Latest / Clydesdale Media Podcast / Ryan Rettke | The Athletes of the 2024 Legends Masters CrossFit Games

Transcript

Ryan Rettke | The Athletes of the 2024 Legends Masters CrossFit Games · Clydesdale Media Podcast

0:05
What's going on everybody?
0:09
Welcome.
0:31
to the Clydesdale Media Podcast,
0:33
where right now we are
0:34
focusing on highlighting as
0:36
many of the CrossFit Game
0:38
Masters athletes as we can.
0:41
I'm not making any Dave
0:42
promises because there's
0:44
like 400 athletes in Birmingham,
0:47
but I'm going to get
0:48
through as many as I can in
0:49
a couple of weeks.
0:54
Ryan Redkey, what's going on, Ryan?
0:57
Not much, Scott.
0:57
How are you doing?
0:59
Good, good.
1:00
Great, great.
1:02
So this is your second CrossFit Games.
1:05
Yes, correct.
1:07
Last year you took fifth.
1:12
Yep.
1:13
Your trip to the Games this
1:14
year was kind of interesting.
1:18
You finished,
1:20
you had your worst finish
1:21
ever in a quarterfinals or semi,
1:23
not that it's a huge sample size,
1:25
but at semifinals this year.
1:28
Yeah.
1:30
What, what, what kind of prompted that?
1:32
Was it an, an event itself?
1:34
Was, um, injury illness?
1:38
No, definitely not injury or illness.
1:40
Um, I think it was a couple of things.
1:44
I, I,
1:46
I feel like I kind of peaked at
1:48
quarterfinals, um, mentally, physically,
1:51
um,
1:52
I feel like it was on point
1:55
for my quarterfinals performance.
1:56
Everything was clicking.
1:58
And then as probably most of
2:00
the listeners know that are
2:02
tuning in for a Masters athlete,
2:03
it was a quick turnaround
2:04
for quarterfinals and semifinals.
2:06
It was only a couple of weeks.
2:08
And so I think I kind of let
2:12
off the gas a little bit mentally.
2:16
Um, like, uh,
2:17
I'm in a chat group with some other,
2:19
other guys in my age group and, um,
2:21
you know, the morning of semifinals,
2:23
they're like, you guys ready?
2:24
And I'm like, ready for what?
2:26
You know, like half kidding.
2:27
Um, I just wasn't quite mentally, um,
2:30
prepared.
2:31
Um, I don't know.
2:33
I think it was a few reasons,
2:34
but I just feel like it wasn't quite,
2:36
quite into it.
2:37
Um, uh, that week, um,
2:42
I feel like after the first couple days,
2:44
because it was so long,
2:45
after I got two events under my belt,
2:48
and then I felt like I kind
2:49
of was hitting my stride a little bit.
2:54
But yeah,
2:54
I feel like I underperformed a
2:56
little bit on a couple of the workouts.
2:59
So we had you on a group show.
3:01
You're a Mayhem athlete,
3:02
as you are proudly
3:04
displaying on the screen.
3:07
And you went to Mayhem.
3:08
Was that for semis?
3:10
Yes, correct.
3:11
That was during semis.
3:12
Yep.
3:13
Was that,
3:14
did that environment help at all
3:16
or did it hurt?
3:20
Um, I don't think the environment itself,
3:23
um, is what hurt at all.
3:27
Um,
3:27
is what caused me to underperform a
3:28
little bit.
3:29
Uh,
3:30
I had went out to mayhem about two
3:32
months before for a camp, um,
3:36
just for a performance camp, um,
3:37
training my coach and some other people.
3:40
And, um,
3:41
As I was preparing for it mentally,
3:43
it just kind of felt like
3:44
that's what I was going to.
3:45
I was going to just go train, I think,
3:48
is partly what it was in my
3:49
mind leading up to
3:51
traveling to Cookville for that weekend.
3:54
So it didn't really feel
3:56
like I was going for a competition.
3:58
So I don't think it was
3:59
mayhem itself at all.
4:01
It was just my kind of
4:02
outlook on everything,
4:04
where I was at at the time mentally.
4:09
Well,
4:09
the good news is you had three months
4:13
from semifinals until we
4:14
get to the games.
4:16
Yeah.
4:17
I find completely bizarre
4:19
that they rushed you guys
4:21
into a semi before elite athletes,
4:24
and yet your games is after theirs.
4:27
Yeah.
4:29
Yes.
4:30
I remember last year, it was –
4:33
felt like a lot of time and
4:34
people were saying that
4:35
that was a long time, um,
4:38
from semi-finals to the games.
4:39
And now it's,
4:41
I think it's almost like a
4:41
week more this year because
4:43
the semi-finals were even a
4:44
little bit earlier and the
4:46
games were a little bit later.
4:47
So, or excuse me,
4:48
like semi-finals were a little bit later,
4:49
but I think it's a longer
4:51
time this year even than it
4:52
was last year.
4:52
Um, so yeah,
4:54
like a quarter of the year
4:55
between semi-finals and the
4:56
games long time.
4:59
I hope that's because they
5:00
didn't know when the games
5:02
were going to be still
5:03
trying to find the location and that, um,
5:07
and maybe they can schedule
5:08
it better as we get into next season.
5:11
Yeah.
5:11
That's what, what Bob has implied.
5:13
Uh,
5:14
I think multiple times is that it'll be
5:15
better in the future that, you know,
5:17
most of these events, uh,
5:19
booking for the arenas is a
5:21
couple of years out usually.
5:22
And so they were trying to
5:23
find a place on a date that
5:24
would work on a short time.
5:27
So hoping it's better.
5:29
So before we dive into the games,
5:31
I want to get some backstory with you.
5:33
Sure.
5:36
In my research of you,
5:37
I found out that you were a
5:39
college wrestler.
5:40
Yeah.
5:41
And you were three-time NCAA,
5:43
three-time USA Wrestling All-American.
5:47
Correct.
5:49
So what is three-time USA All-American?
5:52
Is it a concept?
5:54
No.
6:00
what that means is like the
6:01
Olympic styles of wrestling.
6:02
So there's three,
6:03
three styles of wrestling, basically for,
6:05
for us wrestlers.
6:06
There's three styles.
6:06
There's the folk style or collegiate style,
6:09
which you wrestle in high
6:10
school and college.
6:12
And then there's the international styles,
6:13
which are going on in a few
6:14
days in Paris and the Olympics,
6:16
which is two styles of that,
6:18
which is freestyle and
6:19
Greco Roman wrestling,
6:21
which are the same scoring,
6:22
except it's a little bit
6:24
different scoring from,
6:25
from college wrestling style.
6:29
But,
6:30
Greco-Roman is all upper body.
6:31
You can't attack legs.
6:33
You can't use your legs
6:34
offensively or defensively to score.
6:37
And so that's kind of what I
6:38
wrestled in that.
6:40
And so when I say USA Wrestling,
6:41
USA Wrestling is the
6:42
platform that hosts all
6:44
freestyle and Greco-Roman
6:46
wrestling as well.
6:47
And so I was All-American
6:50
three times in Greco-Roman
6:51
wrestling at three different levels.
6:53
And it was called Juniors at the time,
6:56
which was high school.
6:57
And just when I graduated, I got fourth.
7:00
Uh, in Greco and then in college,
7:02
they call it S fours,
7:03
which I think it's called under 20 ones.
7:06
Now, um, I got seventh place, I think.
7:11
And then I got, um, or no,
7:12
I was the fifth.
7:13
I think I got fifth at that.
7:14
And then I got,
7:14
I think a seventh place in
7:16
universities or sixth place
7:18
or fifth place, somewhere around there in,
7:20
uh, universities,
7:21
which I think is now called
7:22
under 23 or under 25.
7:22
Um, wrestling.
7:23
So.
7:27
What, speaking of, you know,
7:29
the Olympics starting today, um,
7:31
did you have aspirations at
7:33
any point in your career?
7:35
I mean, of course I would have loved to,
7:36
you know, you dream about it.
7:38
Um, so after I finished college wrestling,
7:41
um, I did wrestle the Greco and I got, uh,
7:44
you know, at the university level,
7:45
like I said, I was an all American.
7:46
And, um,
7:48
after I finished my collegiate
7:49
career and I did go out and
7:51
wrestle in the, in the U S open, um,
7:54
one year.
7:55
trained a little bit, but not near enough.
7:57
I was, um, you know,
8:00
Minnesota is a kind of a, at the time,
8:03
especially it was a hotbed
8:04
for Greco Roman wrestling.
8:06
Um,
8:06
I think this last Olympic cycle was the
8:09
first year that, uh,
8:11
which is where I lived at
8:12
the time where I grew up, um,
8:14
a non Minnesota or
8:15
Minnesota person did not
8:16
make the Greco Roman Olympic team.
8:19
Um,
8:19
So this year they have one
8:20
that is technically not on
8:23
the Minnesota team right now,
8:24
but he was a Minnesota
8:25
wrestler for most of his career.
8:30
So I did a little bit with those guys,
8:32
but I didn't put enough time into it.
8:33
I just kind of wanted to
8:36
keep wrestling for fun.
8:38
I did a couple of sprint triathlons,
8:39
and I'm like,
8:40
why am I doing this when I'm
8:41
still 24 years old?
8:44
Why am I,
8:44
why am I trying to learn
8:45
something brand new in a
8:45
sprint triathlon to compete
8:46
in that where I can still wrestle,
8:48
you know?
8:48
So I wrestled a little bit more, but no.
8:53
Yeah.
8:53
Where did you wrestle at collegially?
8:56
Collegially,
8:56
I wrestled at Minnesota State.
8:58
Okay.
9:01
Yeah, I went to,
9:04
I went to Clare University for a minute.
9:07
Back in the day,
9:09
I'm a bit older than you are.
9:12
And I was friends with Kurt Angle.
9:15
And we followed him.
9:17
Now, he went freestyle in the Olympics.
9:19
Correct.
9:20
Yeah.
9:21
And it was a blast watching
9:23
him ascend and make it to
9:25
the Olympics and do what he did.
9:29
And my roommate was a wrestler,
9:30
and so we just hung out at
9:32
the wrestling house all the
9:33
time and got to know those guys.
9:36
And Clarion was, like,
9:37
they were kick-ass back in the day.
9:39
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
9:41
Yeah, well, I mean,
9:42
Pennsylvania wrestling in
9:43
general is pretty big.
9:48
Yeah, Penn State's been killing it lately.
9:52
I lived here in Buckeye land
9:53
and it's like my only bragging rights.
9:57
This is the wrestling.
9:58
Yeah.
9:59
Yeah.
10:01
Yeah.
10:02
That's a kale.
10:03
Kale is a really turn that around.
10:06
I wrestled him twice in college.
10:07
Actually.
10:08
Kale Sanderson is the head
10:09
coach at Penn state now.
10:11
Yeah.
10:11
Yeah.
10:12
Yeah.
10:15
he was 159 and 0 in college
10:17
so it didn't go well he uh
10:23
what's that it that sums it
10:25
up pretty quick yeah um you
10:28
know I think I've I've
10:29
wrestled well against them
10:30
especially my second time
10:32
um you know it just to put
10:35
in perspective I think my
10:36
senior year in wrestling uh
10:37
he was a sophomore that
10:38
year I wrestled him his
10:39
freshman year and his
10:40
sophomore year was my
10:41
junior and senior year and my senior year
10:44
he took me down 15 times in one match.
10:46
And I believe that was more
10:48
takedowns than I got,
10:50
gave up the entire rest of
10:51
the season combined.
10:52
So he's, he's, yeah,
10:55
it was something else.
10:59
Is it like,
11:00
is it still a feather in your cap though,
11:01
that you took them on?
11:02
Like, uh,
11:05
cause you have to be good enough
11:06
to even get on a mat with them.
11:07
Right.
11:08
I guess, you know, uh, no, I mean,
11:11
I'm glad I wrestled them.
11:12
I, I, you know, is,
11:14
I looked forward to the opportunity.
11:16
He was just obviously on a
11:20
different level than everybody else,
11:22
and especially me.
11:27
It's funny because I was a
11:28
swimmer growing up,
11:29
and I had Olympic
11:30
aspirations until reality
11:32
hits you in the face and
11:33
you realize that that's not
11:35
going to happen.
11:36
But one time I beat a guy
11:39
who eventually won two
11:41
silver medals in the Olympics.
11:43
Wow.
11:45
That one time is what I've
11:47
been living on for 40 years.
11:49
Yeah,
11:52
what I can say is I almost took Cale
11:54
down one time.
11:55
I was underneath, I was coming up,
11:56
and I turned the wrong way.
11:57
If I would have turned the other way,
11:57
I think I would have gotten the big down.
11:59
So I almost took him down one time.
12:00
It is.
12:04
So how much do you attribute
12:07
to your success in CrossFit
12:08
with what you learned in wrestling?
12:10
Because I've talked to a lot
12:12
of wrestlers like Chris Feeler.
12:13
Yeah.
12:15
And they say that the big –
12:16
and Scott Tetlow and some other people.
12:19
And they all say that you
12:21
are uncomfortable in wrestling.
12:23
That is the job of a
12:24
wrestler is to be uncomfortable.
12:27
And so it helps you when
12:28
you're uncomfortable in CrossFit.
12:32
Yeah.
12:32
It –
12:34
it's very,
12:34
it's similar in a lot of ways
12:36
and it's different in some ways.
12:37
Um, you know, to be a high level wrestler,
12:43
you have to be able to put
12:45
in the work and work hard.
12:47
Um, it's, it's just a grind.
12:48
I mean, CrossFit's a grind too.
12:50
Um, I think I've,
12:52
I've worked harder in
12:53
CrossFit than I did in wrestling.
12:55
Um, just in terms of, you know,
12:57
I'm on a training and hours put in, um,
13:00
uh,
13:01
but the kind of the
13:02
difference I say for
13:03
wrestling is it's like,
13:04
you're a one-on-one out
13:05
there against another guy
13:06
against another person.
13:08
And so he's trying to tear your head off,
13:11
you know, and you're trying to,
13:13
trying to beat him.
13:14
And if you relax, you know,
13:16
he's going to slam your
13:18
head against the mat, do something,
13:20
you know, so you can't, if I, if I coast,
13:22
if I'm in,
13:23
if I'm in CrossFit at
13:24
competition and I get tired
13:25
and I slow down,
13:26
I'm just going to go slower.
13:27
These guys are going to beat me.
13:29
Nothing bad is going to
13:30
happen to me in a wrestling match.
13:33
The guys trying to,
13:34
at least in a high-level wrestling match,
13:37
they're trying to beat the
13:38
crap out of you.
13:44
It's a grind in that way
13:45
where it's a different kind
13:47
of physical grind.
13:48
Wrestling practice,
13:49
you have college wrestling.
13:51
Sometimes we have half-hour
13:53
to an hour matches where
13:54
it's just you against another guy
13:56
and you're just going at it, you know,
14:00
and that's just a mental
14:01
grind that you break
14:03
multiple times and try to push through.
14:05
So, so yeah, it's a,
14:07
it helps for sure with mentality.
14:10
I think for CrossFit.
14:13
So I know you're on a phone
14:15
and your screen is smaller, but who,
14:18
who is this guy?
14:20
I can see it.
14:21
Yeah.
14:25
Yeah, that doesn't look at me.
14:28
Yeah, my kids, my kids, my girls.
14:31
Say that again.
14:33
The flowing locks.
14:34
Yeah, exactly.
14:35
That's what I was just going to say.
14:36
My,
14:37
my girls like to refer to that as to
14:40
the era when dad had hair.
14:42
Yeah, exactly.
14:44
Yeah.
14:52
I had the treat to watch an
14:54
episode of Fear Factor in
14:57
which you were on,
14:59
and you ended up winning.
15:01
Yeah, I did.
15:03
One quick comment.
15:04
It was before HD existed,
15:07
and 4K was something the
15:10
aliens were going to do.
15:13
Yeah.
15:14
It was right before high-deficient TVs,
15:17
so...
15:18
like literally a couple of years,
15:19
a year or two before.
15:20
So, yeah.
15:21
So how old were you when you
15:22
went on that show?
15:24
See 2003.
15:25
So I was 25.
15:26
Yeah.
15:30
20, 25.
15:32
Did you,
15:32
did you watch it and think that's
15:34
something I can be good at?
15:38
Um, well,
15:40
I'll try to make this story short, but,
15:41
um, a girl I was dating at the time, uh,
15:44
saw that they were doing
15:45
tryouts at the mall of America, uh,
15:48
And, and she's like, you can do that.
15:50
So I'm like, sure.
15:53
You can give me a ride down there.
15:54
I'll go try out.
15:55
So, um, went down for a trial,
15:58
a casting call at the mall
15:59
of America to get on.
16:01
I mean,
16:01
it was the first step of many steps,
16:03
but yeah.
16:06
And, uh, in your episode,
16:10
the first event is you had
16:11
to go into a submerged bus
16:14
and mannequins and,
16:17
Your second non-elimination task,
16:20
which you had to pick up
16:23
Madagascar cockroaches with your mouth,
16:26
put them in a bowl,
16:27
and then drink two cups of stuff.
16:32
Yeah.
16:33
One was lard and something else,
16:35
and the other was rotten milk.
16:37
Yeah, they called it blended milk.
16:41
Lard and cow parts.
16:43
So they call it lard and
16:44
blended cow parts is what
16:45
they called the first glass.
16:46
And then the second glass
16:47
they called Fear Factor Rotten Milk.
16:49
And that was by far the worst part,
16:52
drinking that glass of Fear
16:53
Factor Rotten Milk of the whole show.
16:56
That was pretty bad.
16:57
That was my next question.
17:02
Because then the next one
17:03
was you had to sift through
17:05
cow brains to find yellow
17:07
discs with your face.
17:09
Yeah.
17:10
I mean,
17:11
you didn't have to ingest it there.
17:12
That was the difference.
17:13
You're just going through.
17:15
You couldn't use your hands.
17:16
You're going through with
17:17
your face and your mouth.
17:19
As they said,
17:19
brain spinal fluid is what
17:20
they called it.
17:21
It was dripping down on top
17:22
of you and the table.
17:24
But yeah,
17:25
you had to get the 10 discs and
17:26
transfer them with your
17:28
mouth into the jar.
17:30
And then the finale was just
17:31
a heights thing.
17:32
Yeah.
17:33
Yeah.
17:35
Yeah,
17:35
it was a heights thing with beams
17:36
that were dropping,
17:38
and you had to zigzag
17:38
across them and pull off
17:40
flags before the beam
17:41
dropped to get to the other
17:42
side of a U-shaped apartment building,
17:46
nine stories up, I think we were.
17:48
And Joe was infatuated with
17:50
the fact that you were a wrestler,
17:51
and that gave you good balance.
17:54
Yeah, it was kind of funny.
17:55
This was before Joe Rogan blew up.
17:58
I mean, obviously he was famous,
18:00
but he wasn't the Joe Rogan
18:02
that everybody knows now, you know,
18:03
a lot of people knew him,
18:04
but he wasn't huge like he is now,
18:07
but he was just starting to
18:08
do the UFC announcing stuff.
18:11
Obviously he has a huge
18:13
martial arts background.
18:15
He wrestled in high school.
18:16
He said one year.
18:17
And so his knowledge of
18:20
people that were in MMA,
18:23
it's just unreal to me.
18:24
Like he knew guys that I
18:26
wrestled with in college
18:27
that were just doing like
18:27
local fight scene stuff.
18:30
Um, he knew those guys.
18:31
I'm like, how do you,
18:32
how do you know these guys?
18:32
So he just knew, knew everything about it.
18:35
And so we clicked right away
18:36
and just bonded over that.
18:37
So it was a week's worth of taping.
18:38
Um, I mean, not, we didn't tape every day,
18:40
but, um, it was over a week's period.
18:42
And so we kind of just
18:42
clicked and it's just him
18:44
and I were just standing
18:45
there talking a lot of the
18:46
time as the other
18:46
contestants were kind of
18:48
just standing around, standing around.
18:49
Cause there's a lot of downtime, um,
18:51
resetting the stunts and everything.
18:53
Um, so yeah, it was a good experience,
18:56
but yeah.
18:58
Yeah.
18:59
So the question I've always
19:00
wanted to know is,
19:01
they say it's cow brains,
19:03
or they say it's... Now,
19:06
the bugs were the bugs.
19:08
There's no faking that.
19:10
Were the brains brains,
19:11
or was it just something
19:12
that looked... No, it was brains.
19:15
It was definitely brains.
19:16
The spinal fluid, I'm sure it was.
19:18
I don't know.
19:18
My guess is it was.
19:22
The rotten milk, it was bad.
19:25
It was bad, whatever it was.
19:26
I mean...
19:29
I don't know.
19:29
It was pretty bad.
19:30
I mean, the lard and cow parts,
19:32
you could see stuff floating in there.
19:34
So I'm sure it was.
19:37
I don't know what,
19:38
maybe intestines or something.
19:39
I have no idea.
19:41
I was shocked at how fast
19:42
every contestant went
19:43
through the lard and cow parts,
19:46
and then the milk stopped everybody.
19:50
Yeah,
19:53
it was a bad reaction trying to get
19:56
it down.
19:56
So, yeah.
19:59
So I think back then what
20:00
the prize was 50 grand,
20:02
something like that.
20:02
Correct.
20:03
Correct.
20:05
Yeah.
20:05
So I was on a, it was a special show.
20:08
Usually there's three stunts and it was a,
20:11
a 90 minute show is an hour
20:12
long show usually.
20:13
And so they did a 90 minute
20:14
show with four stunts.
20:16
And that, like you said,
20:16
the second one was
20:17
non-elimination and the
20:19
winner got a trip to Brazil.
20:22
Yeah.
20:22
Yeah.
20:22
I was out in the lead on that.
20:24
And then, yeah.
20:27
Guy came from behind.
20:28
So you won 50 grand in Brazil,
20:32
but instead you just got 50 grand.
20:34
Correct.
20:36
Yeah.
20:36
At the time.
20:36
Yeah.
20:37
Like you said, 50 grand, 2003.
20:40
I mean, 50,
20:40
$50,000 is a lot of money anyway,
20:42
but you know, I was teaching at the time.
20:44
Uh, and I think my salary was $29,000,
20:47
you know?
20:49
So that was like almost,
20:51
almost two years worth of salary for me.
20:52
Um, so that was a big deal, you know?
20:56
Yeah.
20:56
Yeah,
20:57
so how often does this get brought up
21:01
or do most people not even know?
21:06
Yeah, in the CrossFit world,
21:09
not as many people know, I don't think.
21:11
But in the wrestling world,
21:13
because I was wrestling at the time,
21:14
so anybody that knows me via wrestling,
21:17
yeah, it gets brought up.
21:18
It's been over 20 years now,
21:21
so not quite as much anymore.
21:23
But yeah, I did a lot for a while.
21:27
Yeah.
21:29
So you said you were a teacher.
21:30
What, what took you into teaching?
21:32
Did you want to like,
21:34
the only reason I ever
21:35
wanted to be a teacher was to be a coach.
21:37
Yeah.
21:39
So, I mean, that's kind of it.
21:40
That's kind of part of it.
21:42
My, I come from a big family of educators.
21:44
My dad was, uh, he was a teacher,
21:47
but he got into administration, um,
21:49
pretty early on.
21:50
So he was a school administrator.
21:52
Um, by the time I got through there,
21:54
he was a super superintendent of schools.
21:57
Um,
21:58
but um so I kind of had that
22:00
at the background I started
22:01
out college as a pre-dental
22:03
major and and after the
22:06
after the first year it's
22:07
kind of like um I was doing
22:10
okay in school you know I
22:11
wasn't doing I wasn't doing
22:12
great you know I think I
22:13
graduated with like a three
22:15
three or three four or
22:17
something like college so
22:17
that's good but you know
22:19
it's like is that gonna be
22:21
enough to get me into
22:22
dental school and do it you
22:23
know so I i didn't
22:24
probably put enough time into studying, um,
22:26
as I should have to, to do for that.
22:28
And it's like,
22:28
why do I really want to be a dentist?
22:30
Um, you know,
22:31
I was just thinking about it.
22:32
And so I just kind of fell
22:33
back on what I liked and I liked science.
22:36
I was really into infatuated
22:37
with astronomy at the time.
22:39
Um, and so I'm like, well, let's see what,
22:43
what's that there is in that field.
22:46
And, um, yeah,
22:47
there was earth science education.
22:49
So, uh, yeah.
22:50
And then I could coach, you know,
22:52
along with it.
22:53
So, so yeah.
22:55
that's kind of what the,
22:56
what led me into that path.
22:59
And then eventually you left what,
23:01
what was the precursor to
23:02
that or just found a different love?
23:06
Um, so I taught for 10 years.
23:08
Uh, I was, um, you know,
23:10
I taught middle school and
23:11
high school a little bit and I was,
23:13
I was out of the classroom for,
23:14
I think three years.
23:15
It was a really cool, cool gig that I had.
23:18
I was teaching at the
23:19
biggest school district in
23:21
Minnesota and they had an
23:22
observatory at their, um,
23:25
one of their middle schools
23:26
and I ran the observatory, um,
23:29
teacher on a special assignment.
23:30
And so that was, that was pretty cool,
23:31
pretty cool gig, uh,
23:32
running the observatory.
23:34
Um, so, um, my, um, so when I had my son,
23:42
who's now 13, um, at the time, uh,
23:46
my wife, um,
23:49
was working and we've decided, Hey,
23:52
why don't I stay home for a
23:54
little bit with him?
23:56
And so I took leave from
23:58
teaching and then we had
24:03
another girl and we had another girl.
24:07
And so my youngest is now five.
24:10
And so I kind of have stayed home,
24:12
stayed home with them and
24:14
become more or less a full-time dad.
24:17
I have my real estate license as well.
24:19
We have some rentals that I,
24:21
that I manage and do things
24:23
like that as well.
24:24
But,
24:25
but more or less a full time,
24:27
full time stay at home dad.
24:29
So that's pretty awesome.
24:32
And it's sad that like the
24:33
easiest salary to replace
24:35
is a teacher salary.
24:36
Yeah.
24:38
Yeah.
24:39
Well,
24:39
my wife's definitely the breadwinner.
24:41
So I, um,
24:42
it was kind of the easier choice.
24:44
She put in a lot, a lot of,
24:45
a lot of time in her education.
24:47
So what does your wife do?
24:51
She's a physician.
24:53
Cool.
24:54
That's awesome.
24:55
So when you, when you get hurt in CrossFit,
24:56
she's, she can fix you.
24:59
Well, well, her,
25:00
her specialty is a colon rectal surgery.
25:03
So, so hopefully not.
25:06
Yeah.
25:08
I just,
25:08
I just signed up for my first
25:10
colonoscopy.
25:11
So I had my first one last year,
25:14
a year ago.
25:15
So, so I go in the games, the prep,
25:21
the prep, you know,
25:21
obviously is the hardest part, but yeah.
25:24
now so what got you into uh
25:27
diesel mechanic so um uh
25:35
for my master's program um
25:38
when I was teaching I was
25:40
it's a degree in natural
25:42
science and environmental
25:43
education and I got really
25:45
interested in alternative
25:46
energy um and alternative
25:48
fuels and uh I learned that uh diesel
25:54
diesel engines originally
25:55
ran on vegetable oil and I
25:58
read about these people
25:59
that would uh collect waste
26:02
vegetable oil from
26:03
restaurants and filter it
26:05
and use it as fuel or turn
26:08
it into biodiesel one of
26:09
the two um and so I started
26:11
just researching that and
26:15
um bought my first
26:18
my first diesel Mercedes in 1984,
26:21
300 SD diesel Mercedes in 2007 and, um,
26:27
converted to run on vegetable oil.
26:29
And I did that for about
26:31
four or five years.
26:33
And so I kind of, I figured, you know,
26:34
if I'm going to convert a
26:36
car to run on vegetable oil and I, um,
26:43
I'm going to be driving it, you know,
26:46
an old car, um,
26:48
It's going to need
26:49
maintenance and I'm going
26:51
to need to know how to do it.
26:52
So I just started learning
26:54
about it and I kind of fell
26:55
in love with it.
26:58
So that's what started it.
27:02
And I don't do vegetable anymore.
27:03
I haven't done vegetable oil
27:05
since like 2011, 12.
27:06
I try to buy biomass,
27:08
biodiesel at the pump to
27:09
run in my diesels now,
27:11
but they just run on regular diesel.
27:14
I don't do the vegetable oil thing anymore,
27:15
but that's what got me into it.
27:16
And I just kind of fell in
27:17
love with the cars.
27:18
And, um, I still have, well,
27:21
I shouldn't say I still have, I've bought,
27:22
I've been,
27:22
I had some on and off over the years, but,
27:25
uh, I bought,
27:26
I got a couple old Mercedes now that,
27:29
that I work on and I've restored, um,
27:30
that I've sat for a long
27:32
time and restored them.
27:34
So yeah.
27:35
It is so funny because my
27:37
daughter's boyfriend, longtime boyfriend,
27:41
is a diesel mechanic.
27:42
He actually works for Mack
27:43
Trucks in Pennsylvania.
27:46
But they're looking for an
27:48
old Mercedes so that he can
27:51
work on it and do the
27:52
maintenance on it because
27:54
the parts are really cheap,
27:57
according to him.
27:58
Yeah.
27:59
Well, the problem with these...
28:02
Well, I guess when you say old,
28:03
you got to define what old is.
28:04
I'm talking like early 80s Mercedes.
28:07
You're talking more like early 2000.
28:10
Yeah.
28:13
Yeah.
28:13
So the ones that I run,
28:17
a lot of the parts are no
28:18
longer available from Mercedes.
28:20
They don't make them anymore.
28:22
So you have to go to the
28:24
parts yards or there's a
28:25
whole network of people
28:26
that have cars that they've parted out.
28:29
online and on the forum.
28:30
So that's kind of what I do.
28:32
But yeah, there's, I think, uh,
28:34
for the 2000, probably still out,
28:36
still making them.
28:38
Yeah.
28:39
They've done a lot of research.
28:40
The hard part is they're
28:41
young and trying to get a
28:43
loan for a car that old, uh, has been,
28:46
you know, so, but yeah, that's what,
28:50
that's what he's trying to do.
28:52
Um, okay.
28:54
I,
28:54
I know like something that's really
28:56
important to you is your faith.
28:58
Mm-hmm.
28:59
So with,
29:01
and then I talked to a lot of athletes,
29:03
like being a CrossFit athlete,
29:05
take some selfishness,
29:08
especially competing at the
29:09
highest level.
29:10
How do you balance the two?
29:14
Um, yeah, that's something I've,
29:20
I've really reflected on a lot lately.
29:22
Um, specifically in the last, uh,
29:25
month or so.
29:27
And.
29:29
Um, I, I haven't had a lot of epiphanies.
29:33
I haven't come to a lot of conclusions,
29:34
but kind of where I view it right now is,
29:37
is, um, I've been given this life and, um,
29:46
these gifts and it would be
29:49
a waste not to use them to
29:51
their fullest and not to
29:52
live my life to the fullest.
29:54
Um,
29:57
And so that's kind of where
29:58
I am at on my journey with
30:02
that right now and how I
30:04
view my athletic
30:05
performance as using the
30:08
gifts I've been given and just trying to,
30:11
um, pursue excellence.
30:15
Um, and from what I've in my life.
30:19
So
30:23
was that something that drew
30:24
you to mayhem with faith
30:25
being part of their key tenants?
30:27
Hmm.
30:31
So we're, we're going a little deep here,
30:32
I guess.
30:33
Um, I, I feel like I kind of, um,
30:40
drifted away from my faith
30:41
for a while and not feel like I did.
30:44
And, um, I grew up very,
30:48
very faith driven.
30:49
And, um, even through my,
30:53
20s and and 30s early 30s
30:55
but you know for a while
30:57
there it wasn't something I
30:58
focused on um and
31:01
questioned a lot with it um
31:03
obviously still do um but
31:06
trying to um understand it
31:11
all and and um make it all
31:15
work but um so no at the
31:17
time when I went to mayhem
31:19
I don't I don't think I i
31:20
was I don't think I wasn't
31:21
reason at all um
31:23
honestly but I think it's
31:25
been something that has
31:28
made it easier for it to
31:29
come back into my life um
31:32
being a part of mayhem uh
31:36
so this will be my last
31:39
question I promise and that
31:41
is whoop lost you for a
31:44
second um thought you hung
31:46
up on me no but no with all
31:50
the background you have in science
31:53
Is that a natural tug in two
31:56
different directions?
32:02
I don't think so.
32:07
I think it can be if you
32:09
allow it for the person or
32:11
a person can use science to
32:16
say why they don't think
32:18
there is a God or a God exists.
32:23
But science is about trying
32:27
to understand everything
32:32
and understand how things work,
32:35
which I don't know if we'll
32:36
ever be able to do fully to
32:37
the extent leading to faith.
32:40
I don't think that's probably possible.
32:42
But there are things that we
32:44
can't explain.
32:47
I've come to realize that I
32:52
don't know anything.
32:53
There's so little that we
32:54
understand and so little that we know.
32:57
You just look at 100 years
32:59
ago of our understanding of
33:02
the universe and our
33:03
understanding of how things
33:06
worked and how much it's
33:08
progressed in the last 100 years.
33:10
So science is continually
33:12
evolving and continually
33:14
gaining knowledge.
33:16
Um, so, so my, my interpretation,
33:19
my understanding of it knows, no,
33:21
they don't have to be conflicting,
33:22
conflicting things.
33:24
Um,
33:25
I do understand out there that there
33:27
are people out there that
33:31
are very science-based and
33:33
so they're very concrete
33:34
and they need proof.
33:35
And so that was part of, part of the, uh,
33:38
my struggle that I dealt with as well, uh,
33:41
a few years ago and trying to, um,
33:45
understand it because
33:46
In a lot of ways,
33:47
there's not a lot of proof of faith.
33:55
But it's something that I
33:56
think I've been able to
34:00
overcome and make it work
34:02
in my understandings.
34:05
Okay.
34:07
So moving on to the games,
34:09
this year you finished fifth last year.
34:13
Realistically going in,
34:15
What are your expectations this year?
34:19
Um,
34:21
so my expectations are to do the best
34:25
that I can, um, form, um, well,
34:29
and everything to be,
34:31
to be better than I was last year.
34:32
Um, not necessarily in terms of placings,
34:35
but just in terms of better performances,
34:37
um,
34:40
My goal is to win.
34:43
My goal is to take first place,
34:45
to be the CrossFit Games champion.
34:47
And I feel like I've been
34:48
training and preparing to do that.
34:52
Whether that happens or not,
34:53
I can't control that.
34:54
I mean, I can control it to some extent,
34:55
but there are other things
34:56
that are out of my control.
34:59
But I feel like I've been,
35:02
the last three months,
35:03
have been doing everything right,
35:07
have been preparing myself
35:10
as best as I can.
35:11
And I really do feel like
35:14
I'm the best version of myself,
35:17
CrossFit self, ever.
35:20
So if I can keep it up,
35:23
keep it up for another few weeks,
35:25
keep my mental clarity, my mental focus,
35:27
I'm hoping it's going to go well.
35:29
21 years ago on Fear Factor,
35:33
Joe Rogan asked you,
35:34
are you going to let these
35:35
ladies beat you?
35:36
And your response was,
35:39
I'm, I don't let, and I don't like any,
35:41
but I don't like losing to
35:42
anyone regardless of who they are.
35:45
Yeah.
35:45
Yeah.
35:46
He was kind of, uh, uh, you know, it's the,
35:49
I'm sure the producers were
35:50
in his ear and tell him the question,
35:51
like, uh, you know, they want to,
35:53
they want to, they want,
35:54
they want to see if you
35:54
open your mouth and stick your foot in,
35:56
you know, cause I was the final stunt.
35:57
It was myself against two females.
35:59
And so they wanted me to say, yeah,
36:00
I'm going to,
36:01
I'm going to beat these
36:02
girls or something like that, you know,
36:02
cause that's going to be a great for TV.
36:05
But, um, so no, I just said, I said, uh,
36:10
you know, losing is bad period.
36:11
So, you know, I was 25 and a CV.
36:15
Um, but yeah, I, you know, it's, it's,
36:20
I'm a lot wiser.
36:21
Hopefully I'm, I think I'm wiser now, um,
36:24
and older.
36:24
Um, you know,
36:25
a lot of these guys that I
36:27
compete with are really,
36:28
really good friends.
36:30
Um,
36:31
and so I don't feel like I'm going out
36:35
there to try to beat them.
36:37
I feel like I'm going out there to try to,
36:39
um,
36:40
do the best that I can um
36:42
you know because their
36:43
performance in crossfit for
36:46
the most part doesn't have
36:47
to have any direct impact
36:49
on my performance it's a
36:50
little different with
36:50
wrestling because it's
36:51
one-on-one you the physical
36:53
nature of you against
36:54
another person is you're
36:55
trying to beat the other
36:56
person but in crossfit it's
36:58
your performance you know
36:59
it's you against the
37:00
weights or the bike or or
37:03
whatever you're doing um
37:05
and so the other people's
37:05
performances don't have to have
37:09
a direct impact on you.
37:12
So it's all about focusing
37:16
inward and creating the
37:19
best performance I can and
37:20
the best preparation I can for myself.
37:24
So hope that made sense.
37:27
Yeah, it makes perfect sense.
37:30
My last question to you is
37:31
just kind of a fun question
37:32
to finish this off.
37:34
You tagged me in a post you
37:36
made on Instagram.
37:37
I think you were just
37:38
cleaning out a car or went
37:40
to a used store or something,
37:41
and you found cassettes of
37:44
U2 and The Police.
37:45
Uh-huh.
37:47
What is the ultimate music
37:49
to listen to when you're working out?
37:53
Oh, I...
37:55
So I've gone through a
37:56
couple of different phases.
38:01
I would say about five, six years ago,
38:03
I was really listening to
38:05
when I was working out was
38:07
maybe like 80s rock, like foreigner,
38:10
foreigner.
38:11
I listened to a lot of
38:11
foreigner when I was working out,
38:12
even the slow jams when I
38:13
was working out.
38:15
And so that's what I was
38:18
doing at the time around then,
38:20
I would say.
38:21
Probably before that,
38:25
probably heavy heavy stuff
38:26
like more more current
38:27
current at the time so like
38:28
you know heavy metal from
38:30
like uh you know 2000s that
38:32
kind of stuff but then it
38:34
kind of evolved into to
38:35
country and I was listening
38:36
to country for a long time
38:38
while I was working out um
38:40
but I would say the last
38:42
six months to a year I've
38:44
gone back to like 90s
38:46
grunge and that's pretty
38:47
much what I've what I've
38:48
been listening to my my 13
38:50
year old um started playing guitar
38:53
And, uh,
38:54
has a rock band at school that
38:55
he's in and he's gotten really into,
38:58
into nineties, nineties grunge.
38:59
And my wife's kind of a fan of that too.
39:01
And so it's just kind of
39:02
been something that I've
39:02
gotten back into.
39:03
So that's,
39:04
that's what I've been listening
39:04
to a lot while it's in the
39:06
background while I'm working out lately.
39:08
How does that music change
39:10
when you're driving an old Mercedes?
39:14
Um, I don't know.
39:16
You just, I, I, you know,
39:19
that's what I kind of like about it is,
39:21
is it's,
39:22
from the era, you know, the older music,
39:24
that's what kind of like what the cars,
39:26
um, just a little bit nostalgic, um,
39:29
you know,
39:30
for that time for timer as the
39:31
older you get, um,
39:33
kind of more nostalgia you have for,
39:35
for those, uh,
39:36
younger years and the
39:37
things that go along with it.
39:38
So that's probably part of
39:39
the draw for the, um, for the cars that I,
39:42
that I like and drive.
39:43
So do your old Mercedes
39:45
still have tape decks?
39:46
Yeah.
39:47
Yeah.
39:48
My, um,
39:49
So I have two of them,
39:50
one that I've been driving,
39:51
one that's not quite ready to drive yet.
39:53
I'm still working on it.
39:54
But the one that I was
39:55
driving has a tape deck.
39:56
It has an original 80s tape deck in it.
39:59
So that's where the wanting
40:02
to buy tapes again has come from.
40:03
So we can play those in the car.
40:06
What's cool to me is,
40:08
and I don't know if people
40:10
younger than us would even
40:11
understand this,
40:12
is my nostalgia for that
40:13
music isn't the hit songs.
40:16
It's the deep tracks on
40:18
those albums that never get
40:20
played anymore,
40:21
that I haven't heard in 30 years.
40:23
That's why I started collecting vinyl,
40:26
because I work from home,
40:29
and I just put a record on
40:31
and let it play.
40:32
That's so much more
40:34
enjoyable to me than the radio.
40:38
Yeah.
40:39
Because the radio picks two
40:40
songs from a group,
40:41
and that's all you ever hear.
40:43
Yeah.
40:45
So I've been listening to
40:47
Sirius XM a lot lately.
40:50
That's what I put on when
40:51
I'm working out here at home.
40:56
And I've been doing Lithium.
40:57
And they have something
40:58
called Lithium Deep Cuts,
41:00
where they play the lesser
41:02
known songs from the band as well.
41:08
And then I'll finish with this.
41:09
This is just a personal story.
41:11
So I have a guitar.
41:12
It's sitting back here somewhere.
41:14
And before I got into all this media stuff,
41:19
I tried to play.
41:19
Well, I'll leave it at that.
41:22
And I love 90s grunge,
41:24
but everything is drop D tuning.
41:26
And the guitar I have to reset that is so,
41:30
it's a Floyd Rose tremolo
41:32
and it takes so much to reset that.
41:37
And so I just didn't learn
41:38
them because I didn't want
41:40
to have to reset the tune.
41:41
Change and change it back.
41:42
Yeah.
41:43
Yeah.
41:44
Yup.
41:45
Yeah.
41:46
I,
41:46
I tried to play guitar a little bit for
41:47
a while too.
41:48
I had a guitar and I,
41:49
I never took lessons or anything,
41:51
but I was,
41:52
playing some trying to learn
41:54
some led zeppelin and stuff
41:55
like that too and it didn't
41:56
last very long maybe six
41:57
months nine months I was
41:59
doing it but and do it a
42:00
little bit now helping my
42:01
son doing that and that's
42:02
why I was remember that
42:03
talking about the drop to
42:04
and he's trying to learn
42:05
some nirvana songs and yeah
42:08
yeah yeah I was trying to
42:09
do sound garden and uh foo
42:11
fighters yeah all that and it well yeah
42:15
it's all, it's all down there.
42:17
So I actually bought a cheap
42:20
other guitar that I could
42:21
put in drop T tuning.
42:22
And I took three years of lessons,
42:24
but I never,
42:24
I never got to the point
42:25
where I felt I was good.
42:28
Yeah.
42:29
But it was fun.
42:30
Yeah.
42:33
I still, you know,
42:33
I was playing with my son.
42:35
I was trying to,
42:36
we're going through some
42:36
online tutorials and stuff.
42:38
And I was,
42:40
learning a little bit more
42:41
again and I was like oh
42:42
maybe I should start taking
42:43
guitar lessons here too and
42:44
I'm like no you don't need
42:45
any more hobbies ryan you
42:47
don't need you don't need
42:48
any more hobbies
42:51
Oh, Ryan, this has been a blast.
42:53
I want to thank you so much
42:54
for your time out.
42:57
And we'll see you in Birmingham.
42:59
We got granted full access
43:02
to do a behind-the-scenes
43:03
of the Masters CrossFit Games.
43:05
So we'll be back in the area
43:07
at the Grouse getting up
43:09
with you guys and talking
43:11
to you back there.
43:12
So I can't wait to catch up with you guys.
43:14
Thanks so much for having me on,
43:15
but also thank you so much
43:16
for putting the spotlight
43:18
on especially the Masters
43:20
CrossFit and doing the work
43:22
you do for that.
43:23
You guys have the coolest backstories.
43:27
People who aren't tuning
43:28
into this are missing out
43:30
because Justin Medeiros was
43:32
an unfair factor.
43:36
No, he was doing CrossFit.
43:40
And with that, everybody,
43:41
thank you for being with us.
43:43
We'll see you next time on
43:44
the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
43:46
Bye, guys.
43:46
See you later.
43:47
Bye.