genetics as a team sport, is you know, as well as anyone else, that there's no one you've ever competed against in the world.
Well, let me say differently. Anyone you've ever competed with or against. If they have six good routines, it's a fluke. And even with that, it's still hard because, you know, when it's not happening for you, it's like, it's like, it's not a pitch.
And that part of that is what I don't know about you. But that part of that is what kept me going is that reinforcement thing. And a joke again with sprinting. I finished a race and somebody says how to do.
And my answer is, can I give you the excuse or do you want the number? And it's the same thing. I mean, the best routine, the best floor routine I ever did. I took one small step and that's all I can remember.
Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Gymnastics is about working toward perfection, but never achieving it, right? Yeah.
There's always going to be something that's a little different about the apparatus, about the environment, about the temperature. Like these are things that go into performing that are slightly different everywhere you're going around the world. And the gymnasts that are able to minimize those distractions are like changes to the ones that normally end up at the top. Well, the irony with that is the only way you get good at that is by doing it wrong over and over and over and over again to deal with it.
So that goes back to what you're doing in training and the enjoyment of training. And of course, this is something that other people don't non-gimists understand is if you watch a bunch of gymnasts practicing training, you will see the craziest, most freaky wipeouts in the world. And then you'll see everyone else in that gym laughing hysterically. And so that kind of really broke his neck.
Like, can we open up the riot? Yeah. It's, I don't know if we're just crazy the way that we think or if we know if the person is okay or not, you always take a moment. And then the laughter starts as soon as you know they're up.
Yeah. Well, I mean, this is another thing. You can spot a wipeout from way before it happens. This is one of those things when I would be watching gymnastics with my big girlfriend and someone's just about to take off.
And I go, oh shit. And then, you know, split second later, massive wipeout. And you can spot it. So some of that is just you're anticipating because you see it coming.
Absolutely. And it's a joke with a punchline fundamentally. And I don't know if you went through one and we will get back to, you know, taking a fitness vacation, but, but I don't know if you went through this, but they're, when I certainly like towards the end of high school, the sense of kind of indestructibility and knowing what you can do with your body that no one else knows how to do had led everyone that I know to do really, really stupid shit. So my version was we'd be driving on the highway at 100 miles an hour, climb out one window, go across the roof, climb in another window.
Because you can grab both sides of the car at the same time. Where's the problem? I mean, it just seems so obvious. I love it.
Those stories are only for gymnast have those stories like we, we are daredevils in the most natural sense. We just take on risks like most people have no idea. And we at least have a platform and an arena where we can actually show off those moves. Well, and that's the thing that people understand is it changed during your era and PSI used to watch you all the time.
It changed during your era where they stopped giving points for how close did you come to dying. So the originality part of the ROV. It was literally it was a risk part. So I was, I was here, I'll speak in code and then I'll decipher.
I mean, I was doing one of three is a 19 a 79 on a wrestling mat. The you that I was doing that three guys got paralyzed. And I said to my coach years later, why didn't you tell me about that? He goes, well, it would freak you out.
Maybe I knew you could do it. He might, my coach was like five time world, five time national three time world tumbling champion and one of the greatest gymnasts and gymnast coaches ever. And I'd say to him things like, who else did you ever teach this move to? He went, nobody else.
That's the guy who could do it. So, but yeah, the risk part was you got bonus points for like, go shit. They very, very stupid thing. But so your partner is a stunt man.
And this is funny because when I was doing when I was saying it was stunt guys, we were asked to do something and it'll map it out with a spreadsheet and the gymnast like, oh, what's good to do that? Yeah. Yeah. Pull for mindset.
Absolutely. Yeah. He's loving that world now. He's a little older.
Here. What are you working on this week? What movie? What TV show?
He's always in some interest. On the sad part, we have one of our dear friends and someone who we help a lot is Jesse Graf who in addition to being an injured, you can Jesse's stunt person. And the sad thing is she's legally not allowed to talk about muscle what she's done. So the actors can pretend that they were doing it.
You know what? I don't think that's not people to get nearly enough recognition. There's still no Oscar award for stunts, which is absurd. I just I watched on the plane out here.
I'm in Tennessee right now. I just flew out yesterday. I watch some of that fall guy movie that just came out that new Ryan Gosling movie. That's supposed to be like showing off stunt people a little bit more.
but they definitely need to give a look at more love. What they do is absolutely insane. Keanu Reeves did a really great thing. I interviewed someone who said, you do your own stunts.
He said, I do my own action. Stunt men do the stunts. Yeah. Yeah.
Which was very kind of him to say. So many people in Hollywood don't want to admit the truth. Like something like that were, yeah, I took steroids. I'm saying any of those guys who were in their 60s who looked like they're ready to go to a body-building competition have ever done anything performance dancing.
Clearly it's just chicken and rice and vegetables and two-day workouts. That's possibly been. Anybody can do it. That's right.
Just get the right chicken. Okay. So we had a best and worst and we have a surprising. A surprising.
I'm still able to do things at my age that I didn't think I would be able to. And I think it's kind of the path that I've taken to make fitness and movement such an important part of my life that I'm still able to do things that most people who retire from the sport 16 years ago are not able to do. So surprising in the sense that I'm happy that I'm still able to do planches and still do 100 press the handstands and ring handstands. And so for me, I'm surprised that my body is still capable of doing some of the things that I used to compete.
I have shown my standing back lip to a number of former Olympians. A little bit older than you. I have seen a lot of people playing, for example. And anytime I do, if they haven't done what you've done with just stay with it at a decent level, they respond to always the same, which is bite me, man.
Get out there and do it. It's like we deal. I have the same conversation with runner, or sprinter say, oh, well, I used to sprint, but I haven't done that for a while. It's like, master track and field.
Just get back out there. It's good. That's a big deal. So it is an interesting point.
If you really kind of, I'm not even don't stop, but as long if you have an athletic mindset, that's going to keep going for a while. I'm going to do a not humble brag along with the horrible admission. I used to have two claims to fame. One that I never won crux on.
The other is I'd never played pickleball. Sadly, I broke the ladder this past weekend. I was at a friend's birthday party. And everyone was playing.
Said, come on, play. And I got a very sweet compliment from one of the coaches. He said, wait, let me see if I get this right. That was the first time you've ever played pickleball.
I said, I haven't even touched a racket in 30 years. Jesus. You should be doing this professionally. And that's not going to happen.
Jump out ping pong. Not my thing. Oh, man. We love it.
You're at our power market camp. It's become one of the hits of the off times. It becomes very competitive. We are just very competitive in everything we do.
Yeah, it's become a fun after training activity for a lot of people here. So it is fun. Well, that but you nailed it though. It was fun, but everyone else is like competitive.
It's like, Oh, yeah, that's not going to work. There's no bonus points, no prize money, no sponsorship. I actually did watch a very funny video last night of a professional game where one of the players just got really mad because the opposing team kept lobbing towards her, which doesn't sound like a big deal. But what that meant was the sun was in her eyes and she kept like whipping and missing the ball.
And then she got so mess like, you can't keep doing this. Like this is a competition. Yeah. Like, you know, you don't like it.
Wait till you're on the side of the court and you'll do it to me. What's the deal? That was actually a couple more for you. This related to this.
I went when I was at the Atlanta Olympics as a spectator, not a performer. I went to every sport that I knew nothing about, which was really funny. My favorite thing that I went to was wrestling. And it was my favorite because it was a very small venue that you were right up against the mats, the judges were right in front of you.
And you know, there's no space between you and the rest of us, which is great. And everybody in the audience was either a current former or family member of a wrestler. So it was this incredible familial thing. No matter where you were from, they all knew each other.
It was a very small world. And in fact, what the best part was this one Polish wrestler was having just a great competition. And so everyone became Polish. I mean, whenever there are people freaking out, no matter where they were from, no matter who, if their own kid was up against that guy, they were still all Paul.
So it was great. What was the international feeling like for you? Because that's varied over the years. The international feeling.
It's more just in general. No, actually. So I was fortunate enough to compete 17 times for USA during the course of my USA career. So I traveled all over the place.
It was on two American games teams, a few world championships competed in Ukraine, a bunch of times, Paris, all over the place. So we got a sense of what the atmosphere was like in a variety of different places, some places that are where gymnastics is the national sport or something close to it, competing in Japan, where gymnastics is a highlighted sport is very different than competing in Dominican Republic, where, you know, it's just another sport. That's the honest in America. Exactly.
Exactly. But I will say that most places, the Americans were not the favorite people in the world when it came to when we stepped on the court, the maths. And it was funny. I remember one, one pan American games were down in Brazil.
We were in Rio and the entire crowd was against us. So essentially anyone, they wanted anyone to win or to hit a routine outside of American. So there were 19 people, 19,000 people in the stands and I had never heard so many cheers for a mistake. So if we had a bent knee or if we had a big step or it got for a bit of fall, they were going create in fact, they would cheer more for an American fall or a mistake and they weren't even for a Brazilian hitter team.
So for us, that was crazy. And I remember our coach and I was training one of my Stanford coaches at the time was preparing us for these. Hey, when you go compete in South America, you got to prepare for anything. So I'm doing a Paul Morris routine and getting ready.
And I just see like a shoe like come right by my head and like with my my ear. And I'm like, I come down and I was like, what was that? You have thrown a shoe at me. I was like, why are you throwing a shoe at me?
He's like, Hey, you never know what's going to happen down there. They might be throwing. I was like, nobody's going to throw shoe at me while I'm competing. He's like, Hey, we're preparing for anything.
You never know. And I didn't get a shoe thrown at me, but the atmosphere was quite hostile. Yeah, that's I can't even imagine the feeling that one. All right.
One last one that I just thought of something. This is kind of a commercial for gymnastics since it isn't hugely watchers popular. Here's it is not the places. The best part about watching the Olympics or even world championships, especially the Olympics, is the when people are just competing on individual events, when you're getting the specialist, who you almost never see.
And those guys, it's for people who don't know if you ever get to go to the Olympics and I highly encourage it. That's the part you want to watch, because it's guys who only focus on one or two things. They're incredibly good and they know that for them to win an individual medal, they got to throw everything they've got and they will be doing shit that nobody else would even think of doing because it's so risky or so. God knows what.
And you see some of the most amazing things that human beings ever done. Absolutely. I want to point out a couple things there that I think are interesting. One, hopefully people watching gymnastics in Paris over the summer and are still a little bit engaged from the amazingness that happened in Paris, especially on the gymnastics side because the men did an incredible job for us, metal in 16 years.
And what came of it was an amazing story, Stephen Ederasic, Palmer Horse specialist, talking about specialist, Palmer Horse guy as he's known to the masses and now he's on dancing with the stars and getting all the accolades and recognition that he deserves, which is awesome to see. But I encourage exactly what you're saying, because a lot of times in my world, where we're seeing people now being interested in handstands and ring work and bar work for the first time, they're starting to work on very basic gymnastics movements, you know, working on pullovers maybe or some form of a Kip and in gymnastics world, these are very low level movements, but still challenging for people as they're learning, especially later in life. And we're creating this ability to create a form of comparison, which has always been lacking in the gymnastics world way back, flip it, double back and a triple back. We're all the same.
They were all equally difficult, crazy, amazing. I mean, I have no idea how more difficult they double is from a triple. So it's all gets lost on someone. Yeah.
Now we're able to create a little bit of form of comparison where I tried to get up on rings, I tried to do a muscle up and I can't do it. And now I'm seeing someone do an iron cross. I have a form of comparison and a reference point, which is critical. But I would highly encourage, there were a few routines that really stood out to me at the Olympic Games that I would encourage people to go back and look.
And there were two Chinese gymnasts, one that was on parallel bars that won the gold medal on parallel bars. His parlobar routine is so far ahead of all of the other parlobar routines that it's in kind of league of its own, like a Simone Biles of the parlobar world where he's doing a routine that shouldn't really be possible and executing it at a level that shouldn't be possible. So I would highly recommend going to watch that specific gold medal wing routine and something that stands out above the rest. And then additionally, the Chinese gymnast that won rings, his ring routine is also just powerful in terms of what he's doing, the level, the expertise, the precision.
It's horrible because he makes it look so easy and he's the most difficult. He's doing stuff that literally no one else even thought you could do. It's incredible. He looks like he's in, we have an apparatus that we built with the power monkey.
It's called a ring thing, which most former gymnast will call it a dream machine. It's a 50-50 device that we use as a training tool to be able to understand positions where it takes away 50% of your volume. Let me describe it because it's so much fun. It's my favorite.
So basically people can imagine those still rings. And instead of having the rings, well, you've got the ring still, but what you set up is a pulley. So the pulley goes to your waist and basically your hands. So that, I mean, you're not releasing rings.
You're using the other end of this pulley. And so what it does, and you can make it take over half your way or even more. So basically, you can do like all these strength moves that you can't really do yet. You can do it fake and that's good enough for me for now.
So yeah, if you can never find one of these, you got to sell it. We sell them power monkey. We make it. Yeah, we make them.
We call the ring thing and we've been selling it for over a decade now. It was actually the first piece of equipment that me and my partner made when we were living in New York to help the cross the world out to help understand how to do strict movements correctly. And now we have the Medellin B Training Center. We have the Medellin B Training Center.
We have the Medellin B Training Center. We have the Medellin B Training Center. We have the Medellin B Training Center. Yeah.
You know that I know that, you know, as soon as we're done, I'm going to buy one because I've got a space. We have a deck and underneath the deck. There's just enough room. I got a couple sets of rings, but now I'm going to replace one of those.
Perfect. Yeah, it'll be a fun little thing to play around with. But one thing that's interesting. And so just a way for people who are the casual observer to the gymnastics world, something to look out for.
There's something called a false grip in the gymnastics world when you're on rings. And it's basically creating a crease at your wrist where you're setting the ring in that crease between your forearm and the palm of your hand instead of in the mid corner of your palm. And I'm, you know this already, but just explain to your viewers and listeners. And that distance change is only a few inches in terms of where the ring sits, but it creates a significant mechanical advantage.
So most gymnasts will do what's called a false grip to be able to hold those crazy difficult positions for the full two seconds that's required. Now in the gymnastics world, a false grip is a deduction. So you get points taken off for doing what almost everyone does. The top of the top, and especially in the case of this Chinese gymnast, what they're doing at the Olympics now is opening the palm of their hand up to show the judges that there's no false grip and that they're sitting the ring in the palm of the hand.
And the Chinese gymnast does this when he's inverted and is inverted cross. And it's one of the most beautiful and badass things you will ever see. So when you're watching, don't just be in awe. Look for these little nuance things to be able to separate yourself and say, okay, this is the guy that stands out.
And even better, look for the guys who are even cheating that where they're basically doing a false grip. So the ring, when their arms fully outstretched parallel to the ground, the ring is basically still on their wrist instead of on their hand. They open their hand, but the ring is on their wrist. And they're hoping no one's going to notice, which is ridiculous.
But first I saw that I'm well played. That's good. So, okay, let's get back to where we started this whole thing. And by the way, this is what happens to me on this every time I talk to anybody as we know where we're going to start, but we think we know we're going to start.
We never get there. Talk to me about, talk to me about where you are right now and what you're doing. Sure. So I'm out in the woods of Tennessee, middle of nowhere.
The town is called Crossville. We have been running an adult fitness camp for the last 11 plus years. Power Monkey is the name of my company and we run Power Monkey Camp. And this facility is owned by two Olympic gymnasts who you may know, they're still very relevant in the sport.
John McCready was on the 96 team where you were there in the stands watching John. And then John, the Spurder, who was on three Olympic games, 96 being one of the 92 and in 2000 was his last. And the two Johns own this facility and run it as a kids gymnastics camp in the summers. And we take over with Power Monkey in the fall of the spring and we turn it into an adult fitness camp.
And so we bring in 100 participants from around the world. We have a staff of about 50 to 70 depending on the camp who are all experts in a variety of different spaces from gymnastics to weightlifting to jump rope training to running to kettlebells to rowing. We do yoga in the mornings. We do contrast therapy.
We do metabolic testing. We do nutrition seminars and mental training seminars. We do programming seminars. We do adaptive training.
We do sleep seminars. It's pretty wide ranging in terms of the expertise that we bring to people that are just gym owners or coaches or just athlete enthusiasts. And we give them an opportunity to not only learn from the great minds within the space, but also in an environment that you normally don't get a chance to do anymore. And that's basically a camp.
And if you ever gone to a kids camp when you were growing up and it's a fond memory, we're able to recreate that. As an adult, you sleep in cabins. We have chef here that does amazing meals for us all week. You train during the during the day and then we have beers and s'mores at campfire at night.
We get to hang out. We have a beautiful lake, 158 your campus, 50,000 square foot of gym space across four gyms. It's really, really a special environment. So what kind of people are typically showing up?
It's very wide ranging. We've had about 40 different countries represented over the years. We have kids from 16 is our youngest allowable camper. They come with a shop or one before 18.
They can come at 16 and we've had people come all the way up to mid 80s and that participate. We've had people that are have won the CrossFit Games and baby and hum you can as part of our team now is going to be coming to do a demo. So we have Olympic champions that are here, but it's really meant for the beginner and intermediate level athlete that wants to just learn how to move better and how to maybe teach things a little bit better if they're a coach. And so I think sometimes people will see our materials, promotional materials and get intimidated when they see some of the high level athletes doing things, but it's really not meant for them.
Those are guests or some of your coaches. It really is meant for the everyday athlete that's just looking to get a little bit better for longevity purposes. So how long do people come for? It's full week long.
So we got here last night and we're will be setting up until our coaches will get here on Saturday, which in a couple of days, campus arrived on a Sunday and it's a full week long and they leave on the following Saturday. How many people typically? Participants we cap it out of 100. We normally have between 180 and 100 participants.
It's normally about 150 people total. That's a great number to have. I mean, it's for a lot of reasons. It obviously have enough coaches for people to still getting all the personal attention they need, but that community is a really big deal.
And I imagine just for everyone seeing people at different levels is very helpful as well. The people who were like, you know, very new to the whole idea, feeling whatever encouragement, not just it was a smaller group and you were a real beginner and there's a bunch of people who were a couple steps ahead of you would be really depressing. But you've got enough people that your back gets mitigated. And I imagine the people who are more advanced have the opportunity to kind of start mentoring those other people as well.
Without it out, a camp is we set it up as a great informational week. And that's what my thought process was. You know, 11 years ago, we did our first one. Let's try to get great experts into a space and see if we can get an awesome informational week.
And it's turned into an experience. It's way more than what you learn in the stations is the people you meet, the bonds that you create creating a situation where you can get away from your cell phones and all the craziness that's going on in the digital world and be present with someone in person. We don't have enough opportunities for things like that these days and camp has allowed for it. And I actually do.
I have two little baby girls and I would say that camp is my third kid and my family kid is 11 years old right now. And I'm just so fortunate and grateful to see what it's turned into. And the campers, I feel are feel the same way. No, we have campers that have come back five, six, 10.
We have one camper that's come back 15 times. And it's not because the information drastically changes. It's because she feels at home here. She feels like the campers and the coaches are part of her family in the same way that we do.
So for us camp has become so much more than the information. It really is a special experience. If somebody, I said this thing for a long time, I said, it's important to get comfortably being upside down because it's just one of those things when you have that in your repertoire, it just changes the way you think about almost anything. And also feels really good too.
There's that. So that was a crayloot in some weird way for if somebody has never, I'm trying to think of how to ask this even if someone doesn't think of himself as particularly coordinated or maybe all they've ever done is gone for a run or gone for a swim or something, but they don't think that even just the idea of moving better. Now we've been talking to a massive for half an hour. Seems a little intimidating.
If somebody comes in with no experience whatsoever, what are the kind of things they were learning over that week? What are they walking away with? It's pretty wide ranging, right? So gymnastics is just three of the stations.
So there is a ring station, a bar station, and a handstand station. I teach the handstand station. And we always kind of have, you know, the jobs that each other at coaches saying that each of our stations are the best. And that's the one that you're going to do, right?
But I really feel like gymnastics is such a great foundation for anything else that you want to go on to do. And I think most gymnasts will feel that way. In fact, USA Gymnastics, Logan, up begin here, go anywhere. It's something that resonates really well with me because I don't hope that anyone just goes to the Olympic Games.
That shouldn't be the intention for stepping into a gymnastic gym for the first time. It should be, how can I use this as a foundation for whatever it is I want to go on to do physically? And so I'm always promoting body awareness and what we call creation of body shapes as a good foundation. It should be a main takeaway of what camp should be for you.
Can I get my body in the shape that I need for future skill development or how I'm going to apply it? So one of the main things that I want people to get away from this week is, OK, do I have a strong core? Or what's limiting my core? Because I think creating good shapes is based around two things, one, a strong core and two, a more mobile body.
So we do a lot of things around saying, what are your limitations mobility wise? What does your core engagement look like? Everything that encompasses your midline, not just your beach muscles, not just your abs and your hip flexes, but you can see in the mirror, rotation and lateral work, obliques as well as your chain. You have a strong core, you have a mobile body, can I create good shapes and then go ahead and apply it to whatever these other stations you want to go ahead and do.
And so when you I mentioned you hear from people after they've left camp and the things that they're then doing that maybe they hadn't done before and think they could do before. What kind of some of those stories? Oh, it's endless. It's really endless.
I mean, I always get the handstand stories because that's the station that I keep. So I say, you know, I got my first handstand hold. I was able to hold it for a minute for the first time or I was able to walk across the floor for the first time or I got my first press to handstand. And so we get endless stories of people succeeding incrementally in all of the different spaces.
I PR my snaps or my overhead water, whatever I am trying to do my marathon for the first time. I'm using the running techniques that you guys taught me and the pacing and the breathing techniques that come along with what we do at a rain station. So we've had so many success stories that it's really hard to pinpoint one that's worth highlighting. But really every one of our stations has led to someone being able to achieve something a little bit better because of the expertise here.
And just realize that the first time I walked into a crossfit box, maybe instead of sheer curiosity, I don't remember why their whole pitch was, you know, we're going to make you a better athlete. And I was saying, I'm not trying to be a better athlete. I'm a sprinter. I'm trying to get that much faster.
I just need a sense of a second and that'll change my life. This is not going to make you better. I think I understand I don't need that. But the irony is that I would argue that what you're doing is more foundational and valuable in terms of creating a better athlete at whatever level you think that means for you then walking to crossfit box where they're throwing you into situations that most people aren't ready for in my opinion.
Yeah. Yeah. And I think that was that's one of the things that we're trying to alleviate within the process space because one, there's so many cross the chins and some of them are doing things really well and others are doing things very poorly. And I think that's kind of the crapshoot of the gym that you walk into.
Yeah. Also, crossfit is meant to become fairly good at a lot of things. You're looking to become an expert in one vertical, right? Become a sprinter to become incrementally better in that particular space.
Crossfit isn't really meant for that. Crossfit is can I lift a lot of weight? Can I become good on my hands and do gymnastics work? And can I become an athlete that has an engine for days and become moderately good across the board so that I can attack any type of physical environment relatively well.
But again, it comes down to who's coaching you, how they're approaching things and you never know what you're going to get. And so we've always been like, hey, this is amazing that millions of people around the world are now interested in our little niche sports. Instead of saying, hey, you're doing it poorly, let's figure out a way to help. And so we always look at as an opportunity to say, hey, we want to get you guys better so that you become better and cross it.
Workout, you can become better if this is something that you really want to dive more deeply into it. So crossfit has been something that I've always gravitated towards because the passion that I have for teaching and showing people what a cool sport gymnastics can be. And also the founder of Crossfit was a gymnast. And I know that he always envisioned gymnastics being a bigger part of people's physical endeavors.
So for me, it's just a way to help build the sport of gymnastics and gymnastics and teach people that it can be part of your longevity fitness journey. It can be something that you can do much later into life, even though you probably think now that it's not possible. It is interesting that we're not for Crossfit. There wouldn't be as many people interested in muscle us.
And if it weren't for, you know, when I was, oh gosh, between 18 and 20, I did this for a while. Anyway, my first time in New York City, I moved up there for a summer to be a street performer and we'll go to Central Park and find a handful of kids who are tumbling. And it was mostly like, you know, kids from the burrows or like from Harlem, it was people who were not trained gymnasts, but came out and figured it out. And we would just be doing crazy, crazy stuff in the park.
It was really fun. And that in many ways evolved over, oh my God, you know, that was a long time ago. That was 40, something years ago. That evolved into this whole calisthenics movement as well, which also has done this interesting give and take with gymnastics where they're doing some insane stuff.
And again, introducing people to movements and activities that you would never think about doing because you're out to literally your local playground and you've got an entire gym there. And simultaneously, they started doing moves that gymnast started adopting that are actually in the code of fuzzy what's he thinking right now, my brain is not. That was what I couldn't find. I don't know why I couldn't point to got code up.
I was so close. But regardless, you know, that's another thing where you there are people who I mean, there's more people doing planches right now and people don't know what a plan she is imagining a pushup and then just lifting your feet off the ground. Easiest way to describe it. So your body is parallel to the ground supported by your hands, which just seems insane.
I mean, my God, dude, when I was doing gymnastics in 19, when I up until 84, the number of people who do a plan on rings, you could count them one hand. You know, and now if you can't do that in high school, you're not, it's insane how those things have evolved. But so it's kind of funny that there is this crossover, this mainstream specialist crossover, but it hasn't really, have you seen that it's brought more people into a gymnastics gym or just that it's more interesting around the more mainstream fitness world or just people's awareness and consciousness. Unfortunately, I haven't seen the effects in terms of boys entering the men's gymnastics world.
Yeah. That's something I was kind of keeping eye on. Fortunately, the good news there is that what happened in Paris has had a positive impact in terms of what it always is. I think this particular year, because we're getting a little bit of an extended push and extended netarossip being on TV and the Palmer horse guys is known getting some headlines.
Post Paris has been helpful for signing up of men's gymnastics. Women's gymnastics does very well. And there are no shortage of girls wanting to grow up to be the next one. Biles, but we don't have as many voice programs that are capable of creating high level gymnasts and they're, they take up a lot of gym space.
It's expensive. The coaching is difficult. And so we're seeing a lot of voice programs kind of go by the wayside and also the NCAA side is a conversation in of itself. You know, there's only 12 programs left.
If we lose one more, NCAA will probably drop men's gymnastics altogether, which is such a shame. But I'm trying very hard to use this platform that we have within the functional fitness space to be able to say, hey, gymnastics is something that maybe you want to put your kid into. Go to a collegiate meet, go watch Stanford, Oklahoma, Penn State, Michigan, whoever these top teams are. If you're in that town, go watch them compete, support them, show the NCAA, that mentioned that's something that actually can continue to grow.
It's interesting. I so we support the the artistic swimming, the Olympic artistic swimming team. And one of the things I said to them, we started talking with them right before COVID, actually. And in fact, during COVID, I gave them some ideas for making artistic swimming, formerly synchronous, or popular.
I said, you've got to make it more accessible in some way. When the women are in the water, no one knows who's who, them and you all basically look the same. There's not a there and it is kind of an odd sport in general. So it's like, do something to make it so that people just want to hang out with you guys.
So even two ideas. I said, one is do a synchronized swimming thing, but it's everybody at home in their own homes, in their bath tubs and just do something there. Or when you can get out, do routines as you're going down a slip and slide and more find one or two women on the team who just happen to be the ones who, you know, they're the life of the party or whatever it is, where people are going to relate to that personally. And gymnastics, women's gymnastics has had the great gift of some of the vials.
And because beyond being one of the greatest gyms of all time, she's got that she has that personality. She was able to take that on. I don't know how much of that is natural versus just for willing us to go there. In track and field, it was you saying, bolt, it was Carl Lewis before him and nothing in between.
And men's gymnastics is kind of funny that the most the person who's bringing the most attention to gymnastics is doing the most difficult event you could possibly do, which no one's going to show up and go, Hey, I'm going to do a pommel horse. And if you're there and saying, but you know, good on him for being willing to go there and bring some attention to the sport. And it always needs you always need someone to relate to me. My God, look, when I started zero shoes, I explicitly didn't want my face on camera because I want to think if we're going to sell the company at some point, I don't want to be attached to it.
What happened? I'd make a video. It's like, Hey, I'm saying, I'm going to make a pair of sandals and it's 10 minutes of people looking at my feet making a pair of sandals, which by the way, still needs to do some very interesting phone calls that we get. I can imagine.
Some video is deep as feet, please. So that happens. But I've only made a fortune doing that. Haven't I?
So that's the thing that gymnastics is like, it was Kurt Thomas in the day. It was really Bart. It was never really. It was Kurt.
That was it. And so that's one of the fundamental problems. If you're not living in a place where you're where you're where you're living supports the sport in general, then you need to stand out personality even more than a standout performer. And ironically, men's gymnastics has the rantings because you may think of this.
Mentioning has to test the other problem that fundamentally every event you have to be pretty stoic until you stick a landing. And that's a whole phenomenon of celebrating the moment your feet at the ground. So it's an attempt to kind of make things a little less robotic. You're not really.
Yeah, I think you're right. You know, it's not the easiest thing in the world to be able to show personality and still perform at high level. But these athletes today are doing the best they can to elevate their personal brands and showcase their sport in new ways and be able to cross, you know, perform with calisthenics and with all of these other sports that have niche sports that have a bit of a presence. I will say, I just want to mention because I think it's worth people understanding that maybe there is a way to help grow the sport.
There are some new colleges that have been starting to incorporate men's and women's programs. As an example, Simpson College just a couple years ago started a men's and women's program for the first time, which we've been slowly chipping away these programs and NCA 80s have been just saying it's not the worthwhile budget piece to implement. So they're getting rid of it rather than adding. But we've been recognizing that there's certain colleges in the country that are enrollment driven and enrollment driven colleges are in a place where if we can show if a gymnastics coach and come on board and say we can bring 20 kids to the school that are willing to pay to come to the school to have an opportunity to gymnastics.
That means that gymnastics has filled 20 seats and has brought intuition of 20 potential students. So this is an incredible new avenue that enrollment driven universities and colleges have been interested to bring on gymnastics programs because there is the possibility of filling out their student roster that way. And so we've been in discussions with some of these schools to do something interesting next year and to do a little bit of what you've been talking about, try to create this form of comparison. So I've encouraged I've tried to put together still in very initial stages, but this idea of putting together kind of a strength challenge where instead of competing and doing Palmer's routines, these athletes against each other, colleges will do strength challenges and do handstand holds for time or do max handstand push ups, things that the everyday calisthenic athlete or cross athlete are doing in their own gym.
So they can see what a gymnast is able to do at the same time. So we can say, oh, I can't believe a gymnast has been that long. I know what I'm trying to do. And now we're seeing them do it at a competitive level and actually compete against each other.
So this is again, an initial phase of saying is there a way that we can use these collegiate gymnasts and their competitiveness in a way that's a little bit more attractive to someone that's not understanding what the code points is putting out there. I'm going to say something that started out as an economic thought and turned into something much more comical. I think pouring out gymnastics is a great idea. Whatever's going to grow the sport.
But I mean, what the initial thought was, I think that's a brilliant idea to present this as an economic benefit to people, rather than some moral high ground, whatever the importance of athletics or whatever. More importantly, economics dictates everything. Yeah, that's a crisis. I think that's really brilliant.
And it's something that's somewhat ironic thing about, again, like my high school career, if you will, they kill the men's gymnastics programs, like in the entire county that I was living in soon after I left, because they hadn't figured out a way to monetize it. And we were taking up a lot of space and a lot of time that other sports that have more attention and would bring in people who were willing to pay to see that, for example. So yeah, it's always about the cash. I mean, even I went to Duke and I didn't come to college.
You're not talking about that, but I still worked out with a team. They had a women's team and I worked out with them. And they had a losing football team for my entire four years there and for many years before and after. But that was still the money driver or one of the two, best of all, obviously being the biggest, but football still drove revenue, even though they never won a game practically.
So to make gymnastics something that could be a revenue driver, even at a small scale, as long as it's, you know, cashflow positive, that's totally brilliant. Good luck with that. Oh, yeah. Good luck is the only thing that we really have in our favor right now.
I mean, that's sarcastically, I mean, you know, yeah. It's very challenging. In fact, you brought basketball and football. Those are really the only two revenue generating sports in the NCAA at all right now.
Now with NAO, NIL, part of the equation now, it's upending everything. I think with Wild West right now in terms of what's happening, athletes being paid as employees, I don't know if you saw this week, something interesting happening. University of Tennessee is starting to add in on their ticket prices for their season tickets for football. A I don't remember the wording of it, but essentially there's a 10% increase.
That's to pay for talent. So there's an increase that the fans of the team have to pay to now pay for the talent to pay for the NIL contracts for these athletes. So it's getting put onto the viewers and the fans because the AD, the departments can't pay what these guys are asking for anymore. So I have no idea what's going to happen.
It's totally a wild west right now with NIL. Yeah, no, we've had some high school kids say I want to get 10 grand a year. It's like, what? Yeah.
That's not a thing. I mean, you know, in point, you just have Olympians who didn't get paid 10 grand a year. So, Emeterism is officially good. It's well, you know, obviously good news bad news about that.
I mean, it is important to recognize if you are putting in the work, congratulations, I got a core presentation that I'm never going to use and I probably didn't even go to most class, not things that are for all college athletes, of course, but but there are some who are definitely there on a. That's funny. I went back to my 40th college reunion and was talking to my cognitive psych mentor who I've stayed in touch with all these years. And she had a student who was a basketball player, a very, very good player who was who basically was trying to side of the year, even in his day for a senior year because he would offer so much money to go to the NBA.
And he just was sitting there in class and like, you know, did nothing, didn't even lift up his hoodie. And she just pulled him aside and said, you know, like, what's up? And he goes, I'm just here to get the credit and I don't really get it. And I don't remember how she said it, but she basically like spent an hour just explaining how cool what they were doing that class was.
And he just hadn't noticed because he wasn't paying attention and it lit him up and stayed for his senior year, went to the NBA. I was saying, I think when I'm done with this, I'm going to go back and get a master's degree. So it's like, so it also takes the right person on the other end of that equation to engage athletes and have them want to be there independent of the fact that they're getting a free ride or getting a stipend or whatever their NIL deal is just a guy here. The University of Colorado is making like $2 million a year already.
And that's just not right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Colorado is Boulder is that where we're at?
Yeah. It's one of the marquee place right now with the Sanders family and Chidora and obviously Dion, it's one of the main place right now. We're seeing kind of the numbers LSU with the Libby Dunne down on Genostic side and some of the other March Manning down in Tennessee and Texas. So there's a few that are just kind of like the powerhouse right now.
They're able to make seven, in some case eight figures, which is kind of crazy to think about. But if it's allowing these athletes to be able to become financially sound and it's something that's allowable, then you can't fault them for wanting to pursue them. No, no, no. And look, let's be honest, for many of these sports, you've got a limited lifetime.
Yeah. Like this, you know, it's funny. And the only thing that actually what bugs me about the NIL stuff and it's like for people who don't know its name image like this. So that means amateur athletes are getting paid.
So they can't their name image and like this can't be used without their without compensation or at least their permission. And the thing that makes me anxious about this is simply that these are people who are most of them so young that their ability to understand the limited time window that they have and what they need to do financially to take advantage of that in a way that they are possibly set for their life. I mean, that rarely happens even when someone gets out of college and is starting playing professionally at 2122, even if they're kind of it's like, we see all the time people who just don't know what to do with all that cash and then end up broke. This is an opportunity to do something really valuable that I haven't seen people really considering that in a thoughtful way, which is just a shame because if I you're just low on a new Lamborghini, who gets a crown?
Yeah, financial literacy is definitely a component of it all. I would just say that this conversation is one that's important to have. But in reality, like growing the sport should be the main goal, giving more opportunities, athletes at the next generation still has the same opportunities that this current one has that we have and we were coming up and competing at the collegiate level. I think that's really important.
So anything that we can do to make sure that those doors are still open scholarship wise or non scholarship wise, just having the opportunity to compete, I think it's important. Yeah, I agree. So backing up back into power making back into people coming to camp, if people want to find out more about doing that and sorry, you run. We talked about a week long program.
I lost track of every doing multiple weeks back to back or are you just done it. So just to give a quick understanding of the other things that we do. Camp is basically like our hallmark event. We do two a year one to fall on the spring.
We host other events. So we're traveling around the world going to gyms and doing weekend courses about 25 to 30 weeks a year otherwise. And then we host a couple of higher end fit vacation retreats in Europe. We're doing actually one of South Africa for the first time this year.
We're in treat trees. We're in Sicily at early last year. And so we do the higher end smaller group type of vacations as well. We lost our digital component.
We have an app where we highly recommend people checking out the power monkey training apps in the iOS and Android store. And it's a great way if you come to an event as a way to supplement your training. What's next? How do I continue with working with you guys post camp retreat or course?
And so there's kind of all the pillars of what's going on with the power monkey network. Really? And not surprisingly, you will be found at the URL. Fitness.com and then camp itself as its own URL power monkey camp.com.
Anything else people should know about finding out more about what you're up to and more importantly, what they can do with what you're doing. Because this is interesting. Now, they think that what you're providing a lot of people that I've talked to, you know, they'll have a course or they'll have something. But it's kind of trying to find this.
What you've laid out is really a change in what someone thinks they can do for the rest of their life. And that's maybe I'm just being a little biased. That's what I'll probably. But regardless, you know, this is a big thing.
Fundamental. That's where I'm going. Where we started, this idea of discovering the sort of fundamentals of what your body can do and what you can do with it is everything. And many people that I'm talking to or let's say one step removed from that, even if they think they're doing fundamentals, I would argue that it's not often as complete as the program that you've described.
And so I hope people check it out. Obviously, I want to hear from people when they do because this is a wonderful thing. And I love actually, I'm going to go full circle. How did you even decide to do this?
Yeah. So I've been coming to the facility for over 20 years. I have been a special guest in the summers helping out the kids during the kids, gymnastics camp for years and years. And I always loved coming here.
Johnny John are very close friends of mine. And so I always enjoyed being at this location. And I used to go to a gymnastics camp when I was growing up. I used to go to the one that's been around probably the longest international gymnastics camp I GC out in in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
And so I knew how impactful going to a camp was a week long camp and the memories that I created and how incredible that was when I was a kid. And I said, why can't we try and do that with adults? And adults want to act like kids all the time and create some more adult activities and same-time atmosphere. So I had the idea to put this on and we took a huge swing back in 2014, say, hey, does this make sense?
And there was 2013, I can't remember this point. And we put our first camp on and there were 30 participants and 30 coaches. And nobody wanted to tell anyone around it because they were like, we got one on one attention the entire time. And so we're like, oh, please go and tell people.
Yeah. Nobody would ever know. We're the only ones that can ever come back to this thing. And it slowly grew from there.
We didn't make any money the first year. And we were like, this could be something that's really worth pursuing. And it went from 30 campers to 40 to 50 to 90 to 100. And we've been in a pretty good place.
And so it was just because I've come to this location so many times over the years and thought it could be fun for other people to experience. That's great. I actually got hired to perform a place that thought of itself as like club med in the Poconos. And the idea was I was like, camp for adults, but it was really just the biggest pickup spot I've ever seen in my life.
I was bummed. That kind of ends up happening. I think it's been in one location for a while. Some of this stuff does happen.
But it's if you have any listeners that are into fitness, which I'm sure they are and want to escape, they want to go to a location where fitness is highlighted with great people. We're all like minded camp is at the top of the list. That really is a special place. Sounds great.