The Speal Deal: 40 Minutes With a Fitness Legend

Chris Spealler-Blog

Sean: 00:05 – Hi everybody. Welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland. On this episode I speak with CrossFit legend Chris Spealler. Over the years I’ve covered dozens of fitness events all around the world and I’ve seen the best of the best work with coaches to find success. Yet many business owners don’t think coaches can help them. If you want to hit a revenue PR, visit twobrainbusiness.com to book a free call and find out how a business coach can help you. Chris Spealler is an eight-time CrossFit Games competitor, seven as an individual and once as a master. He stood on the podium three times in his individual career. Spealler is also one of the most popular athletes in CrossFit history. He currently owns CrossFit Park City in Utah and he runs the online Icon Athlete training program now known simply as Speal. We talk about some of the more memorable moments from his competitive career, what it was like making the transition from training as a competitor to training for life and what sets good programming apart from the not so good. Thanks for listening everybody. Chris, thanks so much for being here, man. How you doing?

Chris: 01:20 – I’m good. How about you?

Sean: 01:22 – I’m doing really well. You have been a fixture in the CrossFit community for a while and I think people who are sort of late to the game might not know a lot about you. So I want to get to know you a little bit first here before we dive into all the competitive stuff and your history with CrossFit. What sports or athletics did you pursue when you were growing up?

Chris: 01:40 – Oh man, I kind of did like the gamut. You know, when I was younger I played soccer. I wrestled, I started doing that when I was about six and that kinda stuck with me for forever. But wrestled, I played lacrosse, I ran track and with running track that was like the hundred meter, the 400 meter. I tried the long jump, I tried the high jump, I wanted to shot put, but didn’t work out being 60 pounds and shotputting. I even played golf my freshman year in high school. What else did I do? Yeah, I kinda did, yeah, a whole bunch of stuff. But wrestling was my jam. I started that when I was six and then I did that all the way through college. I kinda decided in 10th grade I played lacrosse and wrestled. And then I remember my dad kind of sitting down and saying, hey, you have a choice to make bud. You can either be good at both these. And he said, that’s fine or you can try to be the best at one. And I thought, man, that sounds really cool to be the best at one. So then I stuck with wrestling.

Sean: 02:48 – Other than wanting to be the best at it, what is it about wrestling that appealed to you?

Chris: 02:54 – The fairness. As a kid growing up, shocker, I was small. I was really small as a kid, you know, I think in seventh grade I weighed 65 pounds. Ninth grade I couldn’t wrestle for half of the year cause I didn’t weigh enough. So you had to weigh I think 91 pounds to wrestle103 and I didn’t weigh enough. So when I was younger it was always a little bit of playing catch up and the fairness was so refreshing and it was kids your size, so I didn’t have to worry about not stacking up against kids that were six years old and weighed a hundred pounds. It was just another six-year-old that weighed 50 pounds, which was awesome.

Sean: 03:38 – What kind of work ethic did that instill in you growing up?

Chris: 03:43 – Oh my gosh. It was everything. Especially once I got to high school, I got really committed in middle school and I even wrestled at Foxcatcher for a little bit. And really kinda took that step once I got into middle school and then start of high school to having a big commitment to that. And in 10th grade I remember watching a video on Iowa wrestling and that legit changed my trajectory of the work ethic that I wanted to have, the athlete that I wanted to be, the person that I wanted to be, watching those guys work as hard as they did. I just wanted it, I wanted to be a part of that and that was it. I’m sure some people would disagree, but I don’t care. It is hands down the hardest sport. It’s way harder than CrossFit. It is the hardest sport out there.

Sean: 04:43 – I had a football coach, he used to say wrestling is the toughest sport because God made it first.

Chris: 04:49 – Yeah, agreed.

Sean: 04:51 – How does that lead you to CrossFit now?

Chris: 04:54 – Oh, so when I was out of college, I had the opportunity to go to the Olympic training center. My coach from college said, hey, if you want to go, you can. But I was not at that level, you know, I was not someone that was like Olympic caliber and I was nationally ranked in college, which was cool. But my heart just wasn’t there anymore. I just knew I didn’t have it in me to push that hard and I didn’t want to do it halfheartedly. So I had this four-year window of just being really lost and wanting to do more and wanting to train, but not really knowing how to do it or who I was. And I stumbled into CrossFit through a friend of mine. And it instantly gave me that feeling of purpose behind the training again. It felt like I was at the very least competing with myself because it was so young. The online community, we were posting each other’s times. It was very supportive on.com and it just felt like sport. So I didn’t feel like I was just wasting time doing chest and tris on Tuesday, Thursday back and bis Monday, Wednesday and running the days in between. It was sport to me, which was so refreshing.

Sean: 06:17 – Why do wrestlers make such good CrossFitters?

Chris: 06:21 – They’re just so much more mentally tough, like the willingness to suffer and that understanding of how far you can push yourself, I think is just unmatched for most people and most athletes. And then also truth is that a lot of the training fits really well with CrossFit. You know, a wrestling match in college is seven minutes long. And how long are most CrossFit workouts? You know, they fall into this like eight to 12 or 15-minute window. And then you think about the practices that we had to do, they were drill matches and they were all sorts of intervals that were short bursts and I had to go on long runs to lose weight. It just plugs into its so well.

Sean: 07:10 – Why did you decide to go and compete at the first ever CrossFit Games in 2007

Chris: 07:16 – I thought I could win. I remember thinking I could outwork other people, I can outwork them. And I remember thinking, you know, seeing my times and posting and also just there’s this curiosity because we were all just names on this blog. There was no image and there was OPT and AFT and Kelly Moore and Bingo and all these names that you just, you knew who these people were through their messages, but there was this real element of wow, we can get together as a community and do this together. And it was just such a cool time. It was such a cool time to be on the brink of that and experience that.

Sean: 08:05 – What did you think about the future of the sport after you competed that year in Aromas?

Chris: 08:12 – No one knew. I think we finished and I think on Saturday night we had a big barbecue in the back of like the warehouse there. I remember legit, they were just barbecuing hot dogs and hamburgers and we were hanging out having beers and just being a community, there were like 50 of us there, you know, it was nothing at the time. And there’s no way any of us I think had any idea, not even where it would be in 2014 or 2020, or whatever, but even in 2008 to have 600 people show up? That’s bananas. It’s crazy.

Sean: 08:53 – How did your training then change, if at all, after that experience?

Chris: 08:57 – Yeah, so I really didn’t change much of anything after 2007. After 2008 when I had to do the squat clean and jerk, then I started doing some strength bias programming, but not a ton of volume. And then in 2009, when they tried to kick our teeth in with all the volume, we were like, wow, we gotta prepare for that. So then some volume started creeping in. I still focused on more of the strength stuff and I would do like little balloons of volume. So I’d do just one workout a day. But then about eight weeks out from a comp, I would start to do like two-a-days or three-a-days, usually two-a-days. And then that again shifted in, I would say, probably 2012, there was another kind of bump, and that all that time there was still this, constantly tried to evaluate where your weaknesses are. But in 2012, there was I think a pretty significant bump in training volume, training—I don’t know that style is the right word, but organization and periodization of CrossFit training, getting coaches, all that started kind of popping on the scene in 2012 and then just continually evolve from there.

Sean: 10:13 – One of your many memorable moments of the CrossFit Games came in 2011 and it was on the dog sled. What stands out to you about how you performed in that event?

Chris: 10:22 – Honestly I feel bad for Barber. He beat me, but the crowd cheered for me more than they did for Barber. But it was one of those things where I remember thinking to myself, I remember trying to push the sled and it was the first year that Reebok came out with Nanos and I remember looking down at the floor and seeing my feet slide on the floor and thinking, these shoes suck. Like it must be the shoes’ problem. And I just had to kind of wrap my head around it and realize what I was doing was not working and I had to find a way to make it move. And then from there, honestly it was just—I think that was one of the first times where I felt like I was sorta able to bridge the gap with the community of like, well, if he can do it, maybe I can do it. And I think that event in particular was where that really started to feel like a real privilege to be in that space of, well if Chris can do it cause he’s a smaller guy, maybe I can do that too. And then that just kinda propelled, not because of anything I did, but I just think because of the programming.

Sean: 11:52 – In 2012 you had that great performance at Regionals. And this is actually really when I got introduced to how popular you were among not only the fans but also the CrossFit media staff. You chased down Matt Chan in the final event to earn a spot at the Games. I remember we had everybody around a phone and Justin Judkins was calling the event to us over the phone and there were audible tears in the room. I remember hashtag Speal was trending on Twitter. What was going through your head during that event?

Chris: 12:20 – Oh man. I remember having to beat Hathcock by a lot. I don’t know how far it was, but as I was doing the workout, I could see him falling off. And I just kept thinking, just get a bigger gap, get a bigger gap, get a bigger gap. Zach Forrest was way out in front and I knew I couldn’t catch him. He was like crushing that workout. But I also think he was not in a position to go still. And I remember even talking to him and being like, don’t hold back like you do you, you know. And I just remember seeing Matt at the end of the gym and it’s just like this acceptance of, well, if I’m going to beat him, like I have to kind of run with these dumbbells. And I did. And then I just knew the muscle-ups—it was just such a, that was so cool, man. That was old-school CrossFit to a T because the gym was so tiny and it was packed with like wooden bleachers in either end, open, you know, probably 200 people there, but it felt like 20,000 and just freaking out. It was a really awesome memory and experience for sure.

Sean: 13:40 – You missed the Games in 2013. What effect did that have on you?

Chris: 13:45 – That was hard. That was really emotionally difficult because going into that year, I had kind of made a little bit of the decision or at least thought, I don’t think I’d made the real decision, but I thought I’m going to be done after this year. I can’t keep up with the volume in this anymore. And then when I didn’t make it, there was just this odd finality of it. This feeling of unfinished business or did it really end that way? And I remember I’d be sitting at lunch or breakfast, I was sitting at breakfast with my wife Sarah and our son at the time, he was three, my daughter was one, and I was sitting at a diner eating breakfast and just broke down in tears like, and she knew why and my son, daddy, are you OK? And it was really difficult going back into the gym and training, thinking, well I’m not going to go back anymore, but still doing tons of volume cause I felt like I needed to. And like deep down I knew I wanted to go back. So there was a big roller coaster there for two or three months and then that’s when I decided I can’t leave it like that. So I’ll take one more dedicated shot and then really, really know and decide that no matter what, this will be our last year.

Sean: 15:11 – So it works for you. You get to the Games the following year where you were the only man there who also competed in 2007. What was it like being the elder statesman of that group?

Chris: 15:24 – Elder. Honestly I didn’t think of it that way. I didn’t notice it, cause so many of the guys that were there that year, I think again, that was another defining year where there was still a lot of us around that had been there from the start. And then once 2016 hit, 2015, 16, it kind of like started to shift. A lot of the athletes started to shift. So what was cool about it is I was still around so many of the guys that I knew well, like Bridges and Froning and Bailey and all just all your buddies, you know, that you’re throwing down with. Seeing other guys from around the world that you get to know like Khan Porter, just like getting to know these people. Brandon Swan. But then also seeing this young crowd come in. I remember Will Moorad being there and just being like a really respectful kid. And just you started to see this wave of new athletes coming onto the scene and now those new athletes have either kind of moved on and done something else or they’re some of the best in the world and so it was neat to be there to see that shift. But for me, it didn’t even resonate really that like, wow, I’m the only one here was there in 2007.

Sean: 16:40 – That was also your last time competing as an individual. And I will never forget the interview you gave and then you walked off the floor there at the tennis stadium in Carson. What was it like doing that in front of that crowd?

Sean: 16:53 – It just came so naturally, I think. And it was for sure emotional for me, but it was also time, I knew that it was time for me to step away, and it was so appreciative. That whole weekend I gave myself a chance to definitely compete, to do my very best. I also knew I was not going to win the Games, you know, at my age, at my size, at my ability, I just wasn’t good enough. So I had goals that I want to achieve personally, but I still let myself enjoy the weekend and look up at the crowd and just enjoy the experience and soak it in. And I just felt so much support from just the CrossFit community in general on the clean ladder, you know, like that evening. What a cool experience. I mean, I’m the last place, you know, and all that kind of combined to just give me a chance to say thank you. And I could not have asked for a better way to say goodbye for sure.

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Sean: 18:53 – You touched on this a little bit when you were talking about the dog sled, but why do you think you were so popular as a competitor?

Chris: 19:04 – Hopefully cause I was relatable and a nice guy. But I think a lot of it is—I do think part of it is just the relatability. So when people do connect with you outside of it, I was lucky that I taught seminars for CrossFit headquarters, so I had brushed shoulders with, you know, 50 people every weekend that looked up to any of the athletes out there. So they got to know me a little bit better than they probably would other athletes that didn’t have that opportunity. And then I also think it’s the size thing, right? I do think I played the underdog role more than probably anybody that I can think of. Cody Anderson’s like the only other person that I can think of that has kind of filled those shoes and had a chance to play that position. But I think the next biggest, the next smallest guy out was like 175 pounds. They’re 30 pounds heavier than me. So I think there’s this element of that again, well, if he can do that, maybe, maybe I can as well. And that was just cool. It was cool to be able to be there and do that and hopefully provide that.

Sean: 20:19 – Were you ever intimidated walking out on the floor?

Chris: 20:26 – Not really.

Sean: 20:26 – Why not?

Chris: 20:27 – I just didn’t care. I wanted—I liked when people would doubt me and I evolved a lot as an athlete. When I was in college I had a really difficult time with like the mental aspect of wrestling and wrestle-offs and people saying things or doubting me and I kinda got to this point as I matured, I loved it. I was like, doubt me. I dare you to doubt me. Please doubt me cause I want to prove you wrong or I want you to underestimate me. I really liked that role. But there were definitely times where I was intimidated in the warm-up area. So not when I went to the floor cause it’s game time. But when I would be in the warm-up area and you’re hanging out with guys that are 200, 210 pounds and slinging weight around that you are trying to do for your one-rep max, you just have to ignore it. So there were a number of times where I’d have to kind of separate myself from that. And I did, I separated myself from that a lot so I didn’t see it and I didn’t get intimidated by it cause I knew it would intimidate me. But once I got on the floor, I just knew if certain things would be a head-above-water event, we’ll call it and then just let it be what it is.

Sean: 21:50 – I always remember a lot of shots with you and your family and you mentioned them earlier, but what sense do your kids have now about what you were able to accomplish as a competitor?

Chris: 22:01- That’s a good question. I don’t think they really know yet honestly. It’s funny, my son, just last night he was saying to me, hey dad, like I remember you competing in the CrossFit Games and like doing certain—he was specifically talking about when I would kind of take a knee and just say a prayer for myself, really. And he was like, I remember seeing you do that there. And I think I saw you do that at the Rogue invitational. But I don’t think it’s really clicked with them. They’ll find out someday, I think. And they don’t know. It’s funny. My son, he said some of his friends in school, I walked into his school and they’re almost as tall as me, the fifth graders are as big as I am. They see me and they’re like, yeah, that’s—I’ve heard them sometimes, yeah, that’s Roark’s dad. He’s the strongest man in the world. I’ll be like no no no, not that, very different. He’ll be like, he’s a bodybuilder. I’m not that either, but there’s a little bit of this from their friends, I think, they come around the gym and see some pictures and things, but for Roark and Myla they’re kinda just like, eh, that’s neat, Dad. Normal.

Sean: 23:27 – You competed as a master in 2017. Why did you decide to give that a go?

Chris: 23:34 – I fell into it kind of just by chance and I just wanted to experience it to make sure that I didn’t feel like I was missing out. I don’t want that to sound bad. And I don’t mean that in any degrading way toward any other masters athletes that work tremendously hard to get there. But I just wanted to give myself that experience and there was this piece of me that thought like, oh, that’d be kinda cool to be someone that like stood on the podium as an individual and as a master, that might be kind of neat. But I really wasn’t like worried about that. But I think I more did it to answer the question that I had. Am I missing out on something that I feel like I should be doing?

Sean: 24:19 – I have a feeling that most competitors, once a competitor, always a competitor. How were you able to now switch that off?

Chris: 24:31 – Yeah, it’s taken a long time for sure. You know, like for me to really make that shift, to genuinely not be concerned about where I finish or place or a time in a workout, it’s taken me, it’s been almost six years since I walked off the competition floor, you know, and I would say just in the last year and a half, two years, I’ve really been able to let go of that. And I think a lot of it’s growth. A lot of it’s just realizing what else I want out of my life and what I want out of my fitness. I really don’t have any desire at all to compete in CrossFit in any form or fashion. It just doesn’t appeal to me anymore. And I’m so appreciative of those experiences and I would never trade it. But I really just want my fitness to serve me, to ride my dirt bike and ski and downhill mountain bike. And I mean, I missed out on a decade of adventure and life outside the gym cause I was trying to win the CrossFit Games and now I get to have that back and it feels so dang good.

Sean: 25:41 – What was it like going into the gym then once you made that decision and now you’re making the transition from training as a competitor to someone who’s just training for health?

Chris: 25:51 – It took a while. It took a while to trust the fact that training for an hour or less a day is enough to do that. And to realize that one workout a day is enough. Even now, up until about two months ago, I was training six days a week instead of five. And now I just started like, it sounds weird to me, but Thursday I take off and Sunday I take off. I used to do that when I was competing, cause of all the volume. But once I got done I was just used to that volume so I could train six days in a row and not even whatever. It didn’t bother me. But it’s different now. So the volume’s less, the time is less than the gym. I really do only do one workout a day. And I focus on working hard during that time and I focus on modifying things so I can have longevity. I can’t snatch very heavy anymore. I have to be careful with overhead squats. I can’t run long distances. My box jumps, I step down. I mean like, I’m your regular dude in the gym that maybe just has a little bit more capacity. It’s taken me a while to get there, but knowing that it’s giving me everything I want outside the gym has made it easier to trust what I’m doing in the gym.

Sean: 27:19 – Why did you decide to start Icon Athlete?

Chris: 27:22 – Oh man. I mean at first, like in the very infancy of it, Sherwood and I kind of put our brains together and Pat was like, Hey, you know, think about doing this. And I was like, yeah, let’s do it. And shortly after, like within four or eight weeks, there was like, oh, you know, like I think he was still doing some programming for the masters at the time and we just wanted to be very like black and white and not have any kind of confusion or overlap there. So he was like, you know, I’m more comfortable stepping away. So then I just kind of ran with it. And at first it was just sharing that knowledge that I had had of how to compete. And at the time it was very much that world. A lot of people were looking for competitive programming. And it’s been funny because as I’ve evolved as a person and an athlete and my desires, it’s really influenced Icon. You know, like right now we’re at a place where we have a very small group of athletes and by very small I’m thinking like three off the top of my head that are like Sanctional-level athletes and I want to support them and give them as much knowledge as I can to help them. But our goal is not to have 50 athletes walking around at the Games with an Icon shirt on or X amount of masters athletes. Like my real passion now is to give people really—I really think the community needs to be steered in the right direction again, and I think we’re at this teetering point where people need to know it’s OK to do less and they need to get back to this concept of they don’t do CrossFit just to be good at CrossFit, like stop. That’s nonsense. If you’re a competitor, that’s why you do CrossFit. But you should be doing CrossFit so you can do everything else you want to outside the gym. So one of the things that we’re really trying to do with Icon is really give people those experiences now. So in April we’re going to release in January this event that we’re going to go do, and we’re just going to use our regular hour-a-day training to prepare for it, which just means that we’re going to do our workouts and then we’re gonna meet at this event. And if people can’t get there, we’ll have like a fun virtual way to be a part of it. And then we’re just going to use it, and we’re not going to use it at a CrossFit competition. It’s going to be outside the box of that. And I think people need that to have longevity in CrossFit and they need that to stay motivated and have some goals and really see like their hard work pay off, you know?

Sean: 30:15 – Yeah. Well along those lines, what sets good programming in an affiliate, in your opinion, from not-so-good programming?

Chris: 30:27 – I think volume. I mean if I had to say one word, it would be volume and variance for sure. But volume, right? You could have the best variance in the world and still have way too much volume for your regular affiliate-goer and you could have subpar variance and a really appropriate amount of volume and probably have a healthier gym for it. So I think paying attention to the ebbs and flows of your community, Doug and I kid around, he trains at the gym with us. And it’s like this balance of tricking people into giving them what they need and making them think it’s what they want. I think there’s an art to that. And I think really making sure that you’re very aware of your demographic and you serve them well. I don’t think there needs to be a separation from people that like to compete and not, I don’t think there ever had to be here’s the Games and here’s the affiliate. But I do think there is a difference in how you train for those things and you better dang well be serving your community based off what they need and even what they want a bit, and not what you think they need just because you like to compete or you like to follow the CrossFit Games.

Sean: 31:49 – Along those lines, if someone did come to you and was serious about wanting to be a competitor, what advice do you give that person?

Chris: 31:56 – Start slow with the volume. And we’ve got a one guy in our gym that really enjoys competing and he follows some of the higher-volume stuff with Icon that is basically layered in what the other program that we do at the gym, which is great cause he can still work out with the class and still be a part of that and do the additional stuff. But we’re still less is more. You got to build into that. Don’t go from one workout a day to trying to do four a day for the next six days a week and you’re going to explode, you’re going to get hurt. It’s just you have to ease into that. So we encourage people to just to add in one two-a-day per week, maybe two, and give that a six or eight-week window, adapt to it. Then another day, adapt to that. You get to ease into it. Otherwise you’ll burn out.

Sean: 32:44 – Masters are always looking for sort of the secret sauce as to how to train in the most effective way possible. What is the secret sauce for masters?

Sean: 32:54 – You know, it’s funny because I’ve thought about this recently and I’m kinda like, there’s this weird element because I’m 40 now and I kind of wonder why. Why is there such a draw? And maybe maybe I’m wrong. Why is there such a draw for that community to go to the CrossFit Games? I feel like a large amount of masters, it’s like they kind of want that or they want to train like that. And for me I’m like, I just wonder why. Like what’s the purpose behind their training? Is that what they want? And then if they go, did that fulfill like what their expectations were? So I really think for a masters athletes, maintaining our strength is like super important. Right? And I think to do that, one of the best things we can do is, I’m gonna sound like a broken record, but minimize the volume. You have to give your body a chance to recover to make the adaptation that you’re asking it to do. And that does not come by lifting heavy seven days a week. You know, a lot of the programming that we do within Icon, we have our masters athletes lift heavy twice a week and we have them continuously see improvements, set PRs and make gains and it’s cause they’re recovered. So I think that is important. I think understanding whether mobility or technique is an issue cause mobility can be a big thing for masters athletes and which one is that. Don’t try to, you know, don’t try to make the shortcut there. If improving your mobility is going to improve your lift, then improve your mobility. Don’t worry about the weight on the bar. And then I think just being smart with the variance and the volume of the programming, you know, it doesn’t need to be that much different from what I do. In fact, a lot of the stuff that our masters do, in some ways, it’s more than what I do right now. So I really think it’s important to be aware of that and letting your body recover and make the adaptation that you’re asking you it to have.

Sean: 35:06 – What are the biggest lessons that you have learned, maybe not only about yourself, but also just life in general through this whole CrossFit journey that you’ve been on?

Sean: 35:17 – Oh man. That’s a great question. There’s so much to that, you know, because for me, I look at it almost as like, it’s kinda like juggling these three balls where it’s I had and have the CrossFit affiliate and I look at that as, you know, the brick and mortar, but I also have this great online community as an extension of that. But there’s also this other one where I was a competitor and then there’s this other one where I worked for CrossFit headquarters. So all those have such value to each one and for a different reason. But I think, yeah, if I had to sum it up, regardless of whether it’s the affiliate online programming, the gym, working for HQ, competing, ultimately, whatever I wanted to get out of CrossFit is what I put into it. So however far I wanted to go with competing, however successful I wanted my affiliate to be, the best trainer that I could be for CrossFit headquarters, the tools were given to me, but I had to go to work. No one gave it to me. And I think that that’s a common thread throughout the CrossFit community. However good you want to be as an athlete, got to get to work. However good you want to be as an affiliate owner, you got to get to work. However good of a trainer you want to be, there’s this constant pursuit of making yourself better. No one’s going to do that for you. And I think that’s a little bit unique. I think that’s everywhere. But that was I think a little bit unique to my journey.

Sean: 37:22 – This is probably right along the lines of what you just talked about, but when you look back over your CrossFit career, what are the things that you are the most proud of?

Sean: 37:31 – Honestly, I think, and this has nothing to do with what I did, I think it was just being able to be a part of it from the early stages. What a cool privilege and opportunity to have been there in the right place at the right time with the work ethic that I had. And to be able to just help pave the way for seminars for CrossFit that I helped write, coaches development, building and growing our affiliate here in Park City. Turning that into an online community, going to the CrossFit Games and being able to like—it’s just so cool to have been there when it was nothing and to have seen it and appreciate that. And I mean that’s so valuable. You can’t put a price on that and no one will ever get to experience that again because it’s only a one-time thing.

Sean: 38:28 – Final question for you. How do you want people to remember you as a competitor?

Sean: 38:34 – I think just heart. Yeah. I want people to look at me and undeniably be like, that guy had more heart than anyone else without question.

Sean: 38:50 – I would absolutely agree with that statement and I really appreciate you taking the time to do this, my friend and I absolutely look forward to seeing you back out on the floor at the Rogue Invitational.

Chris: 38:57 – Thanks, Sean, I appreciate it, man.

Sean: 38:59 – Really have to thank Chris Spealler one more time for taking the time to speak with me. If you want to follow him on social media, he’s on Instagram. You can find him at @cspealler. Thank you for listening to Two-Brain Radio, everybody. Please remember to subscribe. Leave us a review. I’m Sean Woodland and I’ll be back with more great stories from the fitness community every week. In the meantime, check our archives for interviews with your favorite athletes, coaches, and personalities. Thanks for listening today, everybody. We’ll see you next time.

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