Because the podcast (if you’d like to listen to the podcast instead, click HERE) we recorded with Derek LaBonte from Packerland CrossFit was so awesome, and we believe he has some great fitness, health, mindset, sleep, and nutrition advice to give…we wanted to get this in writing for you to go back, read, and find the information that appeals to you!
Eric: I am very excited to be joined today by Derek from Packerland Crossfit. Thank you so much for being here today Derek, how are you doing?
Derek: I am super excited to be here and have been looking forward to this. I love talking about fitness.
Eric: I am excited to hear about your story, Packerland, and hopefully learn as much has possible about how I can keep getting my butt in gear as we go here too!
Why don’t we start with everybody’s favorite question: tell us a little bit more about you. This isn’t a working interview or anything like that, but tell us more about you and your background and we will go from there
Derek: Absolutely. I have been the owner of Packerland CrossFit for the last 4 years now, but I have been doing fitness my entire life. It has always been a part of who I am, especially when I played sports. I played college football, but I love the training aspect of it more than anything. I love being able to push yourself at the gym and the relationships that you can build with people inside of the gym is really what I gravitate towards.
When I went to college I was actually a psychology major with a human services emphasis. I wanted to be a sports psychologist. I mean, I had 6-7 books about sports psychology, the mind, and all that stuff because I have always wanted to be a coach. My dream growing up was to be like in “Remember The Titans.” I wanted to go to a school or even an inner city school where I could use sports and coaching to change kids’ lives and help them be the fullest version of themselves.
When I got to college I learned about the psychology aspect and was like oh, I can do this instead. That was my goal. I got accepted into graduate school but had some complications at home. My dad passed away and that made me put that on the back burner. I ended up moving back to Green Bay and that is where CrossFit really took over where I wanted to be involved and coach. That was about 7 years ago from now. From there, this was what I wanted to do. This was my calling. This was who I want to coach. This was where I want to make the biggest impact for people.
At the time, I was working as a social worker as well. I’ve always been in the field of wanting to help people achieve the best and get the best life for themselves.
4 years ago I made the leap and put in my 2 week notice and said I was going to start a gym. I didn’t know how I was going to do it, didn’t know where I was going to start, but it is what I needed to do. One thing led to another and a month or two later I was working side jobs to try and make ends meet, and all the sudden I was putting together my business plan and I had some investors come up…more importantly, my mom really helped out. Everything just opened up and here we are today. I could not be more happy with the risk that I took just to put in my 2-week notice and do it. I couldn’t be happier.
Eric: That’s phenomenal from afar, obviously I don’t know all the guts and glory of it all, but watching from how you guys went through that was really cool. Regardless of what space you had or resources, the one thing that I can always tell is the passion. The doing things genuinely the right way for what you believe in…the self-belief was there. I am excited to hear about how the 4 years have gone and where you are at because something in how you are going about it, and Ty as well, is always important in life.
Derek: Ty and Hillary were amazing to start. We started in their garage, actually. We had 3 barbells, 5 stall mats that were 4’ x 6’, and one little ring set up. We were taking clients in their garage before we actually opened up our space. We were literally hanging on by the bullstrap. It was wild and it was awesome. Ty and Hillary were just amazing.
IIt was kind of crappy at the time because we had 6 people and it was a lot of work. We had 6 members at the time, but Ty and Hillary were monumental to where we are at today. They are no longer in the business, they went back to Minneapolis, but I cannot thank them enough for everything they did.
Eric: And again, I think it’s the energy you brought to it and the quality of product. Obviously it is why you are at where you are at. Very similar in our business where it’s a shingle and treating out of a room/fitness area and see who is going to believe in this thing. So that’s awesome to see.
Now, obviously with your background in psychology and wanting to coach and help, what led you more into CrossFit or having your own gym? What do you think was the big differentiator or difference maker in that decision?
Derek: I think it was when I got done playing football, I was going to the gym but I wasn’t really doing anything. I was going and doing bicep curls, bench press, and all that cool stuff…but it just wasn’t fulfilling anymore. When I found CrossFit, it was actually at an Anytime fitness. This dude by the name of Elvis Cranton (Shoutout to Elvis because he is awesome), I saw doing some crazy stuff on the side and was like “what are you doing man?” I just met him, right? And he goes, “it’s crossfit!” He was explaining it to me and I told him I had never heard of crossfit. He told me to go home and Google it.
So I went and Googled it, came back, and was like this is crazy. This is some crazy stuff that I saw online. He goes, “well I’ve got a set up in my garage if you want to just come over and do it there.” I was like pump the brakes man, I don’t want to go back to your house just yet…I hardly even know you. So I ended up working out at Anytime fitness doing crossfit and then finally we became good buddies and went to his garage and started working out there and CrossFit Stevens Point.
I then realized it was a community feel. That’s what changed. I met Alex Rolfs, who now bought CrossFit Stevens Point which is now Baseline Performance. He was a huge influence on all of this. When I saw him and talked to him, he was able to take me under his wing for coaching. As soon as I walked in and saw him coaching I was like, “oh man that is what I want to do. That’s it.”
He sort of mentored me and showed me how to do it correctly. The same philosophies that I have today were from him. From that point on, I really wanted to change lives and this is an avenue to do it. I think that first class I was in, there was a lady (I forget her name), but we were doing cleans and she hit 10lbs over what she has ever hit before and it was just so easy. She was so excited and she celebrated with Rolfs and that snapshot was like, “oh man!” It’s about so much more than losing weight for aesthetics, it’s this whole spectrum of fitness you can really help bring positivity not only into their life, but for their mental health as well. It’s amazing…the power of CrossFit. From that moment, I was sold. This was what I needed to do.
Eric: That’s awesome. Going back to when you started 4 years ago till now, what do you think have been some of the either personal, business big evolutions, or learning lessons for you? How do you think that has affected the community you have been working with out there?
Derek: The biggest learning lesson is you want to appeal to as many people as possible. So when you start, you have all these people who have these big ideas when we are writing up our business plan and what we want it to be, but then it gets to the point where you just have to be you. You have to project your vision into your everyday life in and out of the gym. What you want that culture to be.
It took the longest time for me to step down from a lot of responsibilities, to let other people grab the reins and coach, so that was a huge learning curve. Just having to trust the people that you are bringing in to spread the same message to create that community sense. That’s something I still struggle with a little bit, but I am working on it. Taking more steps back and looking at it more in a broad range, where we want the gym to go, how we want it to run. That is what I am constantly working on every single day. That was the biggest learning curve for myself.
And then really understanding that crossfit gyms are across the spectrum because they do not follow an individual “we do this everyday,” or “we do that everyday,” it is kind of up in the air. It is the wild wild west really. It’s finding your niche, where you fit in, and what your overall goal is to help as many people as possible. Over the past 4 years, that has been something we are constantly working on.
Now my wife, whom I love very much, is also part of owning of the business and this is what we try and practice every single day. It’s who we are, which is: we want to help as many people as possible but do it correctly and do it in a sense that we want people to come back here and it be the best hour of the day.
So that is where we are at right now and we are continuing to try and push that message.
Eric: I love it. Obviously I have a great deal of knowledge in crossfit and athletes with the demands of some of the sports, but I feel like I am often fighting some of these misconceptions and these myths. I’m on the side of we need to be fit but we need to be focusing on growth, mental health, and not being so reactionary in our medical system…being more proactive and preventative.
For someone who is not working with crossfitters everyday, like me or you, what would you tell somebody who doesn’t really have a good understanding of what it is…what’s the differentiator? And then why might they want to join a gym like yours?
Derek: The biggest factor is what they see on TV and what they see on Google is not what crossfit is. That’s the top 1%. To piggy-back off that, there is a lot of the old school mindset in a lot of crossfit gyms. They want you to come in and just beat you down every single day. They want to leave sore, you have to live sore, you have to rip your hands and do all that stuff.
When we opened, our biggest philosophy was we wanted to take an actual method style approach and philosophy where we are trying to get people to feel good, be happy, be healthy, be hungry, and all that underneath. To do that we focused on just what you said, our “prehab” our general sense of what we want and make sure we do that everyday. I have a saying that I told my coaches and we preach to our members, “little muscles are muscles too.” If we’re not working out, it’s like building a house. Would you rather build a house off dirt or concrete? If you can build that house up on that dirt, you can get all these PR’s you want…but eventually it is going to come crashing down and you have nothing to fall back on. Where if I build a house on concrete, I can build it up, build it up, you may have an injury that brings you back down but at least you are falling on this concrete where you can rebuild easily.
That’s the approach that we took. That is the approach we continue to take to this day. We make sure our goal is not to beat you down and make you sore every single day…there will be days like that because that is crossfit…but I try to explain it as a football week. They only play a game a week. That’s it. They compete and they go all out one day a week. Their other parts of the week are a recovery day (one or two of them thrown in there), a walk through day, a practice/training day (one or two of those), and you only have that one game a week. When you look at it that way in more of a training mindset and how we get people feeling good and continue making progress….we have to make sure we are adding in rest days. We have to make sure we are working on skills as opposed to just sweating and getting your heart rate going crazy all the time and high high high intensity. We also need days that are just like training. We are just working on aerobic capacity, or just working on sweating, breathing, and moving without heavy weights. Then we also have that one day a week where we can go hard, look at the scoreboard and challenge yourself in that way. That’s something that we push out there and make sure people understand. Crossfit isn’t this, “we’re going to rip your hands and break your back.” We are going to make sure that we are growing in the gym and making progress.
Eric: I love that and I think a little PSA on my end is there’s so much solid research out there in terms of injury incidents and rate of injury incidents and the thing I come back to time and time again and there are lots of myths out there like:
Running is bad for your knees
Crossfit is bad for your shoulders
Basketball is bad for your ankles
It’s not the thing that’s bad. Crossfit is not bad. Running is not bad. Basketball is not bad. It is the fact that physical preparedness and the ability for you to handle what that thing is asking of you…and it sounds like, in your case, you are building people up to that spot. You are making sure the capacity is there. You always have to push it a little bit…otherwise you won’t grow…but you are understanding that there has to be a relative capability or capacity to do what you are about to do. That is my PSA for anybody listening.
This is true for any sport, physical activity, or hobby…it’s never the thing. The thing itself is not bad. Crossfit is not bad. There’s a way that you probably weren’t physically prepared for what you were about to do and maybe could have been done a little bit differently, programmed, or progressive. So that is kind of my PSA and why I continue to just love what gyms like yours are doing. We have to break this cycle that we are in. “Don’t do this because it’s bad,” is not the answer.
Derek: To piggy-back off that, actually, the way we start everybody is one-on-one. We do just what you are saying. We see a lot of people in our gym who have never done fitness before in their life…and now they have been with us for 2 years, 3 years, 1 year, or 6 months…they continue to stay with us because we start them one on one and we ease them into it.
Throughout our one-on-one session we do assessments of their shoulders and their hips to make sure this is safe and that is safe. I communicate with their coaches on where they are at when they get into classes. Their first class I am there shadowing with them to help them ease themselves through. We follow-up every single week to see how they are doing and make sure we are always checking in. That is a huge factor. Obviously, what you said…if crossfit was bad it would not be where it is at right now. It is an effective program if it is done correctly. We are fighting that battle all the time.
We want people to know that the way that we run it, it’s safe. It’s effective. We really make sure that safety is #1 and we are going to start you on the path to whatever your goals are.
Eric: Talk about what’s one of the number one things that I hear and personally I deal with, is compliance. It is sustainability with an exercise program. Talk to me a little bit about how your gym and crossfit in general helps combat that.
Derek: What we do a lot is our community, #1. The people that are in our gym are just amazing…amazing humans. I mean for someone who walks in, even when we have drop-ins, our members go up to them and shake their hands and ask them where they are from and how they are doing…that’s awesome.
Humans, from the psychology background I have, are creatures that need social interaction…the feeling of being a part of something larger than themselves. So that is #1. Our community is amazing.
This is something that I do with our coaches, and I tell them this all the time, “it’s not about how much you know, but it’s a matter of how you say it.” How it sticks with people. As coaches, I have 2 big rules in class:
You call everyone by their first name at least 3 times during class. That can be simply saying how are you doing, it can be giving them a cue, something of a positive nature, but something to let them know that they are seen, that they are heard, and that they are a part of this. Nobody is going to be left out.
The second thing is making sure that when we are running classes that safety is the #1 priority. When we are warming up, when we are going through all this stuff..we have eyes on every single person to make sure before we start a workout that everybody is at the level of where they are at to get better and not overreaching to cause an injury. Safety is at the forefront of what we do.
So that is how we try to map out our classes and how we make sure that everybody is a part of this. I think with that, it is just a safe place and a safe spot. When you come in there you don’t feel like you are stupid because you don’t know how to do this or that. All start from this position. We are here to coach you and help you get better, and that is the mindset of all of us. Leave your ego at the door. That’s what I like to say too. Leave it at the door because crossfit will humble you. What we do is humbling for even the most experienced athletes that do this sport. Which are not doing it for sport, we are doing it for fun and for fitness, but it is always going to be humbling. There is always something to work on.
I would say building consistency starts with community…making sure they are a part of something larger than themselves. Leaving the ego at the door and we all start from somewhere and all we are trying to do is get better. I think that allows people to see the progress they are making and keeps them coming back.
Eric: That is awesome. Taking more of a selfish turn on things. What are some things that, as rehab practitioners and speaking about humility and being humble, unfortunately there are some people in health and wellness and more medical that might not understand a movement pattern or a lift, or strength and conditioning. Obviously these movements are dynamic and they need to be coached, and it is a science. You are not just winging it. So, what are some things that you think a rehab practitioner should know when working with someone who comes in with a crossfit background or has an injury? What do you think are some big things they should know or kind of assess?
Derek: That’s a great question. I think what they should really look into is they need to ask questions about the gym in a sense of, “what are you doing for a warm-up?” or “what are the things that the coaches are talking to you about that is helping prepare you for these movements?” There are some crossfit gyms that love crossfit but they don’t do those things. It’s the old school mindset of, “we are just going to kick your butt every single day.” Asking those questions about how we run a class is going to be essential to know that we don’t promote one-rep maxes all the time, intensity every single day…it’s all about the messages that we are talking about that I think make a huge difference on actually what is happening.
Sometimes it can be, and thank goodness this hasn’t happened at our gym, but there can be some freak accidents that you cannot avoid. No matter what you are doing, if you are doing fitness, we have a lot more dangerous movements and a lot more dynamic movements so there is always a chance for injury. At the end of the day, it all depends on, when you are doing something like that, if you are not taught it correctly, and actually doing progressions leading up to that point, the house is going to fall down.
It is just making sure that when you are asking an athlete that comes into your place of practice that you are not just judging. You are asking questions about where they are going too. Asking questions about how it is run because if they cannot answer those questions, then I would say don’t go to that gym anymore. I would recommend someplace different because they don’t care about the actual science or they don’t care about what is actually going on in the body relative to what they are talking about.
I think that is a big key for a lot of practitioners. What are you doing for warmups? Are they teaching movements? Are they talking about progressions? Are they talking about scaling workouts back for you to make sure they meet you where you are at?
Those 4 questions need to be asked to make sure they are making a proper assessment to determine if it is negligence…they got hurt because they just didn’t care…or it was just an accident or a pre-exposed injury that when we go through our individual assessments I try to look at and ask them these questions to make sure we are not over-doing it. Maybe there was this pre-existing injury that they didn’t know about or an imbalance of some sort that maybe could have caused this and maybe it was something that might have come up either way no matter what program they were doing. When they come back with that, have an open communication. I leave my door open for Physical Therapists to reach out to me, and I always tell the athlete if they need to go and see a Physical Therapist T to have the Physical Therapist reach out to me about their rehab exercises and always if they give you a print out of your rehab exercises to bring it so I can make sure you are doing it when we do our warm-ups because you got to be doing it. I think that is also a big key.
We don’t know everything. I didn’t go to school to be a Physical Therapist. I am a YouTube hero. I look up the stuff and I try to do it as best as I can and I try to talk to as many Physical Therapists as I can, but at the end of the day we don’t know everything and it is being comfortable with not knowing everything and referring people out to people who do to make sure that they are getting the care that they need if there is something nagging or feeling wrong.
Eric: And I think that is great. There are some, and I don’t want to sit here and turn this into a bash session, but I know strength and conditioning, personal trainers, and crossfit coaches that probably understand movement, how to assess it, and how to train it and progress it better than some of us rehab practitioners which is unfortunate because we are supposed to be the movement experts. I don’t always think you need to have a crossfit level 1 certification to help some of these people either. If you can ask some of those important questions, it’s really helpful. So those are good. Those are perfect.
The other thing too, is going back to getting injured and these injuries in any sport, I think that is a huge thing is the simplicity of how many times is someone going 0-60 and the nervous system isn’t prepped, tissues aren’t prepped…it’s as simple as what the heck does this person have to be doing to get to A-Z and get to the spot. That is very common in our four walls. I appreciate that sentiment of a warmup aspect.
I think going back to some of the things that you guys are preaching and practicing, obviously in the gym we talk a lot about working out, crossfit, getting fit, getting stronger, hitting PR’s, etc…on your end though, in terms of becoming a completely well-rounded and healthy human being, what are some of the things you think people at your gym are underestimating in terms of their health and how that affecting their health and/or their performance in the gym.
Derek: I think one thing, especially when they start crossfit, is understanding the importance of rest days on your body…and getting outside. The reason we come into the gym is to crush it outside of the gym. Some people get into the zone of I need to be there, I have to workout, I have to do this, and I was stuck in that place for a while too…but it just wears on you…it drags you down. It turns into what a positive can be, to a negative. For example, using your fitness to go on a hike. Maybe you could not do this before. You could not go on a hike to see the sunset and now you can and the endorphins of seeing that and being out there in nature are going to be way more beneficial than always being in the gym and trying to crush a PR.
That’s what we are about. Mental health, to me, is so important. That’s the reason I believe working out is so important…it helps out in all areas of your life. You go up and see that and you are in a better mood. When you are in a better mood, you go to work and you want to do more work. When you do more work, you get a promotion, now you are able to work less. You are able to spend more time with your family.
It is a tumbleweed effect but it all started because you went to the gym, even if it’s 3 days a week, to be able to do this thing outside of the gym to bring you that much joy and gratification it will help out in all other areas. That’s what I try to tell people all the time. Not saying they aren’t doing it, but we also have people who define crossfit and it turns into a huge passion. The joke is, the first rule of crossfit: always talk about crossfit. I just try to tell these people all the time to take those rest days, do stuff outside of the gym, or bike ride. I joined MMA, and it was awesome. It was the best before I hurt my knee. I was doing it for a few months over at Titletown, shoutout to Titletown MMA, it was awesome. It was so much fun.
Just doing different things, it will help expand your life. That is the reason why we do it. That is the reason we do crossfit is to do other things out in the real world. So that is what I try and preach all the time. Now, a lot of people just love crossfit so much they just keep coming back which 5-6 days a week is good but then we have to try and tell them to lower the management, this is how we are going to do it, I don’t want you to do this, still want you to do that, still come in, but we are going to make sure that we monitor that. That comes with the coaching and my coaches have done a phenomenal job. They are awesome.
Eric: The other thing that I will plug in there too, kind of going hand in hand with the recovery days, is going to be I feel like I am talking more and more to people about the importance of sleep. That is going to go back into recovery, right? These Whoop bands, I don’t know what people think of them or what you think of them, but I think in some way, shape, or form at least is bringing some conversation to the table about the importance of recovery and sleeping and the things you do outside of the gym to help you in the gym.
The way I look at it is, you have the old school scale where you put weight on one and it’s going to tip the other way, so many of us because of working out, stress, anxiety, and all this stuff…we are constantly burning hot on one end and one of the only true ways to bring that back to balance is sleep. And then you think about how many of us suck at sleep. It is a dangerous combination. I’ve gotten to the point now where I almost question some of the things I see, and obviously are still going to have some mechanical aspect to them don’t get me wrong, but would they even be there in the first place if there was a little bit more of that balance with sleep and recovery. Is sleep kind of like the new exercise? I mean you are never going to beat exercise, but sleep might be 1B if exercise is 1A.
Derek: Another thing, it’s not only sleep, but the nutrition side of supplements. I cannot stand people always asking me about supplements and what I should be taking. I always say, the only supplement that I think is necessary for anyone is protein. Making sure that you are always keeping those levels maintained throughout the day, week, and month. I think that is going to be what moves the needle a lot in recovery. I call it the long-term macro nutrient. Fats and carbs you can sway back and forth, but if you are not consistent on protein you are not going to see the gains that you want to. I think that aspect of it, the sleep, the nutrition…I only get you for an hour a day…it is what you are doing outside of the gym that is going to make a big difference.
For supplements, just have an apple or two a day. Have a shake that has spinach in it that gets you your vegetables that mixed with sleep would help out a lot with stress and anxiety…what you are putting into your body. I think working out, or even movement, on our list of importance is literally #5.
We believe in:
#1: Nutrition: what you are putting into your body is what you are going to get out
#2: Sleep: just like you said
#3 Meaningful Relationships: Having those people in your life and making sure you are grateful for the person sitting next to you who supports you.
#4: Mindset: Being mindful. Learning mindfulness. Understanding that everybody has feelings and they run through you. Let yourself experience it, try not to fight it, and just let yourself live in the moment. We talk a lot about mindfulness.
#5 : Training
And training is the bottom one on the list, but that bottom one on the list usually gets all the other 4 starting to think about starting to go. All we ask from people who have never done fitness before is 3 days a week. As long as we can get you in 3 days a week for the 1st 2-weeks to a month, everything is going to tumbleweed.
For example, if you workout that day…maybe you are not going to choose the donut, you are going to choose the smoothie. That small victory is going to start stacking on top of each other and all of the sudden it will turn into asking questions about how to track your macronutrients or hey, what is this Whoop band all about that talks about sleep. That is where we want to get to but if always starts with just being consistent. Just coming to the gym and everything else will follow. That’s also what we like to talk about with a lot of people coming in.
Eric: Well there you go. Right there is your $5000 health and wellness plan Derek just summed it up for you in 5 steps. It is, it’s right there…we just have to just do the damn thing now.
Derek: How do you talk about sleep or how do you help people improve sleep? I am interested to hear.
Eric: I start with the bare BARE essentials. The first thing is the bedroom is for sleep and sex only. Temperature control at night. There is a lot of research behind lower 60’s and how many people are actually keeping their house at 62-63 when they sleep? Probably not a lot. And then we are getting more aware of the screens and the lighting and trying to avoid (which is really tough for a lot of people) screens and alcohol within 2 hours of sleep. Both of those are tough because at the end of the day I am going to check out for the day, let me do this right before bed or if we are going to have a cocktail it is usually shortly before bed. So those are kind of the 3 bare essentials that I start with. The first one is common sense, the second one is not known enough, and the third one is probably the hardest one to break.
I think too, there is a lot about consistent wake time. For a while people were thinking going to bed at the same time but I think there is a lot for a consistent wake time. It’s kind of what you talked about with exercise being at the bottom. If you start with that, everything else kind of snowballs. If you start with a consistent wake time, then everything else will kind of reverse itself and start to snowball that way. So those are some of the main things. But gheez, you have the calm app now, you have (and I really talk to a lot of people about) box breathing…which is diaphragmatic breathing with a pattern. You think about taking an inhale for 4 seconds, holding at the top for 4 seconds, exhaling for 4 seconds, and then holding at the bottom for 4 seconds. It is the simplest things, but you start affecting the vagus nerve and that starts to turn the nervous system down and everything else. There are some simple go-to strategies, but in terms of consistency it has to be sleep and sex only in the bedroom, avoiding screens and alcohol shortly before bed, and room temperature.
Derek: That’s awesome to hear about that room temperature. I’ve never heard of that before. I will have to look into that…that’s pretty cool!
Eric: They have – I actually saw a Kelly Starrett and his entrepreneurial world and his like 7 products out there…but he has a chilly pad that you can put it on your mattress or underneath the sheet and it is supposed to turn the body temperature down at night. I think it is an interesting idea. I think there is probably some merit to it but most of us start by just trying to get the temperature dropped just a little bit.
Derek: Whitney had – she bought these sheets. A sheet that goes under our comforter and it’s supposed to help control your body temperature too and help you feel cooler. So that’s interesting. It’s interesting to see if that works, you know? That’s interesting stuff, I like that.
Eric: Again, some confirmation bias but I am trying to track some of this stuff and I always get better scores when I am cooler at night and not in an unusual environment where it has to be warmer like a guest house or whatever. If I control that temperature down a little bit I do see better results.
Derek: Do you wear a Whoop?
Eric: I do, yeah. I’ve been wearing it for a while and again, like anything else, it’s only useful if you take advantage of the information that you are getting. So I know I work with athletes that wear it, and they will still over-train the snot out of themselves and not focus on recovery at all. So it’s like, well there’s your $30 a month for pretty much having some information. You actually have to use the information.
Derek: I used to have one. Whitney, my wife, has one and she wears one. She loves it. My personality, I kind of know it by hand now so I get really obsessive over some stuff. A little bit about me, I am obsessed with black holes so I find everything about black holes right now. Before that it was stars, just weird stuff.
But, I wore a Whoop for a while and I would be laying down in bed scrolling through my Whoop wondering how I could make these better. It was almost making me worse at what I was trying to get better at. I just got too obsessed with it.
Eric: Well there you were again on the screen again before bed too!
Derek: Exactly, right?! So I was like this is making me worse? So there would be sometimes I would be so addicted to looking at the score, just like you said, and I would be in the red or something, and I would say “my body feels okay I am still going to do something.” Maybe doing an X recovery day or doing this will make it go up and blah blah blah. It was just turning to be too much. So now I am going back to the old ways and going to do what has worked in the past for me. But I still love Whoop. That information – we listen to the Whoop podcast and learn information, it is awesome.
Eric: Yeah, they are doing a good job! Alright Derek, I’ve got my next client here. I appreciate the time and certainly would love to talk more. Might have to get you back on here in 6-months to a year and get some updates on your situation and how things are going. To let anyone who is listening know where they can reach out to you, and some social handles and what not, and we will put them in the show notes as well:
Derek: If they want to shoot me an email: derek@packerlandcrossfiit.com if they want to find us on social media, we are: @packerland_crossfit and for Facebook just search Packerland Crossfit and we will pop up.
I love answering questions. I love when people reach out just to ask what we are all about. We do “no sweat intros” it’s basically you come in 15 minute conversation (we do this with everybody) ask questions, talk about your goals, basically talk about you and what you want to do, and take you around the place and give you a tour. We try to create a starting place for you. To make sure that you stay consistent. It’s all about the individual and you are not just a number.
Eric: Yup, I love it! I love it! Thank you so very much for your time today. I learned quite a bit and might go back and listen to those 5 keys. You’ve got like a TedTalk on that if you want to take it and run with it.
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