Two-Brain Radio: Tanya Wagner—Athlete, Analyst, Affiliate Owner

TANYA WAGNER-BLOG

Sean: 00:05 – Hi everybody welcome to another edition of Two-Brain Radio with Sean Woodland. On today’s episode, I speak with the 2009 CrossFit Games champion and owner of CrossFit Apex, Tanya Wagner. Chris Cooper is not the fittest person who ever walked the Earth. He has never recorded a world-record snatch. His Fran time is—it’s just OK. But Chris does hold a gym record. He’s written the best-selling fitness business books of all time. Based on his experience as a gym owner and thousands of free calls with other fitness entrepreneurs, Chris put together four books that can help you make money and live the life you want. This isn’t smoke-blowing without substance. These books have helped thousands, and they can help you. Head over to Amazon and check them out. You’re looking for “Two-Brain Business,” “Two-Brain business 2.0,” “Help First” and “Founder, Farmer, Tinker, Thief.” These are best-selling books based on hard data and experience, and they can help you find success. So pick one up today on Amazon. Tanya Wagner was the third woman to win the CrossFit Games and the last to do it at the historic ranch in Aromas, California. She and her husband Josh also own CrossFit Apex in Souderton, Pennsylvania. Tanya and I talk about how she got into CrossFit, what the competitive landscape looked like more than 10 years ago and how she incorporates fitness into raising her two children today. Thanks for listening everyone.

Sean: 01:34 – Tanya thank you so much for joining me. How are you today?

Tanya: 01:36 – I’m doing great. How are you doing?

Sean: 01:38 – I’m doing wonderfully. I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. What was your athletic background prior to getting into CrossFit?

Tanya: 01:48 – I was pretty much one sport. Soccer was my thing since second grade. I started playing soccer and I was just the aggressive kid that didn’t really know what she was doing. And they put me in goal and I wasn’t really afraid of the ball. I didn’t have too many fears. So I would go out and for breakaways I was pretty aggressive. So I got stuck in goal because that was where my coaches saw that it was a good position for me. So I grew up and went to college and played soccer in college and really that was the extent of my athletic background. I did a little volleyball for a year in high school but I was always just outside playing with my brother out in the woods and stuff like that. So that’s pretty much my athletic background.

Sean: 02:30 – How then did that lead you to find CrossFit?

Tanya: 02:33 – So after I graduated from college, met Josh, my husband, and he was in baseball, collegiate baseball player. So we both were like our identity always was wrapped up in sports and being a part of a team and being physically active.

Tanya: 02:52 – So when we didn’t have our mandatory practices and two-a-days, we’re like all right, what do we do. So we just got a basic gym membership and we were doing the regular old gym routine but it wasn’t quite satisfying. So we found this, we found the Spartan 300 workout online and we’re like cool we’re going to do this every week a couple of times a week and we’re like this is a fun way to do a workout instead of spending hours at the gym, we’ll just do this. Well that went from there to finding all the other CrossFit workouts and this weird website that was like all of these just different things that we’ve never seen before. But we loved the competitive aspect and kind of fell into it because of the time period that CrossFit was in and kind of where the Internet was at, like all the videos and all that kind of stuff wasn’t out there like it is now. So we thought we found like a little gym that not many people knew about and this is like a fun little secret that we wanted to share though with people because it was fun to do. And it tested our abilities, pushed our capabilities and I think for us it just kind of filled a void that we didn’t really—we didn’t want to play our sport any more but it filled that void of competitive and also feeling accomplished and feeling like we were still physically able to do things after, you know, you retire from college sports you like what the heck’s next?

Sean: 04:09 – You then go on to open CrossFit Apex, what pushed you motivated you to open up your own gym?

Tanya: 04:15 – Probably the biggest thing—I wasn’t motivated to start a gym. I was actually working in a gym in corporate sales and I hated that life. And I told Josh we can do anything with this CrossFit because we were teaching. It’s like once you find something good you can’t keep it quiet. So we were living next door to my parents at the time and we’d go over and show them every movement we found and they’re like what the heck are you guys doing. What are you teaching us now. But it was like in our blood to teach and share so, and we love people so it was natural that we just wanted to teach and show people what CrossFit was and kind of teach all this stuff that we were learning. But I was like, but we’re not opening a gym. Like I don’t really care what we do with this, but I don’t want to own a a gym, and he’s like it’s not like that. Let’s just see what happens. So there was a time when we first started there was like six or seven of us that went in together to like start this affiliate which all that meant was we were going to offer free classes in a park on Saturday mornings in our local park, and to me I’m like all right, this seems safe. We’re not opening a gym. We’re just doing the workouts teaching people and then obviously from there it just was like where’s a building because it’s getting cold, it’s too dark in the morning. Where are you guys running classes, and were like we’re not. Like, yes you are. So really our community is what pushed us to open the gym but we wouldn’t have it any other way. Like it’s it’s the best thing.

Sean: 05:32 – How did you then sort of fall into the competitive side of it?

Tanya: 05:37 – Well that was just natural. So like we are just naturally are competitive. So when we saw—and the thing was we only were going off of the Internet. So no coaching and no experience with somebody telling you, that’s the part that kind of amazes me now, like people go into this like I want to be a CrossFit athlete, they get coaches. But back when we found it we didn’t even know if what we were doing was legitimately CrossFit. So we wanted to go where there was judging, where there were people to look at us and be like are we moving well. Are we doing what we’re supposed to. Let’s see where we rank up with people. So it was like any competition we could get a hold of. And there weren’t many back then, but the CrossFit Games was there.

Tanya: 06:13 – So we watched some videos from 2007 and that’s when we were like all right, 2008 let’s see if we can get there. So it was just like this dream like could we get out to California. We’re not making any money with the business, like we both were teachers, just started teaching really. Could this even be? But it was again we went to our Level 1s and it kind of fell into our laps that Greg Glassman was there down in Alexandria, Virginia, and it was one of his last Level 1 that he was going to be talking and teaching at and we didn’t know that at the time. And we asked if he was going to be at this local competition up on the East Coast Championship and he said no I’m not going to be there, I’m going to be somewhere else, but tell me who wins and I’ll send them out to the Games. And Josh is like all right this is your ticket. I’m like what, don’t put that pressure on me, what are you talking about.

Tanya: 07:05 – Well we went up there and I actually ended up winning. And so he did email Greg and Greg’s like I’ll fly you guys out. And Josh did well enough he’s like I’ll put you in the Games too. So that was how it literally—not like that these days, Sean.

Sean: 07:22 – You kind of answered the question but what was the competitive landscape like back in you know 2007 for CrossFit?

Tanya: 07:29 – So the cool thing was it was like you didn’t know and I love the part that like nobody knew what anybody was doing in their own homes, in gyms across the world because you didn’t have all the media surrounding it. You didn’t have all these stats. So all you would do when you showed up in 2008 like you’re picturing what it was going to look like in 2007 but it looked completely different. There was a whole bunch of other people there, different names, a couple people with cameras and a little camera crew and you’re like whoa, they’re probably like big time.

Tanya: 08:00 – And so there’s so many unknowns and you just go out there and you just do—everybody like redlines the first two minutes and you just push as hard as you can. And it’s like literally like survival of what you can do. That was 2008, and then that kind of gave I think people more of an understanding, even the crowd, of like what is this thing and everyone was kind of trying to figure it out. But then once you have a year or two under your belt then you have names to go after and that’s what you’re thinking of training the next year. All right. This is the person I want to beat. And you have a leaderboard or you have the different scores from the year before to say I don’t want to be in this number, I want to be here, and I think that’s kind of why every year it’s gotten bigger and better because people have those numbers to chase and the stats to break and all that kind of stuff.

Sean: 08:48 – You made your first appearance at the Games in 2008 and you finished second. What was that experience like for you.

Tanya: 08:54 – Oh that was like, that was the best. 2009 was awesome winning, but 2008 second place was such a surprise, like it was like, again, we wanted to see if what we were doing was all right and see what we were doing was like legit. And it’s just felt like it was a shock. So it was awesome. That was incredible being, on the ranch walking and just like soaking it all in like because you feel like like whoa this is the biggest thing ever. I mean it was just the beginning, but to me and to us back then it was huge to be like we’re working out, like this is a thing working out and competing and working out is for real? Like nowadays it’s like oh yeah that’s a thing, but it wasn’t then.

Sean: 09:34 – What did then finishing second that year do for your confidence moving forward?

Tanya: 09:40 – Well it fueled me like no other because it was I lost to Caity Matter, Caity Henniger, by 10 seconds, and so Josh didn’t let me live that down for the entire year of training and really that was my competitive nature of like ten seconds. I was right there. You know we’ve heard anybody else that took second say, that like as much fun as it was and a surprise, I was also so close to being like that it was a horrible feeling of like I was right there. Nobody wants that. So that fueled me. It was a good thing, it fueled me for the next year.

Sean: 10:15 – How then did that affect your training now that you’ve seen everybody else and then you go back to Pennsylvania and now you’re getting ready for the 2009 Games. What changed for you?

Tanya: 10:26 – Well it gives you more context, it gives more reference for what the competition you are up against. So every time I trained, no matter what it was, I had a person in my mind. Like Annie Thorisdottir was always in my mind when I’d do wall balls cause the one workout you know you’re side by side, different people, any competition I’ve ever been in and Annie was actually 2009 when I competed against her, but any competition like you just always know the person next you that’s going a little faster, has the edge on you and you’re like man what are they doing. I need to train that movement this way or adjust what I’m doing so really I just took every experience, the race, the Fran, all of them I took them back and really it was the people that were against me that I pictured in every single workout and every single training session, I pictured somebody that was beating me or that was pushing the envelope and knowing that feeling and just keeping that alive in my training sessions.

Tanya: 11:18 – Obviously it works cause you go back in 2009 and you win the CrossFit Games, that was the final year there at the ranch. What stands out to you about that entire competition?

Tanya: 11:30 – I think the biggest thing was probably the unknown and unknowable and the mental aspect. You know I had trained for years of just globo gym junk, you know trying for abs and triceps. And it was all for the looks. And then when CrossFit, I started doing that and I’m like wow. It really changed me physically and I kind of was just thinking all about the physical part of it. But 2009 really taught me a lot about the mental part of CrossFit and just what had changed with me mentally. It broke me a lot that year of not knowing what the next thing was, not knowing when my heat was going to go or any of that, like it was a lot of scarring. But I think that really was the shift in my head about wow, so much more to this than just the physical aspect.

Sean: 12:11 – What did you get for winning the Games that year?

Tanya: 12:14 – I got five thousand dollars. I got a golden sledgehammer. And a plaque from Forged.

Sean: 12:25 – Where are those now?

Tanya: 12:27 – They are actually at the gym. We have them at CrossFit Apex.

Sean: 12:30 – What was the sense among the athletes in Aromas about where the Games were headed after 2009?

Tanya: 12:38 – All I remember is standing there afterwards, standing there at so many different points in the weekend and there was a lot of us. Everybody knew it that this is just the beginning. It was like we—but there was this blank slate. It was a completely white like abyss of like we don’t know, but this can’t be where this ends, like this is just the beginning of something, but you can’t even, you had nothing to go off of to picture what it was really going to become. But everybody knew it. Everybody knew it there. It was busting at the seams, there was no place to park or go to the bathroom or like. It was unreal what had happened like each year how much bigger it got. And everybody knew it. It felt like the Olympics. How could it get bigger what could it look like? But it really was, it was just the start to something awesome.

Sean: 13:28 – How then did the competitive landscape change after 2009?

Tanya: 13:34 – There were a lot of changes that happened, with first social media and media itself of just sharing more about the athletes, athlete bios, athlete profiles and that mental side of it where in the first few years, like I said, you didn’t know who was out there, you didn’t know who was going to show up and where the heck they came from. Look at Jason Khalipa. Like out of the woodwork, like what the heck’s this guy been doing. Ben Smith, little kid in his backyard on the jungle gym. Like that kind of stuff you didn’t know about and then all of a sudden there were cameras. There were people going everywhere to find these people. So you’re hearing a little bit more about them but there were still people falling through the cracks that you didn’t know about that would come out. And I love that part of it because you know people would start to get too wrapped up in like this person’s doing this, and it was neat as an athlete to have to balance that in your head. And that’s where again now it’s so much different than that, everybody’s out there with all their stuff. But like you had to navigate how much do I want to like pay attention to that. Or like do I need to pay attention. What the heck are they doing. They have a coach? What are they doing with their nutrition?

Tanya: 14:36 – There was just a lot of things were like some of that was kind of getting ideas of what other people were doing. But then also the shift of like coaches. There was no coaches back in the early days but then all of a sudden if you wanted to be good you needed people to have your back, watching you with every rep, every training session not overtraining and all that kind of stuff just to give you a guide. Just because you’re a great athlete doesn’t mean you’re doing the right thing for your training sessions or the best optimal thing. So those two things changed but then also I think just like in general with the CrossFit competition it was like there was opportunities for any sponsorships and things that come along to just kind of like distract from everybody else’s just train where before it was just your fitness, it was your fitness levels it really wasn’t like you were specializing in anything but then all the sudden with so many opportunities I think came the part of people needed to—they went from not specializing in anything to I have to specialize almost in everything to be the best of the best.

Tanya: 15:44 – So it was like this really weird shift of like nope, the cool thing is I only have to work out for an hour and all of that’s still true for CrossFit but for the best CrossFit athletes and the best competitors, all the sudden there was this humongous shift over those years and we saw it in media like all the sudden you’re like oh, the new era, the new era, and I think they just kind of tweaked and perfected and just got even more dialed in with the specifics of being specialists in areas where they never would have become a specialist, it wasn’t their background, but they were so physically fit and so physically capable through all they learned in CrossFit, they could do that very well.

Sean: 16:19 – We’ll be back with more with Tanya Wagner after this.

Sean: 16:22 – What if you could click a link and receive a stack of eBooks that would help you reach profitability sooner? Instead of making mistakes, working 12-hour days, missing time with your family and losing sleep, you would be on the path to success. Well, that link exists. It’s TwoBrainbusiness.com/free-tools. Head over there and you’ll get some of our very best resources, totally free. You’ll get “How to Buy a Gym,” “How to Sell a Gym,” “How to Add 10k of Personal-Training Revenue,” “The Broke Gym Owner’s Guide to Marketing,” “How Not to Bankrupt Your Gym” and more all free. Here’s the deal. Two-Brain wants you to make enough money to be able to pay for mentorship. Maybe you’ll work with us, but we’re OK if you don’t. We just want you to have enough cash to pay someone to help you fix your business. So click the link, get the books and sleep easier. It’s TwoBrainbusiness.com/free-tools.

Sean: 17:25 – You’ve mentioned the media, what then led you to the media side of the Sport of Fitness?

Tanya: 17:32 – So we did a lot of interviews when I won in 2009 and was winning, and so Rory McKernan called me up one day and he’s like hey, would you want to come out, would you have any interest. And I’m like I actually don’t like media, I don’t really like that. I don’t really love that. But hey this is a really cool opportunity.

Tanya: 17:53 – And he’s like because I’m like I have no background. And I’m kind of like I think you called the wrong person. He’s like well you know you spoke up, you didn’t seem very shy, any interviews we did. Basically you talk a lot. You’ve been around. Do you want to come out and try, we’re doing this thing out in California, so I went out and it was like it was a really neat side that I never understood and that’s where I was like wow there is so much more to it that it really brings to life a lot more about the sport, you really can tell a ton of stories that I didn’t realize were getting missed. That was really cool. It was really need to be a part of media. It was a really neat thing that was going on there and a really different view of the Games and got me to reflect and even appreciate I think so much more what I got to do as an athlete seeing it from the other side and getting to share people’s stories and pictures.

Sean: 18:42 – One of the first big media endeavors was in 2012 when we went and covered the Central East Regional. What was that experience like for you?

Tanya: 18:53 – That was a mess.

Sean: 18:53 – That’s being kind, I think.

Tanya: 18:57 – OK, so like literally every athlete you’re like, all right, I’m not gonna nervous because I’m used to being out there. Well they put the headset on you and it’s like three two one go and your heart like bursts out of your chest, but there’s no like sprint or snatch ladder to get the adrenaline out. You just ramble. It was a lot of a mess of learning but seeing it from the athlete side and getting to know how they feel and try to convey that to the audience I think was a really neat thing. I’ll never forget watching Julie Foucher, she was out there and I was like she was just smashing, it you can see that her fitness level was like just so far above some of the competitors, she’d finish, she’d take a two little walk around like little breath, and then keep going. Like she looked—and I just remember being able to tell people like you have no idea. Like right now, watch what she’s doing and watch other people and it was a really neat thing to just see fitness levels from that perspective and from that vantage point and really be able to break down and analyze what they’re doing, why they’re so good and be able to see them from that lens was cool.

Sean: 20:05 – At that point, there was really no instruction guide on how to do any of this media stuff. How were you able to grow and improve as an analyst?

Tanya: 20:14 – Well you were by my side, Sean Woodland.

Sean: 20:17 – You’re giving me way too much credit.

Tanya: 20:19 – Seriously. It was, you really did lead the crew, you really did tell all of us, help us all to just kind of navigate that whole world. Obviously Mike Roth, like all the other people, they were incredible, like we were working with the best of the best. We did not have an excuse not to get better with the people that we had, you had to try to not improve with everyone that you had there, because it’s a team. And I never realized the word production, I didn’t understand what that word ever meant fully until I was in the production, till I was understanding that every cable, every wire that connects every hand, every body, every graphic matters for like so much, it can make or break just coverage. And that really showed me a different side also of CrossFit, like teamwork and how to pull together and how to like really look out for each other and it was a really really neat side of things. And they just really supported us, all the media supported us into getting better. I think that was the hard thing of like you know staying in your lane of like knowing like what to say, how to say it and all that kind of stuff and you can like wig out and I can overanalyze and use too many words, it’s what I normally do, but it was something that I was not used to doing where fitness I could just go do.

Tanya: 21:36 – And it was like, media was like, you have to you have to work at that component of it. But on the other hand it’s easy because it’s CrossFit. I love it. I can talk about that and it’s something that was a passion of mine anyway. And so as a hobby to watch and to be a part of. It’s just it was a really cool thing to be a part of that year after year and get to feel and relive those emotions through the camera of every Games champ when they’d be named and I would just cry and I’d tap out and you’d be on, relive that. So I’m just so grateful for the memories and for that to keep that alive in my years of competing.

Sean: 22:10 – I asked this question to Niki Brazier who was a sideline reporter, because a lot of people who watch the Games and the coverage they don’t understand what the individual roles are on the broadcast team. What does an analyst do?

Tanya: 22:22 – So my job was to kind of bring the color, they call it a color analyst, bring more color, bring more bigger perspective of what’s going on. So you would tell exactly the specifics of who’s out there, those details, but I’d say the why and the purpose behind all of it, give a little more clarity and definition to the purpose behind it or maybe what the athletes are thinking, give you a little deeper perspective, a little deeper color to the image.

Sean: 22:49 – What is the toughest part about being an analyst or a color commentator?

Tanya: 22:56 – I think about what people are going to think of what I’m saying. As an athlete I don’t like when people, if I go back and go back and listen to somebody talking about my performance when I’m giving my all and all of that like I know the athlete side. So it’s hard sometimes to be critical or to realize you’re talking about somebody that is going to go and you watch this. Their mom is out there listening right now. They are doing their best. And I think sometimes shifting and remembering that, because you remember in the early years, like I’m friends with all of them. I’m competitors with them. When you have that relationship it’s a hard position to separate from and go black and white. I’m relational. I love people like. So to me that was a hard thing, I had to kind of distance myself. That’s be the one drawback or the one setback I didn’t love, that I felt like I had to be a little more neutral-partied and be very, you know not biased. And that was hard. But as the newer athletes came along it was a little bit easier to be a little colder, I guess if you want to say, a little more black and white they need to work on that. That looks like shit.

Sean: 24:01 – Well as long as it’s performance and not people, you know if it’s performance and not people then you’re fine. But that is tough because like you said you’re such close friends with them that you don’t want to say anything that upsets them.

Tanya: 24:12 – I know how it feels. It sucks when you’re out there and you’re struggling. The last thing you want is an analyst going they look like they’re terrible.

Sean: 24:22 – Thanks so much, why don’t you down here and bang out 100 chest-to-bar pull-ups.

Tanya: 24:23 – You forget what we did. So I think I always try to throw that angle of like they’ve already been through a lot. I play the mom mode. Well you know you got to remember they were you know they’ve been through a lot.

Sean: 24:36 – What did you enjoy the most and what do you enjoy the most about being part of the media team.

Tanya: 24:42 – I really enjoy, I think sharing what’s going on or sharing the part of like the stories of the athletes, where they came from, because CrossFit’s changed everybody’s lives. And I like to be able to share a little bit more about like reminders of the people and humanize them a little bit more than just make them these figures that can do incredible feats. I like to be able to see like I care more when we look at their history and we do our homework on them of like oh no way, they’re a nurse or get out of here, they have three dogs, like that kind of stuff to me like the actual real-life stuff to me is important because I like people to be able to humanize them more so when they see them they know they’re real people too, real feelings, you know real hectic lives. The same things that everybody else goes through. So I like bringing that part. Hopefully I do that to be able to bring the real life to people and then show people more about who they are as a person.

Sean: 25:39 – Right. You are now a mother of two who runs her own gym. How has training changed for you since the competition days.

Tanya: 25:48 – Well it’s drastically changed. You know and the whole life cycle of a CrossFitter that I always have going on in my head is like you go through all these seasons and periods of life and we’ve been around CrossFit for a really long time now. So we through ups and downs in personal lives and different things, business, and I think it helps you with the perspective of keeping it in a healthy area of your life, not making it be your life. And obviously once we had kids like they were so much more of our focus but Apex was still always our child, like that was our first child. So even though our live children needed to have more attention right away for certain things like it’s always been this other child that we’ve nurtured and just always cared about in a way of not thinking about it being our job, but the physical part of training, that kind of was like that was something we always felt like we got to do.

Tanya: 26:40 – We got to be an athlete for a short time. So we kind of tossed that to the back burner after having kids, like it really wasn’t a priority to a fault, actually, and running a gym and being a gym owner and raising kids and wanting to be a healthy role model, like we had to re-shift some of that and get ourselves into a healthy perspective that it’s not all or none. And because it was almost like what the heck if we can’t be what we were like I don’t know what’s the point of even training today. All right let’s just go figure out what we’re doing for the gym and something else tonight. There was always something to fill that. So being able to get back on a routine of having it be a healthy part of our life and lifestyle now has been great.

Tanya: 27:18 – So we train three or four times a week and it’s something that Josh and I had to force ourselves to get back to, like a date night. Like we had to put it on the calendar to schedule Mondays at 3:30 we train together. It was always something we did for fun, but after a while when you’re out of the competitive stage of it, it was kind of like sports in college, you know once you’re done and you don’t have that training for this, we got the Games we have states, what do we train for. It was like we have to get back to like we did it for fun and this is healthy and fun and so it’s been a neat kind of full circle to now get it to be aware that we’re doing it for our health. But then you know the Open comes along. You still get to feel that little competitive nature. We see ourselves more as like yeah like it’s cool to be in the age divisions because we’re like you still feel like you’re kind of rocking it when you see some old names you’re like sweet, I still got something, when it’s not your main focus. But it’s a much healthier perspective. Like the muscle-ups last week, I wouldn’t do that normally because I like my neck and shoulders to feel a little better. I got a lot of junk from all my years of diving on the ground. I know, like you know your body, like over the years you just know yourself and you’re like yeah this one’s gonna leave a little more aches than I would care to on a normal day, but it’s OK because you know it’s like it’s for this comp—a little competitive, it’ll be all right but we’re in a good space with it right now.

Sean: 28:37 – How do you incorporate fitness into raising your kids.

Tanya: 28:40 – Oh that like that’s—we don’t try. Like I guess we just spread naturally like little us-es. No lie, I have a picture, AJ’s 8, but I have a picture of him or a video of him when he was like 3 flipping a huge bag of cat food and dragging like sled-drag style into the house from our driveway. We have a big long driveway and this little sucker’s sweating, breathing hard, like he just always saw it and was around it and same with our daughter, so it’s like we don’t really try to incorporate it. It just is part of our life. It’s not an effort. Sometimes I actually try to tone them down just a little bit.

Tanya: 29:26 – My biggest thing was I never wanted kids to resent that we were business owners and putting so much time in CrossFit Apex and I never want them to feel like they were second to the gym. And I think in doing that like we never forced them, which was a cool thing. Like after class if Kenzie was with me, she’s 5, but even when she was 3, after class she’d be Mommy we work out? Sure, and we’d do our own little version for her like two-minute attention span and then she’s done. But I never wanted to push beyond. And I think that was the best thing that we did because now that AJ is old enough to take our youth classes he’s in there and he only knows one speed, like he sees our speed and he’s fun to watch, he’s really cool to watch because he encourages but I think he just tries to mimic what he’s seen all along as us as coaches and stuff, but that man he’s got to tighten up his form because all he cares about going hard, I’m like, he’s me. So it’s so hard to like tone him down a little bit but. But you know so it’s always in our, it’s in our DNA, it’s in our family, it’s in our house everything is a game or a competition in a healthy way, but the kids love it.

Sean: 30:31 – So what do you miss the most about being a competitor like you were in 2007, 8, 9?

Tanya: 30:40 – I miss the feeling of finishing a workout and being so satisfied with what I could accomplish and surprising myself that I could do better. Because in competition I was a game day athlete and I could outperform what I did in my training. But my issue was always I never had much confidence. So I loved when I finished a workout. I’m like yes I did so much better than I thought I was going to. And it’s like I believed I could because I knew the training was there. But you don’t always feel that until you’re pressured to. And so that’s the biggest thing I miss, I miss that feeling of accomplishment at the end of a weekend where you’re like so satisfied you put everything, your heart, your soul, you left everything out there, and just that feeling, that is what I love. That’s what I feel like being when I was back at the Rogue Invitational last year. I got a little sliver of that. Running across the finish line, like just that feeling of like yes. That’s the part that I love.

Sean: 31:45 – Well you have no idea how much you’re cheering for you to beat Sam Briggs, I think in the biathlon workout we were really hoping that was gonna happen and we weren’t supposed to obviously be you know cheering for anybody but yeah we really wanted you to pull that one off because I know that you would have held that accomplishment up pretty high as far as things you’ve done in your career.

Tanya: 32:00 – That was one of those moments I’m like hold it together, Tanya. My lats are giving up, I have no form on the SkiErg, pulling with all my might, like this one’s gonna hurt me for days. That was really cool, really cool really cool to be out there with these women who I admire and like who inspire me now and who I look up to so much. Such a cool thing.

Sean: 32:26 – Final question. You’ve seen this CrossFit world from so many different perspectives, as an athlete, as a gym owner, as a member of the media team, what’s been the best part for you about this whole journey?

Tanya: 32:42 – I’m not good at picking a best at things but something I always go back to and something that I will like on my deathbed, I will be so thankful I got to share it with other people. The confidence CrossFit has given me and the way that we’ve been able to help other people find passions, find confidence in themselves find that they are capable of more than they think and pull them from an area in their lives where they just feel like they are unable to do certain things and has nothing related to physical fitness but yet show them a methodology of CrossFit, be able to share a little bit about physically and just mental fortitude and that kind of stuff. And then to see that translate into other areas of their life, like that to me like that’s the real stuff, that’s the part that I feel like we’ve been given the opportunity to share that with people and I don’t want to miss that and I feel like I am forever better for being able to share that and be able to be in relationship with so many people at my gym and just for whatever season it is, some of the them don’t last very long, but I really hope they take something that they’ve learned or experienced there and it makes them be able to just be more successful at life or get through a struggle in their lives.

Sean: 33:52 – Tanya, thank you so much for taking the time to do this. Please give all my best to your husband Josh and the rest of your family, and look forward to seeing you compete again at the Rogue Invitational in 2020.

Tanya: 34:02 – Yes. Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, it’s always fun, Sean.

Sean: 34:05 – I want to thank Tanya Wagner once again for taking the time to speak with me. If you want to follow her on social media you can find her on Instagram. She is @tanewagner. If you know me, you know I like hockey, wrestling, pro football, dogs and fitness, and I also like podcasts every week. I am fired up to bring you the very best of the fitness world on Two-Brain Radio. I’m always digging for the best stories from the most interesting people in the industry. We are also cranking out other great shows that can help you run a successful business. Every Monday, the clever guys from Two-Brain Marketing are showcasing success and serving the secret sauce that gets leads into gyms. And every Thursday we’ve got the best of the business world, people who will educate you and inspire you. So if you haven’t, please subscribe to Two-Brain Radio. Leave us a rating or a review. I would certainly appreciate it. Thanks for listening everybody, and we’ll see you next time.

Thanks for listening!

Thanks for listening! Run a Profitable Gym airs twice a week, on Mondays and Thursdays. Be sure to subscribe for tips, tactics and insight from Chris Coooper, as well as interviews with the world’s top gym owners.

To share your thoughts:

To help out the show:

  • Leave an honest review on iTunes. Your ratings and reviews really help, and we read each one.
  • Subscribe on iTunes.
Like
Tweet

Leave a Reply

One more thing!

Did you know gym owners can earn $100,000 a year with no more than 150 clients? We wrote a guide showing you exactly how.