App INSIDER: The Biggest Crossfit Mistakes

Hey, it's Ben Greenfield. Welcome to this app Insider interview with Lewis Howes from the School of Greatness podcast. He's also a LinkedIn expert, an amazing entrepreneur, an extremely fit guy, and among other things, he's going to tell us some of the biggest mistakes that people make in CrossFit.

Welcome to the BenGreenfieldFitness.com podcast. We provide you with free exercise, nutrition, weight loss, triathlon and wellness advice from the top fitness experts in the nation. So whether you're an Ironman triathlete or you're just trying to shed a few pounds, get ready for non run of the mill cutting edge content from BenGreenfieldFitness.com.

Hey folks, this is Ben Greenfield and I've got a super special guest for you today. This guy's name is Lewis Howes, and I first met Lewis actually a couple of months ago up in Vancouver. I was there for a conference and there was another fellow there who actually looked like an athlete and somebody who I might get along with. And so we happened to be introduced and I found out that he's not just an athlete. He is a former All American and world record holding athletes who has played a bunch of different sports, who has broke a world record for the most receiving yards in a single football game, who's played on the pro level in football, who is a standout decathlete as well, knows a lot about whipping yourself into shape, fitness and a lot more. But before I shut up and let him get a word in edgewise, he's also a pretty impressive businessman. He's been on Detail Magazine's five Internet gurus who can make you rich. He's been named as one of the 50 most influential people in blogging. He's been rated as one of the top 100 most desirable mentors, along with the likes of Barack Obama and Russell Simmons and the Queen of Jordan. He's also quite prolific on LinkedIn. This guy has hosted over 400 webinars on LinkedIn and he's considered kind of like the person to go to if you want to be successful on LinkedIn. So today we're going to be talking about fitness football, CrossFit, getting yourself turned into a beast, and much more. So, Louis, thanks for coming on the call.

Thanks for having me, Ben.

So apparently you weren't always an athlete. Man, I have heard you describe yourself as a skinny, awkward kid. So can you tell folks a little bit about your story and how you turned yourself from being a skinny, awkward kid into a standout football player?

Yeah, it all started in third grade on the playground during recess. I was probably. I don't know how tall I was then. I was probably five foot something. I was about a foot taller than everyone else in my class with a shoe size of about 14 at the same age, probably. So I was very awkward and, you know, gangly and a tall kid, super skinny and just underdeveloped. Right? And I remember this was a defining moment of my childhood. And I think all kids have these defining moments, but for me, we were. Were having recess, and this particular day, for whatever reason, there was two. We were playing a class dodgeball game. And we never really do it where there's pickers, but for whatever reason, our teacher or someone chose two of the popular kids in the class to be the captains to pick the teams. So they chose one by one. And there's probably, let's say there was 30 kids, 15 guys, 15 girls, and I'm one of them. So I'm thinking, okay, I'm a great athlete. I'm going to get picked first or one of the first few. And one of the guys picks a guy, the next guy picks another guy, and then so and so forth. All the guys get chosen. And then I'm like, okay, I'm going to be the next person chosen. However, they started picking the girls, and I was down to the last girl. I remember this girl had, like, glasses and was like a shrimp and was just like, goofy. And I was like, I've got to be chosen before this girl. And I remember they chose me last. It was like they didn't even choose me. I was by default on the other person's team. So I didn't even have to say my name. It was just like, okay, you're on their team. And I remember for me at that moment, I was just like, this was the worst feeling. Being in third grade, I was just like, this is the worst feeling. I never want to be the last picked person for sports. I was like, I feel like I'm better than this. I'm a decent athlete. But it was that moment forward where I just spent four to five hours every night at the basketball gym, just playing basketball, playing soccer, doing whatever I could to become a better athlete. And I dedicated myself to never being picked last again in sports ever.

Wow. Wow. And from there, you did what I think a lot, especially guys who are listening in are probably liking the idea of. And I know I even get questions a lot of times on the podcast from women who want to put on curves, who want to put on some Muscle kind of get rid of that whole almost like skinny, fat kind of look. But, you know, you went from the skinny look into being big enough to play football at a pretty high level. Can you walk us through your journey from starting to play every sport, you know, after you started to spend hours on the basketball court and things like that, to what you did to turn yourself into a football player?

You know, it's interesting. Through high school, you know, I was really into speed training and getting a faster 40 and being able to jump higher. I really didn't develop until I was probably a junior or senior in college. And then even after that, when I started training for the professional league, I would train for everything. I would eat as much as I could. I would take any type of supplement. I would work out with weights. And for whatever reason, in high school, maybe I wasn't doing the right program or I wasn't doing the right thing, but I just couldn't get bigger and stronger. I was still tall and skinny. I worked very hard at my craft, which was the sport, and just becoming a great player and a great athlete, but I couldn't get the size. So I never got recruited to play Division 1 football or Division 1 basketball or anything. So I went to play Division 2 and Division 3 and I transferred around them for a while because I still wasn't the prototypical receiver that these college programs were looking for. And I struggled in high school again. I tried everything. I bought every jumping program. I tried everything I could, and I trained very hard. It wasn't until probably end of college where I just started to naturally develop and I put on about 25, 30 pounds since leaving high school to my senior year in college. Probably a lot of that has to do with just maturity. Being around bigger, stronger guys and having to grow into that maturity level with my body. Being around a strength program where we were getting up at 5am and training in the weights and then practicing in the afternoon, all these different things. Probably had to deal with that. But it wasn't until probably I got into. After college, I went to a specific training facility just for the NFL combine in Houston, Texas. And a good friend of mine who was a trainer there brought me down there and put me on like a legitimate NFL training program. And that's when I really started to see the gains. Within six weeks, I had increased my bench press by probably eight or nine reps. At 225 pounds, I dropped my 40. It was just like I was so precise with everything I was doing, and all I did was focus on becoming a better athlete as opposed to worrying about school and girls and all this other stuff, it was just laser focused. Eat, sleep, breathe, becoming a machine. And I think that's when I started to realize how to really hack the systems and hack your body into getting the gains you want or dropping the weight you want or whatever it may be that you're trying to do.

Gotcha. Now, when I was in college, Louis, I took up a dare from one of my buddies who ran the the gym where he and I were personal trainers. And it was to bodybuild. And so I had to pack on a lot of muscle onto a relatively skinny body. And for me, one of the things that I found that worked really, really well because I had a screaming high metabolism, was not to necessarily do the traditional bodybuilding approach of working each muscle to failure, but to instead do three or four really heavy multi joint kind of workouts each week. Now, similarly, did you find that specific workout techniques or specific workout gear or tools helped you to put on muscle best when you were developing strength and power and speed for football?

What I realized was that I was trying so much myself that I really wasn't on one program. It was like I was on a bunch of different things. And I was running so much, doing sprints every day that it was hard to keep on the muscle because it was just, I was sprinting nonstop for two hours during practice.

That's why sprinting is one of the best ways for people to burn fat fast.

It is, man. It's like, I couldn't if you would have told me you're going to die if you don't put on £30. Like, I couldn't do it. Like, I was at 220. I kind of capped out at 220. And I was trying for two years to put on 15 more pounds, 20 more pounds, so I could be more of a tight end in the NFL as opposed to a receiver, because I was like, okay, I need to put on, like, I need to be about 245, 250 for the NFL to look at me as, you know, a great option as a tight end or like a split out tight end slash receiver, because I'm not fast enough to be a receiver and I'm not big enough to be a tight end. And I was trying so hard. I was eating double chipotle burritos like three times a day. I was doing whatever I could to put on to eat, and for whatever reason, I could not put on the weight. So I think sprinting definitely helps. And all we did was sprint 40, 50 yard dashes probably a few hundred times every day in these practices. It wasn't until I went to again, this six week training is when it really opened my eyes. Because it wasn't until I had a specific program that I just believed in and committed to 100% and had a coach that I believed in that was like, okay, this is the program. Here's the result we're gonna get. If you follow these steps, you're gonna get this result. And that's when I was like, when it happened in six weeks, I was like, oh my gosh, this can work. And I think this is probably a lot of the reason why you do coaching in general for people is because when they work with you, they see the result because they're on a specific program. They're not just like guessing, they're not doing half the work themselves, but half like not tracking their results and what they're eating or how they're working out and trying different things. They're following and a system that is proven, that works, that they can get behind. That was really the key for me. It was finding something that works and having an end goal in mind as opposed to just like, I'm trying to put on some weight, but I'm trying all these different things and I'm not really getting anywhere. But it's really about the system.

Yeah, that's the one thing that I found that gets me out of bed in the morning when it comes to the exercise component, even though I actually don't work out until the afternoon. But it's the thing that gets me going is when I have the exact workouts that I'm going to be written down Sunday night. So Monday through Saturday, I know what I'm going to do. Like yesterday I'm doing some work right now with Jay Schroeder, who did some stuff with Adam Archuleta. And he's a guy I met down at Dave Aspred Biohack your Life conference. And he does a bunch of stuff with extreme isometric training and overspeed neuromuscular conditioning.

Is this the guy out of Phoenix who did the Adam Archuleta DVD workout when it came out?

Yeah, the evo athlete guy. And he's enhancing my Ironman triathlon training with some of these same type of workouts that he has traditionally done with power and strength and speed athletes. But a lot of folks don't know that he's actually worked with some really good swimmers and marathoners. So when I wake up out of bed in the morning. I see. Whatever. Like yesterday, I had a bunch of isometric super slow lunges where you take five minutes to do a lunge on each leg and it's complete hell. But you definitely get this lactic acid buffering capacity anyways, though, every single day, waking up and knowing what you're going to do. I think that's. That's a really good point. Yeah. But for you, when you got to a certain point playing, you got to the point where you were playing professional arena football, right?

Yep.

What happened? Why aren't you still playing?

Yeah, I mean, the goal was always to play in the NFL. And after this training, this NFL training that I did for six weeks, I pretty much got to the level of what the physicality they needed for me to play in the NFL, meaning size, weight, speed, all those things. I got there. But there were other factors that were kind of holding me back. I played at a small school, you know, it was just a very competitive receiver draft that year, so I was kind of on the fringe and I didn't get my chance that year. But a lot of teams said, you know, go to the Arena Football League and then come to camp with us next year. You know, show us some numbers, show us what you can do at this level, and. And then we'll give you a chance the following year. And I got injured in the second game of my rookie season playing arena football. I broke my wrist diving into a wall, which was stupid, but I was sacrificing my body to make a play and just happened to break my wrist. So I had to have surgery, finished my career. I thought I was going to come back, but was in a cast for six months and then rehab for another six months after that. And it just kind of dawned on me that football probably wasn't in my. In my life anymore because it was going to be very hard to come back from an injury after missing a year. And I started working on business and kind of that started to roll, and I realized that I can have a bigger impact in the world with staying healthy, running a business than I can play in the NFL for a couple of years.

Gotcha. So at that point when you kind of decided that you were going to move on from football, did you immediately know what it was that you wanted to do?

I had no clue. I was depressed and lost for about a year, and I was sleeping on my sister's couch while I was recovering, trying to figure out what I was going to do next. Luckily, I had some good support system I had some great friends in my family who were kind of there for me while I grieved for a while. It was like I lost my dream. Imagine never being able to do a triathlon or Ironman or any of those things ever again. And it's like you trained so hard your whole life to do something and you can't do it. It's just like, it's just depressing feeling. And for me, I didn't have a college degree at the time and I never had a backup plan. So I wasn't like, okay, I've got this college degree in business, so you know, football, when I'm done, I'm going to go do business and run this and run that. It was just like I had one focus, one goal. It was football. And I was like, I got to make it and I'm going to make enough money so I can retire with this and that's my life. And fortunately for me it ended much faster than that and allowed me to build something in the last few years which I wouldn't have been able to build if I was playing football because I only had that single minded focus. So I'm very blessed and grateful for the experience and for going through that. But basically I had no clue what I was going to do next. I had a bunch of friends that I reached out to, a couple of mentors said, why don't you check out LinkedIn because I hear there's a lot of opportunities on LinkedIn so maybe you can find a job or find some type of business you can build from there. And that's what I did. I started heavily investing my time and understanding LinkedIn how to use it for myself and showing other people how to use it for their business. People just started reaching out to me and asking for advice more and more. I started charging for that advice by kind of one on one consulting with their LinkedIn profile. That grew into books, products, speaking and more, online marketing, coaching and training in general over the last few years. That's kind of how it's come about.

Nice. And so you obviously built a huge following on LinkedIn and I know that by the way, you have a podcast that does focus on some business techniques and lifestyle techniques and stuff. And I'm going to tell people about that in a little bit if they want to learn more about the kind of stuff you're doing with LinkedIn and in business. But you went into an entirely different sport kind of around that time as well, right?

Yeah, I got, you know, it was the, in 2008 when I was in my cast. And I just got my cast off around the end of March. And so I was still kind of a little depressed because, like, okay, I can't really move my arm because it's. I'm going through this rehab phase for a while now. And luckily for me, I'm a huge fan of the Olympics. It's the most inspiring time every four years for me is watching those two weeks in the Olympics. The Olympics happened that summer, a couple months after that. And I remember watching it just nonstop for two weeks and just being very inspired because I used to be a decathlete. So I watched a lot of the track and field gymnastics. And I remember at like 3am One night, seeing the sport that I'd never seen before, and people were running and jumping and throwing a ball and scoring, and there's all this excitement, and I was just like, what is this sport that I've never seen, never heard of? And there was a sport called team handball. They call it handball everywhere else in the world. They call it team handball in the United States. And I literally became obsessed. I started researching. I was like, where are these? Are there teams in the U.S. are there leagues? What's happening? I want to learn this sport. It's a very small sport here in the US on an amateur level. There's team club teams in every major city pretty much. But there was nothing in Ohio at the time, and I couldn't afford to move to another city to learn the sport. But I became obsessed with just trying to figure out any way I could to learn this sport. Eventually, within a couple years, I made enough money and I moved to New York City to go learn with the best team in the United States. My whole goal for moving was to learn this sport to see if I had a chance of making the US national team. And that was my next step.

So at that point, did you have to kind of change up your idea of what worked for you when it came to fitness? Because obviously, handball physiologically is a little bit. Go ahead and explain. Actually, for people who are listening in, like, the physiological difference between, like, stop, start, sprint of football and handball.

Yeah. So, you know, for me, handball, for those who don't know, it's a team sport, so it's seven on seven. It's basically like water polo on a basketball court, and you have a ball that you're running around, you can dribble with the ball, and you throw it and you try to score in a net. So it's like water polo on a basketball Court or soccer with your hands. But it's very physical, it's very athletic. A lot of side to side movement, a lot of quick, a lot of jumping, sprinting, fast paced. So it's a lot of fun, but it's very physical. Luckily for me, I've played so many sports. I did play soccer for until I was 15. I played varsity in high school before I even played football. I played basketball all through my entire life and one year in college I played football. So I had the physical aspect, I had the footwork aspect. I played baseball so I could throw a ball really hard and really accurately. So I had all these elements as an athlete for what team handball represented. And that's why when I saw it, I was kind of frustrated because I was like, how come I never saw this sport before? Because this would have been perfect for me. My size, you've got to be tall, you gotta be able to jump, you gotta be athletic, you gotta have good arm strength. And I was like, I have all these skills now, I just gotta put it all together and learn the technique. And that's what I did. I moved to New York City and luckily for me, a lot of these guys in the teams, the team in New York all played professionally, Europe and they were some, you know, some of them were on the national team for their country. So these were top pros that had retired, moved to New York City and were still playing competitively because that's their sport that they grew up loving. So I learned from some of the best guys very quickly about the technique. However, you know, I'm still nowhere where I want to, where I want to be. And it's probably going to take a few more years until I really get down, you know, putting the time and the hours into learning the technique of how you're supposed to throw and the movement and the working with the team in the flow. But luckily I did have enough experience playing on a basketball court, playing with a team, understanding spacing, positioning, you know, movement without the ball and all these different things that I was able to pick it up pretty quickly.

So what kind of workouts do you do to get yourself in shape for something like that? I played water polo in college for a couple of years as whole set and for that, you know, we did a lot of, you know, we do workouts where you'd be like treading water in the pool, throwing medicine balls out of the pool, a lot of sprint across the pool, get out of the pool, do push ups, squats, get back in, sprint back across and I combine that with a lot of bicycling because in water polo you're doing lots of, lots of this egg beater kick and so lots of, lots of high intensity interval bicycling for you. What has worked for you to get yourself into shape for a very physiologically demanding sport like handball?

Sure. So since I only practice twice a week, because it's a club level, it's amateur level, and you actually pay to play in the United States, which is funny, I was like, how can I stay in peak performance shape? Because the only way that I'm going to be able to keep up with these individuals who are great at handball is to be in better shape than them. That's what I figured. I was like, if I can hustle and play great defense and just make plays but not be the best technique, then I'm going to be able to give myself the best opportunity to play, make the U.S. national team. If I can do that for my busy lifestyle just running my businesses. I was like, what is the best workout that I can do where it's not a lot of time. I don't have to think too much, but it's going to make me an animal. I started getting into CrossFit back in, I think it was late 2010 and realized that this was probably the best workout for me in terms of not having to think too much, knowing that there's going to be a program every time I come and if I just stick to giving my best effort every day, that I'm going to have pretty much a great overall strength, endurance, quickness, agility, you know, explosiveness. If I follow this for me, and I said I can do this when I travel because I can find these places so I don't need to rely on one specific trainer and being one place every day. If I just show up, then I know it's all half that. The other half is the diet and what I'm putting in my system. So CrossFit became my workout of choice.

Did you just randomly walk into a CrossFit gym or did you actually kind of, kind of get introduced into CrossFit by some.

I got introduced actually after I got injured, after I got my cast off from, from playing football, I was going to try to actually get back into football. And so this was my, you know, I was very naive thinking that I could get back into it, but really I realized that my, my body wasn't ready for it and too much time had passed, that I need more time to try to get back into it. But I reached out to my good friend and my old college football teammate, Graham Holmberg, who was doing a lot of training, doing a lot of personal training, and just like, I would hang out with him and just see that he was just so shredded and so strong and whenever we'd work out.

And he, like won the CrossFit games or something like that, didn't he?

Yeah, he won the CrossFit Games, which.

Is like the fittest man on earth.

Exactly, exactly.

And he.

But he didn't win it. When we were training, we were training back in, I think late 2008, early 2009. And this was before he was actually doing CrossFit. We were doing. He had his own gym that he was training at. Just doing, like speed training and different sports, specific training for athletes. He was just training them. So we were doing, like a lot of different jumping stuff. We were using rings. We were doing a lot of the stuff that you do in CrossFit. But he didn't know about CrossFit at the time because it was still pretty, pretty unknown then, however he got into it, started doing it on his own. Went to the CrossFit Games, I think in 2009. Got like 19th or 20th or something. Basically just starting it, like a couple months before the Games. He heard about it and he was like, okay, I'm just gonna go do this thing. And got like, 20th in the world. Then he, like, dedicated the next year to really training and doing it. And he was like, yeah, I just did this thing where I got 20th, and I'm trying to go back and do it again in a month. And my goal is to get top five. And then I hear from him afterwards, he's like, oh, yeah, I want it. I was like, holy crap. And that's really when CrossFit really started to take off. Was like, after 2010, he got on ESPN, everyone started talking about it. So he got me into it. He was like. He started training me with CrossFit style workouts before, but then he was just like, just come to my gym and we'll just do CrossFit. And that's kind of how I got into it.

So was there a big difference between, like, the way that somebody like Graham would approach CrossFit workouts in the way that the average person would? That kind of set him apart, or is he just kind of a genetic freak?

You know, it's interesting. He's. He's not that much of a genetic freak. He's, you know, 5, 11, 190, 185. When you look at him. You don't see like, you're not like, oh my gosh, this guy's such a beast or whatever. He's beastly just because of how hard he trains and his energy that he puts into it. But he's worked really hard to get there. I think his approach is, this is his Life. He dedicates 100% to everything he eats, thinks and does about his lifts and perfecting everything. In terms of the average person, I think a lot of challenges with the average people who come into it is they may not get a great coach right away, or the coach may just kind of throw them into whatever the workout is without giving them the technique or the training. And a lot of people get injured. And so the thing is, you just got to make sure that you take it very, very slow. Even if you were an extreme athlete before or did any of these extreme sports, taking CrossFit very, very slow and forcing yourself to slow down when it comes to using weights. If you're doing any of the body weight stuff, then you can beat your body up as much as you want and go as hard as you want there. But when you start lifting anything, go as light as possible until you feel comfortable with your technique.

For a lot of folks I know who listen to this show, they may be familiar with specific moves in CrossFit, like a muscle up or a clean or something like that. Are there specific specific moves in CrossFit that you think people make the biggest mistakes with in terms of, like, things that you see people doing wrong consistently when you're at CrossFit?

Yeah, I mean, snatches. I mean, I do this wrong too. And this is kind of the downfall with CrossFit is, you know, the competitive person it's great for, because you go in there and you compete and you try to race against time and race against the other people in there for reps. But that's also can be bad if you have too much weight on there because your form gets very, you know, gets average. And when I see it, I've done this myself, I've done snatches, overhead snatches, and it's. If I put too much weight on there and I try to do too many reps without, and I get fatigued, I've got to slow down and I got to hold the competitive nature in me back and say, you know what? It's not worth getting a few extra reps if I'm going to pull my back for four days. And that's the challenge is I see a lot of people when they get fatigued and snatches overhead squats as well, because maybe they don't have the flexibility in their ankles or their hips, and they're just not holding good form. And so they're trying to just do an overhead squat and they're leaning forward and they're like, you know, their shoulders are rounded and all this stuff. It just doesn't look good. And I'm like, ugh. That's just. I'd rather not do the lift than try to push it if the form is bad. And those are a couple of things that I see with the snatches and overhead squats.

What about, like, a lot of the metcon stuff that people are doing as far as, like, you know, the running and the rowing and things of that nature? Do you note any form deficits in those kind of activities?

Yeah, I mean, I think rowing. And I'm to blame for this sometimes, too, and I'm aware of it when I do. It is. It's just like. It's the fatigue factor. And I think this happens with everything. It probably happens with you when you're doing a triathlon. It's like you get fatigued and you start to slouch your shoulders when you're running and have bad form, and that makes you have more pain. So it's just a matter of trying to break through the fatigue. But the CrossFit is much harder because you're using specific weights, and it's very heavy kettlebells sometimes. I see this as well. People are doing a lot of kettlebell swings. They have bad form there. It all happens with fatigue and understanding your limits. But that's also the challenge because we're trying to break through limitations and see how far we can push our bodies with it. So it's kind of like on the fence with understanding your body, with also pushing it to the limit to see how far you can push your lungs and where you're at. So I think that's why a lot of people get a bad rep with it, because there are a lot of injuries, and I've even hurt myself a few times. But it's a matter of being aware and trying to be on the fence about pushing too hard, but also having.

Great form when it comes to CrossFit. Is that something you do every day or do you have, like. Because I know some people will go and do whatever the workout of the day at their box online every single day. Some people kind of split it up throughout the week. What do you do?

I try to do it. It depends if I'm in la, which is where I'm living right now. I'll try to go four times a week and it's pretty hard, I think, to go to seven days a week to CrossFit. Even like the elite guys, they'll take like a day off, I think once a week. So I try to go four times a week just because I feel like if I push it too much harder, I start to get too sore and too fatigued and I just want to give my body a little bit of rest. And I'm not competing to be like an elite crossfitter. So if I was, I'd probably be training harder. But for me it's just about like, do I have enough conditioning to be in top shape for handball? It's really what I want to be and I don't want to hurt myself. What I am doing, what I'm starting to do is CrossFit a few days a week and then also add street basketball where it's full court sprinting right after that. And I'm seeing my body transform more than I've ever seen it before. I'm actually the leanest, strongest I've ever been. And I think by doing CrossFit and then sprinting for an hour or two afterwards and just running around and doing side to side stuff, it's like my body is sculpting into a way that I've never seen it. And it's like it's a beautiful thing. And I don't know the science behind that. Maybe you know more about that than I do of doing those type of workouts back to back. But. And I'm also eating very clean and I think that's helping.

But yeah, yeah, the eating component is pretty huge. I'm actually, I'm working on a two part series of how to get ripped for my Get Fit Guy Pocket podcast right now. And it's amazing how well there's 10 points and only two of them have anything to do with exercise. All like lifestyle, stress, cortisol, nutrition, hormones, that kind of stuff. But yeah, I mean the thing about the whole back to back workout components is that for guys that does tend to work really well. I find that for women you tend to get a lot of amenorrhea and overtraining issues. But men seem to respond very, very well to some back to back high intensity cardio and weight training type of components. Even in some cases some kind of like chronic fasted cardio in the morning combined with weight training at intervals in the afternoon. Again especially for Guys, women don't do as well. From what I found with the fasted.

Cardio stuff, whenever I'm sprinting, I just feel like my body forms to this sculpture thing that I want to look like. And sprinting has definitely been the key. Whenever I'm not sprinting, if I'm just doing CrossFit, I still look good and feel great, but it's. Whenever I add sprinting to anything, it transforms.

Yeah, that's a key part of my workout every single week is I either do hurricane sprinkler sprint, which is 10 by 30 seconds straight uphill on a treadmill, as fast as the treadmill can go and as steep as it'll go, or else, say, a Litvinov sprint, which is whatever snatch, clean, deadlift, squat, swing. You pick eight to 15 reps and you drop and go straight into a 400 meter sprint and do that eight to 10 times through. And either one of those workouts, just once a week is enough to. To cause some serious body transformation.

Yeah, 400 meters is like the worst. If you can sprint after you're lifting and then do a 400 meter, that's. Oh, my God, I want to throw up just thinking about that.

The only thing worse than 400 is the 800. So in terms of CrossFit, I know that there's another guy. It's fantastic that you've gotten to work out and kind of see the evolution of a guy like Graham Holmberg. And I know that you've. You've had him on your podcast. And don't worry, folks, I'll let you know here in a little bit and put a link in the show notes to Louis's podcast. But you've also had Bob Green, the Biggest Loser trainer, Bob Harper. I'm sorry, Bob. Bob Harper.

I had Robert Greene, who is an author, and then I had Bob Harper.

That's right. That's right. Okay, gotcha. Yeah, I'm looking through your iTunes interviewees here. Now. I'm melding them because you've got Bob Harper right after you interviewed Bob Green. Yeah, Bob Harper. Sorry, the Biggest Loser trainer. And he does CrossFit as well.

Yeah, actually he goes to the same CrossFit gym that I go to in LA and had a number of occasions to work out with him and actually just watch him work out when we're at the gym together. And he is extremely intense when he is training and he's almost 50, I think. So it's amazing to see how, you know, this guy continues to perform at a high level just Working out through that many years.

So between a guy like Graham Holmberg, the fittest man on earth, and Bob Harper, the biggest loser trainer, what would you say are the biggest fitness lessons you've taken away? Just watching those guys, I think a.

Lot of it is commitment. And they both have an amazing commitment to staying in the best shape that they can be. Bob, I think he's been committed, he's been doing lots of different classes and training for 20, 30 years or something, and he's still 100% committed and focused in the workout. This is the same thing I see with both of them. They're very focused. When you do the workout, he's not like, he's very talkative, very friendly before the workout, after the workout. But right when it starts, it's like, game face, don't talk to me. This is the most important thing, is getting the maximum output of my energy during this time. It's not about just chit chatting, having fun. It's about making sure I get the.

Most out of this.

And Graham is the same way. He'll talk before and after a workout. He's kind of a quiet guy in general, but it's like right during the workout, he is an animal and it's just like he gets in the zone and you can see that. It's like he's putting all of his energy into making sure he gets the best workout so that he can reach his goals as an athlete. And the same thing for Bob. He's got to stay fit and look good for his personality and his business. That's what he's doing as well.

Yeah. Interesting. Now, in terms of kind of wrapping this up and harping a little bit more on the CrossFit thing for people who are wanting to. To get into it and kind of experiment with using something like that to get into shape, how does somebody actually get started, whether if they live in LA or something like that? Is the best thing to do to go to a CrossFit website or to just kind of wander into your local CrossFit gym and just jump in?

Yeah, I would say this is what I do whenever I'm traveling. I just do CrossFit in this city name. So CrossFit LA, CrossFit Denver, CrossFit Columbus. Just type it into Google and then I just check out what the closest CrossFit gym is, literally. And I just go there when I'm traveling. I would do some research in your city and figure out what's been, you know, what people are saying, maybe check out their Facebook Fan pages. Ask around. Hey, who does CrossFit? What's the best place to go to? Ask your friends, because usually there's a good reputation between a few of the gyms in your city, and some aren't as good. So figure out where the best coaches are and go there first.

So not all CrossFit gyms are created equal.

No, definitely not. And I've been to a bunch of them, and a lot of them are great. But you want to figure, you know, you may work well with a male trainer or you may work well with a female trainer. So you got to figure out who fits your personality type well, like where you feel comfortable at. You know, pricing may be an issue for people, so there's a lot of different things, but I would try to find the best coach that works for you. And the best coach may not be working for other people. So it's all personal preference.

Yeah, Gotcha. Okay, cool. Now, I've alluded a few times for people listening in that Louis has a podcast. He also has. Your website is Lewishous.com right? Correct. Okay, so we'll link to that in the show note. But he's also got a podcast I've listened to a few episodes. It's good stuff. He actually just did recently an interview that was just with. With he himself talking, and I thought it was pretty good. He gave away a lot of his. What'd you call it, your solo round.

Solo round. The power.

Yeah. He just talked about a lot of really cool things that inspired me in terms of the way that he's kind of built his business and built himself as a person. But he's also had, like I mentioned, Bob Harper on. He's had Graham Holmberg on. He's had Tim Ferriss on there.

I had the world's greatest athlete, Brian Clay, who was an Olympic gold medalist in the decathlon.

Yeah, yeah. So a lot of impressive guests. And I'll link to that in the show notes as well. It's called the School of Greatness. Great name. So, Louis, anything else you want to share with people?

Man, I'm just excited to be on here, and I'm glad I was able to share some of my story. But other than that, feel free to connect with me anywhere online. And if you have questions, feel free to reach out.

All right, cool. Well, that's the man, folks. Lewis Howes will link to some of the stuff that we talked about in the show notes, along with his podcast and his website. Over at BenGreenfieldFitness.com you can access those. And until next time, this is Ben.

And Lewis signing out.com for even more cutting edge fitness, nutrition and performance advice.

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