Shane & Josh Rogers - ATOM & Taking Functional Fitness Virtual

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Thanks for having us. Yeah, thanks for having us, Eric. We've been looking forward to this one.

Yeah, I've been really looking forward to it too. I uh like I was telling you guys pre-recording, I just have a good vibe with you guys, maybe because we're we're all from uh you know the same area in Northern California, and I could just kind of feel that you know NORCAL vibe coming off of you guys. And uh plus, you know, you guys are in Santa Cruz now, right? It's one of my favorite places on earth. So um it's cool to have you guys on.

Sweet.

Um so you guys are the now I give us a little background. You're brothers, right? You're founders of RPM. Um you got a new thing coming out called Adam. Um we're gonna cover all that stuff, but I guess uh yeah, give us a little bit of your origin story. How did uh how did the company RPM start and now it's venturing into what we'll we'll talk about later in this this chat?

Yeah, well, we uh lived together for a long time when we were young. I'm actually eight and a half years older than Shane. Okay. So there we're like uh, you know, we had the we didn't fight so much as me just like, you know, um defending myself against his like, you know, uh toddler tantrums or whatever when I was about nine or ten. Yeah, that's going back too far. Um really RPM started um at my gym. So I had one of the earlier CrossFit affiliates in the in 08-09 time frame. And back then, jump rope was kind of becoming a thing with the CrossFit methodology, they're programming double enders, that kind of thing. And uh Shane and I always kind of wanted to put our heads together to make a product, and we kind of saw an opportunity there.

You know, uh Josh had been trying to get me back into the gym for a while too, and it wasn't until his he started training more kind of functional fitness, crossfit type training that got me hooked. Yeah. Yeah, Shane was cycling at the time, I think. Cycling and running. Um, grew up strength training, but after college, I thought I was becoming an endurance athlete. And Josh changed my mind.

Which was just like selfishly motivated because he's actually a really good endurance athlete. So I just kind of sabotaged him there. I just actually just run my first marathon last month, so I'm a terrible runner, so I just thought, oh no, I'm not letting him get any glory for this. Yeah.

Yeah, the great equalizer. Yeah, speaking of great equalizers, uh, jump roping and in the early days of CrossFit, I think people who uh have attempted or learned double unders will uh will resonate with this. It's like if you're coaching it or you're trying to learn double unders, it took me like what I don't know, two years probably to get these damn things, right?

And that's more common than you'd you'd expect.

Yeah, and you always want to blame it on the jump rope. You're like, oh, and clients always be like, I think I need a new jump rope. And like, no, you just need to practice more. It's gonna take you like a year to do this, right? Um, some people pick it up fast, but that's rare. And I always, and so I think that was like, I'm sure there's a lot of reasons why you guys are successful in the market, but I think there was also like this kind of underlying thing where it's like, well, I just need the best jump rope, which was what RPM made, and then I'll get my double unders, right?

And uh it's like this passion-inducing movement. I actually, as a gym owner, I had never seen anything like it. Like we have ropes being thrown across the gym. Oh, yeah, you know, like ropes ending up in trees and stuff, like just crazy frustration. And but then the people who who just kind of like some for some people, it just kind of clicks, you know, and they're just like doo-doo, you know, what's wrong? What's the problem with you guys? You know, I got this double under thing down. So it was like this spectrum of like people who had them love it, people who couldn't get them, like just like it's so frustrating, right? And so if you if there's a tool to help you kind of equalize that that discrepancy, um, turned out to be you know something that was pretty powerful in the community.

Yeah. I would also say that one of the challenges is when people are using the jump ropes in a gym, is they're never coming back to the same rope. So, like if if you're looking at this as a set of variables, right? The rope is changing, you're trying to adjust your form, but your form's adjusting relative to the rope. So having a rope that size for you just it is also just incredibly important in dialing in your rhythm.

It's really the only thing, right? I mean, you can use the gym's kettlebells, dumbbells, bullet bars, rowers, list goes on. But if you try to use the gym's jump ropes, it's just a bad experience for everyone, including the gym owner. Speaking from experience, like just trying to keep your gym stocked with enough ropes where everyone has one that fits them in a class is like impossible, number one. And then for some reason, it's just like the beating that they take. Like it's just this constant um battle, basically, to try and keep your ropes in shape. So it you end up with this one tool and this one movement that coaches and gym owners just kind of like, you know, that's the thing that they tell all their members, even new members, like, hey, yeah, just bring your shoes and buy yourself a jump rope and you're good to go.

Yeah, it's uh for my relation too, I I think we went through phases um where we're like, okay, we got a bunch of jump ropes and they are kind of crappy ones. And then, you know, we started to buy nicer ones, and then you know, which I think that's when RPMs started coming out. We started buying some RPM ones, and and you know, slowly every month we buy a little bit more, and then people just start trashing them. And so we're like, then we went back to crappy ones because well, then we just told everyone buy your own. So we made ours that they came into the gym so bad that they had to go out and buy their own, and then we'd just be like, hey, here's the brand that we recommend. And uh that made things a lot easier on us because it was yeah, everyone was always throwing our jump ropes or using them for the most random things, like tying stuff off or whatever. It was uh it's funny what people what people do with it. I'd like to get you guys so you guys were early in cross uh in CrossFit. When when exactly did you, Josh, did you open your affiliate?

Uh my gym was opened in 2004. Wow. Um, I started doing CrossFit 07-ish, probably. Um, and then I officially affiliated in 09. Um, but we were running kind of like I was already doing some like quote unquote human performance training at our gym and um just found CrossFit, fell in love with it, you know, personally, and then just started down that path with like you know, if you already have a gym and you're not a CrossFit affiliate, it's there's it's not just as easy as flipping a switch, you know, so as a transition over time and slowly removing the things that don't that don't fit in the gym and slowly adding the things that you need. I mean, and then in 09 we moved facilities and I just kind of like moved locations and reopened as a more um traditional CrossFit affiliate.

What was the name of the affiliate?

Uh Cadence, CrossFit Cadence.

CrossFit Cadence, yeah. Okay, yeah, for sure. I remember you guys. And that was in Las Gadis, is that right?

Yep.

Yep, Las Gatas, California, man.

Yeah, we had uh some competitive athletes right off the bat at our gym. Um Joey Warren was one of my coaches at the gym, and so immediately like the I mean everyone knows this, the camaraderie that's built around following an athlete's journey in the games, you know, really in the early days especially, um helped sort of build that community and make things really exciting. So we follow Joey down to the old, the old days of sectionals and you know, regionals and all that.

Yeah, I remember those days really well. And um, so listeners know too. I I I sound nostalgic because I grew up in Saratoga and Las Gattas area. That's where I spent all my youth, so I know exactly kind of where they're from. You know, when when um so maybe walk me back to the impetus of okay, we're gonna build a jump rope, right? What what was the thought? How did the design process go and what were your expectations? Did you ever think that you would be in just about every CrossFit gym in the world? Um, was that expectation ever there? Uh what yeah, walk me through the early days.

Definitely definitely not. So I think we were training, Josh and I were also kind of in quotes, competitive at the time. Put some really big quotes around that. I thought we were competitive at the time. The competition has changed a lot since then, so it's funny to even use that term. Uh, but we were doing a workout um that had 10 minutes of double unders in it. And Joey actually, one of the athletes, Josh was just talking about, his rope broke. And we'd already been kind of like playing around with this idea of doing something for the this sport that we had all of a sudden fallen in love in love with. And Joey's rope broke, and it was, I wouldn't pin it to that one point, but it really that just really reinforced like the importance of this tool that's being used by bigger athletes, probably than ever before, and really becoming more mainstream than it ever has been. And this idea of kind of reimagining an old tool is really kind of a fun place to start. So we just kind of got tinkering. My background is in product design, um, engineering, and started making a bunch of prototypes. Like we have this funny list or kind of string of all the different rope iterations we went through. And it was literally like I'd make one, we'd bring it into the gym, all our members would jump with it, our coaches would jump with it, we'd tweak a few things, and then we'd make another one. And then the next day I'd have another set, and then I started to make a few more. Um, and we came to a point where by kind of going through that design test process and really having no pressure, it was fun, right? Like we got to something pretty quickly that we wouldn't have got to had we not been using it. And that is um kind of like the crux of why that rope, why people love that rope so much. So in jump rope, you hold the rope and you jump and it goes under your feet twice if you're doing a double under, and then or a single under goes under your feet once, but you're always holding onto the handles, where in functional training, you're often setting the rope down, picking it up, setting it down, picking it up. And with that, you still want the rope fixed on the end of the cable. Uh, but it becomes really important that the handles can rotate freely around the cable. So when you pick the rope up, it's not twisted. Imagine like building up a bunch of torque and a wire. And if you don't do that, then it feels very strange. And most people don't know why they like it, but a lot of the reason, or one of the big reasons, is if it was fixed on the ends and didn't allow for that free rotation, um, you would know immediately. And so we got a utility pattern around that. Um, we made some of them for the NorCau region sectionals. What was that? Regionals? What was that called? Um in San Jose. Yeah, it was probably sectionals. It it kind of took off immediately from there.

I I also remember that competition he was talking about. I think I did that 10-minute max double under test with like this old Nike sort of like heavy um plastic jump rope, and just like remember dying, right? And being like, huh, if this jump rope was lighter, man, this workout would be a lot easier, and I'd probably get a lot better score. So it's kind of like, oh, I think we can do better here.

Yeah. You know, and the thing, and what year was this roughly that you guys came up with it and got it out in the market?

That would have probably been uh 2010.

Okay. Yeah, there was you know something special is you know, around that 2020 to probably 2014, where um man, that CrossFit community got behind anything, right? If there was a new product that made them better at CrossFit or made their lives a little bit easier in the world, because we were obsessed. Like it was just it was a total obsession during that time. You know, we were still learning, we were still doing, I mean, we can admit it now, we're doing some dumb stuff, right? Like stuff that probably wasn't the best training, but we were having fun and we were playing, and it was just this really, really cool special time, which I think a lot of people in the industry looked at, were like, these guys are idiots. Like, what are they doing? You can't do high repetition, you know, Olympic, Olympic lifts, and like, well, we're doing it, and you know what, we're actually getting really good results. And uh, you know, it's but it's a lot of fun. Um, but that that community during that time frame was just so supportive of each other, and what a great time to launch a product that really solves a problem for them. And I think that's um, you know, a lot of great livelihoods were made in that time, like you guys. You know, you you you hit something at the right time, you you found a problem, you solved your own problem, which was a problem that everybody else had, and uh boom, you're off to the races. And you know, fast forward, gosh, uh 11 years now. Um where where is the company at now? Like where uh where are you guys now?

We got big things coming real soon here. Um I think between over the last 10 years, I think the most important sort of developments were that uh we realized that this the jump rope was kind of an interesting foundational piece for just a fitness brand in general. Um we realized that you know, as sort of action lovers of action sports and outdoors and not really traditional gym culture, that there weren't a lot of brands supporting like people with our values and our passions, or a lot of a lot of brands doing that. And so we kind of really set out to like position RPM at that intersection of action sports and outdoors and training. And so I think that we've obviously everything that we've done over the last several years has kind of been you know deliberately designed to kind of put ourselves in that position. Um and obviously the the the apparel lines have grown. We added functional swimwear. Um, we actually now have a sewing factory in our facility in Northern California where we make all of our women's tights and leggings and all of our swimwear um and a few other things, which is a really unusual and unexpected um sort of thing for such a small brand, or really any brand, if you think about it. So that's that's been a really fun experience. Um so yeah, I think that obviously the apparel line is growing and we had some more hard goods coming down the pipeline, and we've been iterating on a few other pieces, more traditional fitness pieces and equipment pieces, and you know, kind of talking about how we launched those things. And then COVID hit and uh kind of changed our whole perspective on how that was gonna be done.

Yeah, and and did you still did you own your gym at the beginning of COVID? Did you were you guys still doing it? Yeah, yeah.

Um at in 2016 we made a transition to make it like officially the RPM headquarter gym. CrossFit Cadence was still our affiliate name, but most of the branding went to RPM just because the RPM brand was obviously a lot bigger than my just my little community gym. So um, but yeah, still had the gym when COVID hit. Shut down like everyone else. Um we were in one of the toughest counties in the in the country to have a gym in, and uh just never were able to get it open again. So not how I would have chosen to go out on my you know, 15 year sort of labor of love, but you know, just Gotta make the boat met the best of the situation and move forward.

Yeah, yeah. I I'm really sorry to hear that, guys. That's uh, you know, there's just been um so many great gyms that had a tough time and really had no decision. The decision was taken away. I mean, you know, Starette up in San Francisco was interviewing Mark Fisher for Mark Fisher Fitness yet. His his facility is still open. But it's uh, you know, in downtown New York City, it's he's been having a lot more challenges than he thought he would, and he's one of the best operators in the world. And uh, you know, it shows that you can be an amazing operator, have a great community, but man, there's just things outside of your control that happen, and it's really frustrating. But we uh we don't need to belabor that point. That's um that's not what we're here to talk about. But you know, so how did you guys, I guess here's a big question. Um, how did you guys adapt during COVID? What what changed in your business? How did you guys change your outlook? How did you um, you know, continue to persevere?

We initially really buttoned everything up super tight. I was quite fearful to start about everything, you know, the the fitness industry as a whole, what what you know, kind of what was going to happen with our supply chain. So we became quite conservative in how we were running the business right out the gate. Um and then we found that I like all the listeners on this podcast know that the fitness industry has done quite well through a lot of this. Um for at least on the equipment side.

On the equipment side for yeah, certain segments of it for sure.

Yeah. On the equipment side for no credit of ours, even. And then it became, oh my gosh, how do we make sure we keep our supply chains open? So we we are totally nearly vertically integrated across all our different facets of the business. So we have a really close connection um with where some of our machining was happening. So again, it was just making sure that we could keep our supply chain open and then um figuring out how we could stay operating because we do a lot of the manufacturing also here in Northern California. So it just became a logistical challenge. Um, but we were able to actually stay in stock and um never go never stock out kind of through COVID, which which we were quite fortunate about. Wow. Yeah, so that that brings maybe maybe on the on the gym side, maybe Eric, I think that's maybe what you're gonna ask, is what did that look like for our members? And we didn't close the gym right away. So is it so on that front, we all kind of got dispersed or as a company, we all are used to working out kind of at noon together. So we would break and we'd go train and we'd train with all our local members and friends. That was like a big part of our gym culture and super fun. Um, and we lost that almost overnight. It was kind of just stripped away. And so we quickly adopted Zoom. We had our coaches coaching classes over Zoom, and I think we were surprised at how fun and how much we still felt connected and realized pretty quickly how important that was. Um, even if it was just hopping on. We had members hopping on just to like sit and watch us work out while they ate lunch, just to like just to heckle us and heckle us and feel like they were still somewhat connected to what was going on. And so I think just seeing that happen in our own little community um and feeling it firsthand how how important it was was was accelerated a lot of the other work that we were doing and brought a lot of clarity to that.

Yeah, and for people who are outside the CrossFit community, I think that explains a lot. Like people got into Zoom just to watch you guys work out while they ate their lunch, just to feel part of the group again, right? It becomes your friend. Like it's it's it sounds so cliched, but it's true. It's community, it's culture, it's all these things, it's your friends, it's your family, it's it's that. And that's something that, you know, I think um, you know, what Crosser brought to the market was undeniable. Like community is a really, really, really, really strong thing. And it drove um, you know, even through a lot of terrible business practices, uh, you know, a lot of CrossFit gyms thrived through it despite bad business practice because community was so strong at that time. And I think that's if one lesson from the you know, the rent the remainder of the fitness industry can look at is like there's something really powerful there, um, which actually kind of segues nicely into what you guys are doing now, um, which is Adam. So uh I'm really excited to talk to you guys about this. I'm really excited to, you know, work through you know the beta and and and gain experience on it too. So let's talk about that. What was the inception of that and you know what's the vision for it? And uh yeah, take it away. Tell us all about it.

Yeah, I think uh going back to what Shane said about us being dispersed uh when COVID hit, um just recognizing that there was something there with uh the remote programming and training, there was still a sense of community, but there were some obviously some hurdles that we felt like if we could clear or obstacles that we could overcome, we could really improve that experience. And so we kind of, like I was saying, had a few hard goods in the pipeline, and we thought, well, if we add this piece or that piece, we could like solve some of these problems. One of which was, you know, uh, we took we all took some equipment from the gym when it closed down, and we gave a whole bunch, basically everything, out to the members and kind of tried to distribute it evenly. And then so we were at home, and those of us who didn't have built-out garage gyms, like maybe someone had a bar and plates and someone had a couple of dumbbells or something. And so we were doing the same workouts with different equipment, and what you lose there is that apples to apples sort of comparison when you know Shane and I are if we're gonna compete and he had a kettlebell and I had two dumbbells, it's just like not exactly um comparable. So we thought, well, if everyone had the same equipment, that would be amazing. And then if you just look at the online programming industry as a whole, all the fitness content out there starts with the coach saying, okay, this workout's gonna need dumbbells. If you don't have dumbbells, maybe you have a kettlebell. If you don't have that, go grab something heavy, load up a backpack, grab a jug of water, like whatever it is. Like, I get it, like they're trying to help people solve a problem there. But uh we felt like, hmm, this is interesting. We actually we are a hard goods manufacturer, like that's what we do. We also have been delivering fitness for 15 years, like that's what we do. Like, how do we combine these things and really solve some of these problems? So that was that was one of the things that we felt like um uh a programming system that was designed specifically for the equipment that we knew that you had would be pretty cool.

Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I mean, uh in some ways it's like a virtual to use CrossFit term box, right? It's like a virtual box. This is your community, this is what we know everybody has the same equipment, so you can do the programming in line. Um I I I love it, you know, I I've always wondered, and you could look at like uh, you know, street parking and Miranda and and you know what they're doing, uh, you know, it's a built-in online community. Um, but I've always wondered what what's held back from the functional fitness community of having just a virtual community everywhere where it's standardized, you know, uh workouts, just like what a CrossFit gym does. Like, you know, it's the same workout of the day. There's a couple um, you know, scaling options depending on where your skill level are at, or or things like that. So it's it's always bewildered me why that's not existence virtually. And you guys are kind of tackling it on because you do have the tools, right? You have you have the hard, you know how to you have the hard goods, like you said. Um so walk us through a little bit more, like, okay, so you have this inception, this idea. What is uh what is what's what's the engine behind it? Like you mentioned the methodology of it and um you know how you guys are gonna get in and out to the market. So tell us a little bit more on that side of things.

I would just add one more thing to maybe what Josh was saying is please you take that example of somebody who's super familiar, maybe have been doing this type of training for years, and to have them go and build a shopping cart and find a program, that's still a tall ass for somebody that's very competent. I mean, I mean, Eric, I'm not sure. I'm sure you've tried to do that at some point yourself. And then you layer that down to somebody who's never done this type of training. And like my neighbor, for example, was saying, Hey, I want to really get into some strength training at home now. Um, where do I start? It's like, oh my gosh, where do you start? That's a great question. Yeah. Um, get a coach.

So much that I need to tell you. I I was getting emails when the pandemic hit from all of my members saying, like, hey, where do I get dumbbells? And and what size do I need? How many sets do I need? What it's like so different than just buying a treadmill or a Peloton bike. Like it, it's like you that's like a one-click situation. Whereas if you don't know, if you're not really deep into functional training or CrossFit, like and how do you piece together your gym and make sure that you get the right things? And it was clear that that was a hurdle that people were having trouble with.

And then you put that in the market that we're we're really investing heavily in that out action sports and outdoor market. And this is very unfamiliar, right? So you got to think we we have to hold our our athletes' hands through this entire process from the first introduction to the training to finding the right kit to then seeing the right program and walk them through that whole process and on-ramp and onboarding um digitally. And so that became our mission right out the gate. Simplify that process.

Yeah, that's a tall order. Um, but it's, you know, big problems, um, big challenges always come with big rewards too, right? And one of the things you mentioned is that, you know, I was gonna ask you about the target market, who you guys are going after, and you decided, you know, uh action sports community, right? Um what led you to that decision out of the gates? And and uh yeah, could talk to us about that and how how do you plan on kind of specifically serving them?

Yeah, I think there's a number of ways to look at that. One of them is just we love that community, and those that's where our passions lie, like training and action sports. If I was to create a business for myself and I could combine two of my favorite things, there you go. Um, so there's just a a longtime love of outdoors and and those kinds of sports from both Shane and I. Um, and then beyond that, I think so. We all know the methodology is magic, right? I mean, this is something that is really exciting to me because I've been able to provide it to a small group of locals at my community gym, you know, for a long time. But how do we be expand beyond the CrossFit community? And and CrossFit obviously created somewhat of a little like defense bubble, right? It's not super easy to get into. People have some you know nervousness about walking into a gym. There's obviously been some uh some connotations, you know, sort of fair or unfair, sort of perceived by what the CrossFit games have become and how much how prevalent they've been on TV. And it's like, well, I'm not doing that. That's just crazy. I mean, I think most gym owners even saw that. It's like we had this like boom of people walking in your doors in the 10, 11, 12, 13. And then, like, as the games became more prevalent, it felt like there was it was harder to get those people in the door because they thought, well, that's not for me. But it is for them. It is for everyone, right? And it's like, what's the community that will just eat this up more than everyone else? And it's the people with sort of that adventurous spirit, right? It's like the same approach that the typical CrossFit gym member probably has is like the kind of same mentality that a downhill mountain biker might have. You know, it's like there's there's sort of a a lack of fear and like uh an adventurous spirit to try new things and an and a real value placed on capacity. Right. And so what can we do to help show the community that I think will, I mean, this is for everyone, so it's not like we're gonna stop with action sports, but I think you know that that's kind of our ethos, and that's that's true to who we are. So that's the next obvious step is like, let's help this methodology get out into this whole enormous cohort of people that would probably just find like where it like what we had. Where has this been all our life? Like, I feel like that's that's the general sort of you know response when you get exposed to this kind of thing. And I feel like that action sport outdoor community is gonna eat it up.

Yeah. Yeah, I I I I mean, I'm I guess I consider myself part of the action sport outdoor community. I'm outdoors all the time. I enjoy action sports, so I guess that makes me part of that community. Um yeah. Uh cool. I I feel cool now, guys. Thank you.

Uh the um well, I guess adding one more thing to that. Yeah, the guys at the top of these sports, they're already doing this. Like, you know, it's like it hasn't been super in vogue to talk about your training in the in that in those communities, right? Because it's like, how do you there is a coolness factor there, and it's like, how do I speak to this that feels authentic and is is true to my personal brand as an athlete, you know? But like the guys at the top of these sports, surfing and climbing and mountain biking and snow, especially, like they're all doing this, this kind of thing. So it's uh it's not a big hurdle to clear to convince them that that the guys at the top of the spear that this is this is important. I think the idea is just disseminating that down from that pinnacle all the way through the to the weekend warriors.

Yeah. Yeah, it's great. I I want to I want to get more into that too. Um, but I want to go back to something because I think, you know, as listeners may people who um especially were operators of gyms back in that 2012 time when the games, the CrossFit games really started to become popular and CrossFit headquarters really started to pour a lot of energy into it. Um that was uh a very critical turning point for that community because um I that's when I had to start having the conversations with people when they would come in my gym and I'd be like, listen, there's two different types of CrossFit, right? There's what you see on TV, right, which is not what we do here, right? I I can train you for that if that's really what you want. But 98, 99% of the community is still about general preparation, you know, feeling good, being healthier, having a great community, you know, that's the types of things that that we are. And that was a really interesting turning point. And I think uh, you know, unfortunately, it it kind of made things difficult for the next four years um for a lot of operators to have to deal with that. So um, yeah. Uh okay. So one of the things that's interesting too is about this is I I think there is when people think about joining a functional fitness, right? We'll just use that term moving forward, a functional fitness gym. Um, there is an intimidation factor, right? I mean, this is there's barbells, right? There's pull-ups, there's things that a lot of people may, you know, unless you've been an athlete earlier in your life, you may not be it's just intimidating and you don't know if you can do it. And the best gyms, of course, make that non-intimidating and get people in and you know, show them that, hey, this is a long-term investment. We're gonna take you step by step and we'll get you there. Um, but I would imagine there's also a little bit less when you actually don't have to walk into a gym, you can just do it in your garage and you can be kind of part of an online community too. Is that have you guys noticed a difference there? Like it's a little bit easier to join if it's in your garage versus having to walk into a gym and be, you know, the the newbie.

We were surprised actually that that wasn't really in the forefront of our mind, but that's been some of the feedback we got just from having the people in the program, is they get to kind of dabble in it in the comfort of their own home and then build up some confidence. And I think again, one of the things we're excited to get this out to the masses because we're not even sure exactly how people will use it, but that was that was one of the things that came out pretty quickly as soon as we started to expand the beta.

Well, the irony is that it started as a garage gym phenomenon, right? So, like CrossFit in its early days was people posting to the main site from their garages, and it's like those guys didn't get started by going to an affiliate, they figured it out with like minimal resources. Like the the the amount of detail that was written in a in an early days dot com workout was like pretty minimal. So that's how the whole community was built. And we feel like, you know, just taking the sort of 10,000-foot view of this, it's like, yeah, this is gonna be really powerful to get people who may not have been sure that they could walk into a CrossFit gym or a functional fitness gym comfortably. Um, and obviously we're gonna build out that step-by-step process and and hold hands as much as people need it and as much as you can possibly do in a virtual sort of capacity.

Yeah. Yeah, you know, I and when you guys talk about, as I'm thinking more about the action sports community, there's some really interesting things that will lean towards success because you know, there's a certain part of the population that doesn't want, wants, you know, no impact, no chance of, you know, any sort of injury, right? They want, you know, and that's kind of like I think Peloton, like you're not gonna get hurt on a Peloton. You're not. You're gonna sweat, you're gonna feel good. Um, but you know, if you are learning to properly strength train, um, you know what? Like the the benefits are tremendous, right? Uh the results you'll get and the longevity of having more lean mat. We can all talk about that, the scientific side of things. But there is a small risk that, you know, you're gonna have some aches and pains, right? I still lift heavy twice a week and I've been doing it for the last 15 years. Yeah. Yeah. Right. We just all looked at calluses on our hands and rips and things like that. You know, there's a little bit of a price to pay for that type of fitness. And I'm still sore. I back squat every Monday. I'm still sore every Wednesday. And I'm just used to it, right? But I know that, like, hey, I'm 45, I can still lift 300 pounds on my back. And to me, that's great. Um, but a lot of people have that.

I have so many thoughts about this topic. Yeah.

But to get to this point, then I'll let you extend on is that the action sports community realizes that like a little bit of pain to get to where you want to be is the path, right? So it's not like you're not fighting that battle in that community. They get it already. So I think that's a really interesting place. But yeah, I would love to hear more thoughts that of what you have on that, Josh.

Yeah, I mean, where do I start? It's it's like 100% safe is 100% ineffective, too. So you start there. And so obviously you and and which means that Peloton isn't 100% safe because it's not 100% ineffective, you know. Like so you sitting on a bike, and any experienced cyclist will tell you this sitting on a bike too long every day does come with some, you know, that's not safe. That's that will come with overuse injuries, being in a position that ends up, you know, stimulating certain muscles, you know, and you know neglecting others, you know, and so what's wonderful about CrossFit is the the versatility and the variance, right? So you're you're not always doing the same position over and over and over again, um, which comes with obviously some risk. And I mean, being a gym owner, that's the thing that you heard more than anything else was like, oh, I heard this is dangerous. And it's like, well, I don't know. I had a gym before CrossFit. I was in the fitness community before CrossFit, and it seems no more dangerous, literally, probably less dangerous to me than the old bodybuilding methods of the old school personal training gym. Like, is people constantly having overuse injuries from doing like seven chest exercises back to back to back to back. You know, it's like so there, and the other thing is like someone will applaud someone for running a marathon. And I'm all about, you know, people going out and doing what they're you know, challenging themselves. So I'm not against that at all. But it's like then you mentioned that they're gonna start CrossFit, and it's like this this big gasp about, oh, that's so scary. And it's like you just told your friend that you're so happy for them running a marathon, like everyone gets hurt running a marathon.

It's 100% guaranteed that you're gonna get injured training for a marathon.

Pick up basketball. Or I have I used to have members who would ski 10, 80 days a year, but like be really like these are private training clients who are really like resistant to doing CrossFit style exercises because they're afraid of quote unquote. You know, getting injured. It's like you ski 180 days a year. Like, this is not the most dangerous thing you do. This is so controlled, comparatively speaking. So I think there's a whole can of worms there that I think that's just an education piece that people need to realize. But I think what you're speaking to is exactly right. It's the mentality of the action sport and outdoor athlete. And I'm, you know, 180-day skier aside, like the people at the top of those communities, generally speaking, they have more of an aversion to safetyism, right? So they're out there, they're trying to get the most out of life possible. And we feel like the best foundation for getting the most out of life possible is a functional fitness or functional training foundation. It's like if you want to ski and snowboard and surf into your 60s, if you want to chase your grandkids, if you want to beat your grandkids on, you know, some physical capacity test or some sport, like this is how you do it. And so, like, yeah, does that come with a little bit of risk? Well, yeah, but there's a lot of reward in that. And does that come with a little bit of sort of mental fortitude and overcoming some fears of doing something that might feel new and maybe you know perceived as possibly more dangerous than let's say riding a recumbent bike or something? Um, well, yeah, but think of like all the benefits that come from that mental fortitude. It's like I think just the the risk reward metrics have been thrown out of whack in that in that sort of um community conversation.

Yeah, I I totally agree. And I think we could probably talk about that for another two hours in total, you know, really. Uh, but I agree. And I I just want to make sure we we spend enough time too covering Adam because I so walk me through in its current state, and today's recording is October 22nd, uh, 2021. What is what is the customer experience from finding you and then all the way through to training?

So the customer would come to our site, they would get a little bit of exposure to what is what Adam is, so they'd get a sense of the content, the program, the equipment, and then our goal is to quickly move them into this um sort of level setting and kit kiting. And that process is about a five to ten minute process where we ask you a series of questions and we present different questions to you based on how you answer the prior questions. So you get a really personalized kind of experience through that process. And then at the end, um we're with some limited information, we have a starting point of kind of where you are in your fitness journey. And with that, we can recommend a kit. And that kit, uh, there's three levels of the kit. So there's access, which you think about um plyometrics box, uh, dumbbell, set of one set of dumbbells, kettlebell, jump rope, accessories, sandbag, those sort of things. Um kind of is your entry into the program, our atomic program. The step up from that is fly, so a pull-up bar and gymnastics rings to get you overhead. And then the step up from that is power, and that's barbell and plates. So it's kind of a three-phase process in that atomic program. And then each day when you log on to the workout, you can see you can see a version of the workout that's adapted based on the kit you have. And then on the level side, there's four levels male and four levels female. So, what that allows us to do is dictate the the loads. So from the kettlebell to the sandbag to the dumbbells to the plates and to the bar that you you get assigned. And you can always go in and reconfigure that. Um, but it gives you a starting point. And again, you know, going back to that example of somebody totally unfamiliar with this training methodology, they may just press checkout, right? Or somebody like yourself, um, with 10 minutes, you know, we don't get to know you as well as we would if you've been training and know yourself for the last 15 years. So there is an option to go in there and kind of reconfigure it yourself. And so that get that kind of speaks to the kidding side. Um, but I would also say like Adam is equipment agnostic. So if you already have a home gym or you have another brand that you love and um you already have equipment, that that's totally welcomed. Um, we're solving the kit, um, the kit concern for the person who doesn't know, essentially. And we've made some really awesome equipment.

We've designed beautiful equipment. Like some of this stuff is so exciting and so fun to train with. Um, but that being said, like I think I've even we as a team have shocked me as far as like what we build on a delivery side. So like the the experience of the how you you know get presented your workouts, how you configure them, we can get into more of that. But that side of it plus the content is is just so unlike anything that's out there right now that I think even if you have a home gym and you're not gonna you don't have a need for our beautiful dumbbells, which are just so awesome, um it's still gonna be a high value to you because of the the time and effort that we've put into the delivery and the content.

Yeah. So you guys are now in the content game. Welcome.

Yeah.

Yeah. Uh yeah, I talked to us about that. Like, I mean, that's that's a big investment to deliver really high quality content in the frequency that you guys are delivering, which is, I guess, at least daily, right? You're delivering the workouts via video. And so tell us about the content and what people can can expect uh and how you guys have built that out.

I think again, going back to how do we get more people into the methodology and how do we introduce this to people that um you know haven't been training in a functional fitness gym for the last 10 years? Like, well, that comes with more instruction, right? And so how do we present that? And the way we started thinking about it was well, shoot, like over Zoom, even during early COVID days, our coach on screen could could see us, but at the same time, they weren't always talking to you. So you could, you were they're actually coaching the other people on the screen as well. And what you had, what you get in that environment is very similar to what you get in a class where the coach has 10 people and they're giving cues, not always to you, but you apply those to you. So there's this audio component where you're training and they, you know, yell at Jim down the row to go a little lower on their squat and push their knees out. It's like, oh, I'm gonna apply that to myself right now because I don't want the coach to look over here and say the same thing to me. So I think there's this value of training alongside a coach coaching other people and coaching them well. And so every single day a workout is released, we're gonna have a coach on camera with at least three people training. And each one of those people are gonna have one of our kits power access fly. And so you will be able to have an athlete on screen that's doing the workout exactly like you are with the same type of equipment. They might not be the exact same level as you, but they might be some days. So those that those athletes will kind of rotate it and out, and some days you might have someone that you actually get to know as one of the athletes that are frequently in our content, and you're like, oh, this person's like pretty similar to me. So you end up like naturally racing this person, what we found. It's like I have some of my old gym members and coaches. Um, some of them are participating in the content, and so we have a little bit of a history together, and so I find myself training, and if they're on screen doing it, I'm like, oh hell no, I'm not letting Matt beat me on this, right? And so it's a really like um genuinely feeling authentic experience to train alongside this content. And of course, um, we can talk about this too, but we have Pat Barber as our head coach, who's just an incredible um coach and so much experience and so entertaining, just on a basic like entertainment value level, that I think it's um it's pretty, it's pretty fun. Like it's almost watchable, even if you're not even if you're not training.

Yeah, Pat Barber, uh, you know, probably not too many people outside of the CrossFit community know, but he's he's a funny dude. He's the he's he's uh he's very entertaining. Yeah, he's really uh I I like I he was always uh you know, when I was into the CrossFit competition, he was always one of my favorite athletes to watch and cheer for. Um so good job grabbing him. Um I want to respect everyone's time because you know we are kind of running short. I can't believe it's already been uh you know almost 50 minutes.

But um you guys have one thing real quick, Eric about yeah, please. Um so I would never have pictured myself as a digital fitness consumer, like just it's not me. So, but at the same time, um I thought, well, there's obviously a big market for this. People love this, right? So, what is it that I don't like about what's currently out there? And it's like this very cheesy, highly produced, sort of inauthentic feeling, especially like, I mean, there's not a lot of digital content in the CrossFit or functional fitness space. So if you go out write one little step outside of that, it gets really cringy really fast, in my opinion. And I feel like a lot of the people in our community, and even extend that on to the action sports community, they're gonna feel that same way. So, how so that was one of the things I came to pat with, and I said, Well, who's who could teach this like really authentic class that feels like it's not, you know, it's like as if the your buddy was a coach and you're taking a class from them. Like, how can we get this to feel more like a real class environment in a functional fitness or crossfit facility? And um, that was just like just like setting Pat loose on three athletes and recording it. And it's basically we're doing all of these in one take, too. So it's it's not like like he's not gonna say everything perfect every single time, but it's very impressive that Pat and some of our other coaches who have been um you know practicing with some of the content, like they're able to do this. And they just we just film a class on camera. So it's like there's are they gonna say you know something wrong here or there? Like, yeah, possibly, or just have to correct themselves. Like that's like real, right? That's a real sort of class environment. And I think the vibe that people are gonna experience from that is gonna be really surprising.

Yeah. Well, I definitely think the market's there. And uh, you know, I what I when I talk to you guys, and probably listeners can pick this up, is I get really excited because I think you guys are representing what I remember as some of the best of CrossFit, right? The community, good training, fun coaching. Like just it gets me excited again, you know, about it. Because there, I I admit, and I think a lot of people who are operators or in the CrossFit kind of got jaded after a while and just kind of didn't want to deal with it. And this is to me, it's really exhilarating. So it's it's really cool that um you guys are doing this. I'm obviously a big fan of the project. Um you guys also have um the 10K challenge. You guys want to plug that really quick? I think it'd be great for people to hear about.

Yeah, that is something we're super proud of. I think this will be our eighth year or so on that. Um, we ran it last year. It's it's it runs every year now in January, and we challenge kind of the community at large. All you need is a jump rope, and the challenge is to do 10,000 jumps for the month or in 30 days. And it's a super fun process. All the registrations, all the product sales, all the sponsorship goes to our Iron Compass Initiative, which is our internal charitable initiative inside of RPM. Um, last year we raised $130,000. Um, over the course of those 30 days, we had 28 million jumps logged, 30-something countries represented. It's super fun. And this year we're bringing that into Adam, uh, which will allow us to really take it to the next level. So, yeah, we're really excited about that. Registration opens up in November.

Sweet. Sweet. Um, well, you guys, thank you so much for coming on the show. Um, really excited to track the progress of this. And uh, yeah, I guess uh give us give us the goods. Like where do you want people to go online? How do people get in touch with you? Give us all that.

Yeah, follow us on social at RPM Training Co. Um, we have our website is rpmtraining.com. There's an Adam link. It's pretty easy to find the sort of landing page right now, which is a bit of a teaser, but that's gonna be uh getting boosted very quickly here as Adam um actually goes live November 15th. So get ready. Um, we're gonna start sharing a lot more information about this, and uh people will be able to get into the the program and start playing around with the interface, and we have some really fun ways that we are scoring the leaderboard, um something that the community has never seen before. Um, so it should be really cool.

Right on. Well, you guys, uh yeah, it's exciting. I'll say it again. And thank you guys so much for coming on the Future of Fitness and talking about it. And uh I'll I'll be excited to track it all. So, ladies and gentlemen, Shane and Josh.

Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having us. Great being here.

Hey, wait, don't leave yet. This was your host, Eric Malzone, and I hope you enjoyed this episode of Future of Fitness. If you did, I'm gonna ask you to do three simple things. It takes under five minutes and it goes such a long way. We really appreciate it. Number one, please subscribe to our show wherever you listen to it, or iTunes, Spotify, Catbox, whatever it may be. Number two, please leave us a favorable review. Number three, share. Put it on social media, talk about it to your friends, send it in a text message, whatever it may be. Please share this episode because we put a lot of work into it. We want to make sure that as many people are getting value out of it as possible. Lastly, if you'd like to learn more, get in touch with me, simply go to the feature of fitness.co. You can subscribe to our newsletter there, or you can simply get in touch with me as I love to hear from our listeners. So thank you so much. This is Eric Malzone, and this is the Future of Fitness. Have a great day.