Sevan Matossian (00:01):
Oh my goodness. I’m so good. Right on. Excited every morning to wake up and jump in my office. I’m like another podcast. I’m just pumped. Bam. We’re live
Matt Shindeldecker (00:10):
<laugh>. Nice shirt. I’ve got that on too. Oh, good. Under this <laugh>,
Sevan Matossian (00:15):
It’s a healthy shirt to have on in the comments already. Travis from Vindicate, You won’t want to miss this one. I met Matt Uhoh, Shindel Decker. I met Matt Shindel Decker. I’m not good with words that have more than two syllables. You won’t wanna miss this one. I met Matt Shindel Decker, the Masters Fitness Collective, and he is an amazing human being.
Matt Shindeldecker (00:39):
Yeah, that’s a kind individual.
Sevan Matossian (00:42):
I was at the beach in Santa Cruz, California the other day, just hanging out with my kids and Craig Howard texted me and said, Hey, I’m in town. Do you want to hang out? So of course I invited him down to the beach and as we talked he started talking about a man named Matt Shindel Decker and kept telling me, Dude, you’ve gotta get him on your podcast. You’ve gotta get ’em on your podcast, <laugh>. And I barely scratched the surface. And Craig was right and Travis is right, and a few other people Brian Friend told me I had to get you on. And I’m glad to finally meet you. We haven’t met before, right?
Matt Shindeldecker (01:15):
No, sir. Nope. We have not.
Sevan Matossian (01:17):
What an incredible facility you have behind you. Yep.
Matt Shindeldecker (01:20):
This is our home little sweet home we have here. CrossFit Crave Celina, Ohio.
Sevan Matossian (01:26):
Yeah, that’s a beautiful shot too. I appreciate the effort you put into getting that. That’s a That’s nice.
Matt Shindeldecker (01:31):
Yes sir.
Sevan Matossian (01:33):
I wanna start the show by sharing this off of your Instagram.
(01:41):
In 2016 Greg started pulling the team together and saying, You know what? I’m not sure if the a hundred thousand people who’ve taken their level one know that they have the cure for the world’s most vaccine problem. I think that they think that they only create people, tip of the spear people, and they don’t realize that, hey, there’s a tsunami of chronic disease that we’re living in and they actually have the cure for it. So when I see affiliates have things written like this, it just tickles my tickles, my fancy, whatever that means. We sit collectively in possession of a uniquely elegant solution to chronic disease. Each affiliate is a lifeboat in what is a surging tsunami of a raging epidemic. Greg Glassman. And the follow up to this is go to Google and type in five buckets of death and watch that. And you will find not a more potent video that sort of explains to you the power of these affiliates.
Matt Shindeldecker (02:36):
I played that video for our director of health in our county when Covid, when I invited them to the gym, we talked about what we do here. We talked about, they called it course tracing or tracking. We call it protecting our athletes cuz we’ve done that for 10 years. We track and monitor everything that comes in the door. And so we just talked about what trust fit’s all about. And I played that video and he looked at me, he says, Can you send that? And I said, Absolutely. I can send it to you. And we opened our doors early the very next day and he says, Listen, I have no problems. Why don’t you reopen? I’m like, Okay, <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (03:13):
Yeah. Oh, I would love to hear more details of that story. What year was that?
Matt Shindeldecker (03:18):
So that’s when we were closed. Oh. The state of Ohio was closed for, Gosh, I think we were shut down for 11 weeks and right away we had a relationship with our local health director.
Sevan Matossian (03:32):
Excuse me, Matt. You were closed because there, because
Matt Shindeldecker (03:36):
Of the covid,
Sevan Matossian (03:37):
There was a Wuhan virus and it was circling the planet and people and the whole planet was in this panic shut down. That’s right. Okay.
Matt Shindeldecker (03:46):
Yep. Panic shut down. We closed right away when the governor of the state of Ohio came out and said, Hey, effective seven o’clock this evening, all businesses must come to a halt, so to speak. And we were one of those, the hairdressers, the hair salons and all of that, we were categorized
Sevan Matossian (04:03):
As one of, What do you know about hair salons? I
Matt Shindeldecker (04:05):
Don’t
Sevan Matossian (04:05):
Believe that. Okay. Just checking. <laugh>.
Matt Shindeldecker (04:07):
<laugh>. I like my barber though. So we shut down, we’d followed do minions, everyone else did at that point in time. And we got probably three quarter of the way through it and then talking with our members. And this gym was completely empty. We loaned every bit of a piece of equipment out. We kept some equipment here for our coaches. We didn’t lose a member. We gained members through the process. And like I said, about three quarter of the way through, we were like, This is enough. Three
Sevan Matossian (04:37):
Quarters of the way through this. The 11 round? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
Matt Shindeldecker (04:41):
I called we got in contact my business partner Debbie Wagner, and I got in contact with our county health director and invited him in and said, Hey, can we just walk you through what we do here and why we do what we do and why we feel we’re essential? And he spent, gosh, I think he spent 45 minutes with us and a part of that, we watched that great Glassman video and he turned around and he says, Hey, when you guys opening your doors? And I said, Tomorrow morning at 5:00 AM And that was a Friday morning. And he’s like, Okay, great.
Sevan Matossian (05:16):
And the police never showed up. No.
(05:20):
It’s an interesting video because it explains it’s really big picture, but someone who might be dogmatic in their beliefs of what was being pushed to us through the media might take offense to it even though there is nothing to take offense to. Wow. That’s good. Yeah. I can’t wait to tell Greg this. He is gonna be tickled that just even one gym was able to use that and talk sense into someone. For those of you who are not familiar with this video, you have to see it. It’s called Five Buckets of Death. And basically it’s, it’s a perfect description of why everyone on the planet should do CrossFit.
Matt Shindeldecker (06:02):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (06:04):
Did you ever get discouraged Greg would say, Hey, we’re not gonna be able to save everyone. We’re not even gonna be able to save most people. These are just lifeboats, <affirmative> and we can’t force people to get on board.
Matt Shindeldecker (06:17):
Yeah. I think there’s a lot to that statement based on the program that I think you’ll wanna talk about. We’ve gone through we’ve created myself Dr. Aaron Coon, created a trauma sensitive athlete centered coaches training
Sevan Matossian (06:35):
Available January, 2020
Matt Shindeldecker (06:39):
First. I’d have to look at the
Sevan Matossian (06:40):
Date. 2023 in Columbus, Ohio. Yes.
Matt Shindeldecker (06:44):
At Rogue. We’re hosting it at Rogue. And that’s live on CrossFit’s website. We can send that link out. So based on my personal trauma and what we’ve been through and what we’ve developed to help coaches kind of work through what 70% of adults around the world have suffered some type of a traumatic event in their life, whether they wanna admit it or not, they’re walking around with some type of trauma. So can we save everyone? We’d like to say, absolutely, we can save everyone if you just walk through the door. But we know based on the trauma bracket around of someone like somebody that’s extremely, there’s extreme obesity walking through out of their house is a tear. It’s a threat. It’s not that they don’t wanna come to the gym, they don’t wanna walk out of their house because of something that’s happened in their past. And we know that we would love to reach those individuals but it takes a certain mentality, it takes a certain temperament. It’s not walking the door and say, Hey, let’s get ready for class, sit down on the couch and have a conversation level proximal calm. Where are you at? How do you feel? So we’d love to say we can reach everyone, but some traumas just eliminate that possibility because we can’t get them out of the house. And step one is, let’s go for a walk.
Sevan Matossian (08:01):
<laugh>. And some people are so identified with their trauma. I would say most people, I’m open to being wrong, that they don’t even wanna give it up because there, there’s a compounded fear there. If you give up your trauma, you’ll also lose who you are,
Matt Shindeldecker (08:14):
No question. Right? Yeah, absolutely. I feel that every day.
Sevan Matossian (08:18):
It would be if my parents said, Hey, you’re not really Armenian, we’re Irish. So a lot of people might be like, Well, who cares? But I was raised for 50 years with this little piece of my identity as saying, I’m Armenian. Just the whole thing is, I mean, it’s the flat earth rounder thing too. Those of us who believe the earth is round, we immediately, we should look at ourselves when people say the earth is flat, because we immediately start calling them names. Oh, they’re fucking idiots. Well, the reason why we say that is we’re terrified of even that one little thing being off.
Matt Shindeldecker (08:51):
Because we don’t know. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (08:52):
Cuz yeah,
Matt Shindeldecker (08:53):
We don’t know what their reality is. And depending on when the trauma happens in your life, if you’re young and you’re in that juvenile state, or even younger, I know your kids are younger, if there’s something traumatic that happens in that age timeframe, a lot of people stop developing. The brain literally stops developing in that age. So you may have someone that’s a drug user at the age of 13 or 14 they’ve used for three or four years. Now they’re 35 and they still have that 18 year old mentality. Well that’s not just because they’re trying to be cool or they’re just acting young. That’s because that’s literally where their mind development stopped. So that’s why it takes them longer to for you and I to say, Hey, this is reality. No, it’s not reality for them.
Sevan Matossian (09:39):
<laugh>, the good news is, I mean, there’s a lot of good news is that it, it’s textbook. Once you start seeing an expert like you or someone who’s worked with this community for a long time, you start to see the patterns. And there is a tried and true method that’s very successful in helping people pass through that.
Matt Shindeldecker (10:00):
And I’m new expert. I, I’m a novice at best. I just love helping people. So you know, learn as you go just like everyone else does.
Sevan Matossian (10:09):
Gimme an example of what trauma you’re talking about. Are you talking about you were molested or you were raped? Or are you talking about your parents getting a divorce or, There’s so many levels when you’re 17, there’s things you would say, I hate that person for what they did. For sure. But when you finally have kids and you think of the whores that could happen to your kids, it’s nothing compared to that person. You said when you were 18 and you actually love that person. You’re like, Oh actually I would go have a beer with that person relative to someone who hurt my kids. It’s all relative to the depth of your value of
Matt Shindeldecker (10:45):
Life. Your experience. Yeah. To the depth of your experience. Right. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (10:49):
Depth of your experience. Thank you. Yeah.
Matt Shindeldecker (10:51):
Yeah. And my trauma is different than most. My mother went to prison when I was 11. She shot and killed my bus driver in an attempted murder, attempted kidnap of myself. And I saw all that unfold. It
Sevan Matossian (11:06):
Happened. Your real mom, The lady who birthed
Matt Shindeldecker (11:08):
You? Yes. Yep. My mom. Yep. Her name was Shirley Shindel Decker. And so through that process there was a lot of things that happened prior to that wasn’t the start, nor was it nearly the finish of what I went through. And that’s a bottled up not a secret necessarily, but a bottled up trauma event that I pushed down for. I’m 48 for the better part of my entire life. And through that process I’ve learned that bottling, that trauma can really result in a lot of other bad things happening in your life. So at a young age, drugs and alcohol was, that was the cure to that. And I did that through, oh gosh. Until I was probably, Yeah, there you go. Until I was probably mid twenties and alcohol was a major thing for me. That’s what helped push all of that trauma that happened before and happened that day. So that’s my traumatic experience and that’s what I try to use to kind of grow people’s knowledge on what life is really
Sevan Matossian (12:20):
<laugh>. What city do you live in?
Matt Shindeldecker (12:23):
It’s called Celina, Ohio. So it’s C E L I N A, Celina, Ohio. We’re Midwest, Ohio. It’s we’re real small, 10,000 people. It’s a very rural area where the county seat of Mercer County sets on Grand Lake, St. Mary’s. But we are a very small population here.
Sevan Matossian (12:45):
And is that where this incident took place? You’re born and raised there?
Matt Shindeldecker (12:48):
Yep, yep.
Sevan Matossian (12:51):
Let’s see if I can,
Matt Shindeldecker (12:52):
Yeah, right there. Sina. So if you see where, Yeah, so it actually took place just outside of town. If you see that 1 27 in Rockford. Right? Just south of Rockford there, <affirmative>.
Sevan Matossian (13:07):
Okay. It really is out. It’s in the middle of nowhere.
Matt Shindeldecker (13:10):
<affirmative> surrounded by corn.
Sevan Matossian (13:14):
<laugh> can. So someone tried to kidnap you?
Matt Shindeldecker (13:19):
Yeah, it was my mother she had.
Sevan Matossian (13:21):
Oh, okay. So it wasn’t the bus driver, it wasn’t kidnapping you? No,
Matt Shindeldecker (13:25):
No. Yeah, there was some, She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia. So she had some mental chemical issues in her mind prior to that. And there were several kind of episodes from, my gosh, from my kindergarten through my fourth grade year. And then fourth grade, that’s when that took place.
Sevan Matossian (13:47):
Were you on the bus?
Matt Shindeldecker (13:49):
Yes, sir.
Sevan Matossian (13:50):
<affirmative>. And you saw your mom come on the bus?
Matt Shindeldecker (13:52):
Yeah. Yeah. I watched the whole thing unfold.
Sevan Matossian (13:56):
How many kids were on the bus?
Matt Shindeldecker (13:58):
Just me. I was the first one picked up and the last one off every day. Cuz we lived out in the country about 10 miles out in the country. So I was first one last off.
Sevan Matossian (14:08):
Wow. Yep.
Matt Shindeldecker (14:11):
Yes sir.
Sevan Matossian (14:12):
And fourth grade. How old is that?
Matt Shindeldecker (14:15):
I was 10.
Sevan Matossian (14:16):
And then even more traumatic. Well, equally traumatic for you, I’m guessing is then your mom was gone out of your life after
Matt Shindeldecker (14:23):
That. Yeah, I lost a lot of things that day. I lost my mom and in some sense I have a great relationship with my father. It wasn’t always that way. As we all grow up, we learn to realize what our parents tell us. Or probably more right than wrong, but when we’re young, it’s all wrong.
Sevan Matossian (14:41):
<laugh>.
Matt Shindeldecker (14:41):
Right. So I’ve got a great relationship with my father, but in a sense that kind of wrecked my relationship with him. I ended up changing schools to the city I live in now. I changed and went to a smaller school, even where my grandparents lived, cuz I was living with them at the time. So I lost a whole set of friends. I lost a school, I lost, my mom went to prison. That’s where she eventually died. So yeah, there was a lot of things lost that day.
Sevan Matossian (15:13):
CrossFit Crave has changed my life. The community’s hands down the best. Matt and Debbie have built something incredible. So proud to be a member at this affiliate. How did you meet Debbie?
Matt Shindeldecker (15:23):
She’s been a member here. So CrossFit Crave we opened in May of 2010. Ashley Ik was the original owner. She had come out of practice CrossFit, which you probably know that name, Josh Bunch. She brought it to Salina to our hometown here. I knew of CrossFit. There was an individual that I worked with. I handled the Walmart account for our company. And there was a buyer that I’d worked with 13 and a half years ago that went to CrossFit, nwa, Northwest Arkansas. I was on the phone with her, literally
Sevan Matossian (16:01):
It was a CrossFit nwa,
Matt Shindeldecker (16:03):
It still is CrossFit n. It’s the oldest affiliate Arkansas. So she’s like, Oh, my hands hurt. I’m like, What? I kind of laughed. She played basketball at I think Missouri. And I was like, What? What’s going on? She goes, Well I do this thing called CrossFit, you should check it out. And that week Ashley started moving things into a very small space across town. So I drove by and within the first week I went to my first class and I threw up three times. And here we are almost 13 years later. So
Sevan Matossian (16:35):
Go ahead. Did you have any athletic background? Did you play any sports up until that
Matt Shindeldecker (16:39):
Point? Yeah, I played football and baseball in high school. And then I played a little collegiate baseball at a junior college. It was Columbus State University. But through that timeframe, after college is when I really started my trauma really caught up with me. So I started drinking pretty heavily. I’m only five foot five, so I’m not a tall man. And I ballooned up to about 210 pounds. And that’s when I walked in the door at CrossFit, Crave that first day at two 10. And I think we were doing something simple, wall balls and maybe a farmer’s carrying some setups. And I got halfway through it and Ashley looked at me cuz I was three shades of green. And she said, Well, there’s a bathroom right there if you need to use it, but you need to finish once you’re done. So I went in, literally threw up, come back out, finish the workout. She
Sevan Matossian (17:37):
Was telling you that if you do throw up, you have to come back and finish. It’s not like a
Matt Shindeldecker (17:41):
Yeah, it’s not an option. And I love her to death for that because honestly, that’s old school CrossFit. That’s just the way it was done. And when I walked out of the building, I’m like, I’ll never go back there. I was embarrassed. I, I’m like, that’s it. Never again man. She called me the next day and she’s like, Hey, when you coming in? And I’m like, Oh, I don’t know. She goes, You gotta come back. And I went back the second day and never left.
Sevan Matossian (18:05):
So this lady isn’t even a lady, I mean, you had a professional relationship with her, but it’s not like she came to your house for dinner or anything.
Matt Shindeldecker (18:11):
No, no.
Sevan Matossian (18:12):
Just someone you worked with in your business.
Matt Shindeldecker (18:15):
Yep. Ashley. Yeah. And that’s where it was at. So that’s how it started. <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (18:22):
What a cool lady. Yep.
Matt Shindeldecker (18:24):
Yep. And then about four years into it she had to move. Her job was taking her away from Salina and it was ripe and ready. So I bought it at that point in time. And then about two or three years after that my now business partner, Debbie Wagner, we got to a point where we were growing and I still have a full-time job. And it was like, Hey, we wanna be able to manage it well enough for our members to make sure that everything is covered, that we can share the workload, so to speak. So Debbie came on board with my wife and I, and here we are. We’re having a lot of fun.
Sevan Matossian (19:06):
I have some insignificant details. I’d like to know about when you, did you sell to Walmart?
Matt Shindeldecker (19:13):
So I work for a company called Crown Equipment Corporation. So we do electric forklifts. We manufacture electric forklifts. We’re the largest electric manufacturer and the fifth largest manufacturer of internal combustion in the world. But it’s a privately held company. So one family owns it. It’s
Sevan Matossian (19:31):
A Oh wow.
Matt Shindeldecker (19:32):
Like a 4.2 or a 5 billion company
Sevan Matossian (19:34):
Based in Ohio.
Matt Shindeldecker (19:36):
Based in Ohio. Little town called New Breman, Ohio. We manufacture around the world. We manufacture in Europe and China, but our headquarters is in 15 minutes down the road. Are you
Sevan Matossian (19:46):
Still affiliated with them? Yeah,
Matt Shindeldecker (19:47):
I still work for them. No
Sevan Matossian (19:49):
Shit.
Matt Shindeldecker (19:49):
Yes sir. Yep. Wow.
Sevan Matossian (19:51):
Now the people there must ch How long have you been there?
Matt Shindeldecker (19:54):
28 years.
Sevan Matossian (19:56):
Oh man. So there’s people who’ve seen you go through this journey. Oh
Matt Shindeldecker (19:59):
Yeah, for sure. No question. Yep, yep. And then my title is a national account manager. So I take care of Walmart for the, it’s our largest customer. So
Sevan Matossian (20:09):
Meaning Wal and Walmart has to if Walmart wants, if they open a new store and they need 10 forklifts there to move their goods around that’s what you do. You make sure they get their 10 forklifts.
Matt Shindeldecker (20:20):
Yeah. And a lot of it, it’s in their distribution centers. So whether it’s here domestically in the US or I travel the globe, so whether it’s in China or Chile or wherever it’s at, I meet with the business headquarters in each country and we try to make sure that we’re positioned from a company perspective in a favorable manner so we can continue to do business. So that’s what I
Sevan Matossian (20:47):
Do. Wow, that’s fascinating. That’s like deep behind the scenes stuff. How about Costco? What other accounts do you guys have besides Walmart? Do you have any other big stores that are Ikea or Costco
Matt Shindeldecker (20:56):
Or Costco? Walgreens Amazon.
Sevan Matossian (21:01):
Okay. We share a
Matt Shindeldecker (21:02):
Lot of Any large box Kroger. What would you have on the West coast? I traveled the West coast for a long time. You would have Ralph’s grocers, a lot of those individuals,
Sevan Matossian (21:16):
Those components that make up a How many different kinds of forklifts do you guys have?
Matt Shindeldecker (21:21):
Oh gosh,
Sevan Matossian (21:23):
Really? It’s like that. It’s not like two.
Matt Shindeldecker (21:24):
Yeah, no, we probably have 10 different lines, 10 different models. And inside of each model there’s five or six variants of the same truck. So there’s quite a few
Sevan Matossian (21:36):
Hard plastic seats. Ones that are gonna be parked outside. Ones that are gonna be parked inside. Ones that
Matt Shindeldecker (21:41):
A manual. Yeah, a little manual pallet jack that you would see in the back store of a gas station moving Pepsi product
Sevan Matossian (21:48):
I used. Could play with those. Yeah. You had a job where we had a pallet
Matt Shindeldecker (21:50):
Jack all the way up to what we would call a turret truck. A very narrow aisle truck that’s gonna go 605 inches with 2000 pounds in a 70 inch aisle. Real small aisle <laugh>.
Sevan Matossian (22:02):
Wow. That’s cool. Fascinating. That should be a whole show. And is the founder of that company still alive?
Matt Shindeldecker (22:11):
So, no. Jim Sr. Passed away about two years ago. Jim three. So it was Jim Sr. Then Jim two, and then Jim three. And Jim three is now, he’s just a little older than I am. I think he’s 51 or 52. He’s the president and CEO and he’s engaged every day. He’s a great man to work for. It’s a great family. It’s a great family owned business for sure.
Sevan Matossian (22:39):
When you would sit on the bench in high school waiting for your turn to get it bat <affirmative> would you tell yourself this? Would you hear the story start of who you are? <affirmative> I’m the, no. So the story didn’t haunt you didn’t have this narrative in your head. I’m the boy whose mom came on the bus. No,
Matt Shindeldecker (22:56):
No. Because the narrative I built was, I have to be the opposite of what that is. So I need everyone to like me. If there’s a party, it needs to revolve around me. It needs to be at my house, it needs to, So there was a group of friends and Dr. Aaron Coon who helped or created the trauma training was my best friend growing up. I met him when I was nine years old and we trauma bonded right away cuz he had dealt with some trauma in his background as well. So all the way through high school, he and I were doing the same stuff. Like, Hey, how fast can we get done with the football game and go get drunk or go smoke or whatever was whatever we were trying to do for that day. So I, I thought I left the trauma behind because I built this persona of, man, I’m gonna be that guy if there’s a party where I’m going.
Sevan Matossian (23:49):
You were conscious of
Matt Shindeldecker (23:50):
This Very,
Sevan Matossian (23:52):
Okay.
Matt Shindeldecker (23:52):
Yeah, Very conscious of it. But I didn’t realize that, I didn’t really kind of sit back and look until I was probably late 26, 27 when I’m like, my first marriage was a disaster and ended. And I had two kids at that point in time. I’m like, man, I gotta figure life out <laugh> fast.
Sevan Matossian (24:12):
And you knew that and did right away that it was, you could see that it was some rope tied deep to back to that incident you knew. Yeah.
Matt Shindeldecker (24:20):
Yeah. And that’s probably what really, that’s when it really started to change for me. And then, oh, within the last four or five years I’ve really sat back and said, Okay there’s something way deeper here inside of me that I don’t know what it is, but I gotta get it figured out. Because I’d go through really dark times, really depression on the outside. I’m great. Everyone said, Oh, hey, Matt’s the happy, good, lucky. He’s got a great life, got a great job, got a great family, everything’s great inside. I was a wreck. So I guess it’s been eight months ago through the prompting of Dr. Coon, as we were building this trauma training for coaches, he’s like, Hey, you should probably maybe go see, see a psychiatrist. And so I did. I took it as vice and it’s the best thing I’ve ever done because I’m now realizing some of the thing, the reason I am who I am today is primarily based on the trauma that I lived through and how my body and mind coped with that. And I’m grateful for it but now I’m understanding why I do what I do, if that makes sense.
Sevan Matossian (25:26):
But the work doesn’t stop there. Just because you know, do what you do doesn’t mean you can just stop it.
Matt Shindeldecker (25:31):
No, you gotta, Yeah. It can’t stop. Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (25:35):
That’s, That’s another layer of
Matt Shindeldecker (25:37):
Work. No question about it. Yeah. Cause the trauma’s never gonna go away. That thought process is, it’s there whether you’re a trauma survivor like I am, or you’re an addict, or you’re recovering alcoholic or there’s something that’s going on, you wake up with that every day. Now what you do with that is of course your conscious choice. So it’s an everyday battle when you wake up, say, Hey, I’m gonna put that behind me and look at what I’ve got right back here and look at the family and the community that we created and let’s see if we can help someone else. That’s why I love that great Glassman quote, because we can certainly help if we can just get ’em in the door.
Sevan Matossian (26:18):
I don’t remember when I came up with this idea, but I had this idea that from when you’re born to a certain point, you can blame your parents and everyone around you for everything that happened to you. You’re 16 years old and your girlfriend broke up with you and that’s why you’re upset. And there becomes a point and you can do that, and you can do that and you can do that. And then there’s a point where you turn from a caterpillar. Not everyone, some people, I don’t even know what the percentage is actually, I don’t even know if it’s half or if it’s only 2%. I mean, I hope the number’s big, but there’s a point that’s the demarcation between being a child, a caterpillar and becoming an adult. And that’s when you start realizing it doesn’t matter what anyone else did. You are responsible for it
Matt Shindeldecker (27:06):
<affirmative>
Sevan Matossian (27:07):
And no one’s coming. Like the blame has to stop.
Matt Shindeldecker (27:12):
That’s right. I think what we try to tell our kids and the juvenile probation program that we have, it’s a lot of them, they don’t know any better when they’re that young and you live in the lives that some of these kids lived, that’s all they know. So what they see on the outside world is foreign to them. What they know is drugs or domestic violence or substance abuse, or maybe it’s sexual abuse, whatever that is, that’s all they know. So when they go to the outside, that’s just normal to them. What we try, people
Sevan Matossian (27:45):
Forget that too. When you’re a kid, people forget that. You see from the outside, someone’s beating their kid and you feel sorry for the kid. You have to remember the kid doesn’t think that to a point, doesn’t think there’s anything wrong with it. They’re like, Yeah, I get beaten. That’s life. That’s all they know. Oh, I know. Kids get beaten.
Matt Shindeldecker (28:01):
Yeah. That’s the way it works.
Sevan Matossian (28:02):
Yeah. That’s the way it works
Matt Shindeldecker (28:04):
It. And it’s hard for adults to accept that at times. And it’s even teachers, it’s hard for teachers to accept that they’re trying to teach 25 kids at a time. And that one individual that walks in their door that’s got some severe trauma, it’s tough to realize that that individual last night probably didn’t sleep, didn’t do homework because mom OD’ed or dad got pulled out to go to prison. And that’s reality. So it’s tough. So what we try to tell the kids is, listen, yeah, it’s tough. It’s rough. Your life’s rough right now, but if you take the hand that’s given to you, you can pull yourself out of it. I mean, case in point where I’m at in hundreds and thousands of kids that have done it the right way, but they have to openly say, Okay, I wanna make myself better and I want to use what we’ve done here at CrossFit Crave to build a community around these kids that says maybe I do want to take the right step in the right direction. And then one step creates the second step. That’s good. And then the third step, and they realize, Huh, that’s not so hard being right. It’s not so hard going to school. It’s not so hard doing my homework and I don’t get in troubles much. And I get the ankle monitor off and I don’t go to JDC <laugh>, but they have to, Well, we tell the kids, you have
Sevan Matossian (29:20):
To juvenile delinquent court jdc. Okay.
Matt Shindeldecker (29:23):
Juvenile delinquent center. So it’s a prison jd, it’s a juvenile prisons but they have to be willing to take the hand that’s given them. They have to rise out of that.
Sevan Matossian (29:33):
You guys are looking at Matt Shindel Decker one of the owners of CrossFit Crave. You have a business partner, Debbie Wagner. Yes sir. He’s running a program that’s four years old that we’re about to get into the gym, opened in 2010. Congratulations. That’s amazing. Is also keeps full-time job that he’s had for 28 years. Pretty impressive. And he works with the juvenile courts in.
The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.
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