In this powerful episode of Spark.N.Stride, we bring you the incredible journey of Max Gomez, the founder of AMP'd Fitness, who faced a life-altering accident that tested his resilience and mental fortitude like never before. At just 18 years old, Max's life took an unexpected turn when he lost his leg in a devastating motocross accident. But rather than letting this tragedy define him, Max turned it into a powerful source of inspiration.
Max's story is a testament to the unbreakable human spirit and the true meaning of leadership. He not only rebuilt his life but also founded AMP'd Fitness, a fitness movement that has touched the lives of countless individuals, motivating them to overcome their own obstacles and achieve their fitness goals.
But Max's journey would not have been possible without the unwavering love and support of his family, who played a crucial role in putting him back together, both physically and emotionally. Their dedication and encouragement have been instrumental in Max's remarkable transformation.
Join us as we delve into Max Gomez's awe-inspiring story of resilience, determination, and the power of family. Prepare to be moved, motivated, and inspired by a true leader who has turned tragedy into triumph. Max Gomez is living proof that with the right mindset, anything is possible.
Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to our channel for more inspiring stories like Max's. Hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content that celebrates the human spirit and the triumph of the human will and remember to always stay sparkd! Spark.N.Stride!
https://ampdfitnessnj.com/
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Doing Good and Doing Well: Inspiring Helping Professionals to Become Leaders in Their Organizations https://a.co/d/4Ov5WG4
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In this powerful episode of Spark.N.Stride, we bring you the incredible journey of Max Gomez, the founder of AMP'd Fitness, who faced a life-altering accident that tested his resilience and mental fortitude like never before. At just 18 years old, Max's life took an unexpected turn when he lost his leg in a devastating motocross accident. But rather than letting this tragedy define him, Max turned it into a powerful source of inspiration.
Max's story is a testament to the unbreakable human spirit and the true meaning of leadership. He not only rebuilt his life but also founded AMP'd Fitness, a fitness movement that has touched the lives of countless individuals, motivating them to overcome their own obstacles and achieve their fitness goals.
But Max's journey would not have been possible without the unwavering love and support of his family, who played a crucial role in putting him back together, both physically and emotionally. Their dedication and encouragement have been instrumental in Max's remarkable transformation.
Join us as we delve into Max Gomez's awe-inspiring story of resilience, determination, and the power of family. Prepare to be moved, motivated, and inspired by a true leader who has turned tragedy into triumph. Max Gomez is living proof that with the right mindset, anything is possible.
Don't forget to like, share, and subscribe to our channel for more inspiring stories like Max's. Hit the notification bell to stay updated with our latest content that celebrates the human spirit and the triumph of the human will and remember to always stay sparkd! Spark.N.Stride!
https://ampdfitnessnj.com/
Connect with Spark.N.Stride!
Instagram: https://instagram.com/spark.n.stride
Doing Good and Doing Well: Inspiring Helping Professionals to Become Leaders in Their Organizations https://a.co/d/4Ov5WG4
https://sparknstride.com/
http://instagram.com/spark.n.stride?igshid=zddkntzintm=
https://www.youtube.com/@spark.n.stride
Hey Max, how's it going? Man, good man. Hey, listen welcome to sparking stride Max, where conversations are sparked and put in motion. Also, and on behalf of the 50th anniversary of hip hop, I must say I'm wearing my run DMC t shirt. So, what's up, max? What's going on? Man Talk to me.
Speaker 3:Not much, man. Just we finished working today. So you know, just kicking back talking a little bit and then you know see what the rest of the week's got out for me so doing good Cool man.
Speaker 1:So, max, you own a fitness gym.
Speaker 3:I do.
Speaker 1:Right, it's called Ampt Yep, all right. And what? How did you come up with the name for your fitness gym?
Speaker 3:So I've wanted to own a gym like literally my whole life Okay, before I even had my my accident, which I'm sure we'll dig into but okay, we. So I always knew that this is what I wanted to do. And then once I had this accident when I was 18, so this was 2012, was 11 years ago and then I became, you know, I lost my leg, so I'm an amputee and then I always knew. From that point on, I was like, at some point or another, when I own some sort of fitness facility, I didn't know what it was going to be, but I knew something health related. I was like I'm going to name this thing Ampt, because it's kind of a play on words. It's, you know, amped up like that's what most people think it is.
Speaker 3:And I was like, how catch you would that be if you know it's amputee but it's amped up? And then I, just from the beginning, I had the vision of like damn, how awesome would it be to have, like he's all over the country and somebody you know, a French or whatever it may be, and the person's like oh yeah, the owner's an amputee, that's why it's named what it is. So I just thought that was real catchy and then I ran with it and it's. You know, it's awesome to see where it's at now.
Speaker 1:Wow, man Dude. So, first and foremost, thank you for being here and thank you for being open, or your willingness to be open.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:You know, losing a leg, I can't even imagine. Right Before we deep dive into that, I would just like to go back a little bit, right. Because, the folks that are going to be listening and watching.
Speaker 1:They're going to kill me in the comments because they're like context or they're going to be like Well, why did you stop that guy? He was just about to tell you how he had this accident. We're going to get to that. Just hold your horses, okay, max. So you said growing up you've always wanted to have a jam or be in this industry. Was that is that fair to say yeah, so talk to me a little bit about what happened prior to your accident. What was life for you like then?
Speaker 3:So in terms of like the typical sports kid, that was not me. I was not a team player, I didn't like to stick in ball sports. We tried everything, like you know all of them baseball, soccer, football, whatever you know which. As a parent, you do your due diligence. You put your kid in these things just to see what they like. Nothing really clicked At a young age.
Speaker 3:I was lucky enough that while I was exploring these things, my dad was into jet skis and dirt bikes and just an adrenaline junkie. He never took it as far as I did, but it was always a thing that you know. I feel like if you don't have at least a parent or somebody that puts you in that situation, you're never really going to know which you know. Thankfully he did, you know, because it showed me I had such a burning passion I still do for, you know, dirt bikes and stuff like that. So when I was four years old for actually for my fourth birthday they got me this tiny little dirt bike and I used to just ride it around my backyard and even while I was exploring other sports and trying to figure out what I liked, it was always the dirt bike Like that's always what it came back to and for a while I just didn't think, like you know, I didn't think that could be the sport that I played. It wasn't, you know, it wasn't really considered a sport, it was more of like a hobby type of thing. But then as I got older, my dad kind of laid it out and he was like you know, listen, we can, you could try you know baseball, you could keep trying this. Or he's like, if you want to ride the dirt bike, we can do that. And I was like I remember, like it was yesterday, I was like I didn't even know that was an option, like we could just do this and then that from there open the doors up.
Speaker 3:And I did a little bit of other stuff, like I wrestled in high school for a while, but even the wrestling was just an off season thing to keep me in shape. For when the motocross season came and I was just like dove into that headfirst and every year we just became more immersed in this, this world. And you know, I mean like, like anything, there's injuries. I mean dirt bikes are one of the more dangerous sports compared to something else. So we knew it was inevitable. It's really not, you know, not if, but when, type of deal. And then, as I started getting faster and the bikes got bigger and we traveled and the tracks got more advanced, there was like, okay, well, this, you know, broken bone here, this, that, this, that. And you know, when I was 18, I had a big one that changed me forever and you know we can kind of dig into that a little more, but that's kind of what.
Speaker 3:what put me, you know, in that situation?
Speaker 1:Wow, man, so hang on a second. So in terms of like motocross right In my motocross right, Can you tell me a little bit more about how much of a subculture that is, like that community? Yeah because I, because when I think of motocross, because of the traveling, I always feel like when there's any sort of travel component to something it just instinctively or the natural order is what I like to say like it brings people together.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Because you're traveling, the camaraderie is building up. Was that, is that fair to say? Like similar in that world 100%.
Speaker 3:So it's not a huge sport, especially not in this area. It's a little bigger Florida, california, like those where it's more mainstream. So usually, like when I meet somebody and I tell them, oh, I race dirt bikes, almost everybody knows somebody, and I always tell them like, all right, I probably know who that is, regardless of where they're, they're from New York, pa, like it's just such a tight knit community, is like we, you know, obviously is a lot of travel, is not a lot of tracks in the area, but it was the same. You know 30 guys or whatever that, and each year you essentially have like a class. So it was like Okay, my age group, I still know all these guys, especially the guys that stayed local, and you know we keep connection a little bit here and there.
Speaker 3:But it's like if you rode a dirt bike, everybody knew who you are. You know two people rode a dirt bike. You knew each other, especially in this area, and it was just one of those things. Like it's positives and negatives. Right, traveling is awesome because you get to see a ton of stuff, but it's expensive.
Speaker 2:Yep you got hotels.
Speaker 3:You got, you know, time away from work. So it was, it had its its positives and negatives, but I saw some awesome parts of the country. You know, I got to one of the coolest experiences I ever had and again we can, you know, dig into this a little more was I raced in the X Games, so I raced out in.
Speaker 3:LA. So I drove to California. I raced in the Staples Center where, you know, kobe Bryant was a Laker at the time. I'm like how many people in the world can say they rode their dirt bike where Kobe Bryant was shooting you know three pointers, wow, so that was a hell of an experience.
Speaker 1:How old were you when that was?
Speaker 3:I was 19. Wow. Dude, yeah, but that was that was when I got that invite yeah it was like my dream. That was like dream come true. There I remember getting the email Like you have been invited to race in 2013 summer X Games out in LA. And we, just like my dad, was like let's go.
Speaker 1:So how, but? But how does that work though? Like who's emailing you, and, and and I know this might sound stupid, but like who's emailing you, why are they emailing you? How do you get you know, baptized into this culture? Right, because you're seeing, you've raced. So is it more of a race type of a setup? Like you're racing Because, because I'm thinking jumps, flips, tricks, but then you're saying racing.
Speaker 3:So yes, so it's kind of I guess, just to kind of like dumb it down in a sense.
Speaker 3:It's basically like, like, like a bicycle, right. So there's okay, there's guys that do tricks on bicycles and there's guys that race them, like you know, downhill, mountain bike or whatever a closed course. So I raced, I didn't do any tricks. People always ask me how you do back flips, like I didn't do any of that stuff. It was just how fast can I possibly go on this bike around a closed course? That was, like you know, maybe a mile, two mile circuit, whatever. It is a one minute 30 lap time. And that was always what we did. We rode the same tracks because it was just that's the local spot. You did your off, you know, off the bike training. And then it was whoever was the most prepared, whoever did their homework in the off season. Whoever was, you know, had things lining up the right way During the season, was okay. This, you know you could tell kind of okay, this person rode over the winter, they rode in the you know the sand, they did their homework and they came swinging this year and it was.
Speaker 1:What would I mean? To control what would stand out the most to you, for you to make that conclusion, or for someone to make that be like okay, yeah, he, he rode in the sand. He like what would would stand out the most to you.
Speaker 3:So it was so before I really started. Like I said, like every year I kind of took it more seriously. But when you were younger it was like okay, well, it snows, it starts getting cold. You know, you're a 10 year old kid, you don't want to ride when it's 30 degrees out, you're gonna freeze. Then, as you get older, it's okay. Well, if I want to even be competitive, you know, come May I have to ride with it's 30 degrees. It doesn't matter, I'm putting gloves on, I'm putting double up gloves and we're just going to go. The sand, you know the hard pack tracks, like when it's real cold, like it's too slippery, like you get, you know, water, ice, whatever the case may be, like you can't really ride on them. The sand doesn't freeze up.
Speaker 2:So it was like okay, well, oh, I didn't think of that, yeah.
Speaker 3:So it's still cold out, yeah, but you're, at least the dirt is loose enough that you can still ride, even though it's 40 degrees, 35 degrees and we're, you know, freezing our asses off. But we're just, we're making, do? We're out there just to be better, we're not out there to enjoy ourselves, and so it would be okay.
Speaker 1:Well, you know, it's just like you and your boys, my dad, you and your dad.
Speaker 3:Yeah, maybe my brother would come every once in a while, but he was not as gritty. But it was like, you know, if we, if we were going, and we lived in New York, so there wasn't anywhere to ride up there was like, okay, we're coming down to like Manahawk, and we rode, you know, this pits out, there's a lot of sand pits out in Jersey that they're just like quarries, and we would meet up with a bunch of guys and we would just, you know, link up a track and everybody was running, the same little man made track, and that was like a Sunday in January.
Speaker 3:And it was just like, and it's like a known thing If you rode dirt bikes, you ride sand pits and at this time?
Speaker 1:what kind of bike are you?
Speaker 3:riding. So I started going to sand pits when I was on 85s. So there's the bike I first got was a 50, which was real tiny. Then you go to 65s, then you go to 85s, then you go, you know, bigger, the biggest bike, which is like a 125, 250, they're same size frame they just have bigger motors bigger motors yeah yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So the smaller ones, like the ones that you first first started out on, are those like two gears, three gears, Like actually the first bike I had had no gears no gears, it was like a shaft driven like just crack the throttle and go.
Speaker 3:And then the second bike is a clutch and you got six gears. You got one down, five up, so that's a big adjustment.
Speaker 1:None to.
Speaker 3:You know, essentially you're eight years old and you're having to work this transmission and learn all that, and learn the gears, and, okay, the bike's revving out, you shift, okay, you're going, you're coming down into a turn. You got to go down one, two, three, two gears whatever.
Speaker 3:So and all you're doing. That's why it's crazy, like like sometimes I'll watch slow motion guys like riding it like a pro brought riding a dirt bike, and it's like incredible the amount of things that their body's doing. Their right foot is on the brake, their right hand is on the front brake, their left hand is on the clutch, their left foot is on the gears. They're doing all of that while going 40 miles an hour down a straight away into a tight little hairpin turn. They're going down, they're clicking the clutch, they're hammering the gas, all like in such sync. It's just like art, yeah, and you can't appreciate that unless you've done it and you know to look for that.
Speaker 3:Yeah but like the guys that are good, it's like a work of art. Yeah like not, and it's some people just you know like I never was able to get to that level. Some people are just blessed to be able to know how to work their body in that way, yeah for sure, and these are the little things that make you yeah, I'm the best in the world, you know like, yeah, to be in sync, right With the whole, with the whole thing, yep. I learned.
Speaker 1:I learned how to ride a motorcycle later, later on in life, in 2016.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:In 2016,. I took a trip with my buddies. I went to Vietnam.
Speaker 2:Okay, and.
Speaker 1:I rode up the Ho Chi Minh trail from Saigon to Hanoi. Wow, it was like two weeks so I was on a damn. It might have been like a like a 200 cc. Okay, one of the guys went to like a 250.
Speaker 3:Yeah that's.
Speaker 1:he just wanted like a little bit more, but it's a little heavier too, so I think most of all of us were on 200s and he was only one guy was on a 250. However, learning, learning how to ride on a cruiser and then going to a dirt bike in Vietnam, dude totally different right. Absolute, amazing experience, amazing experience. But it did take me roughly two days to get comfortable with the bike. I couldn't really find the center of like balance.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know what I mean, yep Dude, the very first day, the very first day we're trying to get out of Saigon, we get lost. It's like four guys. Long story short. We were on our way because we could only ride really for like eight hours at a time because, you know, we're dealing with like sunlight, we don't know where we're are, we're in like another world country, right Coms, like it was like a whole thing. However, we're about to go through our first mountain pass and the folks that are coming down on the opposite side, they all have ponchos on their soaking wet, so instinctively like we got to pull over.
Speaker 2:We got to pull our ponchos on because there's rain.
Speaker 1:Probably the most scariest things that has ever happened to me happened to me on that trip. So in other countries, dude like, there's traffic laws and stuff, but they're like nice to have. Yeah almost you know, like not everybody you know. So on this mountain top you have people passing each other on these tight roads to include trucks. So as we're coming up it's my first day on the bike, Dude I'm coming around a corner and I'm not going really fast and I'm not going really slow.
Speaker 1:Yeah but I'm trying to keep up with the rest of the guys. I'm the last one, so, as I'm coming around this corner, there's literally a dump truck, a dump truck is passing, another dump truck and this guy's in my lane. Bro, I couldn't go there. There wasn't nowhere for me to go. Yeah, one of the first things that I learned in the motorcycle class that I took was similar to like snowboarding you have to look in the direction that you want to go. You look down. You're going down right. Max, you got to understand that there is no right side to me.
Speaker 2:Right, there's nothing on the right side Right.
Speaker 1:There is a little piece of road and a drop. Had I gone over that drop, they would have never found me. Oh yeah, it would have been lights out, yeah, so, as the truck is coming, I literally it was a split second. You either like flight or fight.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:So my thing was just like stay looking straight.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I literally do like I don't know how I I don't know how I'm still here, because the that truck was so close to me and the amount of space that I had was not much. Had I froze up and looked right, I would have went down.
Speaker 3:Right, so would you go right in between the two trucks?
Speaker 1:No, dude like I got pushed all the way over to the side. That's why, yeah, I wish I would have got in between two trucks.
Speaker 2:Yeah, maybe I could hang on to something.
Speaker 1:No, dude, this was like much. Go straight or go to the. Yeah, so, but yeah, man, just. But on this, by the second day I figured out the center of gravity on the bike Right. And to your point, when you're just doing everything as you're trained or as you know, you're one with with the bike just flows.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know it just becomes like you and even like like. I'll give you an example. One time I was with a buddy of mine from high school and he was like a little bit older than me, so he was able to drive and I was, and I was, my dad was at work. So I was like Dad, can we go? Like he's just going to drive and I'm just going to ride and we're going to hit. And he was like all psyched about. He's like yeah, I'll take you, like whatever. So he goes, he's like he's like Yo, at the end of the day, like can I just take a rip around the parking lot? I'm like, yeah, like whatever he's. And he was like I rode, you know, in Italy.
Speaker 3:He was Italian, this Italian kid. He's like in Italy we ride scooters like whatever. He's like I know how to ride it, it'll be fine. Meanwhile, this is like my race bike. So he gets on it, dude, just cracks it and just whiskey like flies off the back. He ended up like crashing so bad we had to take him to like the hospital. Like he busted open his knees, he was fine, but just bad screams. And I'm like even sometimes like you get on the bike and like you're so used to it that you just like, no, like. I know I get on a bike, I'm like okay, I know throttle, you know control, whatever. But the average person that gets on these things have so much torque and they just rip, like, and the gas is this way, so like as you're falling off the back, you're literally just cracking it open, like more.
Speaker 3:And that's why you see these videos online of these people getting on these bikes and they, just because they, these bikes, have insane amounts of power, like even the ones that you rode, like the race ones. They even the pros, like they detune them, they make them slower out of the box, because the ones that you buy, like out of the crate, the dealership, they're rocket ships.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:And that's just like how it is, like they just give people so much power in these bikes and it's, you know, it's you think like Alright, a faster bike, I'm going to go faster, like no, it's the opposite. Yeah you learn to ride a slow bike. Fast, you're going to be fast, so that's just like you learn these things you know as you go.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no 100%.
Speaker 3:But it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Crazy. So, like on the second day, I start getting accustomed to the bike. Everything's all good, but the one thing with this particular bike was that, the way the seat was, it's not meant for you to ride it for like eight hours. You know what I mean, yeah because there's like these two points of, I guess, impact on your thighs.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Dude by like the second, third day you couldn't even sit down. Couldn't even sit down, yeah you can't like.
Speaker 3:even the bike I have now is like you ride that thing for 30 minutes, that's it.
Speaker 2:Really.
Speaker 3:Anything more than that. Like if you're out riding in the woods, like, yeah, you're going to be dying, the seats not made for that. They're just. That's not.
Speaker 2:It's not a.
Speaker 1:Cadillac Exactly Short spurt, yeah so if I could go back and do it again, I think I would have had like better pants with like some kind of padding in them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I didn't have that dude I took camping pants like dying oh by the second, I'm telling you, by the third day it took it, took us. I think we were slotted for like 12 days and we did it in 10. Okay we got up to Hanoi like a day early, so I was so happy to give the bike back. Don't get me wrong, it was a great trip. Yeah, the cool thing about it is is you notice from riding bikes like you're just seeing everything like really fast.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, so you're seeing this whole country, this beautiful country. You're just, you know, going through and every day would be a different place to sleep, right? So sometimes it'd be like some little village in the middle of some rice paddy somewhere.
Speaker 3:Oh, I can't even imagine. Dude sick, that's so. That's on my bucket list. I've never ridden my bike outside of my this country, and I would love to be not to. You know, I'm kind of over the racing thing. I would love to race eventually one day, but to just to be able to go on a cruise and ride like that and just be on a bike, which is something I love.
Speaker 3:And then, on top of that, be able to get this scenic view, because when I ride these tracks it's all just dirt hills. You know it's like during a farm, but to be able to ride another country on a ledge like that and just be like wow crazy, I'll show you pictures.
Speaker 1:And when I, when I, when I put this podcast together, when I edit this down, I'll throw some some pictures in there, I mean but no man, listen.
Speaker 1:First of all, the group of guys that we all went together. We're still friends to this day and the guys knew each other like someone to college together, so I got brought in, like I didn't grow up with these guys. However, this experience that we had together going back to what I was saying before, like the camaraderie, the traveling, the this and that dude, we just have this unique experience that we rode up the Ho Chi Minh trail from Saigon to Hanoi in two weeks Amazing bro, like that's something you guys could talk about literally forever.
Speaker 3:Like that's like every anytime you're with them. Like, oh, you remember when we did this, like that, did this, that's like once in a lifetime.
Speaker 1:The last night that we were there, we ate King Cobra.
Speaker 3:Oh, wow, yeah it was like.
Speaker 2:it was like a celebration, easy. It was like a celebration, you know.
Speaker 1:So my buddy, tommy he was, he was already trying to piece this together like four days prior. So we're trying to, as we're going to these different places, he's like trying to research and try to find yeah, because it's a delicacy you can't just find it everywhere. Right, on average, we did not, individually, we did not spend more than $10 on food a day. Wow, 10 us.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:On average. Yeah, like I mean, for the most part it wasn't more than 10. Wow, yeah.
Speaker 3:That's crazy yeah.
Speaker 1:But the last night with the King Cobra it was almost $300 to eat that. Yeah, because between all between yeah, yeah, yeah. Because it's such a, it's a delicacy, yeah you know, it's like a rare thing. It's a super rare thing, yeah, but we we ate a King Cobra dude.
Speaker 3:Wow, yeah, there's not many people that could say that.
Speaker 1:No man it was awesome dude Dude. If you're really like interested in doing something like that, we could talk offline. Yeah, I can tell you exactly how we did it, how we put it together. I'd be so down, I'd be so like, I'd be so down to do it, you would go again. Yeah, oh, yeah, oh, dude, 100%, oh yeah.
Speaker 3:I keep saying I'm like with the you know the new gym and everything which we'll talk about I'm like, right now, I'm like it's starting to kind of settle into its place. I'm like I need to go on an adventure. Yeah, that sounds like a sick adventure. Yeah, dude, I'll do anything. Yeah, all right, yeah, yeah, yeah, oh, dude 100%.
Speaker 1:So. So the crazy thing about like not crazy, but for me I didn't get involved or get exposed to any of this kind of stuff until late in life right. Like late in life, like grown ass man you know, like. I didn't grow up camping. I didn't grow up fishing or anything. I grew up in the projects in Brooklyn in the mid 90s. You know we didn't have any money for anything. So, I didn't even go see like my first professional baseball game until, like I was an adult. You know what I mean yeah.
Speaker 1:So what I'm getting at is that, like I'm big on experience, I'm big on trying things and learning about things. I have a list of all these different, these different things that I want to, you know, get into right, I've never been ice fishing. I want to try that. You know what I mean. But the motorcycle thing, like in another country, dude, I will, I will, I will tell you exactly. You know, I want to say, because I was asking people all the time, I was like, hey, so I'm going to go, I'm going to go to Vietnam, I'm going to fly from JFK, I'm going to fly to Vietnam. I'm going to rent a motorcycle for two weeks and I'm going to sleep in a different place every day for two weeks. How much do you think this would cost me? 10,000, 8,000, 5,000? Do that trip was less than $3,000. It was less than $3,000. It was like I'm not. I am not making this up.
Speaker 3:That's a weekend in Miami. Yeah, miami, yeah, well, that in two days. Exactly.
Speaker 1:Dude, and this was like so much more fulfilling.
Speaker 3:Like you know what I mean.
Speaker 1:Like you, just 100 again you're, cruising, you're, you're, you're seeing everything. I mean and and I don't know if you're like a big foodie or like if- you're tried to eat, I'll eat whatever yeah. Because that's not the country to be picky.
Speaker 3:Yeah, you got to be willing to. Yeah, that's not the one where you're like, I don't know, mcdonald's.
Speaker 2:Like no, not happening, no, not happening bro, no McDonald's.
Speaker 1:So we ended up eventually by, like you know, day two, day three. I had one of the hotel workers right on a napkin for me. It was like I would like, but in Vietnamese I would like a room with air conditioning and a cold beer.
Speaker 3:So every time we would go like this is what would pass, that like here you go Okay, yeah, we got you.
Speaker 1:And then the way they serve you, like beer in Vietnam is they just bring a case to the table and you just get charged for what you do. But think about that man like you bring a case of beer to your buddies, you're going to drink it.
Speaker 3:You're going to drink the entire case. No one's going to be like yeah no, I'm not drinking that.
Speaker 2:Like, no, like you're going to take it Exactly, Right.
Speaker 1:One of the wild things that I saw while I was there it was one of the days was a women's national, women's natural national day, like for women right is like there one day, where I I so at first because we're coming in and out of these towns and we're seeing like these huge tents being put up and, like man, like what's going on.
Speaker 2:Is it?
Speaker 1:like some federal holiday that we know. It was like National Women's Day, so so I want to say it's like, it's almost similar to like, like, like a sweet 16 kind of a thing where, like, if you're like I don't know, 15 or 16 years of age, the family is going to celebrate you and there's like DJs and food. So we end up going to this restaurant, like on National Women's Day, and in the middle of the country is where I started seeing this, the more what I would say is garbage or trash the more shit you have underneath your table, the more fun you're having.
Speaker 1:It's almost like you're culturally. You're showing the rest of the people in this restaurant that you and the folks at this table are engaged and there's like love here and family right. So they drink a beer. They throw it to the ground. They're eating stuff with like shells they throw it to the ground. So like there's like all this empty beer cans and all this kind of thing underneath these tables. I've never seen that. I was just like dude. That's kind of wild.
Speaker 3:You know what I mean? They're just like collecting it. They're just throwing it underneath the table. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:But women's national day? Yeah, man, we should look into that. Oh, hold that down and there's so many other places too, like I know there's dude, there's something like South America you could do. I want to say. I want to say, like you can start off somewhere in Mexico and make your way all the way down South America. I don't know how crazy that would be. I think you could be prepared to like, maybe get kidnapped because it's possible.
Speaker 3:You know you see all the shows on like Nat Geo, you know what I mean. Riding on the motorcycle through, you know.
Speaker 1:Columbia yeah man, yeah man.
Speaker 3:Crazy stuff, dude.
Speaker 1:Crazy stuff, man. So how'd you get hurt?
Speaker 3:Okay, so we have like a long list of injuries, like broken arm. I broke my femur when I was 15. That was a real bad one. I had to be like flown out of the track and like a helicopter. Then I broke your femur. Yeah, it was almost went through the skin and I was young, I was 14.
Speaker 1:We call that like a compound fracture. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:It was. I was out in like a track same thing in the middle of a farm but these tracks are literally in the middle of nowhere and they were like we can't even get the ambulance in here, like safely the broads to bumpy. So they're like we just got to call a helicopter and that they shut the whole track down. They came down, they threw me in there. I wish I was in a better condition to enjoy the ride. That was the only time I ever been in a helicopter. But, yeah, they pulled me out, brought me right to the hospital.
Speaker 3:That was a bad one. I broke my foot, you know a bunch of little stuff my hand, fingers, this that. But the big one was when I was 18. I was qualifying for this big race in Tennessee. It was like this three rounds, so you do the first round, which I made it through, then I crashed at the second one, and then the second one you go to the national. So we were at the second one, we were in the middle of PA Same thing, like literally middle of nowhere.
Speaker 3:And then I was doing pretty good up to that point, which it always seems to work out that way, like right, when, like I'm doing well. Things are about to. You know, it's almost like that's just the luck that I had. It was every time I had a bad crash it was right before. I was like feeling really good.
Speaker 3:So I hit this jump and what they do is they water the jump. They water the tracks cause it gets real dusty, so they try to keep the water down, the dust down, so they throw water down. But this track was like like hard packed. So when you throw water on, you know, like a hard surface, it gets super slippery. So this jump was like ice and I could see it. I was coming up to it, I could see all the water on it and I'm just like, oh my God, like this is going to be. I'm just going to slide like crazy. So I'm coming up and I got the. You know I'm on the gas and you just get same thing. Like you learn intuition and feeling of like the bike and how it reacts to things, and I just knew I was like getting no traction. I was just slide, like, like, and I had people behind me and I've been landed on previously. Like I've landed on people, people have landed on me and I like that's terrible, like that hurts.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I was like yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was like all right, well, I got guys behind me. There's no way these guys landed on me, I'm just going to like hammer it. So I'm just on the gas some wide open. I'm sliding as I come up but, like you know, you squeeze the bike to kind of keep it together. So I jump and instead of I just barely made like, didn't make it over. So I landed like knuckled it right on the top and instead of it was like a jump up a hill. So instead of landing like on the track, I landed off to the side.
Speaker 3:So I landed all the way at the bottom of the hill and I was you know, flipping, I guess, through the air, and I landed on my just my right leg, like just that. The left leg was fine and it was like a 30 foot drop and we have boots and all this other gear. But I knew when I landed like one I was in like excruciating pain right off the bat but I was also like I was just pissed, like I was like I cannot believe I just blew my whole weekend off of. You know just this.
Speaker 1:Whatever this jump and so real quick, Go ahead. When you're saying that you landed, so, like you, you're not landing on the track. Obviously You're landing off to the track.
Speaker 3:When you say landed, like two wheels landed and I was separate, so the bike actually ended up on the like, stayed on the track. Oh it just tipped over on the top of the jump, so the bike made out better than I did. I landed all the way on the bottom of the jump and just like right down.
Speaker 1:So, you got tossed almost. When you say you landed like. You landed like I'm assuming like you're being like tossed around like a ragdoll almost like in the air. Exactly so. And when you land, it's not like you land on your feet.
Speaker 3:Right, well, I could, so it could have been worse, like I could have landed on my neck from that. Right, which would have who knows what could have happened. So if I was going to fly through the air, I'd rather land on my feet.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:And so I land and I immediately just pissed off, like I set up a, take my helmet off. I'm like, just sitting there, they, the medic, comes over, they put me on the back of the you know the little UTV, they take me off the track, they take my bike, whatever. And I go back to my truck and my dad shows up and you know he's like, yeah, everything all right, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, yeah, like you know, hurts. But you know, I don't know, I don't know what's going on. I was like it's a lot of pain but hopefully it'll be like I'm still kind of.
Speaker 1:You're in shock. Yeah, you're in shock.
Speaker 2:It still didn't even really set in. Yeah.
Speaker 3:So then once it starts to kind of like you know, an hour passes and I'm like, damn, this thing hurts. So we go, they have like a little medic at the track, so we go over to him, he takes the boot off, he starts looking at it and he's like, yeah, it doesn't really look too bad. It was like from my own eyes it looked fine. So it wasn't like anything. You know, looking back on it people are like, well, how did I don't understand. It looked up fine. I was like, yeah, it didn't look like anything. The boot just kept everything together. It wasn't black and blue, it wasn't swollen, it was nothing.
Speaker 3:So from the outside, looking in, without an x-ray, the guys like, oh, I, you know, maybe a sprained ankle, but you see, it seems okay. So then I was like, all right, well, I'm going to take his word for it. So we go back to the truck and usually I can kind of sleep it off a little bit. I knew I was done riding for the day, but I was like, all right, maybe I can ride tomorrow if it feels okay. So I'm laying there and it was just worse and worse pain and just kept getting worse and worse and it was like knowing what I know now.
Speaker 3:So you know, this is a little later on in the story, but I ended up severing two arteries in my leg. So I think what was happening when I was at the track is the blood was just pooling like in there and it was just the pressure was building up and as the hours went past, like I was just essentially the leg was just dying on my body because there was just no blood flow. So I didn't know that at the time. You know they didn't. I was still just laying there and so they took me Dude, dude, dude, dude, dude.
Speaker 1:You're saying that you fell, you got injured and you severed two arteries in your leg. Which leg was it your right?
Speaker 3:leg.
Speaker 1:And your right leg. You severed two arteries, Bro. You know how painful that is, how crazy that is.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it was nuts. I didn't know, I didn't know. I'm in shock right now.
Speaker 1:Like that's crazy.
Speaker 3:It was. It was, it was very painful to the point where it was so bad. Like I told my dad, I was like we have to go to the hospital literally right this second, because I don't even know if I, like, I feel like I'm going to pass out. So we go to the medic. They just IV and just straight morphine, like they just the highest dose of whatever they had. They would just gave it to me and there was like a 40 minute ride in the ambulance and it was it like, looking back on it, it was like a blink of an eye that it went by, because I was just so out of it.
Speaker 1:But but um what? How did they come to the? How did they come to the conclusion? Not conclusion, but how did they get to the point where they're like no dude morphine IV gone, like because it was?
Speaker 3:just my level, like my pain, like I've always had a pretty high tolerance of pain Right and so whenever like, are they like checking?
Speaker 1:your leg and they're like oh shit, he has like internal pain.
Speaker 3:No, I don't know, they didn't know any of that. It was literally just like I think them like. The medic at the track, looking from his perspective to mine, was probably like, oh, this kid's exaggerating, you know, like it didn't look, it didn't. It didn't look like anything.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 3:So I know my body, I know, like you know, when you go to a hospital and they give you the scale, oh, one to 10, 10, and they have the little faces and they're like the 10 is really pain, like I'm always, like I could be in there with like a broken arm and be like, ah, it's a four.
Speaker 1:Like.
Speaker 3:I'm just like I don't like to complain about anything. This was like 12. Like I was like what the hell is going on, like to the point where I knew, okay, this is not a broken foot. Like I've had that before. This is way worse than that. So I was like like at this point I probably was screaming. So they just was like shut this kid up, give him whatever. And I remember I held my leg in my hands like this, like propped it up, laying back in the hot in the ambulance for like an hour ride and just held it like that. And just we rode to the hospital. I went to Pittsburgh Medical Center. As soon as I got in there, they rushed me in immediately and that's when, like the hell just set in, go ahead.
Speaker 1:Hang on a second, bro. So like no tourniquet, no, none of that, because you don't know what, you don't know Nothing. Had you known that you suffered arteries, then you could tourniquet your thigh.
Speaker 3:I'm sure there was probably stuff that, looking back on it, like we have this conversation sometimes. But I'm also the type of person like I'm like this is what it is. It doesn't even there's no benefit to dwell on the past, but I'm like there may have been some things they could have done to save it.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I think even the hospital did some stuff that they probably shouldn't have done. But, like when I first got in there, the first thing they did was cast it, which I think was probably not the best idea, because it was like there was so much swelling and then they just like crushed it with the cast.
Speaker 1:What was the point of casting it? I?
Speaker 3:think they x-rayed it before they did an MRI and the x-ray showed a bunch of broken bones. So they were like we don't want this thing to move. And so they just I had what was called a pilon fracture, which is basically the doctor described it as like if you had a chandelier and you hit the bottom of it with a hammer and it just exploded. Like that was what happened in my foot basically. So that break with all those pieces, like 12 pieces just floating around in there and then no blood flow to repair. It was just like inevitable. So maybe not, you know, maybe it was inevitable that you know that maybe it wasn't going to get saved, but I'm like I don't know if casting it would have been a good, but they didn't know, you know. So, whatever they're there to help people, they thought that was the best move.
Speaker 2:I'm not.
Speaker 3:You know a doctor. I can't say so.
Speaker 1:I was.
Speaker 3:You know, we're we didn't know what we didn't know, we're just letting them do what they had to do. But they were moving quick and that was scaring the shit out of me. They were like this doctor, this doc. They had like a team right away cast. They put out this little thing called a Doppler, which I think they use, like maybe for babies, to like check the pulse or something, and they were checking the pulse on my leg and they would come in every hour just to see. Okay, they would see it, you know, hear it, beep, beep, whatever.
Speaker 1:And then, um, so you're still bleeding at this point because they haven't. They haven't done internally, yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, outside look fine. Of course, still nothing.
Speaker 1:Right. Inside must have been like oh my God, I can't, even imagine pool.
Speaker 3:You know, it was just. I can only imagine that first surgery, what it looked like in there. It must have been a war zone in there. Just from it being a day later and there was just no. You know, I don't even know where the hell's that blood going, so hold on dude, so they cast it.
Speaker 1:So when they cast it it's still swelling, yeah, but now it's in a cast.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that, almost like like you said, a tourniquet like that cast almost acted as the tourniquet.
Speaker 1:Okay.
Speaker 3:They almost were killing it unintentionally. Wow, while I was still alive, you know, like I'm obviously awake and alive and whatever, and they just put a cast, because I remember when they casted it it didn't feel any better.
Speaker 2:Oh, my God.
Speaker 3:It was. It was like I was like this is like crazy.
Speaker 1:It just kept getting worse and worse. Oh my God.
Speaker 3:But I was. You know, I was 18. I knew, I didn't know any better, I didn't know. You know it wasn't talked about of losing a leg. At that point it was just holy shit, what the hell is going on? Why is this hurt so bad? So to fast forward a little bit, like you know, maybe a couple hours after that my dad, my mom, never goes to watch any of the races, just because I would get hurt a lot and there was just not her thing. So, uh.
Speaker 3:So we were in Pittsburgh. My dad drove from Pittsburgh with my brother because my brother was racing to back to New Rochelle, which was like eight hours. They go to pick my mom up and then bring her back, because things were worse than we expected. And while he was going that way, on his way back or whatever, they came in. The doctors came in and checked the pulse and they couldn't find anything. They were like we got nothing here, we have to rush you in right now. So they rushed me into like an emergency surgery. So I was rushed in while I didn't even have any family, nobody even at the hospital. I was there by myself. But they brought me into the surgery while I was in the surgery.
Speaker 3:The first one was 20 hours. So while I was in there, my parents were made it back before I got out. When, uh, when they got back, they you know, they left or my dad left the hospital thinking like still that I just had a broken leg. When he got back, they had already opened everything up to look inside. And that's when they told them they're like listen, I think he's going to lose his leg. Like this is like way worse than we thought in here.
Speaker 3:I was still under at the time but my dad like passed out in the waiting room, my mom screaming. I don't understand you. We thought this was a broken leg. Well, you know, whatever, things just escalated like immediately. So I get out of the, out of the first surgery. It was the craziest thing. They still had everything like open, like they didn't even like sew me back up. It was like an external fixator. So I had like this box that they had drilled into my shin bone and it was just like basically made to like lock me into place, but the wound was still open. So it was almost like unfinished business and you could see this yeah.
Speaker 3:So I was awake, I could see the blood, the muscles, like. It was just one of my buddies, he and this was like around the time when we had phones, but well, yeah, there was. I don't know, I didn't have a good phone, none of my friends had any. So one of my buddies had this picture of my leg on his phone, which I wish I still had it, and it was like took it on a blackberry, the quality was crap, but you could see it was just red, like all. My whole leg was just red, like cut open on the side. And I don't remember the timeframe from the first surgery to the second one, but within that time I think maybe it was like a couple of days. That was when my parents had closer, so that was when my parents had told me they were like all right. Well, you know, I took them a couple of days to be able to tell me that that was that losing my leg was even like going to be a thing.
Speaker 3:So days yeah they waited yeah because they just didn't know.
Speaker 3:I mean, I guess you know, looking back there, you know, I would imagine that's not an easy thing to tell your kid, but they were like they didn't want the doctor to say it, like they want it to be the ones to be like, hey, listen, like things aren't as good as we think and there's a good chance that you're going to lose your leg, but they have some things that they could do to, um, you know, try to not make that happen. So this, you know we. At that point it was like, okay, the next surgery was a bypass. So they took an artery from my left leg and they put it in the right leg to try to get, you know, fix it, repair, get some blood flow a day or two past. That didn't work. Then I went in for my third surgery. They put like a stent in just to kind of open things up a couple of days. That didn't work. So then at that point they're like all right, well, we exhausted all our options, you got to make this choice, you want to keep it? Which, at that point, my toes were blue, I had no movement, it was super painful.
Speaker 3:This was like two or three weeks in at this point and, uh, it was like, okay, I mean it was a tough decision, but it was a no brainer, like it was like okay, they said like at some point or another you're going to have to cut this off. So see that you do it now or you do it in, like you know, six months and you're going to have the worst six months of your life. I was like, okay, I don't even know. You know this, things are happening so quick. All right, now I can I walk again, can I? You know, riding the dirt bike is way out of the question. I was just like how do I even go back to being a normal person at this point? I don't mean, I have one leg. So these were all the questions. And you're so young too, man. Yeah, I just didn't know. You know which? I think being young helped me looking back on it.
Speaker 3:You know, I just, like you know, I always try to look at the bright side and I'm like I'm going to have a prosthetic for longer than I had my real leg. So I think being young I was adaptable and mentally was just stupid and naive. And if this happened to me now and I had to go and get a job or do something and you know, like working at the gym all the hours that I'm there to be able to relearn how to walk like it would, it would never. That would have. If I would have been the age I am now, it would have been a totally different story when you're young, like you got time.
Speaker 3:I had all summer to figure this thing out. I had, you know, school I was, I wanted to go back to school, whatever, but I was young enough that I could still mold my life and you know, as you get older you got to kind of figure it out a little bit more.
Speaker 3:So I think being young kind of you know, helped me and I had that energy and I had that just spunk. I guess that you kind of lose as you get older. So I've looked at it as me being young as a positive. I think I was the perfect age for this to happen. But the fourth surgery was, you know, I went in with two legs. It was a quick surgery. It came back out and it was just crazy thing.
Speaker 3:The first, the hardest part initially, was like looking at it, you know, like my eyes adapting to seeing one leg was like crazy. Like I'm like wow, you know I can smile about it now, but at the time I was like holy shit, there's one, you know, like I had the bed sheet on and the one foot you could see and the other thing is nothing there. So it was just like but I felt good. I got out of the first, you know, that surgery. I was like this thing is finally off me. I'm not in pain and it's amazing what motivation like pain is such a strong motivator to the point where I was like, well, at least I'm not in pain anymore. Like I'm like, okay, you know I'll deal with it, but the pain I was in before for two weeks was so severe that I was just like at least I don't feel that anymore.
Speaker 3:So I had a fifth surgery. They took a skin graft that cleaned everything up and then they just sent me on my way. I was in there for a month and then I was out and it was right the beginning of summer. So I graduated from my hospital bed. I didn't go to prom and go to after product and I do any of that stuff, which I really didn't even care. I just wanted to like get out, go hang out with my friends Like I was 18. You know, it was like I was in the hospital. It's almost like being in jail, you know, like you don't know what's going on outside of that. I mean, I had my phone, I had my laptop, whatever.
Speaker 1:You're in a bubble.
Speaker 3:It was just like yeah, it was in a bubble, like I'm like I want to go see what's going on you know it's the summer like I'm ready to roll. So I just, you know, got out of the hospital, we drove all the way back home and then it was just like what's that ride like back home?
Speaker 3:It was crazy because I'm who's in the car. I think we were all in the car my mom, my dad, my brother yeah, they all want. Everybody wanted to be there when I got out. So I'm pretty sure there was a was a full car.
Speaker 3:And I just remember like, like you know, my graduation, like people had team Max on their cap and like people were taking pictures you know with like they were posting things hey, max, this is for you. They made like a whole announcement. My brother and sister went up to get my diploma so they told the whole graduating class. You know, everybody knew that I was like losing a leg and having this crazy thing. So when I was coming home, it was like huge news for like the whole city, which is crazy to think about now. But I'm like you know, I had the newspaper was there, the news was there, like it was just like a big deal in my town and I was never like a popular kid. I just kind of stayed to myself. I did my school, my sports, whatever. This was like I had, you know, the coolest people in the school, which you know whatever. But looking back I'm like that's a big deal, but now I couldn't care less, but you know you got all these people hitting you up.
Speaker 3:You know I'm coming by to see you People that I never even talked to, but it was just you know, they wanted to be there, which, whatever their motive of being there, may have been, you know whatever but I just took everything as love and I was just like you know, you want to come hang out. I mean, you never talked to me ever, but now that I'm like a big deal, you want to come talk.
Speaker 1:whatever you know I'm there, I'm there. You're being humble.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was just like listen, I'm locked up in the house. I'm on crutches. You want to come visit me? I'll take all the guests I can get. So I was home.
Speaker 1:That was the whole summer like that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I didn't have. I was in a wheelchair and then literally within like two days, I was like I can't do this anymore. So I went right to the crutches and then the whole summer I was on crutches but I was getting invited to parties, like it was. It was like it was like nothing I had ever experienced. It was like anywhere I wanted to go, I had like I don't know if you're familiar. I'm sure you are, you know, like Jada kiss. Yeah, okay, so I knew somebody that knew him. One of my buddies was like a produce. His dad was a producer. He got me in touch with him. He was like sending me merch, he was calling me on the phone. I was talking to him on the phone. Yeah, this was, and I, it was like my favorite rapper ever, dude, that's crazy yeah dude him styles P, they were all like I would could call them.
Speaker 3:Like I was talking to Jada kiss on the phone and he's like yo, you know, and his voice, I raspy voice, he's like you know, the my buddy's friend's name was scram and he's like yo, scram told me that you're, you know you're about, you know I had a commission for a little bit, like hold your head, just motivating stuff. Quick little phone calls like this is a cool. So right away it turned into, you know, I had that support system to make it like something cool, you know, and, like I said, I was not even dumb to where I'm like I like I lost a leg, but I just talked to Jada kiss on the phone, you know, like you should, you should send them a message, man, I know you should post and tweets about me.
Speaker 3:It was like all kinds of crazy stuff, instagram stuff. I was like it was like looking back on my gets, crazy that it was that to that extent, but it just was not. It was kind of an unheard of thing for somebody to like lose a leg and you know whatever. So, yeah, yes, I was riding that wave. Hell yeah, I was going to parties, I was hanging out. I was girls coming over the house, I was just like whatever, I was like a local celebrity.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:So it was cool. Like to this day I'm like that really wasn't that bad of a summer. I just kind of I had a big adjustment, but yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the reason why I was asking you what was the ride home like? The reason why I'm asking you that is because, like, as a parent, like I, have a daughter. She's six years old, right, dude, I can't imagine like, clearly, you're in pain and you're going through tons of things, right, like, like you're, this is traumatic, right. And then, from a parent, like man, like your parents must have just been, I can't even imagine what they must have felt, like you know what I mean.
Speaker 3:I think. So the way that you look at it is different than the way that I look at it, and I think until I have my own kids, I don't think I'm going to be able to relate the same way.
Speaker 3:I think as I get older, it's a little bit easier for me to see you know the pain in their eyes that I'm sure they they had and the feelings they felt. I think my dad carried a lot of guilt with him because he was the one that brought me into the sport. I think my mom had animosity towards my dad through the whole situation and but at the same time I think it really helped. It brought my family together because they had a common goal which was you know. Get me back to normal essentially.
Speaker 3:So and I think they've each served you know their purpose in that and they did a fantastic job. Like to this day I'm like I never seen two human beings work so well at doing some you know something together which was putting me back together, essentially my dad's very handy so once I ended up getting a leg, him tinkering with things and he was just like whatever we needed fixed, he knew how to do it. My mom was very big on the emotional side and the mental side and keeping me like engaged in my recovery and I think they played such a crucial part that there's no way I would have been where I am, you know, obviously without that, and I'm blessed because not a lot of people have that support.
Speaker 3:But, what's your dad's name, alex?
Speaker 1:and your mom, Doreen Doreen.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:God bless you both. Yeah, Alex and Doreen Can't imagine what where you had to pull that strength or tenacity from to be there for Max. But thank you. I appreciate that and I'm sure they will too.
Speaker 3:They, you know, I can imagine and looking back on it, so you know, the things kind of expose themselves as time went on. So one of the things that and it kind of hits me a little bit now that I'm older is I remember my dad being like he was, because when I first got back home from the hospital my bedroom was on the first floor and our bathroom was on the second floor.
Speaker 1:Oh shit.
Speaker 3:So I would, and I was mobile, like I would just hop around. I still, to this day, I do that. I'm just like all right if I can hop somewhere. You know, let's say, I gotta take a leak in the middle of the night, I just hop to the bathroom.
Speaker 3:So, that's what I would do. I would wake up and I would just hop to the bathroom and he says he's like for literally months, like he's like I would hear you hopping up the stairs to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. And he's like it would just like rot me to my core. He's like I just that stuck, you know, with him to the point where the way that he coped with that was he made, they took some money and they put a bathroom downstairs Like his work office. He turned it into a bathroom, so I had my bedroom and then his office became my bathroom, and so you know that was his way. I told her I was like. I was like I don't need, like I can hop up the stairs, I don't care.
Speaker 3:Like you know, I was athletic enough that I could just move on my arm with my arms, whatever, and he's like no, no, no, he's like I can't anymore, like I need to sleep, I can't keep hearing it. And so they built the bathroom and it was, you know, it was like the nicest part of our whole house, but it was my bathroom and you know. So they did stuff like that to kind of cope.
Speaker 3:But I can imagine some of the other things, you know. I mean, even to this day we never really we're kind of past it in a sense. You know, I was able to kind of cross that bridge to where I feel like I was able to make, you know, turn a positive into a negative with the help of my support. But you know it was, I can only imagine being a parent and I don't think I'm gonna. You know, I feel like you can relate to that more than I even can.
Speaker 1:Dude, like, as you're saying it, like I want to cry, like and anyone who knows me intimately will tell you that, dude, don't cry, for shit, I don't dude. There's only like a few things that trigger me. Things like this, things with like children, innocent children, innocent women and children, and I can't see, like I have a hard time when there's like elderly people crying, like like you've ever watched like a World War Two documentary.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3:And do that just so. The certain things that trigger you, right and it's like, but here in this, story and I'm gonna cut you off.
Speaker 1:No, no. And the day that you're blessed to be a parent, you'll understand. Oh, I can imagine this whole experience will come back to you, because it's the wildest thing, dude, it's the. You could think like you have nothing else to give. You have no more emotion, no more love. You're just like I'm cool, dude, yeah.
Speaker 2:And then you get and then you get blessed to be a parent and it's just Dude.
Speaker 3:I'm excited for it.
Speaker 3:I say it all the time. I love kids, I can't wait to have kids, but I feel like that's the type of thing that I want to be the best human I can be for that child, you know, boy, girl, whatever it is. I want to make sure that OK, like I'm good with myself, because a lot of times I feel like parents will put their own burden onto the you know, not purposely, but just accidentally, put their own shit on their kid and you know, you could put a kid in a rough situation. And I'm like I want to be able to provide for this kid that financially, emotionally, mentally, like I want to be there, you know, obviously with a partner, with my wife, whatever, but the two of us working together. That's something that I can't wait to have, but I'm like in no rush.
Speaker 3:You know I'm like right now I'm lining up my ducks with the gym, with all this stuff and that's all. That's my number one priority. But I know once that next chapter comes, I'm going to be fully dedicated to that. And then I think at that point I'll go through another revelation with my life with like holy shit with the you know the like thing to be like wow, I can't even imagine that happening to my kid.
Speaker 1:And then I think that will even give me more respect for my parents and that whole situation, because I know that that wasn't easy for them, brother, wait, just wait, just wait, because I always tell folks I mentioned it on the podcast a trillion times already the natural order of things, just the natural order of how things just progressively stay in line, like to your point, you want to be a dad. You think about it like when that opportunity comes your way, you're going to reflect, like to your point, you're going to reflect back on them. You'd be like, wow, dude, like my parents were so strong my parents were this or that.
Speaker 1:Because, dude, like things like that happen, like people divorce, people leave each, like things happen and like it's because, because, again, it's a fact, that's what I was asking. What was the, what was the conversation like in the car heading home? Because it's, it's the first time it's the first time that you guys are heading home together.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right after this thing happened, where it's just like fuck, like what do we talk about?
Speaker 3:They and it's it's more so. My dad, my mom's a little more like on the realistic side but my dad's very glass, half full type of deal Always he's always been like that and I think a lot of. I mean, like I said, they both work together but they're very big on like mentally, you know, mental strength and being able to persevere and I think you know I mean I love even to this day I don't think I would, you know ride like I ever, you know, like I did, like I'm not going to put myself in that situation to get hurt or anything like that. But there's times when I'll just go in the gym and I'll just make like the hardest workout I can think of, just to put myself in that Like I want to quit type of deal, just to feel that again.
Speaker 3:Sometimes it's good to go into the pain, cave and feel, you know, life gets real comfortable. We got Amazon that delivers stuff to your door, like we. Things are easy. Every once in a while it's nice to make things difficult so you can appreciate the other side of the coin. And I think my dad's you know both of them have really instilled that in me, but they were all about that big time when I was coming home and you know that through that couple month period and I had a lot to learn as, like you know, a young man learning how to cope with my own feelings and my adversity it was just, you know, there was nights where we cried together like you know what are we doing, what you know how did this happen?
Speaker 3:And you get a little bit of a little bit of, you know, up and down, which is you got to feel these emotions and it's not, you know, not shy away from them, but learn to embrace them and cope with them. It's okay to be sad, it's okay to be, you know, feel down, but how do you get through that and how do you recover from that? And I feel like a lot of people struggle with being able to. You know a lot of people that I meet. It's like they have anxiety, they have this, they have this, they take this medication, this, this. I don't. I'm so against all of that. I mean, granted, if you need it. You know, whatever, everybody live their life, but I've always been like I can figure this out. I've I'd like to think that this leg, this leg situation, has this is the hardest thing I'm ever going to go through, and I went through it at 18. So the rest of life is just going to be smooth sailing.
Speaker 3:And that helps me kind of, you know, with business with certain things, having tough conversations, like I'm like I already kind of paid my dues, I just got it. The rest of this is just little trickle up and downs, but the big one was already paid. So I, thinking like that makes me feel like I have the world on my side. So, you know, and I and I don't think I was born that way, I think that was my parents teaching me how to think that way.
Speaker 1:That is a that is a powerful outlook. That's incredible, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you.
Speaker 1:That is incredible, man. I mean, let me just gather myself. Yeah yeah, let me just gather myself.
Speaker 3:Go ahead, man, go ahead. I knew we were going to have a good conversation.
Speaker 2:Oh man.
Speaker 1:Did you have a girlfriend at this time?
Speaker 3:No, no, no girlfriends, I was just kind of like I said I was riding the wave, it was like I went from nothing. You know, I was just like, you know. I mean I wasn't like a loser, but I wasn't getting half as much attention to. Then, you know, I come back home and there's 10 of them coming to hang out and I'm like okay, well, and then I ended up, which is crazy. I hope she never, she never sees this, but I ended up there's this like literally the hottest girl in my whole high school when I got invited to go to the X games.
Speaker 1:talk about it dude, she was there she flew to California Really.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:She before me and her were like talking and she would you know reach out. When I was home she would whatever, but we never had really anything.
Speaker 3:And then when I got invited she was like flew right out there when I got there then at that point I started like dating her and she became one of the first like girls that I actually dated. But she was like my high school crush for the whole. She was like really cheerleader, you know the whole nine yards type of deal and I was just like right under my arm.
Speaker 1:I was ready to go. I was like.
Speaker 3:However, I got here.
Speaker 1:I got. Yeah, definitely don't mention her name, Like everybody to see. Dude, that's wild man. So, when you went to the X games, your accident had already happened.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's why I got invited. It was a, it was an amputee race.
Speaker 3:So I was racing, all all bunch of amputees I had actually. So you said, like, how did that happen? I got, there was a race that I did prior to that, which was like a qualifier type of deal, and it was all amputees and all these other amputees had kind of been amputees for a while. I was like the new guy and there was like a fast, like you know, there was a couple of good guys, whatever, but there was one guy that would win this thing, like every year, and they just kept telling him hey, there's this kid, he's coming up. And you know, at the time, like so this was. So my accident was May. This was a year later, so I had already gotten back on the bike, which is a whole separate story. We figured out how to. You know, I had to make some changes to the bike and whatever, and my dad did that. But I got back on six months after the accident.
Speaker 1:And then why is that? Because you weren't able to use your back brake.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I would go up to the jump. So the first day that I got back on the bike, we just did it totally normal the bike. We didn't take anything off, I just had, you know, my foot and I put it in the boot. I just did everything normal. I'm caught, I'm going up to the jump and I just keep hitting the break. And I was like this is so sketchy, like I'm just gonna you know, and I can't feel it, I'm like I'm gonna end up like going over the bars, I keep slowing down. So we took the break off. I rode with just the front brake. I was like, okay, this is better, but there's got to be a way to rig this up so that way we can, I can have my break.
Speaker 3:And that was when my dad came into play again. He's like the tinker man. He just was like I'll figure something out. So he rigged up a system where I had like a bicycle, back break, front break and the clutch. So my hand was doing a lot, but it was better than having no break, no back breaks. So he rigged up the system and then that was when I started to like get my speed back and I went to this race in Michigan with all the amputees and I this was my first race back.
Speaker 3:I hadn't raced, hadn't done anything, so I was nervous as shit. I was just like it's all amputees, they were highting me up to like win it, whatever. And I went and I we raced, and the guy was in front of me and I passed them and I beat them the main guy and that was kind of put me on the map. And then from that point forward I got invited to the X games, like a couple months after that, and the X games was like the big event, that was like televised and it was all the same guys. So I went into that thinking like I'm going to win this thing again, no problem, cocky, kid, whatever.
Speaker 3:And when I got there to the lights, the cameras, I just like shit the bed to to this day, my brother rubs it in on me all the time. He's like. He's like if you would have just got third place, you would have had a medal and you could have hung that up in the gym. I got fourth. I was in like second or third and I crashed and I was just like I couldn't take the pressure. Dude, I was just like I was 19 and the everything was just too much.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was way too much.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the new girlfriends they're watching.
Speaker 1:Yeah, dude, she's in the stands.
Speaker 3:The only thing that you could think was just the worst, and I'm like this could not be any worse Like more pressure on me, and so I just crumbled like a ton of bricks and I and I I mean the experience was awesome. I would never especially because I didn't know this at the time, but it was the last one. They never had it again after that.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow.
Speaker 3:Yeah. So I thought like, all right, I got fourth place. I'll come back next year and I'll crush this.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I had it again, dude. So I was just like you know what it was. I was there for the experience, yeah for sure, and that's what it was, and I appreciate what I had. I went in way too cocky. I should have like pulled the reins a little bit, but it is what it is.
Speaker 1:What was your strategy? Just like fuck it, Like I'm just going to win. Yeah, dude, I was just like that was your strategy. I'm going to win yeah.
Speaker 3:I thought like I was like I got this thing wrapped up. I come around the first turn, I'm in like fifth place. I'm like, all right, Well, I got some work to do. I got to pass some of these guys and I couldn't get around any of them. And it was a short race, like the time was just ticking, and I'm like, and I'm like I know I'm faster than all these guys here, but the track was super tight.
Speaker 3:So we normally ride on like a big outdoor track. This was in the basketball court. So imagine, you know 10 dirt bikes on a tiny little court. You know that they built a track and I was just like I can't get around them and I'm just like I'm stuck here and I just couldn't put it together. And then I pulled off and I was pissed. But I was like whatever you know they and they and the other thing too is they paid some big money for first place. They give you like 15 grand. So I was like that would have been nice you know, 19 year old kid getting a paycheck like that. So I think I got five grand for fourth which covered our expenses for the trip, and that was it. It was like I broke. Even it was. I was just, it was just for the experience which, looking back, that's what it was supposed to be. You know, it was just, I was there, but did you have to?
Speaker 1:Did you have to like go see like a therapist or anything like that? No any kind of like mental therapy. None of that.
Speaker 3:I recommend that. I think you know, if somebody you know is in the same shoes I was in, 100% they should. I don't think that was a good thing, I don't know. I just was like I've been very I'm always very challenge oriented and I just looked at it as like another thing to try to figure out.
Speaker 3:Like I don't like when people doubt me. I had some of the you know doctors in the hospital like, oh, you'll never you'll want, you won't ride again, you won't ride again. They're like you'll walk, you'll run, you'll do, but you're not going to ride again. And I was like, all right, well, I have to walk and I have to run in order to ride my bike. I have to figure out how to do all three of those things. And that was just how I looked at it.
Speaker 1:What was the physical therapy like that?
Speaker 3:was probably every day. Yeah it was. It was like quick but a lot, so it was a lot in like one month.
Speaker 3:I would just go like every day and just like we would work a lot of hips, teach you how to use the leg a little bit, this that I remember. We got to a point where I could like run around the facility outside and she was like, all right, I don't think you even need to be here anymore. The rest of this you just kind of figure out on your own. So I was like, okay, so I went to therapy for like a month and that was it. The rest of it was just figure it out and I remember I was a twig, like I was real tiny. I can actually, if you want to like, pop pictures in.
Speaker 3:I have a couple out of the hospital dude, I was like this big yeah send them.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was like I don't edit everything down.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I was tiny and I remember I was like you know, the same thing. I had the girls coming. You know, I'm like all right, I got to start lifting some weights. And then that was when I was like all right, I'm going to the gym and I just upper body, just whatever I could do, and I just, you know, kind of built myself back up from that point.
Speaker 1:How does it work when, like when you're doing workouts like leg workouts and stuff like that, like you're just like stronger on your right side?
Speaker 3:Like now you're saying. So one of the things I struggle with is being able to distribute the weight proportionately and the effort proportionately. My left leg is extremely stronger than my right leg, like it's like the contrast is just too drastic, to the point where it's always going to do a little bit more of the work. It's just like I like to like barbell back squat, I deadlift, I just do a lot of compound lifts and when I do that I just try to evenly push as best as I can. So it's more of like a mental thing.
Speaker 3:But I don't have any exercises that I'm like. I like I can't really do that. You know, I just kind of I work out in my own gym and we don't have any leg press. When I'm anything like that, everything is barbell and like dumbbell stuff. So that's what I do. I do a squat, like you know, two or three days a week deadlift, rdl, split squats, just all these same lifts that I incorporate with, you know, my workouts in the gym. I do them myself and I feel strong as the strongest I've ever felt, the best I've ever felt. So you know, I can't. I have no excuses, I just yeah, wow.
Speaker 1:Max, that's, that's a wild story. You know that, right, yeah, it's, it's wild hearing it.
Speaker 3:You know I haven't told it in a while, but that and thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:Oh man, Thank you for sharing, I mean I don't hold back.
Speaker 1:Dude. So like part of this whole thing with spark and stride right, like wellness, mental health, resiliency, personal development, those are like the core pillars with these conversations are centered on. And then you know like I would get people say like, oh my God, are you going to just, you know, talk about wellness like you? You're going to talk about well, like yeah, like wellness means a whole bunch of different things to a bunch of different people in terms of, like, being resilient.
Speaker 1:I mean like, wow, listen to what you're saying. I don't, I don't know. I don't know how I would have been able to. I don't know what my reaction would have been to such a situation.
Speaker 1:And then my background is a little different, like I didn't have my dad in my life. I grew up without having my father. My mom did the best that she could with what she had, but we have every little. So having to experience something like that with my background and my childhood Shush, I don't know man. Yeah, you know what that would have been like.
Speaker 3:So okay. So you look at something like that and you say, look at both of our situations, right? So not that we had a ton of money, but I had both of my parents. We were financially okay. There's always food on the table. We got to go on vacations, whatever.
Speaker 3:I was dealt my adversity, and it was in the form of a physical disability. You were dealt your adversity. There's not one any easier than the other. They both create the person that you are. I used to say I would have handled that situation better than I think God gives the people the battle they can handle. Everybody needs adversity in their life, like that's what creates you to be who you are. You can't, you know, you don't grow in your comfort zone, and I always say that. And every time I have any chance to put myself in a situation where I don't like to be, I try to do that because I know this is an opportunity for growth and they don't come all the time. Mine was forced, yours was forced. You had no say in that. I mean, I guess I could say I had to say you know, maybe didn't ride, but it was inevitable.
Speaker 1:It was an accident.
Speaker 3:So that you know, looking back, I'm like this made me who I am, that made you who you are, for sure, and and it's it's like okay, well, how do you respond to that adversity and how do you learn to spin it? And I think it's not something that everybody does, but I think it's something that everybody can do, and there's different levels of adversity, there's different types, but I, at some point or another, your life is going to be difficult whether it's in the beginning, whether it's in the middle, whether it's at the end, you're going to face some struggle and you know a lot of it.
Speaker 3:That's how I try to even motivate people to work out. Like I'm like, listen, how do you feel right now If you're overweight? Like that sucks to wake up and not feel good about yourself and struggle to move? Like you're in it. You're in the tough spot Now. It doesn't have to be for the rest of your life. Let's get you on the other side and feel good and it's could be the flip side. Is people that, oh yeah, I have great genes, everything's fine, I could eat what I want At some point that's going to catch up to you.
Speaker 3:You might not be in the struggle yet, but at some point it's going to catch up, and so it's just like you know. When do you want to have your tough?
Speaker 1:You know, when do you want to have your tough? You should put that on a shirt.
Speaker 3:I like the shirt, by the way, do you yeah?
Speaker 1:I'll wear the one you got me on the next one. I like it dude, such a man that was. Thank you for sharing.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Max.
Speaker 3:Absolutely man I love it.
Speaker 1:The reason why I was asking you about, like, did you go to any kind of like therapy? Because I'm just wondering what, I'm just curious what kind of information the therapist would have shared with what sort of trauma you were going through. And not only that, like, maybe like family therapy too, because, again, this is affecting everyone. The entire group dynamics in your household changed that day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, everyone had to adapt. Your dad had to adapt while you're going up and down the stairs, everybody's role.
Speaker 3:My brother was, you know, I mean to this day, like he. So I know we spoke about this like all fair. So my brother's like an Instagram influencer, I guess you could say he's got like over 500,000 followers, so he's got a huge following. He gets all this limelight now and at the time when this first happened to me, it was all on me.
Speaker 3:He was in like the shadow kind of he was like my, you know my shadow, who's always following me around. He was always next to me, always with me. He wrote he did everything. And it's funny now, because now the roles have kind of reversed and I always say it I'm like when we go out, like we'll go to the bar, whatever people are like you know, like flock to him, dude, he gets like crowds of people that they want to take pictures with him. All this it's crazy. He has recognized all the time. Wow, dude, like you wouldn't believe we'll go to like we were in Mexico, me and him, people knew who he was Florida, california, everywhere Europe, people will know. Like he's just that big, which is crazy. And now I'm in his shadow and I'm like to me, I'm like I don't care. You know he had, I had my time, he was behind me. I'll let him have his time, I'm behind him and I'll just ride that I don't need that fame.
Speaker 3:I don't need any of that, I focus on my stuff. But everybody's role in the situation was different. You know, he was like my little support buddy doing everything my sister was. You know, our relationship developed a little bit more once I had this, this accident, and she kind of does her own thing. But yeah, to your point, it's like everybody had their own little say in what went on. And now I would confidently say like all our relationships are the best they've been. So you know, I just moved out. I live, you know, down the street actually, and I lived with my brother for years. That kind of took its its course and it was time. You know, two full grown men in a tiny little house, like we were butt heads. It was like all right, it's my time to go.
Speaker 1:The natural order.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and he was kind of coming up and he's checking me.
Speaker 2:I get it.
Speaker 1:You know this. Whatever order, man.
Speaker 3:And it was my time to flock. So I moved out. I got my own little apartment. He's the man of the house over there now with you know my mom, whatever and and our relationships fine. You know me and my mom are good. I go mountain biking with my dad all the time. Everybody's got good relationships, you know that's so great to hear, man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's really.
Speaker 3:It took a while, but it is good and we never were bad, but just, we're at the, we're the best we've been.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's great. So it's good. I think when people think about like resiliency because it's such like a buzzword it means so many different things to so many different people, right? So I think you really summed it up really eloquently on how you, how your level of resilience, or what happens to you, is no different than me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we just, we just had to adapt to like a different thing right 100%. But I guess the key thing in there is like adapting, because you could have chose to do a million other things in terms of like coping with your accident. You could have went on to like hard drugs, and I know people that have been in that situation and it's like I'm like thank God, mm-hmm, because that You're making a bad situation even worse.
Speaker 3:You know, you're just, you think you might be helping with your temporary, you know the temporary fix, but and I get it, you know it's not. It's not an easy thing to lose a leg or to lose a father, to lose something in your life. And then it's like, okay, well, how do I figure this out? You, you know you, sometimes you got your back against the wall, but that you can either break or you can shine. And you know, sometimes it's just a matter of I'm not gonna let myself break. You know I. You look at like what's the Rocky quote? You know it's not about how hard you hit, it's about how many times you keep getting up. And you, just you, you go. You know it's like alright.
Speaker 1:I just felt like you like quiz me real quick.
Speaker 2:I'm like damn, which was the quote? Was it going with this?
Speaker 1:No, I got you, though man Like that's yeah, man. So, and I know we're probably like bouncing around skipping over things. All right how do you go from Putting getting yourself into a healthy mind, mental state after this traumatic injury or experience and then Like, how do we get to amp?
Speaker 3:like, how does okay, so now we're bridging the gap.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. How do we, yeah, yeah, yeah, happen?
Speaker 3:So you want me to kind of run you through this story like we don't like.
Speaker 1:Like as enough.
Speaker 2:All right cool.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so I was. I wanted to be a physical therapist. Just that was what I wanted to do. I spent a lot of time in PT not just with this accident, other ones, right and I just liked helping people, I liked medicine, it just made sense. I couldn't get into any schools anywhere. It was just so difficult, so competitive. You know, and honestly, like they weren't mate, you know right out of school the amount of debt you were, I don't know. I just didn't line up financially and just I didn't make any sense.
Speaker 3:So At the time I was like, while I was trying to apply for PT school, I became a trainer. I was like, all right, this is like, you know, something I could do on the side. I'll get some clients, make some money. It's not set hours, whatever. So I worked at a gym and freehold and I would go back and forth, I would do my thing. Then they were gonna open a location in Belmar and as I was kind of working up the ranks in there, they were like, listen, you're gonna manage it, it's a salary position and I was like, okay, that's a little more appealing. You know, maybe that's something that I can. I don't want to be a trainer for the rest of my life. But it's just another step and you know progression. So Right then, as like they were about to open it up, like within a couple months, covid hits, wipes everything out. So now they're which, looking back, I mean obviously COVID was terrible, but for me it was like the best thing. Again.
Speaker 3:I was put in the same situation where it was adversity. You know, a lot of people broke and Obviously I didn't have as much to lose at the time. I was just like a kid. I didn't have any. You know, I didn't have a house, I didn't have a gym, I didn't have it. I was just like I'm gonna just kind of go.
Speaker 3:So I put an ad out on Facebook that I would go to people's houses and just train them. I didn't know what the hell I was doing. I was like, just give it a shot. I had a couple cones and I would just go and make a workout. This thing just blew up. It was just like, comment, comment, comment. Oh, come to my house, come to my house, come to my house. I was like, all right, I'm going. I charge 10 bucks a person. I would show up.
Speaker 3:There be groups of like you know, it's mostly moms stay at home. Moms. They were just, you know, people that had nothing to do at that time, so they Everybody wanted to be outside the house. I was like, socially distant, workout, whatever. So I would make 50, 60 bucks a house. I would go to three or four in a day. I was like, yeah, it's the most amount of money I ever made in my life and I'm doing what I love. Like this is all. I'm like barely working. So After a while, I knew, okay, at some point or another I'm gonna not be able to do this is all outside. So once it gets cold, that said, I'm done, I gotta go work back in the gym. So the gyms open back up. The Belmar gym that he said was gonna open fell through, and so the winter rolls around and this is 2020.
Speaker 3:So that summer, into that winter, I Run into one of a buddy of mine that I used to work with and he goes, he goes. Yeah, my dad's got a spot in Manisquan, a building with a room in there that's like for rent. It's tiny, but you know, maybe you can make something happen. So I didn't think anything of it. I went there. It was like a 600 square foot room blue carpet, the ugliest thing you could imagine but it was my starting point.
Speaker 3:And so January of 2021, after I had kind of built it all out, I put some you know all the money that I had raised that summer from doing the outside stuff. I just dumped all of it into this room. So again, it took like a little bit of gamble Well, you got to crack some eggs if you want to make an omelet so I was ready to go. I dumped all the money in. It was like 10 grand. I built this room out and we opened the first amp January 4th of 2021. I Ran it that whole year just building it up, just little by little. I mean, I was dude. I was going door to door people's houses, like anything I could do to get one additional body in that room was like.
Speaker 2:It was like I just kept giving myself raises you know, like as an entrepreneur, like you know, it's like you every Additional person that buys something from me.
Speaker 3:I just gave myself a raise. That feeling was addicting and it was at that point, you know, I didn't know to what extent things were gonna go, but one thing led to another. I was still working at that other gym and then, yeah, and this was again something that needed to happen. They let me go. So they were like, listen, and and I'm still friends with the owner, his name is Anthony, the gym was sets awesome gym. They're a little more central, but and I still talk to him all the time I asked him. You know he's been doing it longer than me, so I pick his brain. He was he. He was like listen, just go do what you got to do.
Speaker 3:You know, at the time, again, I was a little Uneasy with the decision, but that's what had to happen. You know, if it forced me, again, I was put in a position where I was forced to act and that was what I did. I just was like all right, well, now I'm totally Self-employed and whatever money I make is all on me. There's no stable anything. So that forced me to kick it up a gear. I had more time because I wasn't coaching and freehold and again door to door. I would just like Be, try to be everywhere, talk to people. I don't do. I do it in different ways. Now you know, kind of as you learn business, you learn what leverage to pull and leverage and what things are gonna get you more. You know time bang for your buck. So, but at the time I knew nothing. I was like I have no idea what I'm doing. I would just read books, try to implement that, listen to podcasts, implement whatever I learned and Just action every day. I was like I have to do something that's gonna move the needle and progress this business and I would try every day.
Speaker 3:And if it was, you know, one month, I started with seven members and then, maybe you know, two months in, we had 15. We're okay. Well, we're making a double what we made last month, and it was just that's how I thought. Now I was just okay if I could just grow, grow, grow a little bit at a time. My goal was to get 50 members by May. So that was like five months in. I had hit it. I was stoked. I was like I could have. Meanwhile, looking back, I'm like what? It was such a, you know, small number, but it was huge for me at the time.
Speaker 3:And then that whole summer I worked. We opened. That was, you know, maria came in, she was working out there and and then, a little bit after that, we opened the first real location in Brielle. That was where I signed the lease. It was like official, I dumped some real money into the place, I painted it, made it nice, and then, as soon as we opened that place, I was like this is my job, this is what I'm gonna do, and I'm just gonna open as many of these things as I can. And that we opened the Brielle one April 23rd of 2022. And then I just opened another one in Belmar May 1st of 2023, and With the way this one's going, it's growing awesome. I'm hoping to just open another one.
Speaker 2:Love it man, Just keep going, I love it man.
Speaker 1:Do me a favor, sure, plug your website, plug your Instagram, throw the address out there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, so we're. It's amp fitness, the websites amp fitness, njcom, the Instagram is amp fitness and J I'm. What else are we? I mean, we've got a Facebook, you know we're. We're Belmar, 611 Main Street. We're Brielle, 718 Union Brielle.
Speaker 1:That's gonna be New Jersey.
Speaker 3:Yeah yeah, New Jersey. Yeah yeah, I forgot.
Speaker 1:Dude, that's bra.
Speaker 2:I love that. Thank you. I love that. Thank you, I love that now, man, that's.
Speaker 1:That's solid stuff, bro. Just I love seeing just when people are passionate about what they're doing. I don't care what it is they're doing if they're passionate like like you are now and. I just Seeing success and things start to like, unfold themselves. Yeah because here's the here's the part. No one tells you that cannot be done, with you sitting at home being down on yourself.
Speaker 1:That's not where that happens. That happens with, like you said, knocking on the doors getting the extra person in, and also Just when you have good energy about yourself, like you do max, like dude, like it's the natural order things, it's only gonna come back to you. Yeah putting the good stuff out into that atmosphere, folks start to um, it's weird because I'm a tape towards it.
Speaker 1:They gravitate towards it and the folks that gravitate towards you, naturally those are your biggest advocates. Yeah, dude, the folks who have been following spark and stride, and it's just the wildest thing.
Speaker 1:People were coming to me and they're like, oh yeah, like I'm, I found out about spark and stride through I Don't even know, yeah, who how they found out about it but and then what keeps me kind of like passionate about what it is that I'm doing is just the positive feedback, and then also there's ways for you to kind of like In this day and age you can really see, and your analytics, and see like where you're going up in these different areas. Yeah, yeah, every single analytic of spark and stride is just going up. That just tells me, yeah, keep doing the right thing, keep doing what you're doing. You know, dude?
Speaker 3:If it's not broke, don't fix it. You're you know being I mean, listen a podcast here. This is an entrepreneur, this is a self you know made thing and a lot of times you know, at least in my experience you want the next, you know the shiny thing. It's like all right. Well, what are we gonna do next? If something works, get really good at it and do it a million times, because that's you. Keep it simple, you know, and just go. And that's in my experience with the gym. A lot of you know businesses are very similar. You just get good at what you do, you find your your niche and you just pedal to the metal and that's that's worked for me, you know, so far now, man, it's working for you, dude.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it's and it's, you know, it's like when you're younger, you know, you know you almost don't really know what you want to do and and it's crazy because, like you know, I was like I said I wanted to be a PT. Then it was I want to be a trainer and now I'm like training people is probably like 20% of my job. The other 80% is the business, the sales, the marketing, the back end, the retention, all these things that I'm like I had never thought I would be doing that and I don't. You know, not that I'm Great at it, you know, you just kind of learn as you go, but I'm like I'm learning to love that side of things and I'm like I'm more of look at it more of as a businessman than a trainer.
Speaker 3:You know, like obviously you got to put on a good show and have a good product, but you got to get. You could have the best stuff in the world. If you don't get people in the door, you're not selling anything. So it's just like, okay, well, I gotta learn how to sell what I'm good at. And it's just so many different hats and I think I've learned more in these two and a half years than I ever have through any Video book anything, and that's just from doing it.
Speaker 3:Yeah you know, getting in the, like you said, getting in the in the field, tying the boots up and just going yeah, man, what have you done anything with the like the veteran community? No, but I would love to do that.
Speaker 1:We, should, we should team up.
Speaker 3:I'm like all I. It's so to a lot of you know, what I'm able to do is because of guys like yourself that obviously had these. You know, some people have these unfortunate circumstances they lose a leg, they lose a arm, whatever, and these prosthetics are developed like insane. So you know there's there's an Unfortunate need for them to be as good as they are Mm-hmm, and you know I I wouldn't be able to do what I do without you know that. So I'm all for that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no man, I think, I think, I think, after people see and watch your story on here and I mean this is just one platform of many right, right, I Don't know who else in our area is doing anything similar to like what I'm doing, but the more the merrier. Yeah, there's enough out there for everyone.
Speaker 3:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:I think we've collectively coming together as a community. There's no telling. You know what we can accomplish. Yeah, I mean the veteran community. That's something I think would be beneficial. I think there's value added. Yeah, so your brand and you know Networking within that community. Anything I could do to help I'd be more than happy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I would love. Well, yeah, I'm sure you change some info.
Speaker 1:Absolutely yeah 100% cool, I'm in your corner with it. Oh, easy stuff.
Speaker 3:When did you start this?
Speaker 1:When did I start sparking stride? Yeah, so, believe it or not, man, I think my first actual video or episode went up maybe like a month and a half, two months ago.
Speaker 3:No way, yeah. So this is like. This is like fairly new.
Speaker 1:Yeah, fairly new yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, that would took me the longest. Wow, you did. This is pretty. You got this thing down pretty good. Yeah, bro, I'm out of time. Brother, listen, sparking stride.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man so the whole concept is just like spark is. Is equates to just thinking outside the box, right, staying motivated, just whatever. Whatever you like, your spark for your gym right Right and then the stride part is how did you put it?
Speaker 2:How did you put it forward?
Speaker 1:motion.
Speaker 3:How did you put it in motion? Yeah, yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I suffer with like extreme PTSD anxiety.
Speaker 2:Yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, um, does this like I Know, like everybody's got their thing. Yeah, is this something that like kind of helps you through that 100%?
Speaker 1:cool dude, 100%. Yeah, the cool thing for me about doing this is all the folks that I get to meet, like yourself. Of course because I'm just continuously and it's a little different right. I'm older, I have a wife, I have a kid.
Speaker 3:I'm not going to be at the bar you know, it's just, that's just not where you're going to find me.
Speaker 1:Right now I'll meet you for brunch or lunch or something like that but like you know, you're not going to catch me at leggates at two in the morning.
Speaker 3:It's just not your atmosphere, it's not my atmosphere right.
Speaker 1:This gives me the opportunity to still interact with folks, still get a chance to like network, Because a lot of times you know you'll be at an event or somewhere. Or let's just say, like at a bar, Not everyone you meet is going to own their own business. Not everyone you meet is going to say, hey man, I just started this gym.
Speaker 2:This is my story.
Speaker 1:This is in this next part of my life. This is where I want to focus my time and energy and these sorts of conversations, this sort of networking, and just see where we go from here.
Speaker 3:Well, and also like I feel like being in a situation like this it's kind of like peels back layers of people that sometimes they don't even know. Like this is honestly the deepest I've ever dug into this story. I usually have, yeah, I have like an elevator pitch that I'll tell people. If I say, oh, what happened, I give them a real brief summary, but to this extent I never went this deep. So this things you know, as we're talking, it's like wow, yeah, that did you know. You kind of the memories are there, but you almost jog them and I would imagine, you know, with some of your guests, you you get people on here and it's like you know they're learning things that were tucked away that they might not even knew they had in there.
Speaker 1:That's a super good point. I didn't even think of that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like you know, you, you have all these memories stored, but sometimes you need something to kind of peel them out and I think, being in your situation like you're gonna, you know, and I hope this podcast just goes dude and you do it. I hope so too, and get a big following and get some awesome people on here, and you're going to be a very educated guy.
Speaker 1:Oh, man, thank you After a couple of years. Thank you, man, thank you. So like my biggest inspiration has been Nori from Drink Champs and Joe Rogan yeah.
Speaker 3:And Mike Tyson's in the middle, right right, right, how boxing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:So I list so prior to retiring I would have to. My commute to the base here in Jersey, mcguire, was roughly like 45 minutes to 50 minutes every morning, which I didn't complain about, dude Like I'm, just like it's fine, I don't mind.
Speaker 1:But I would listen to so much of these guys on the way to work, on the way home and, to be quite honest, your mind dude can play tricks on you. You can really think it's almost, you can manifest things. Yeah, right. So I was just like man, you know, I think I can do that. But again, what? What would be my message, right? And then to my, a lot of my buddies like whoa, what's your target audience? Yeah, in my mind I'm like everyone's my target audience but I get what they're saying.
Speaker 1:Like you got to pick your your niche or whatever, but no, like Joe Rogan, Nori from Drink Champs, Mike Tyson, Hotbox and like those have been the top three like inspirations for me.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which those guys are the? You know, those are some of the biggest ones.
Speaker 1:Like what a, what an awesome, yeah, you, just you go.
Speaker 3:Yeah, and the fact that you I don't know I read this book one time and it talked about the 10,000 hour rule and it talked about how, in order to become like a professional at something, you have to put in 10,000 hours. Now, granted, I'm sure that's probably, you know, different for everybody, but if you do 10,000 hours of something, you're going to be pretty damn good at it, better than probably 90% of people that would do it. So it's just about okay. Well, how much time, how much? How many hours of podcasting did I do to where? Okay, yeah, I put together a phenomenal show and, and you know, and people want to listen to it and people are intrigued and it's just put in the time. You know, no, very rare you meet these people that pick things up, like you know, out of the blue, like it takes, you know, you only see the tip of the iceberg, but the bottom of it's huge, huge.
Speaker 1:you know, it's just you know the other thing too, max like with all this stuff right. Like with a podcast or anything like dude. Like YouTube university, right, youtube, bro, like phenomenal tool. So much for our, our generation you know, whatever it is, but they can make it look really easy. They're like oh yeah, you can buy these microphones and you buy these cameras. And this is how you kind of said okay, that's dude, that's just a fraction of it, tiny little piece.
Speaker 1:The next part of it is, in my opinion, because you got to remember, like I'm doing this by myself. I don't have a team of people, I don't have a, I don't have anybody running my social media. I'm doing that, my marketing, I'm doing that. That's that Right. So, with all that being said, when you look at, how do you scale something like this Dude, there needs to be a constant flow of people to speak to, and not only that, but like they have to be interesting. Yeah, right, I feel that everyone is interesting and I feel that, if you take the time, my mom used to say that people are books and it's up to you to figure out how many books you're going to read.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's a good.
Speaker 1:I'd never heard that, but that's a great analogy, because because, dude, you could, you could pick something up and you could like, skim through a real career. You could automatically go to the very back and you put it back on the shelf and that's all the interaction you're going to have with that. If you actually took it, read through it, the acknowledgement, the chapters, not now. Now you're committing your time to wanting to know right.
Speaker 1:And I think the same thing with people. Yeah, 100% Right. Instinctively, man, it could have just been like hey, you have a gym called Amped, you had a tragic accident and you lost your leg in it. But hold on a second, and my mind I'm like Whoa, there's so much more to that. Yeah, right.
Speaker 3:Like how do you? That's like the the table of contents you know like okay, look this this, this, but what got you to where? You know, like you said, what got you to this position. And everybody's different. Everybody's got their story. You know, like you said, not everybody's an entrepreneur they don't. You know, not everybody works for themselves, but every person's got a story and I guarantee you there's something you can learn about every person that will benefit you as a person.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:You know, and it's just like okay, well, you're in the hot seat and you're learning and digging into these people to figure out. Okay, like, if you get one little piece of something from every person that you you know have on this show, like dude, you're going to, that's a lot of nuggets which is awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm really excited, dude. I'm just I'm going out to California for a wellness event, a wellness festival, and there's just so many things on the horizon and then the amount of people that have been reaching out to me. It's incredible, man. It is absolutely incredible.
Speaker 3:You know. So it's nobler, it's noballs man. It gets momentum.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And it's awesome when it does because, like you know, I remember, like I said, when I first started with the gym, it was like if I got one person, I was thrilled. Now it, you know, it builds a little momentum. It's got some legs. There's people reaching, you know, I don't have to reach out to them, they're reaching out to me and once you get to that point I mean not that I'm, you know, there, but it's at least starting to get to that point it's like like wow, it's nice. It's nice to look back and be like I remember when I used to have to dig 2000. Do the nail to get somebody to even step foot in this place.
Speaker 3:Now the class. You know, full class is like it's awesome.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So just appreciating it too, you know, and enjoying the ride it's pretty solid Like as I'm sitting here across from you, like listening to you, you know, and like I I at your age, I was in the military At your age I was in the Air Force, and there's a part of me that wishes I would have had your level of like foresight for being an entrepreneur. I think I always you know dabbled back and forth.
Speaker 1:But because you're a part of something so huge, the enterprise is so large, being in the Air Force or being in a branch of service, you know you almost. Your mindset is different because your mindset is more about the team, the mission. It's very team based getting everything together, but but a lot of what I learned throughout my 24 years is helping me right now.
Speaker 3:No, without a doubt.
Speaker 3:And I think even the biggest thing. I mean, you look at like, even just in history, some of the best leaders we ever had in this country, there were all people that were in some sort of armed forces or something, and just it's important to know how to do things on your own, but it's also important to know how to, like you know, work with a team. And that's kind of the part where I think, in my experience, like I'm struggling, which I think maybe in a way it's like kind of almost the opposite. So you were in, you know, the Air Force. You worked with a team. You're going to be able to work well with others.
Speaker 3:I was myself always no team sports, no, nothing. So initially, the business I did I did well with that because I was good at working by myself and doing everything. I'll just work, horse through it and just I don't care how tired I am, how hungry I'm, I'll just work. Now I'm getting to the point in the business where I have to take other people on and be a little bit more of a leader and show them okay, no, I need somebody to do this. So it becomes who, not how, and that's kind of where I'm at and I feel like somebody like you would be better at that because you kind of were already in it. So it's not to say one better than the other, it's just this steps to everything, and who knows which step better.
Speaker 1:One thing that we learned when you're in a supervisory management role, especially in the military, is how to delegate. So what happens is that what they teach us early on is that, as a leader, you must understand the strength and delegation, because if you do not delegate, like ultimately, you're not being a true leader. Right, you have to lead by example and, in being able to delegate to your team, to feel like you trust them, because if you're continuously going behind your team, you're not allowing them, you're not empowering them to step into the position, and there's going to be people on your team that I mean.
Speaker 3:Granted, like we talked about, it's good to know how to do everything, but it's impossible for you to be the best at everything and there's going to be people on your team that, okay, you got this guy. He edits way better than you do. You know how to edit, but this guy's going to be able to edit super quick, whatever the case may be.
Speaker 1:What's his name? Wow, the editing guy. That's better than me, dude. Wherever you are, mr.
Speaker 3:Editor please please.
Speaker 2:I need your help. Please send me an email, dude.
Speaker 1:Because the editing, oh my God.
Speaker 3:I can imagine oh my.
Speaker 2:God.
Speaker 1:Dude, I type with two fingers.
Speaker 3:I'm like dude, the first person I hired at my gym was the social media guy. I was like I want nothing to do with that. I'm like what, what name your price? Yeah, yeah, I'm not dealing with that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well spent, money well spent. I don't know how.
Speaker 3:Yeah, sometimes, like there's certain things that you just don't know how to do, you know it's like, okay, well, I do need the things not going to take off if we don't get this guy you know in. So, yeah, it's putting the right people in the right spot and learning how to. I think delegation is so important. But I didn't, you know, I'm still learning that. So there's a bunch of stuff.
Speaker 1:I have tons of books around here. I could, and you know we should probably at least speak once a week.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I could. Yeah, whatever I could share with you or whatever I love it.
Speaker 1:But your delegation is a big one, and then also one of the big big ones is just like understanding group dynamics. So understanding that when you put a group together, there will be a level of like, um, storming, norming, performing. There's another part that I'm missing. Well, in short, what it's saying is that when you put people together, there will be a storming phase like friction. Just a storming phase. Just I gotta get it's like it's like a bunch of dogs.
Speaker 3:Yeah, they gotta feel each other out a little bit. It's just right it happens. Yeah, it's human nature.
Speaker 1:Like if you and I are working together for the first time on a shift. We both show up to the gym at 5am.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then there's a specific way that you're doing things that I'm maybe not aware of. Maybe you turn it on the music at a certain time. You like the lights a certain way. Whatever the case is, whatever, there's a storming part of it. Then there's a norming part where you're kind of like starting to figure it out. And then there's a. The end part is performing, meaning that everyone's jelling.
Speaker 3:Yeah, which is obviously. You want to get there as quickly as you can, yep.
Speaker 1:Because there's there's there's money to be made.
Speaker 3:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Like if the biggest thing, too, with like a gym is in terms of like a team. When you're putting your team together, everyone may not be on the same sheet of music, right, and that's the natural order of things. Right, people see things differently, they express themselves differently, but what's important, especially with a gym, is that no one on the outside looking in has a direct post on what your group dynamics are, if that makes any sense.
Speaker 3:Yeah, yeah, no, it is.
Speaker 3:You know, so you, you, I think, and a lot of this is so, like I said, the businesses are very similar. So what we spoke about you know before, before we got on air, was you setting the like, almost the tone of how the podcast is right. Like you, only you know how you want things done and you have an idea of that and the ability to keep that through. You know your expansion as you expand and, okay, no, like you know, everyone's so awesome. Sometimes you got to go back to the roots and go well, why, why are we doing this? What is it? And this is the vibe I want to set, this is the mood.
Speaker 3:So the same thing with the gym. It's like, okay, I want people to come to my gym, feel good, have a great time, laugh, make people laugh. Every you know, if you enjoy doing things, you don't need as much motivation to do it. So if you could go there and have a good time yeah, maybe you don't. It took you a little longer than you wanted to lose the 10 pounds, but I'll tell you what. Yeah, the hell of a good time doing it and you're going to stick through this longer than if you.
Speaker 3:Maybe you lost 10 pounds, but it was the worst six weeks of your life. You're never going to want to do that again. So it's about you know. My vibe is like okay, how much fun can I make this place to, where people just love being in here, and that in itself will just attract the right people. You know there's people that come into my gym and that vibe is not for them. No hard feelings, you're in, you're out. The next person comes in, somebody will fill your spot and that's just kind of how you know you're only. You know your vibe.
Speaker 1:So, like in terms of how you build culture right, Because that's what you're doing. You're building a culture for your business, for your gym, right To your point, once you have your culture kind of like in place. When it comes to fitness and physical fitness, I've always been. I've seen the best results and the best success, the quickest results when I've been in a community workout environment CrossFit, something community based. I can do the by myself thing. I've done it for a long time earbuds in timer just breeze through the workouts and get out right.
Speaker 1:There's a different thing with energy and people and laughter and motivating each other.
Speaker 3:It's that's why these gyms even exist.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean I tell people all the time I'm like, listen, we don't have anything special in there. If anything, I have less equipment than most gyms. You know, until you get all these other planet fitness, they got tons of stuff. But the community, the energy, the camaraderie going in there, I mean there's people that ever you know I'll meet that are like, oh, I work out in my garage. I'm like that's great. They have the motivation and determination to do that. But I know how, after a while, that sucks, you know it's. And some people just like that. You know they're able to do that and that's, you know, great. If you can do it, do it. But being in a group, you're all suffering together. We, as humans, like to be in that type of, you know, community based setting. You like to get along with people. You like to kind of be a unit. You know we're all in this together. You know we're the coaches putting us through his shit workout that we're just dying in here and it keeps people coming back.
Speaker 1:Dude, the analytics are out there. Right, the anal, this, this has been proven. It's not like you're trying to invent electricity. No, no, this has been proven of right. Yeah, this, this works. This is the reason why it works. Yep, you know what I mean? Yeah, 100%. So yeah, man, I mean somebody was telling me that the planet fitness marketing for it, and I don't know how true this is, but that they load up a lot of like treadmills and a lot like individual cardio stuff.
Speaker 1:And the weights are very limited or there's not a lot. It discourages this influx of people to go to the gym because they know that there aren't a lot of weights there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, whether it's a planet fitness, retro fitness, jersey, strong wherever, if you're going, that's awesome. Do what you got to do. The business model behind a planet fitness, I think, is terrible. They load these gens up with people that are paying $10 a month with hopes that nobody shows up. You know, like you said, that wouldn't surprise me. They got all these single individual equipment. They want to, you know, and it's a certain clientele. I get that. But the business model of those gyms need to have like 10,000 members in order to be profitable. Imagine, you know or whatever, it is, 5,000 member, whatever. There's no way you could fit that many people in that gym. They bank on people not going paying and just, oh, it's 10 bucks. They lock these people into these year long memberships. I'm like the total opposite. So when I sell my gym, I go. Whatever you think a gym is. We're that's when I like that where.
Speaker 3:I want you know month to month. I need you to, I need to be on my toes every month because at any minute you could reach out to me and be like hey, listen, I'm going to go somewhere else, so I need to provide a good product. And just you know, and that keeps me on my toes and just try not to be what the big. You know big companies are. Yeah, are you a big? Um, like you write down your stuff? You do any of that? Like journal yeah dude a journal every night.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's how I came up with this.
Speaker 3:It's insane how this shit comes to life. Yeah, if you do that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man, that's how much a journaling I want to hear about that.
Speaker 3:All right. So I haven't done this a long time, but my dad used to um was all about this, so I can't say that I haven't. You know, I discovered it myself, but he always used to tell me what, whatever you want, write it down. It's like write it down, write it like a hundred times, read it every day, and Repetition of just constantly writing it. And it was crazy.
Speaker 3:I got this little thing. I read it in a book and somebody was like they recommended I, I get this called a five-minute journal and they have it on. I looked it up on Amazon, ordered it and it kind of prompts you. So it gives you the same, like five questions every day. Turn the page, new date, new, same questions, and it asks you like all right, well, what are you grateful for? What was a good thing that happened today? Ba-ba-ba, this, that, this, that. So you know, and I, and it's very Frequent, so it happens a lot, so you can kind of dig into things like I'm gonna write all about this tonight and I just go and I write down I am grateful for the time I spent with March and it was like you know, whatever.
Speaker 3:So and it's, yeah, it's stuff like that. But it's crazy, when I was going through this initial period in my life with the gym, how, like you almost dig yourself out of your own hole like I would, just when I was going to sign the lease and the Belmar gym and that gym is like way bigger than the one in Brielle. It's an expensive. I got to pay a lot every month. It was a five-year lease like I was locking myself into some serious money and I was just like. I was like you know what, I'm gonna go home, you know, when the guy that the, obviously the, the realtor wants me to sign this lease, so he's pushing on me, he's like, oh, you're you ready? You know, and I'm, and I don't. Well, I do well under pressure, but I, you know, if something doesn't feel right, I won't do it.
Speaker 3:So I was just like, dude, chill, I gotta write my way out of this one. So I went, I wrote in my journal what the hell do I do? What do I do? Give me a sign, give me something. I'm doing the right thing. What's going on? And, dude, boom, like Things just started coming my way of like to go do it. And I and I knew to be open to the signs that I saw and I was just like being able to Like God or the higher power, whatever that it will point you in that direction. If you're meant to do something, this is gonna be a sign. Sometimes, dude, it's like mind-blowing.
Speaker 3:Yeah how clear the signs are and I'm like, holy shit, that could not be more clear of a sign to do that. And every time it happens, I'm like it. What's supposed to happen happens and I always say, like, 90% of the things that you worry about, like, for instance, for you, all right, I want to be in a commercial space, oh well, what? You know? What's the negative, what's the pot? You weigh the odds, 90% of the things that we worry about don't even happen, which is crazy. You Create these things in your head and you can't expect to like Figure that out in your head. It's like we do.
Speaker 3:You know, when you're growing up in school, you do complex math on a paper. Imagine you can't figure out shit in your head. You got to write it down. So why would you think you could figure out life in your head, write it down, figure out what you want to do and wait for a sign to come. And it's literally that simple and, bro, like I literally just live my life like that. And it's crazy to like, like I said they say it, but it's so true, like things just come my way.
Speaker 3:Yeah and I'm like you just be open to the signals and just let them come dude so like the journaling thing, right.
Speaker 1:So my therapist, my therapist, she's like hey, I want you to start journaling before you go to bed.
Speaker 1:Okay you're gonna brain dump a lot of stuff Supposed to help with your anxiety, right. Supposed to help you, like, be able to fall asleep faster, right? So what was happening was is that I could be Tired throughout the day, tired driving home from work. Whatever the case may be, I would hit, like this space around 8 o'clock and what you think? I'm tired that I will go to sleep. The opposite, it's like this thing would trigger in my mind and now my mind is racing. I Lay down in bed because I know Instinctively like you need to lay down to go to sleep, right, to get a good night's rest. But now it's like your mind is like fuck that bro.
Speaker 2:We're not going to bed, yeah we just get started Right.
Speaker 1:So now you're like your mind is spinning, so the journaling part of it was to brain settle that, all these ideas and is that from?
Speaker 3:do you think that has anything to do with the PTSD? Oh yeah, for sure, that's it for sure.
Speaker 1:PTSD, anxiety, this whole thing. So, unfortunately, like in the military, like when you're going through these kinds of things, like culturally, the culture is to like bar well up, bar well up. Yeah, yeah, of course squeeze it down, squeeze it down in the in the last few years. That has changed right. It's like stamp out the stigma. There's help out there, get the help. So I start to journal and and I've been doing it from for months and One, one day man like I'm literally like having this dream. That's why this is on there.
Speaker 2:That's awesome.
Speaker 1:Like I'm literally yeah, it was all a dream I'm literally having a dream, dude, that I'm doing, I'm doing the podcast, and then it goes from like doing the podcast To like speaking, to like a group of people, like I'm speaking out, out to folks.
Speaker 1:Yeah the logo's in the background, the color scheme, the whole thing. So I wake up out of this dream, I grab my, my journal and I go right into the kitchen and I just start writing everything down. It's gone, dude, I have. I'll show it to you. I have my original list of people that I would speak to. Dude I have like 50 people Joe Rogan's on there. No reason they might. Tyson's on there right. Like I wrote all this shit down.
Speaker 1:Yeah and um and then color scheme right. So like the stuff you see in here, like like the candle, like the grays, the blue, yeah these are all the like when you have a spark, that that's. Those are the colors that are in a spark right the blue, the orange right right. It looks like a flame, so it's like a flame. That's kind of like how I crazy Did all that.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean but that's awesome, like you, it's also crazy how, like you said, how vivid, like you see it, before it becomes a thing like I have people that ask me all the time. They're like, how did you know to lay out the gym this way? And I'm like I don't know, like I just had it and it's wild that you have that there. Because in the back of my gym I have this thing on the wall and it's a kid on his bicycle Looking at a Porsche, because that's like one of my favorite cars, like one day I want to have one, and it's. And it just says it was all a dream. And it's on my back wall like where I work out all the time, dude, and it's just like dude, I've saw this before. It even became this and it's that's. If you don't have that and it doesn't get you like excited, like, yeah, what are you doing? You got it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know the cool thing too, man, with all this has been like the support of, like, my wife, man Bro, I couldn't have done any of this without her support. Like it's, it's, it's almost to the point, like her level of support is almost animated, like it should, but it belongs in like a comic book because that's how, out of this world, yeah you know what I mean?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, like dude, like my wife, although, like this is not her thing, I will say that up front. This is not her thing, right, this is not. You know, she's like you're gonna do what exactly?
Speaker 3:like you know, she won't ever, she won't be sitting here, you don't?
Speaker 1:I would love for I mean, listen, man, she, she could she's got stories. Oh man yeah like yeah, she's definitely well-versed.
Speaker 3:She's a worthy yeah opponent over here. Yeah, exactly man.
Speaker 1:So so, yeah, man. So again, like, this whole thing kind of like starts to like grow legs. The support from, yeah, from my wife and everything and it was it was less like a lot of her stuff is like Business-minded right.
Speaker 3:It doesn't make it doesn't make sense, yeah, you know. So what helps to have somebody like that around? Yeah, that at least can kind of point you like hey, listen, no, that's not gonna work. Mm-hmm try this.
Speaker 1:You know type of deal and then also the things that she wasn't too sure on and I'm like trust me on this. She's like, okay, it's such a wild thing to tell someone. Trust me. Yeah and for that person To be like okay, like, it's a, it's a complete surrender.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah right, there's no going back and forth.
Speaker 3:She's like okay, okay, I trust you, which is a very difficult thing to do.
Speaker 3:I've, at least in my experience, yeah you know, I don't know, sometimes you've like Trust. Is that one thing that's like you can you know and and I'm still like I'm single and I think that's partly just because I'm very dedicated to my craft and that's what I spend my time doing and whatever. But the toughest thing with a relationship, I think in my eyes is, is the trust. You know that's one thing that like takes forever to build and Could be broken very easily. And you know you could build all you could build a house you could build. You know you make kids, you do this and that, but the trust is one of those things that you have it and you have it and you and you know you could either make it stronger or you can break it. So you, you know you have that trust and you guys trust each other.
Speaker 1:That's like literally the most important thing, the most important thing, man, like it's so, um, a buddy of mine. So we were having a chat and I forgot what we were talking about, but it kind of like Segwayed into, kind of like, what you were just referring to, like you're so like invested in your craft, right. So my, you know, he was asking me something and and I basically told him I'm like, hey, man, like you have the entire world in the middle, you're in your hands right now. Whoever's around you, that is not for this journey of what you have in your hand. Yeah, they're white noise.
Speaker 2:It's noise Give rid of it yeah like get rid of it.
Speaker 1:So, unfortunately, going back to like dating and that kind of thing, it's a tough spot, right, because when you're young You're trying to figure yourself out and the person that you're with there the natural order of things is that they're trying to figure themselves out too. Yep. So you know, maybe their path, their journey is a little different than yours, but the point it stays the same. If Whatever is in your life, if it's not Adding value to what, it is you're trying to do.
Speaker 1:It's, it's white noise, right, it's right so no, I agree, 100% of you.
Speaker 3:And, and as you get older, you know. One of the things I've learned too is you know, when you're young, you're like, like I said, when I got out of the hospital and all these people want to hang out, I'm like, look at all these you know friends, I know all these people awesome that the older you get, my bet circle Just gets tighter and tighter. And I don't even care. It's like you got to be a real special person to be able to get you know the, the real trust you know yeah.
Speaker 3:And I mean, obviously you know, you know a lot of people, you want to network and it's good to have connections, but the the real core values. Like I'm, like I got my dad, I got my mom, my sister, my brother, like that, like that's my team you know, I need anything, I could go to them.
Speaker 3:Outside of that there's maybe a couple people, but that's that's it. You know, I'm like I got that group and you, you kind of learn to be Okay, no, that's how it, that's how it is. Yeah, there's not. Not everybody deserves a A spot at the table. You know you, I want you to still eat, but you're not eating at my table. Mm-hmm and that's just kind of like. You know, you learn that as you go.
Speaker 1:What's so? What's your favorite movie?
Speaker 3:Oh man.
Speaker 1:You said you read a lot, though, right yeah.
Speaker 3:I don't, I don't watch a lot of TV Like no, because I'm the type like what if I started, I got to finish it. Yeah so I know when I start something I'm like shit. I just started this movie like. Now I'm invested for the next like, but I was watching the other day. This is not my favorite, but I do love this movie the fast. Yeah, fast and furious, the first one the first one here, dude the first one.
Speaker 3:Like you can't beat that, and I was pissed watching it because I'm like they've ruined this series.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:I was dude. I'm watching this thing in my apartment getting hype. Yeah, I'm like, damn, these guys are like and I'm like a car guy, like I love all that stuff and they're chasing down trucks and I'm like, how do you go from? Like I get it. You know it blew up. It got too big. They had to start bringing in all these. You know the rock and John Cena, whatever, but I'm like this original when they were young and just like yeah that movie was great.
Speaker 3:But one of my favorite movies is and I don't know if you know, I'm sure you know it the town. Yeah, dude, great, yeah when he goes and he's like, oh, did he write it?
Speaker 1:He wrote it in the right.
Speaker 3:I'm sure, I feel like those guys are all.
Speaker 1:Don't quote me on that, but I'm I think that wouldn't surprise me, I think he directs like multi-talented.
Speaker 3:You look at somebody like like Eddie Murphy, that dude the guy that plays like every character in the whole movie. It's like how is one person that talented to do something like that? I mean, I'm sure same thing, a lot of work went into Perfecting that craft, yeah for sure. But dude, the guy's directing it. He's playing 15 different people in the same movie.
Speaker 1:Um, what's the guy's name? Man, I can't. Oh dude, I gotta remember this guy's name. He's in the town, he's. I think he's Ben Affleck's cousin, or something.
Speaker 3:He's the other guy right, the second main character. I don't know his name, but he's. He was just in a crazy accident he was.
Speaker 1:he was like Jeremy Renner, okay.
Speaker 3:He's the set, he's the other guy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was just some crazy accident.
Speaker 3:Really like a car accident bro, crazy accident.
Speaker 1:Hang on a second.
Speaker 3:This is that's just like surreal you know you look at these people and you think like they're like invincible. That's like when Paul Walker died. I'm like damn dude, that's just wild, could change in the blink of an eye.
Speaker 1:Okay, listen, bro. I don't know how legit this is, but apparently this is from, like, some news network. This is my first time doing this. I don't want to get into any kind of trouble, but it says Renner suffered blunt chest trauma and Orthopedic injuries as he was crushed by a snowplow in January. He had been using the snowplow, which weighed at least 14,330 pounds, to help his nephew whose vehicle had gotten stuck in the snow. Holy shit, he's lucky he didn't die. Dude, apparently it was like some crazy shit. Apparently, like it was really like.
Speaker 3:That was his past January, I guess. Right, yeah, it was like it happened, like recently, recently.
Speaker 2:Hey, I'll change blink of an eye, but I remember them saying like in the news like he made like lose a leg or what.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it was something really wild like that.
Speaker 3:You know, you think these people like they're invincible, they're not dude, that's shit. Changes quick.
Speaker 1:What's your favorite? Oh man, uh, he, so okay. So, my, my, I got two favorites Carlitos, way.
Speaker 3:Oh, I know that one.
Speaker 1:Carlitos, way right Um in high school, my buddies would pay me to um Do like impersonations of certain certain characters, yeah, and then the other one is um heat. We're like Robert De Niro Okay, in that whole cat.
Speaker 3:Alpache yeah, what is that like a line? He's like yeah, if you don't get out of there in 30 seconds flat.
Speaker 1:So something like that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those, those are like.
Speaker 3:I got it. That makes me want to watch that. Yeah, I used to see the ads for that one Carlitos way, yeah, and then um in heat.
Speaker 1:It's, uh, it's um Michael Mann, I think was the director.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the the last scene like the crazy gun gun scene the shootout. Yeah, that was actually filmed on a Sunday in LA. So the reason why they filmed it on the Sunday is because you know they're out on the street, right, so they had to be like they were closing off straight, or whatever. So, um, but yeah, man, but I think I forget how many rounds they fired off, but to get that echo right. Yeah because that's like very distinctive.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:The echo of Like the caliber of the gunfire or whatever. But but what am I? One of my? So I took, I took a film class in college and we studied, like all these different films. One of the first films that we studied was a platoon. Oh yeah, so this was really wild. So I don't know if you know this or not, but, like so, the movie platoon, the plot to platoon, when you start to really analyze the movie, yeah, it's the struggle between heaven and hell. Okay so you have to listen and watch the movie because, the squad leader for Charlie Sheen's squad right, William the.
Speaker 1:Yeah so William the foe and the other guy forget his name, but if you, if you listen to the movie, good, they have both been in the army the same amount of time, they're both the same rank, but yet one guy's face is just like Beats a shit. He has all these scars and William the foe doesn't. So that was like, that's like the first, that's like the first depiction.
Speaker 1:Yeah of the character right, right when you can kind of see the sides right when, when, the when the platoon is in the like tent and they're hanging out, if you notice, like half of them, they're almost like taking part in, like ritualistic Uh-huh. You know, yeah, yeah they're smoking pot out of a, out of a pipe, out of a shotgun. They're drinking. They're playing cards. The other guys are kind of like meta. You know that there's two. There's a thin line between the two polar opposites opposites.
Speaker 3:Let's take a film class one time and it was. I was like very interesting how, like the amount of Like work that goes in to Direct, like you know, like the music they do all these different things with, and it all like lines up to give you this image and it's like you would never think to dig into them. You know, you just watch or you're like I just watch a bull, like they put it things in a certain way that it just makes, whether you notice it or not, and some people have the eye for it and they. That's when you appreciate like a really good director or whatever and it's like that's like damn.
Speaker 3:They dig. You know these movies, they go in depth.
Speaker 1:So the other part about that class that I took, like we studied like lighting to Do like I could watch a movie now or anything, and I'm so intrigued in like the lighting, the this to that, the dialogue, the music playing in the background, just all this, yeah, all these different things.
Speaker 3:Now you got that eye for you have that eye for it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man for sure which?
Speaker 3:even like Me, like I would say Like since I opened the gym, I went one time to Disney World. Disney World and I went and I was like I went with a different set of eyes to where I was looking at it, like how did this place become what it is Like? I've you know, every business starts something small and then they become something and it's like that place is such a well-oiled Machine and it's crazy. Like you look at certain businesses and you, you know, being a business owner, you look, you appreciate the little things that they do. There's no trash on the floor in Disney. Somebody's going around cleaning it up like they. They say that there's like people that they hire that are just Pretend civilians, that walk around and pick up trash. So you don't see trash. You know people picking up trash. Like it's little things that they do.
Speaker 2:I get you know, that yeah, I read that somewhere.
Speaker 3:They said that that Disney World hires people to just be like like I guess guests, visitors at the park and they'll go and like pick up trash and put the trash you know, put it in whatever. So you don't see like Worker and I and I walked around I was like damn yeah, you really no trash on the floor. We don't see people like walking around scooping up like trash, with like a little Bin yeah and it's just like they go to that extent.
Speaker 3:You know it's like that. It's the little things that make you. You know your business like who's willing to Go to that step to really make their product like. I'm proud of this, this product is yeah. Awesome, you know sure you said.
Speaker 1:You said you like to read a lot love to read. Yeah, what are you like my? Favorite books share something with us. I got um.
Speaker 3:Right now, so I'm waiting. This dude is like my mentor, like not actually, but I wish. I wish I could afford to even have a conversation With him. But is this guy's name is Alex Harmosi? I don't know if you ever heard of him.
Speaker 3:He's like a big time. Actually, we have like a similar path. He opened a bunch of gyms and People realized that he was good at opening gyms and he developed this consulting business called gym launch and it was. He taught people how to open gyms, basically, and One thing led to another. Now he's like a billionaire. He owns all these like businesses.
Speaker 3:He has his company acquisition where they just acquire little businesses and just like a genius, this dudes and he's young, it's probably like 35 maybe oh yeah, but he's like a billionaire, but I listen as that's usually all I listen to his podcast and he's got a book coming out and like a couple I think it might be like five days, so I'm just cleaning my slate.
Speaker 3:when that comes out, I'm gonna buy that and just dig into it really but I read like, like the next big move, there's like a bunch like seven habits of highly successful people, something there's. You know how to get rich. I just used to read all these, like you know, books like that on mindset stuff and but same deal. You know, it's one thing to read a book, it's something else to be able to, like, pull something from it.
Speaker 3:And so I try to write notes on everything that I read and then if I ever need to like go back and pulse up, I you know I will, but I just love the. I've always loved to read since I was young, like literally first grade, second grade, like I just Would read Harry Potter or whatever. And then I started to realize, okay, I actually like to read like business stuff and like mindset and Didn't, didn't the, didn't the woman who wrote Harry Potter like, wasn't she like Homeless, or something like that?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm pretty sure she's got like a whole crazy. I forget her name, but she was like another. It's another thing like just these success stories of like people that Wars, you know they became obsessed with their craft. Like I read this other book one time called winning, and it was about it was Written by Kobe Bryant's Like mental health coach or something like that he was. He was like it was like his coach or something and he talked about how Crazy like he was as a competitor, as a person, like the sacrifice, not having the normal life, like you can't have it all. Okay, you want to be the best. What are you willing sacrifice? And then, once you're the best, like, okay, well, you want to be the best of the best. You got to sacrifice even more. Well, how far are you willing to go? And this guy just talked about all the things that he would do and it's like I don't know if you ever saw the Jordan Michael Jordan documentary.
Speaker 2:Mm-hmm, which one last dance.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 3:Yeah, like that was crazy, like I'm like this dude was a maniac, like if he didn't Divert that craziness to basketball, like he would have been like a psycho, because it's just the head games that they play and like these crazy things I love. I love like study and that type of stuff and yeah, they're just it's a different kind of human man the brain, they, the way that their brain works. It's like most people can't function that way but that's what puts them when they are. You know it's just yeah, man, like I don't know, you got to almost appreciate that.
Speaker 1:That like have you ever read Malcolm X? No, by the biography. It was written by Alex Haley. You should check that out. It's a good one.
Speaker 3:Yeah, are you. You read a lot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I would love to read more. Yeah, you just Time with when you like with the kid and yeah, yeah, yeah so. I typically try to get out onto the porch at least an hour before everybody wakes up.
Speaker 3:I try to read it. Yeah, I don't like I try to. That's great, yeah, especially I just need more time to me. Whoa dude, I just retired like yeah, yeah, you know like every day Saturday.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:No, but what I was, what I was gonna tell you in in the Malcolm X biography, is such a depiction of transition that I think I Know a lot of people know about it but, like a lot of folks, maybe don't know that you know what I mean so, yeah, just just really getting into the weeds on, like how he taught himself how to read, how he told himself how to read in prison, what he was able to do when he got out of prison.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how he changed his life and which is crazy, yeah. And then it goes through this whole part, like, of when he started to practice the Muslim religion and how there's. There's a part it's even in the movie too where there's like a part where, like, he's Speaking at different universities, yeah, and he's at this one specific university and Like a young, a young woman came up to him, you know, to praise him for his work.
Speaker 1:He's broken that kind of thing. And then also I want to say there was some sort there was a part in the conversation where she was asking him like how does she get more involved with his movement? You know, she was like a supporter right right early on, yeah, yeah, and he basically like wrote her off for being white Right. He was just like basically like, yeah, no, like. And then during his pilgrimage, towards the end of the book, when he describes his pilgrimage to Mecca and how he was surrounded by so many different people that did not look like him but were Muslims, that it wasn't about Skin color race it was about humanity.
Speaker 1:Okay, you should check it out, man. It's just it's one of the. It's one of the ones that that resonates with me in terms of like how you could change how. What I take away from it the most is that your life can start out one way, but it doesn't have to end that way right. You know you have this opportunity to.
Speaker 3:Change. You're under no obligation to be. You know the person you were Yesterday you know, you change that quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is great, hey, max, thank you, thank you, man, for being here.
Speaker 3:Yes, thank you. Yeah, I appreciate it brother Thank you. I haven't had a good conversation like this a while so, and I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, man. Thank you for being here, max, thank you for being an early supporter of sparking stride. Absolutely, I look forward to like whatever it is we look to do in the near future. Well, however, we team up, whether it be like a brand thing or just how we get involved in the community, you know.
Speaker 1:I'm not for the military veterans, and there's just endless, endless possibility. You know what I mean. I just want to wish you all the best Thank you. But most more importantly, I want to thank you for being so open On sparking stride about your story.
Speaker 3:I appreciate it. No, no, man, and best of luck to you. You this, this things going places.
Speaker 1:Thank you boss, thank you man, awesome brother, thanks again for sparking stride.