Chapter 1: A Demented Clown and a Sweat Lodge

**See last night’s post for the Intro of this 10-part series

Chapter 1

2004 was a tumultuous time.

One morning, my Buddy “Big AL” from Gaspe looked at me and started hysterically laughing.

“Patterson, (Huge belly laugh) your girlfriend has a boyfriend.”

Her name was Kristyna — a beautiful Czech coppertone model with perfect boobs and a nasty edge to her – and she had just left me. Her boyfriend was in Vancouver and had come back to take her back to Prague.

On the very same day, my best friend and business partner in a (very successful) green building design business we founded, kicked me out of the company we’d spent three years building — a company I had poured by heart into.

And I knew if I stayed in the corporate engineering world much longer I’d turn into a fat, black-hearted, soulless piece of garbage.

I was 33 year old, and I was fucked.


Why?

Because the worst thing about corporate America is how everyone always tries to cover his or her own ass. It was all about people putting in face time; you got promoted up the ladder based on politics. And the higher up the political ladder you climbed, the bigger the pecker you had to suck. Once at the top, it was all about greed. The concept of taking care of people was nowhere to be found. The disfunction created a rat ship, where people were pushed to make bad decisions all the time as it was all based on shareholder value, as opposed to creating excellence.

Engineering was all I had ever done, and in my mind, was all I was qualified to do.

Eventually, with time and experience I realized that this way of life didn’t work for many people. This led to the third life lesson: All for one. One for All.

In other words, take care of everyone around you, including the people who work with you and for you. Do this and your life, your friendships, and your business will thrive.

Having said that, in the seven years that I worked for two Fortune 100 Companies, I had had one great boss. He mentored me by taking me on actual sales calls and closing them right in front of my eyes. And I got the sales credit! Unheard of.

But most of my sales managers had been useless. They had never really sold anything; they just juiced the chain of command to get promoted. Bill Tucker had been my only true mentor; he helped me grow as a business person and a human being.

Business Model rule number two: Mentorship. Business Model rule number three: Earning it

Coaches at a MadLab facility all go through a period of one-on-one mentorship, with coaches who know what they are doing, and have earned a professional wage dictated by the free market. (ie. Coaches have to earn their way – they were given it).

This process builds excellence first, as opposed to instilling them with short-sighted goals, or all sorts of crazy thoughts that-by-the hour employees always come up with.

Likewise, in our member gyms, owners have to go through the process first. We train the owners to become successful coaches and business people. If they don’t do the work – if they don’t pull the hard yards to become successful – they will have no chance at developing (and mentoring) coaches on their journey. No short cuts. You can’t just pay $1,000 and become a Madlab coach, and you can’t just pay $3,000 to become a Madlab accredited gym. You have to earn it.

Needless to say, I was at a crossroads.

Luckily some old friends forced me out of my sulking, pathetic state and dragged me off on a camping trip to Whistler for the weekend.

Soon after, I found myself high on a happy pill in a sweat lodge, hot as balls, hanging out in my underwear. As I was “cooling off” with a Macallan 12, I spotted this crazy ass t-shirt with a Clown puking on the back. It belonged to an old buddy I had worked with at Johnson’s Controls, Andrew Krynen.

I didn’t know it at the time, but he would become my first fitness-industry business partner, and would help me build the first CrossFit gym in Canada.

“Bro, what the hell is with this demented clown?” I asked him.

“It’s rings and ropes and running and weightlifting. It’s crazy,” he said all excitedly. “Patterson, you gotta check this shit out.”

Little did I know at the time – as I stood on the bungee platform looking into a creek bed a few hundred feet below saying to myself, ‘This a bad idea, look at the burn outs running this joint? These guys have no idea what the fatigue point of this cord is, I could fucking die here,’ when it occurred to me that I secretly wouldn’t have been that upset if the cord snapped. As I jumped into the unknown, this Pukie the Clown shirt would come to shape the next chapter of my life, as well as all those closest to me.

I went home and checked out this crazy website and read “What is Fitness” by Greg Glassman. Having been an athlete my whole life, and as a former varsity hockey player, I knew a bit about training methodologies, and what Glassman had to say made a ton of sense to me and more importantly it freaked people out.

I didn’t realize it as I devoured Glassman’s words, but my engineering career was over.

Thursday Lesson Plan

Warm Up: Coach Choice

A) 1×30 Full Bridges

Scaling Options:

1 Table Rocks

2 Table Inside Out

3 Elbow Bridge

4 Assisted Bridge

5 Full Bridge

B) 1×20 Floor Press Drill

Strength/Skill:

A1) 6×3 Bench Press

Add 5-10lbs from last week.

Regress with Floor Press for those unable to maintain shoulder position.

A2) Hip and Ankle Preparation

Conditioning:

400m Ball Run 20/12

Rest 5 Minutes

400m Ball Run 20/12

Finisher: 50 Diamond Push Ups