Dave Durante
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Juliet: [0:00:16] This episode of The Ready State Podcast is brought to you by Sleep.me.

Kelly: [00:00:20] We just saw where I sent you a meme which says, “In my 20s, I lived on a futon,” which we both did.

Juliet: [00:00:26] Yeah, we both did. More like a Therm-a-Rest. 

Kelly: [00:00:29] In our 30s, we had to do something else to get a little bit better sleep. In our 40s, suddenly it was like I had to have an eye mask and sleep on a perfect-

Juliet: [00:00:37] Deep darkness,

Kelly: [00:00:37] To get three hours of sleep. What we are saying is when it gets hairy in your life later on, you need all of the support you can to get the max out of your sleep. We organize our whole day around sleep.

Juliet: [00:00:48] Yeah, and we’re going through a particularly busy and stressful period of our life with our book coming out in a few months and so we’re really trying to prioritize our sleep and our Dock Pro Sleep systems are a really important part of that. 

Kelly: [00:01:01] I have talked about this magic for a long time. I don’t overheat, can regulate my temperature, and what I end up finding is that I do sleep better. And we see a lot of people really do struggle with temperature regulations. And that ends up having downstream consequences. I need to sleep with the window open. I need to have this cover. Don’t touch me, you’re too hot. It really is gnarly. And you and I have our own winter wonderlands.

Juliet: [00:01:26] Our own universes.

Kelly: [00:01:27] Ironically, we sleep in the same temperature these days.

Juliet: [00:01:29] Well, only in the winter though.

Kelly: [00:01:30] That’s true.

Juliet: [00:01:31] In the summer, it’s a different world. Anyway, if you want to get some sleep support in the best possible way, head on over to Sleep.me/TRS to learn more and save off the purchase of any new Cube, OOLER, or Dock Pro Sleep System. So go to Sleep.me/TRS to take advantage of our exclusive discount and wake up refreshed every day.

Kelly: [00:01:53] Cannot say it enough, control your sleep, control the temperature of your bed, your life will change.

Juliet: [00:01:58] Feel happy.

Juliet: [00:01:59] Hey everyone, so before we jump into today’s episode, we just want to tell you about a project that’s been almost five years in the making and something we’re really excited about, if you haven’t already heard, and that’s our next book. It’s called Built to Move.

Kelly: [00:02:12] This book comes out April 4, 2023 and you should think about it as the missing soul, like the keystone in some kind of movie where you put the jewel back into The Supple Leopard, and ching, the whole thing comes to life like Jumanji, right? The new Jumanji, obviously.

Juliet: [00:02:30] Obviously.

Kelly: [00:02:31] But the idea is we see that people struggle with figuring out where do I fit it all in and what’s essential that’s not necessarily exercising.

Juliet: [00:02:39] Yeah, and we’ve really put our heart and soul into this book and we think it’s fun to read with a lot of fun stories about our lives and how we got to where we are and how we think about our own health and fitness practices in our lives. And we are just really excited to share it with you all and hope you check it out wherever you get your books.

Kelly: [00:02:57] We could not have written this too soon. We are now approaching 50 years old and our eye is, hey, I still like to go fast and lift heavy weights and all those things just like you do, but we also want to feel good and be durable. And this greater conversation that we have missed, like Instagram is showing us what people think fitness is, it has nothing to do with how to feel better and how to live your life so you can be durable. 

Juliet: [00:03:20] So check out a copy wherever you buy your books.

Juliet: [00:03:25] On this episode of The Ready State Podcast, we are pleased to welcome Dave Durante. Dave is a multiple time USA Gymnastics National Champion and was part of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Team. Dave has coached gymnastics teams to multiple National Championships, was a lead coach for the CrossFit Gymnastics Level 1 Course, where he developed the CrossFit Gymnastics Advanced Course. Dave is also the cofounder of Power Monkey Fitness, where he travels the world delivering world class knowledge in coaching to those looking to improve their movement quality and longevity by ensuring they have the proper foundation in place to always strive toward their highest capability. 

Kelly: [00:04:03] This conversation with Dave I think is important for a lot of reasons, from youth development to the state of gymnastics in America. But Dave gives us some reasons in this conversation to care as a middle-aged heavy man about gymnastics.

Juliet: [00:04:20] In my case, a middle-aged mom.

Kelly: [00:04:22] Right. One of the things I appreciate about their approach, and remember, that one of the things that’s going on with his company, Power Monkey, is he has really excellent coaches from other sports, including Olympic lifting, in here. One of the things that they believe strongly in is always coaching in progressions that allow you to progress infinitely to the very highest level. So it’s not just like, hey, learn the circus trick for Instagram, it’s here the foundational skill that is infinite in its application.

Juliet: [00:04:52] Yeah, and just talking to Dave inspired me to want to play around with some gymnastics skills again. And so I hope everyone listening will have the same feeling.

Kelly: [00:05:00] Yeah. And when we define that, as he does, just simple ideas of do I know how to tumble and roll, can I be upside down, how do I progress, always limited by your skill. He is a mutant, truly, surrounded by a bunch of mutants. But he has translated his mutantdom into actual skills for everyday people.

Juliet: [00:05:23] I think you are really going to enjoy our conversation with Dave. Dave, welcome to The Ready State Podcast.

Dave Durante: [00:05:28] Thank you both for having me on. Good to be here.

Kelly: [00:05:30] You’re coming from Portland, is that right?

Dave Durante: [00:05:33] I am. I am. I am in my basement in Portland. I’ve been here for a couple of years now but I’m still learning the area. It’s still kind of not so familiar. I’m an East Coast guy for the most part so this is still kind of new territory for me.

Kelly: [00:05:47] We’ll get into all of this. Juliet and I, as we’re rolling, we’re excited to talk about a lot. You come from deep, deep cultures of movement and competition. How is the competitive movement culture in Portland?

Dave Durante: [00:06:02] Well, I’d say Portland is a very fit city. Running is, I mean I’m sure everybody knows, Nike being based out of here, but also, Adidas’s North American headquarters are here, and Under Armour’s sports performance headquarters are here. There are a lot of high performing sports brands and fitness brands based out of Portland. And people just like to be outside here. I think a lot of people that aren’t from Portland move here because of the outdoor culture: going outside, hiking, running, going to the beach, going to the mountains. And so it’s a very fit city and I really appreciate that. I enjoy it. And it’s actually got me to be much more outdoorsy than I had been prior. I’m hiking more, I’m going for runs. I was a gymnast; I didn’t run more than 76 feet down the runway of the vault runway my entire life. So the fact that I’m outside doing trail runs and stuff is like, whoa, what’s going on with Dave? So Portland has definitely exposed me to stuff that I had never done prior.

Kelly: [00:06:56] Let me ask you this: Juliet and I are from an outdoor community of paddlers and skiers and adventure athletes. And they often don’t think they need strength and conditioning movement training. Do you find that these conversations are like, people are like, “Uh, you’re in the gym? My gym’s out there.” And do you find that there is that sort of disconnect? Because we’re seeing that of course at the top, everyone is engaged in strength and conditioning because they have to if they want to be competitive, but sometimes we hear from our coaches in these smaller mountain communities, they’re like, “I don’t need to do that. Why would I work on those things? I do plenty of pullups when I’m out climbing.” I mean have you run into that a little bit?

Dave Durante: [00:07:36] Not so much. To be honest, people seem to be more receptive than anything else, especially when they know maybe my background and they maybe consider me someone that’s worth listening to when it comes to strength and conditioning and body weight training and the value that comes along with it. So I haven’t had too much pushback. What I have seen is that there’s just integration on both sides because as a gymnast I would have thought the same things in terms of doing outdoor conditioning myself. And now looking at it in the rearview mirror, I wish someone would have pushed me in areas of training that I didn’t do when I was an athlete either. So I think it’s a little bit of a two way street in terms of, hey, I could have become a better athlete by doing some of the things and implementing some of the things that you guys use in your training and vice versa.

Juliet: [00:08:19] So I want to go way back into time but I just want to set the stage. You have two daughters, is that correct?

Dave Durante: [00:08:25] That’s right. Yeah. 

Juliet: [00:08:27] You’ve got two little daughters. Yeah.

Dave Durante: [00:08:27] One just turned six and the other one’s two and a half, soon to be three.

Kelly: [00:08:27] You’re in the thick of it.

Juliet: [00:08:32] You know, one of our favorite subjects is youth athletics and training kids and a lot of the misconceptions around that, much of which I think you will get a very up close and view once your daughters get a little older and actually start competing in sports, assuming they do. I think you, like us, will probably be shocked at what you see out there a little bit. But I know you obviously are a former Olympian and in order to get to that place I assume that you were intensively training starting as a little kid and so I’d love to hear a little bit more about how you got into gymnastics and what that was actually like training as a young person, what your experience was like.

Dave Durante: [00:09:13] Sure. Well, I was an Olympic team member. I didn’t compete in Beijing. I was part of the team. So I just like to make sure everyone is aware. Olympic team member, not Olympian, it’s a distinction that I feel most comfortable with in terms of bio. But yeah, I did it my whole life. It’s actually a little topic that I think Kelly, we spoke about last time you were on our podcast, about some of the things that you’ve gone through with your kids and routes because it’s something that I’m trying to navigate now, you’re right. But starting out, I started gymnastics when I was six years old. But I played a ton of sports. Sports was just a part of our household. I have an older brother and a younger sister and my father played soccer at a fairly high level in Italy – my father grew up in Rome and played for some teams out there. So soccer was a big part of our household. I wrestled for a long time, I played baseball, I played basketball. I just loved sports. I loved moving, I loved being on teams, I loved individual sports, I loved all of it. 

Kelly: [00:10:05] Is that typical for gymnasts early, that they play? Maybe it’s different for boys versus girls.

Juliet: [00:10:10] Yeah, because I feel like that’s so not in connection with my perception. My perception is man, in order to be a high level competitive gymnast, you have to specialize at age four. Is that more for girls than boys?

Kelly: [00:10:22] And was there pressure to do that? Get into that.

Dave Durante: [00:10:25] I think for girls just because what we see historically, which is changing now, historically female gymnasts tend to peak at a younger age. You have your 15, 16,17 year olds winning the Olympic Games. Again, this is in the process of changing. We’re seeing a lot more higher level athletes in college and post college. But that required female gymnasts to start younger and specialize earlier. I don’t think that’s the right route, to be honest with you. And I think what you end up seeing is that there are so many athletes that do it that you have a flood of athletes within a particular space that are in that pool of athletes that  can succeed. But the number that actually do is so infinitesimally small that you get this skewed view that starting young leads to success where you disregard or you end up not viewing it from the perspective of the majority of the percentage of athletes that have gone through it that injure themselves really early and couldn’t pursue it or didn’t get that college scholarship or wasn’t able to get college paid for or went on to do something else and dropped out of the sport because they were mentally drained at the age of 12 years old. 

So I think you get a skewed perspective thinking that at four you need to specialize and that leads to great success. I think a better way to do it is… I’m viewing it from my perspective because it led to a more healthy mentality towards sport where I played a ton. I understood what it meant to be part of a team from a young age, I understood kind of what collectively you could do to succeed. And I know gymnastics is considered an individual sport, but I consider it a team sport. Everything that I’ve done in the sport  has been part of a team, from growing up in Jersey and competing to my collegiate experience to being part of Team USA. And I think it allowed me to understand what it meant to have a life outside of the sport and to be able to do things with your friends outside of the sport and to have a balanced life. And I think those athletes that are specializing so early, and you only see the success stories, you end up getting a really skewed perspective on what it actually means to get to that level. 

Juliet: [00:12:33] I just want to make a note that I appreciate your distinction about being an alternate, but I also want to point out that being selected in any capacity for any Olympic Team-

Kelly: [00:12:44] National Team.

Juliet: [00:12:44] Or National Team, the chances of that are so infinitesimally small and so show what a total boss of an athlete you are.

Dave Durante: [00:12:52] Thank you. It was quite an experience.

Juliet: [00:12:53] So to me, that’s pretty epic. 

Kelly: [00:12:56] I think everyone skips over the fact that you were a little gymnast at this small university here south of us called Stanford, which is a pretty extraordinary achievement in and of itself and their athletic program. Do you think it’s a reasonable goal for people to think college – I think everyone thinks Olympic National Team versus specific sports. And my sport was white water paddling but our marquee event was the Olympics, right? There’s four years of silence, Olympics, unless you’re deep in the sport. And there’s not even college paddling. Was that or did people understand that there is a great opportunity to play and be a gymnast at university?

Dave Durante: [00:13:38] This is a really interesting topic and it’s something that’s kind of top of mind for me right now as the sport of men’s gymnastics nationally is dying. The number of collegiate programs that are left is about 14 that are offering college scholarships.

Juliet: [00:13:52] Wow. 

Dave Durante: [00:13:52] And every year, it seems like another program is being dropped. Actually we’re at the point right now where if one more drops, NCA will have the ability to no longer recognize men’s gymnastics as an official NCA sport.

Kelly: [00:14:04] Wow.

Juliet: [00:14:04] Wow.

Dave Durante: [00:14:06] And so we could end up going to the club level.

Juliet: [00:14:08] I had no idea.

Dave Durante: [00:14:08] Yeah, we’re kind of on the brink. And so I’m helping Stanford right now on the alumni board to assist with making sure that Stanford has some ability to move forward as a program either whether that’s an NCA recognized D1 sport or as a viable club program moving forward. But for me, that’s actually one of the reasons why I’ve tried to stay so closely tied to the sport because I love gymnastics. I think it has so much value for growth, not only to achieve Olympic medals or collegiate stardom, whatever that might be, but just to have a great foundation to any sport you go on to do. 

And so I just love when I’m teaching a course or teaching where they didn’t grow up with the sport and they tell me one of two things: either I can’t wait to put my kids in the sport of gymnastics or I wish my parents would have put my kids in the sport at a younger age. That to me tells me that we’re doing something right in terms of trying to grow the sport. And I’m talking specifically about men’s gymnastics. Women’s gymnastics is a different world, especially collegiately. It’s enormous. They get 10,000 spectators per sport. UCLA, Georgia, Alabama, Utah, LSU, these programs are just enormous. They’re on par with the basketball teams, in some cases the football. Not the football teams in terms of attendance, but they are actually revenue generating sports collegiately, which is an anomaly. Almost every sport collegiately besides football and sometimes basketball loses money. But women’s gymnastics actually has a tendency in some of these cases to make money. So they’re an anomaly. We’re trying to use them as a model to say what can we do different on the men’s side. 

But I know I’m off on a tangent here. But I’m just trying to bring some attention to the fact that men’s gymnastics collegiately, while it is still a viable option for a lot of the kids whose parents are putting them into gymnastics at a young age, it’s becoming less so. We only have 6.3 scholarships available per program. So you divvy that up amongst the number of schools that were left, that’s only a handful of kids nationally that actually can get scholarships. And so it is something that we’re trying to make more of a viable option for those kids that want to go on to compete at a higher level.

Juliet: [00:16:15] What are you guys doing specifically to try to keep the door open and schools having programs? Give us more details. I find this so interesting. I actually had no idea. I mean I am aware-

Kelly: [00:16:24] I love the flipped nature that this woman’s sport is actually nursing the men’s sport.

Juliet: [00:16:30] Well, and I am aware at a macro level how a lot of sports are getting cut from colleges and they’re rethinking on revenue generating sports. I know there’s a lot of people overall in college sports but because I’m not involved; I really had no idea. I was actually just shocked to hear it’s a dying sport from your perspective. So can you tell us a little bit more about what you guys are thinking and how you can revitalize it because I mean as a spectator I will say, I mean I am definitely once every four years men’s gymnastics spectator. But I genuinely enjoy it. 

Dave Durante: [00:17:01] Yeah, well, I appreciate that. And I mean I think one of the reasons why gymnastics is so popular during the Olympics is because I think I mean I did gymnastics because I thought of myself as a super hero, you know, being able to do things that most people on a daily basis just aren’t able to do and they’re like, wow, you can fly through the air – I can fly and land perfectly and make the impossible look possible and all these things. And I think that’s the cool aspect of gymnastics, why the viewer every four years finds it interesting to watch these amazing skills being done effortlessly. But what are we doing? I mean it’s really a daunting task, to be honest with you, and there’s no real honest answer, especially with the landscape within NCA changing with the new NIL rules coming into effect, it changes things pretty immensely.

Kelly: [00:17:45] How does that change for you guys?

Dave Durante: [00:17:46] Well, I mean the budget of the NCA programs are fairly fixed and the amount of money that’s given to non-revenue generating sports is minimal, just enough to be able to have the operating budget, fund a head coach, maybe an assistant coach, and then the scholarships, the component there. Those are the three basic components of any program is the scholarships, the operating budget, and the coaching staff. And so what ends up happening now is that athletes will start dictating some of the budget to be negotiated as part of coming to a school. And so if you’re having to pay an athlete to be part of a program, it ends up negating some of the capital that would be allocated to a specific program outside of the top tier ones – the footballs, the basketballs and in some cases the baseballs. But it’s primarily football, basketball. But at Stanford what we’ve done as an alumni group is we’ve created an endowment. Stanford for the first time ever is allowing smaller endowments to be started. They can be added to over time. So we collectively initiated an endowment program that has minimal amount. The amount of money that we need to endow the program is substantial. It’s substantial. And so we’re starting small and trying to create a fund that will allow for Stanford Men’s Gymnastics to have a presence at the school, even if NCA drops Men’s Gymnastics completely, or in the case at Stanford, says that we don’t want to have a Men’s Gymnastics program anymore, that Stanford Gymnastics in some capacity will still have some life. So that kid that’s in high school right now might still have a gym to go and train at, still be able to put that block S on their chest, and still be able to represent Stanford in a different capacity into the future. 

Juliet: [00:19:31] I think that’s really smart actually. I know a little bit about those endowments because I actually was a rower at Cal. I learned when I was there that the men’s rowing program at Cal has the largest endowment of any rowing program in the whole country so you’d think it would be Harvard or Yale or one of those OG rowing programs, but it’s not, for whatever reason, I think partly because Charles Schwab was a rower at Cal.

Dave Durante: [00:19:52] There you go. Yeah, you’ve got a mega donor in there.

Juliet: [00:19:54] Yeah, one mega donor and that money sits there for a long time and grows. And so it’s interesting because that program will live on forever thanks to that endowment so I mean that is actually a genius idea to create that for smaller, for other programs.

Dave Durante: [00:20:09] Yeah. We’re trying. It’s not a definite fix. There’s no perfect fix and we’re looking at it from a lot of different angles. And my daily job within Power Monkey is to just build awareness around gymnastics too. So I think we’re just trying to create avenues for people to find a love for the sport and hopefully that’ll kind of a grassroots approach to continue it. but we are doing it at the collegiate level and the National Team level as well.

Juliet: [00:20:35] So let me switch directions a little bit and I think this is going to be a couple part question. But when in your athletic career did you start doing more CrossFit like training? Secondarily, do you think in the way that it did for Olympic lifting that the fact of CrossFit gyms being everywhere and popular has done something positive for the sport of gymnastics, right, because I have to think until CrossFit hit the airwaves, just like with Olympic lifting, most people were not attempting to do bar muscle ups and dips and handstands and muscle ups. So anyway, that was a two-part question. But tell me about your own experience in finding CrossFit or functional training or whatever it is.

Dave Durante: [00:21:18] I’ll try to keep it relatively brief. I got back from Beijing in China and I had blown out my knee about six months prior and I didn’t tell anybody. Only my coach knew. So when I got back from China, I had to have knee surgery right away. So I had surgery at the OTC and I also signed a contract to go and coach Stanford. So I moved back to Stanford from the Olympic Training Center in Colorado Springs and was assistant coach at Stanford. And while I was rehabbing and coaching the team, I found CrossFit. I was trying to figure out what I was going to do next with my training, I wasn’t being competitive anymore, I went from being an elite athlete to what are you now, just coaching the guys every day. And I started doing my own CrossFit type workouts at the Stanford Gymnastics Gym at the Ford Center every day. I went online. I got bored with the routine that I had created and I found CrossFit and I started doing some Main Site workouts end of 2008. 2009 in the gym before the guys would come in and kind of grew from there. started to fall in love with the programming that I found on Main Site and doing them on my own and seeing what the scores were being put up on message board and things like that. 

So I started out fairly early but not even an affiliate; just Stanford Gym doing them on my own. And I fell in love with the structure and being a competitive athlete, competitive person, I just loved the idea of being able to challenge myself in a way that I didn’t think was possible prior. The second part of that question in terms of did CrossFit assist in terms of creating awareness and a love for the sport of gymnastics in the way that it has for weightlifting, I think it’s still happening. That part of it is going to take a lot more time for gymnastics because of the challenge for gymnastics. And there’s no disrespect to weightlifting. If I showed you my legs, you’d know that I have no ability to do anything on the weightlifting world. So I respect anyone who is-

Juliet: [00:23:09] Yeah, but you can do an iron cross.

Dave Durante: [00:23:11] Able to do an iron cross. Yeah. But weightlifting has two movements that can be broken down endlessly. But we’ve seen is that CrossFit has allowed for those athletes that grew up with CrossFit or found CrossFit somewhat later in life, to devote some time to weightlifting and compete and go to the American Open or go to the World Championships or compete at the Olympic Games. Going from competing at the Games, two weeks later going to Rio and competing in the Olympic Games. That’s an incredible feat.

Kelly: [00:23:41] Incredible.

Dave Durante: [00:23:42] It’s insane. It’s absolutely insane. But to think that a CrossFit athlete is going to compete in the Olympic Games in gymnastics is just not possible. It’s just not possible. And the idea that the level of competency and the level of devotion that you need to have, and also starting early to be able to create some foundation around the movement patterns and what you need to be able to do at a higher level, is going to take a long time. Not to say that it won’t happen, especially because we’re seeing CrossFitters start so much earlier, is their first sport now. They’re not coming from baseball or basketball or gymnastics and finding it later on. We’re having these athletes that are starting at eight and doing it CrossFit Kids and starting it as their primary sport early on. 

It will take some time but what we are seeing is that people are now interested in the basics of gymnastics: creating shapes, getting into inverted positions, and wanting to hang rings in their gyms or working on bar muscle ups. And to me, that’s a starting point. And I know there’s a lot of people in both weightlifting and gymnastics that have always looked at that as you’re bastardizing our sport, what are you doing to our beautiful movements. I have never, never viewed it as that. And in fact, it’s one of the reasons why I’ve always connected so well with Chad Vaughn, who’s my counterpart within Power Monkey on the lifting side, is that we both viewed people who didn’t grow up with our sports and finding interest in it as an opportunity. It’s an opportunity for us to help and help understand where the faults are and how we can set a better foundation around those movements and help them grow and understand and find the love for the things that we found the love in at six and eight years old. And so to me, it’s incredible to have this cohort of people around the world that are interested, even if it’s at a foundational level, in something I’ve devoted the last 35 years to.

Kelly: [00:25:27] Let me ask you this: Would you define gymnastics for everyone? And the follow up question is what is essential, what are the essential blocks out of gymnastics that a dilettante adult should care about?

Dave Durante: [00:25:41] I mean, ooh, defining gymnastics, I don’t know if that’s super easy. I would say just body weight competency as a really global way to approach it so that it’s not so specific to competitive gymnastics. I think that sometimes gets lost where you need to be able to do a high bar routine or be in routine. I think that’s such a small fraction of the population I think less about the competitive side of gymnastics and more about body weight competency. Spatial awareness, the discipline that comes along with consistency around chipping away at movements over time and eventually seeing that final piece of art that comes with years and years of doing the same thing over and over again and chipping away. But the second part of that question, can you repeat the second part of that question?

Kelly: [00:26:26] Just what’s essential? What are the building blocks that an adult should see gymnastics, not get sucked into watching Lasha clean and jerk 500 pounds. You’re like I can’t relate to that. I can’t relate to watching people on the pommel horse, you know? So what’s essential, what’s in gymnastics for me as a middle aged guy who’s over 200 pounds, by the way?

Dave Durante: [00:26:49] Absolutely. Well, looking good.  You’re looking svelte. You hold it well. It’s our first phase within Power Monkey what we call our creation of body shapes. This is the part that’s fundamental to everything that comes later down the road and it’s where we start everyone in our training programs. And creation of correct body shapes is broken down into two fundamental pieces. One is a stronger core. Everything that encompasses your midline. Your abs, your hip flexors, your obliques, rotation and lateral work, posterior chain. Being able to manipulate your core will allow for more efficient movement, better movement patterns later down the road. So we recommend people working on core spe26cific movement on a daily basis. 

Kelly: [00:27:26] Can you give us an example? Like what is one of those-

Dave Durante: [00:27:28] Yeah. So we actually put up five to 10 minute core workout every single day on our app just to introduce people to it.

Kelly: [00:27:33] You’re not saying people just need more crunches. That’s not what you’re saying.

Dave Durante: [00:27:37] No, no, no, no. Positional awareness. So the two shapes that most people associate with gymnastics are the hollow and the arch, right, because they are so used at a  higher level in terms of how you’re tipping and swinging on the bar or how you’re going from a long position to a short position to roll or flip or twist. And so being able to control the hollow and the arch will allow for a lot more of the higher-level skills to be developed. So that’s what we’re trying to create awareness around, from that hollow and that arch and then creating some lateral rotational components along with it. So yes, it’s not just doing crunches every day. I hope that’s not how it came across. It very much is a fundamental understanding of using and understanding all components of your midline.

Juliet: [0:28:25] Hey Ready State listeners, if you like what you’re hearing, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show.

Juliet: [0:28:33] Hey guys, we just wanted to take a little break in this podcast episode to actually tell you about one of our own products and that’s our Ready State Virtual Mobility Coach.

Kelly: [0:28:42] Yeah, the app literally is the first place you should go if you’re trying to feel better, if you’re trying to solve an old movement related problem, if you’re just trying to just not be as sore from your workout.

Juliet: [0:28:54] There is so much going on in this app. We have a mobility test that is comprehensive and designed by Kelly Starrett himself.

Kelly: [0:29:01] It’s pretty good. 

Juliet: [0:29:02] So you can figure out what your biggest limitations are and start to work on that. There are sports specific mobilizations if you want to try to lift more or run faster. There is a pain area. And we even have a ton of bonus content. You can do challenges around squat and ankle and a bunch of other specific body parts. So you can just generally get more supple and awesome.

Kelly: [0:29:23] JStar, you’re killing it. You should talk about this app more often. We started the original mobility project back in 2010 trying to help people solve problems for themselves. We think that every human being should be able to perform basic maintenance on themselves and we want you to be able to engage in self-care in a really reasonable, responsible way. One of our favorite parts of it, daily mobility. You have a 10, 20, 30-minute follow along with me if you just have a ball and a roller and think you want to feel better, move better, play along. I mean we really feel like that’s the base camp practice and you can add in what you need.

Juliet: [0:29:56] We’re really proud of this and what we’ve created here and we think you should give it a try. Head on over to thereadystate.com/trial and use code Pod 20 for 20 percent off your first month. And just FYI, including your two-week free trial, that’s literally six weeks for $11.99. You can’t beat that. There’s so much amazing content to help you feel better and move better for $11.99.

Kelly: [0:30:19] In the words of our podcast producer: bananas.

Kelly: [00:30:25] I was just watching a bunch of very high level, very accomplished athletes work on an expression of a very hollow position, just doing a rollout, and seeing, so just grabbing an evil wheel or one of the frames that they make that you roll out on. And I saw… You can do it with a barbell. But just fundamental not understanding how to control that in space, all the compensations and breaks. And so you really are speaking to something that I see. I was like, wow, here we have some of the really talented athletes who have really never been taught how to control their body under this extension load. As your body gets long, and they just defaulted to these origami shapes.

Dave Durante: [00:31:05] Oh yeah. I’m not saying it’s easy at all. In fact, quick little story. When I first got to Stanford, I blew my knee out for the first time. My first day at Stanford, I got in the gym from Jersey, my first day on my first turn I fell and I blew my knee out. And it was obviously devastating for me to start my college career out that way. But my coach was like, “Okay, we’re going to use this opportunity to, one, get you strong.” So I was a relatively weak gymnast when I started. I became one of the stronger guys in the country towards the end of my career. But he also said, “We’ve got to fix your handstand.” And I was devastated. I thought my handstand was really solid. It was actually one of my pride and joys coming into college that I thought I had a good line. I did not have a good line. And there’s a big difference between understanding how to control your midline and how to create good shapes within being inverted or being upright and not having awareness of what all of those little components are doing. 

So for someone that’s using a wheel or an ab roller or whatever it might be, they probably have very little understanding of what all those little fundamental components are not only feeling like but also looking like. So I spent that whole year manipulating and working on small little adjustments, small little changes, that turned into allowing me to have a handstand to really be proud of and one of the better handstands in the gymnastics community. But it’s not something that sticks right away. And you need a lot of time and effort and eyeballs on you to really be able to understand those small manipulations to be able to get your core to a place where I can place my body where I need it to be in any moment in time. And I think a high-level athlete will be able to do that statically. Essentially saying if I’m standing within a position, I know where to put myself if I have the time to do it. An elite athlete will be able to do it dynamically, meaning if something happens where they need to make a change, they can make an adjustment and go back to that correct shape in an instant. And that takes a ton of time and a ton of awareness to be able to make those dynamic adjustments. So an elite athlete just has that capability to do it through time a little bit more rapidly.

Juliet: [00:33:21] That reminds me of how Kelly always describes Rich Froning as an athlete, that he gets and why he has been so success is that he gets better when he is under stress. His movement and position actually gets better the heavier the weights, the more tired he is, right? And that’s often not the case. You see a lot of athletes fall apart at that point. So I love the way you describe that because it seems like that really is that tipping point of becoming elite ability to be that dynamic in those moments. I really like what you’re saying because I’m sure you as well, you have kids, you’re out in the world interacting with “regular people” there is this great myth that the core and doing sit ups are the only two things that go together. So I appreciate-

Kelly: [00:34:10] Let’s be honest: It’s about looking good naked at the beach.

Juliet: [00:34:15] Yeah and that’s fine. But it’s just interesting how it’s just one of those things that has stuck in the greater consciousness, that core equals sit ups and that’s the sum total of what you do. So you’ve mentioned it a few times, but for our listeners who are not familiar, can you tell us a little bit more about Power Monkey Fitness?

Kelly: [00:34:33] And how you got started with Chad.

Juliet: [00:34:34] What you guys are doing. Obviously I know you’re partners with Chad and that’s been an awesome relationship. So give us a little backstory on the business side.

Dave Durante: [00:34:42] Chad’s a component here. Again, this is a story that some of your listeners might have heard, but it all started with the 2010 Victoria’s Secret show, believe it or not.

Kelly: [00:34:52] Did not see that coming.

Dave Durante: [00:34:52] I was living in Italy at the time. I’m an Italian citizen and I was living there after coaching at Stanford. I moved back to New York and I got asked by my now partner, Shane Garrity, who was also a collegiate gymnast and stuntman in former New York City to perform at the Victoria’s Secret show in 2010. They were looking for a bunch of gymnasts to tumble on the stage and do all these gymnastics movements while the models were walking down the runway.

Juliet: [00:35:19] Is there a YouTube video of this somewhere?

Dave Durante: [00:35:20] Oh yeah. 

Juliet: [00:35:22] Oh my goodness. Okay, because I mean that’s what we’ll be doing the moment we hang up. 

Dave Durante: [00:35:26] I highly recommend it – 2010, Victoria’s Secret show, gymnasts, just type that in and I get a lot of face time which I’m extraordinarily proud of. And my wife hates that I like to bring it up all the time. But I’d just like to mention that it was before I met my wife. It was before that happened. But yeah, you can definitely watch this video on YouTube. So anyway, that’s where me and my partner with Power Monkey met. And our first idea was we had both been doing CrossFit, and we had the idea for our Ring Thing, which in the gymnastics world it’s normally known as a dream machine. It’s a 50-50 device to help people work on good technical strict movements on rings. Most gymnasts, you go to a hardware store, you put a bunch of shit together, and you hang it up in the gym. It’s just poorly made. And so we wanted to make one that was very well made that could be marketed to the functional fitness CrossFit community. And so we made one and we shopped it around to a bunch of fitness equipment manufactures. 

And Power Monkey Fitness was an existing company down in Florida and they made rigs and they made a bunch of other equipment and they were the ones that were most interested in  helping us make the Ring Thing. And so we became partners with them, we started making Ring Things, I started being a traveling salesman. I was traveling to CrossFit gyms across the country.

Kelly: [00:36:36] We had a Ring Thing, just so you know. 

Dave Durante: [00:36:38] What’s that?

Juliet: [00:36:39] We had a Ring Thing.

Kelly: [00:36:39] We had a Ring Thing.

Dave Durante: [00:36:40] Yeah, you can get another one, if you need one. Happy to send you one. It’s a great tool for people to work on… We were just at Wodapalooza over the weekend and we had a bunch of people, we had it set up and a bunch of people testing it out that hadn’t seen it in a while. But yeah, that was our first little piece apparatus. I sold my first three to Julie Foucher, Ann Arbor years and years ago, over a decade ago now. I was like, oh man, this is going to be a huge hit, we’re going to make it with this thing. And of course, it doesn’t work out that way. Still tons sitting in the warehouse that need to be sold. But it is a great piece of apparatus and that led us to wanting to expand the business into our Power Monkey camp. This is kind of where Chad came in. I had done a few seminars with Chad, CrossFit Milford, got to give a shoutout to Jay Lydon out there who’s been in the community since the early 2000s. He’s been around forever. And he introduced-

Kelly: [00:37:37] We love that human.

Dave Durante: [00:37:39] Oh yeah. Jay’s the best. He’s the first one that had me and Chad come out and do a seminar at his gym years ago. And I had the idea to put Power Monkey Camp together, which is a full week-long adult fitness camp, fitness Disneyland, out in the middle of nowhere Tennessee. It’s a kid’s gymnastics camp that I’ve been going to for close to two decades now that’s owned by two Olympians – John Roethlisberger and John Macready. And I was like why cant we just use this for adults when it’s not being used in the fall and the spring. So we made our first Power Monkey Camp actually 10 years ago. This is our 10 year anniversary this year.

Kelly: [00:38:10] Congratulations.

Juliet: [00:38:11] Congratulations. 

Dave Durante: [00:38:13] Ten year anniversary this year and we just bring people into the middle of nowhere in the woods in Tennessee and we train and we learn about each other’s backgrounds. We’ve had people from over 40 countries come out, bring in about 100 participants, another 50 coaches, staff and guests. It’s an incredible week. It’s my third baby. It’s something I’m incredibly proud of. I invite everybody to come out. Kelly, we’ve invited you out. We really would love to have you out, be able to experience it. But it is kind of unique within the CrossFit community and what most people know us for within the CrossFit community is our Power Monkey camp.

Juliet: [00:38:48] And is it for primarily CrossFit type enthusiasts who attend or do you find that people find you and they’re gymnastics training curious and they show up? What’s the demographic of people who come?

Dave Durante: [00:39:02] I’d say it’s heavily skewed towards CrossFit community, mostly athletes, coaches, owners. The backgrounds are vast. Most people look at our videos and think I’m not capable of going because so and so athlete was there. We bring in those guest athletes to train and hang out but it really is meant for the beginner and intermediate level athlete. We’ve had 14- and 15-year-old athletes come out with their chaperone, we’ve had people in their 70s and 80s come out and train with us. We’ve had people that have never kicked up into a handstand, never picked up a barbell, never tried a kettlebell swing in their life, never been on a rower, and leave camp crying because it was the best experience of their lives. 

And so camp is meant to be as inclusive as you can possibly imagine, not only to the athletic background, but also to the everyday athlete, everyday person that is just looking to synch up with like-minded people for an entire week. We know that taking off for an entire week is difficult for people but we’re onto our 19th and 20th camps this year because the model works and people who are able to come, it’s a lifechanging event for a lot of people and it’s been lifechanging for me, for sure. 

Kelly: [00:40:08] The two most important, influential sports of my understanding of how the body works, what is fundamental and root positioning, has been gymnastics and Olympic lifting. Those two disciplines have taught me more about what the shoulder does in the short lever or long lever position better straight or what is happening with the trunk. Why are Olympic lifting and gymnastics such good partners? It seems like a very strange fellowship unless you truly begin to nerd out and grok the differences. But can you talk a little bit about why that’s such a potent partnership of skills for people to learn?

Dave Durante: [00:40:47] You know, you’re right that you would never think that they would pair up well together. And first time I hung out with Chad, I’d be like I dislike this guy so much. I’m joking, obviously. But I had never picked up a barbell really in gymnastics training. And it was such a mistake in terms of training because the value that I see now is something that we encourage all of our athletes and all of the next generation of inspiring gymnasts to do in the right capacity because of the value that it has to becoming a more capable athlete over all. I think there are so many similarities in terms of the mobility component that is needed to be able to achieve success on both sides. And that is something that I didn’t touch on earlier in terms of the creation of the shapes. We talked a lot about core but the mobility is secondary component, being able to get your body into the shape that you need to allow for efficiency and not allow compensation to happen. And weightlifters, Chad always likes to bring up, are the second most mobile athletes at the Olympic Games after gymnasts. And the mobility that comes along with being a capable, competent, confident weightlifter falls in line with the same things that we see on the gymnastics side. And I think that’s one of the reasons why we align so well is because positional awareness is so important. 

And I think one of the things that we do really well with Power Monkey is you can go to any seminar, you can go to a seminar and have incredible coaches there for the entire week. You can have a gymnastics coach, you can have a great weightlifting coach, great PTs, whatever it might be. But after 10 years of working together, what we’ve been able to do is create synergy within the way that we teach. So if you come to a gymnastics seminar, it’s going to better your weightlifting because you’re going to hear things that translate into what Chad and Mike and Vanessa and Cheryl and all of our weightlifting coaches are going to talk about in their sessions and vice versa. When you go to the weightlifting stations, when you work on your bottom squat with Chad or when you work on your clean and jerk with Vanessa and Cheryl or you go work on your snatch with Mike, you’re going to hear things that are going to transition into a better position in your handstand or into a better support position on rings. And the ability to create synergy in terms of how we teach has allowed us to all become better coaches and has allowed the experiences of working within Power Monkey or camp to be enhanced because they’re not individual sessions. They work harmoniously, they work together to create a better overall experience and better overall athlete. So I am incredibly grateful for the fact that I’ve been able to find weightlifting later in my life because it’s allowed me to become a better gymnastics coach.

Kelly: [00:43:17] Dave just name dropped some insanely talented athletes. Just wanted everyone to know that. Casually.

Dave Durante: [00:43:23] Cheryl, three time Olympian. Sheryl’s a freaking badass. If you don’t know Cheryl Haworth, please do some research on Cherl. Three-time US Olympian, Olympic bronze medalist, youth world record holder. She is one of the most accomplished and impressive athletes you will ever come across and she is absolutely amazing.

Kelly: [00:43:40] Amen.

Dave Durante: [00:43:40] I’m just grateful that she’s part of our staff.

Juliet: [00:43:42] Shoutout to her. So after owning a CrossFit gym for 17 years and having brand new people who maybe don’t have a strong athletic background come into the door every single day, I think the two things that they feared the most were, one, working with barbells because people then and now still have the sort of weird feeling about barbells if they haven’t come from some kind of athletic tradition. And then inversions, aka handstands. People find doing handstands to be terrifying and very uncomfortable and really pushing their boundary as a human and their physical ability. What do you think it is about the handstand that is so scary for people who don’t have a background in athletics or gymnastics and why do you think that movement is important? Because we believe it is important. We do think people need to go upside down every so often.

Kelly: [00:44:31] Our kids do handstands as part of their training.

Juliet: [00:44:33] And these days, all I do is a handstand against a wall. As a 50-year-old woman, that’s good for me. But I still appreciate the importance of it. But tell us a little bit about what you think about that.

Dave Durante: [00:44:44] Thank you for that.

Juliet: [00:44:45] That movement in particular.

Dave Durante: [00:44:46] I love handstands. It’s something I have gravitated towards after I retired. It’s a movement pattern that I was pretty good at and I’ve gotten better since I retired, which is kind of interesting. But I think it has a ton of value. But before we get into that part of it, the first part of your question, it being intimidating or scary for a lot of people is very real. And we come across that nearly a daily basis whenever I’m working with a group from the camp. And I teach the handstand station at camp so I see it very regularly. And I think the first part is if you don’t have a coach in your gym that can break down the movement of a handstand, you can exacerbate the fear factor by just saying just kick up into the wall and just hold it or do a wall walk and hope for the best. And that’s a really poor approach to creating the level of competency and confidence for that person. An easy way to think about this is never thinking of a handstand as all or nothing. It’s not either I have a handstand or don’t have a handstand. What we have to understand is there are more progressions and more ways to be able to understand how to effectively get the person to understand what it’s like to be upside down without getting them fully inverted. 

And I think this is a key component to working on handstands is working on handstands does not mean you have to get upside down. This is a really key component to the way that I teach. There are positional exercises, there are stability exercises, and there are strength exercises to building a well-rounded handstand. I call this the handstand triumvirate. All three of these handstand types of exercises need to be worked on together if you want to achieve a higher-level handstand where you’re not just kicking up and hoping to survive, right? Most of the time, people kick up and just don’t die. I don’t care if I’m breathing, I don’t care what my toes are doing, if my knees are whatever it is, don’t tell me a technical piece, I’m just trying to survive here. So what we try to do is create pockets of exercises: positional exercises, stability exercises, strengthening exercises that might not be fully inverted so that people can start creating a stepping stone process to get more confident and capable once we start getting them upside down. 

Another side of it is understanding that kicking up against the wall is a starting point. And I know that this might seem kind of shocking even to listeners thinking you want me to do something even more advanced like a freestanding or a handstand on parallets or maybe even one day working towards what we call the highest level aversion of any movement. We’re always trying to put progressions in place that work towards the highest level aversion of that movement so that we don’t get caught into a box or create a situation where we’re exposed in terms of our learning process. So on the handstand, highest level aversion would be something like a one-armed handstand or maybe even thinking about doing a freestanding handstand on rings or swinging rings. I know that’s laughable to a lot of people out there that are just trying to get inverted for the first time, but understanding that trajectory gives you the stepping stone process to understand what I need to do next. What’s the next progression in this stepping stone process? So we do is say okay where are you now, where is the end goal, and here are 1,000 progressions along the way to be able to achieve this in a way where you can go from point one to point two confidently. 

I also think that working in groups and working with partners and spotters is a critical component to this process. Most of the time, you’re in a gym, you’re an affiliate owner, you see the same people come into each of your classes on a daily basis. People have their best friends that they like to train with. Their network is within their gym. They need to take advantage of that more. It’s one of the things that we’ve done in gymnastics endlessly, creating spotters, creating a group of athletes that work together, that are comfortable getting hands on with each other, so that you can expose yourself to progressions that you wouldn’t be able to do otherwise on your own. And this is one of the things that we teach endlessly: how to become a better spotter working with the people that we see on a daily basis to create a level of comfort and confidence so that that person trusts the ability to get upside down and that that person spotting them can safely put them through the positions. Now does that take time? Yes. But it’s the way we do it in gymnastics and highly recommended way for people to become more confident with getting inverted.

Kelly: [00:48:50] Lisa, Juliet, you’re going to be spotting my back flip later on. Excuse me, back tuck.

Juliet: [00:48:54] Yes, we’ve all tried to spot Kelly and I’ll say it’s hazardous for us. 

Kelly: [00:48:57] I love all of that and I love that people, because I think of our lack of classical movement training early on, if we look at the gymnasium around the turn of the century even, stall bars were everywhere.

Dave Durante: [00:49:14] Oh yeah, I have them in my living room. I have a set in my living room. 

Kelly: [00:49:22] People had basic tumbling. I think we think gymnastics rings or parallel bars is gymnastics. But learning how to forward somersaults, learning how to fall backwards, these are just such crucial skills that sometimes get lost. When I originally did my first Level I, I did a half day of gymnastics training. It was the first time I had had any “formal training.” But I had to learn how to do a whole lot of things and it was so interesting for me to see how prepared I was to learn new skills based on my movement history. Some things I was good at, some things I had no idea what my butt did.

Juliet: [00:49:55] Well, you weren’t good at any of those.

Kelly: [00:49:57] I know. One of the things that I think we struggle with globally now is that we have such intense powerful movement cultures inside training environments that people never leave the gym and go expand that outwards. They never go apply their fitness or their skills. It’s just very much recursive training. I do this skill so I can do this skill so I can do more of this skill. Do you find that gymnasts… Because I think early on, one of the things I knew, if I had been a gymnast, I would have been a better athlete. I didn’t know why even until I got into gymnastics and started to understand some positions, shapes, and transfers. But do you feel like gymnasts at all are better movement learners outside and how do we do a better job of getting people to realize we’re training for something, not just more thrusters?

Dave Durante: [00:50:49] Yeah. That’s interesting. I think gymnasts are really good at understanding how to move their body. So when they’re exposed to a movement pattern that requires them to move their body, they’re capable of picking things up very quickly. What I have noticed is that those athletes that started with gymnastics and only gymnastics early on, they are terrible at hand eye coordination, ball sports.

Kelly: [00:51:13] Fact. Breathing hard.

Juliet: [00:51:14] Suffering. 

Dave Durante: [00:51:16] Yeah, well, suffering, but ask a gymnast to throw a baseball, ask a gymnast to hit a three pointer, it’s laughable a lot of times because movement pattern and it’s an aspect of training that they’ve never been exposed to. And so I think moving their body they’re great at and so it’s one of those things that I said early on, exposure to a variety of sports will allow you to become better at multiple things. So I think it’s a fantastic foundation for what most people are lacking. But it can also lead to a very straight line approach to what your body is capable of doing and not so much when something is in hand. 

Juliet: [00:51:54] So before we let you go, I just want to ask you at least one parent question. We definitely I think because we owned a CrossFit gym, appreciated the athleticism, body awareness one learns in gymnastics. And so our kids each did gymnastics when they were really little for a couple years. I mean it’s obvious within two seconds that their body types are not like gymnastic body types. But we still appreciated the foundation of gymnastics and put them in gymnastics when they were little. For parents who are raising kids and want to know how to set them on their athletic journey, would you recommend that as an early stage training for little kids? Are your kids doing gymnastics? What’s your approach as a dad?

Dave Durante: [00:52:37] A hundred percent. I think gymnastics is an incredible foundation. And not competitive gymnastics. I’m saying more just being in the gym, learning how to roll, all the things that Kelly was talking about in terms of some of the competitive foundation of good movement. I put my daughter in gymnastics at four months. She wasn’t allowed to go until a little older than that, but they let me put her in. And so she was just a little blob with her leotard and diaper on for the first few months. But just being in the gym and understanding those things I think went a long way for her to be a better mover. She does wall walks now and she does handstand kickups and she’s in the gym pretty often. 

The pandemic allowed us to create a gym at our house here where we have some mats and we have a beam and we have a lot of smaller kids gymnastics equipment, stall bars, rings, a climbing rope. And to them we make it play, you know what I mean? It’s not so structured as it is in the gym. We want them to really enjoy it. And I think that becomes a big turnoff to people that might be good early on but the structure is such that it might be a turnoff to them early on. I think you have to create an environment where it’s fun for them and they have to want to do it because at some point it becomes a chore, there’s no way they’re going to want to pursue it. So we just try to make it fun. Me and Sadie are in there all the time and we’re going to do it regardless if they are and they just like to see their parents doing some things so they jump in with us. But I would highly recommend all parents out there putting their kids in gymnastics and doing the research and finding a good gym. That’s not the easiest thing either. Search your area. Ask some parents, other family members. There are some incredible gyms out there but there are also some really poor gyms. So you have to do some research and make sure that you’re in a space where they’re taking care of the kids and doing a good job with that developmental side and not just pushing them to the competitive side too early.

Kelly: [00:54:26] We had shoutout because we had three good gymnasts: Courtney Walker, Lisa Warren and Carl Paoli at our gym for a long time. I just want to shoutout because I learned so much from those three.

Juliet: [00:54:36] So quick OG story. When Adrian Bozman was still working for us back in the dawn of time, he had occasion to acquire a nice set of parallel bars. But because at that time San Francisco CrossFit was outdoors, we couldn’t leave them outside, so they were stored in our garage for I don’t know, five or six years or something. I should ask Adrian what became of those.

Kelly: [00:55:02] You can see the MWOD videos, they’re always there.

Juliet: [00:55:03] And a lot of our old original MWOD videos you can see them in there. But it was just a playground for our kids. I mean they just were in there and their friends were in there. So it was just luck would have it that Adrian acquired those set of parallel bars in the garage but it just became this awesome playground for our kids and their friends.

Dave Durante: [00:55:21] I love it. And they’re probably like 3,0000 pounds and probably not moving them and like this is where they live.

Juliet: [00:55:24] No. I mean once they were in our garage, they were in there for years. So anyway. 

Dave Durante: [00:55:31] Well, it’s good to see Boz putting parallel bars into the games for the third time. Hopefully, the first of many new events that rely on parallel bars. I love seeing it. 

Juliet: [00:55:39] Yeah, it was really cool to see that.

Kelly: [00:55:40] Hey, what are you working on currently? Where can people find you?

Juliet: [00:55:43] What are you looking forward to?

Kelly: [00:55:44] What are you looking forward to?

Dave Durante: [00:55:47] Our app is our big new thing. We’ve been putting a ton of time. Our in person events have been why most people come to us and we want to create a digital experience for a lot of people that can’t attend with us in person. So our Power Monkey training app was just released about a month and a half ago.

Juliet: [00:56:00] Congratulations.

Dave Durante: [00:56:01] Thank you. Thank you. It’s a long process to be able to get it. I’m sure you understand what it takes to not only labor but financial aspect and finding developers, all those fun things. But we are excited where it’s at right now. People can find it on our website, powermonkeytraining.com. If you want skill development, we have tons of skills on the gymnastics side. Also, volume plans in there for the competitive athlete that are looking to go from one to five to ten to twenty on unbroken muscle ups we have a plan in there. Build volume around the skills. We have a core workout every single day to help build that foundation around a good core and then we have a general GPD gymnastics program that we call Monkey Method that builds a well-rounded gymnastics approach that can be applied into your regular standard programming. So it’s a really good place to be able to work with us.

Juliet: [00:56:46] And besides on your website, which we will of course put in the show notes, where can people find you and the team on the social media universe?

Dave Durante: [00:56:53] On Instagram @powermonkeyfitness and @davedurante. We’re always putting up good teaching and technical content on there on a regular basis. 

Juliet: [00:56:59] Awesome. Thank you so much for spending some time with us today.

Kelly: [00:57:02] David, such a pleasure. 

Dave Durante: [00:57:02] Of course. I appreciate it, guys. I love being in the Bay Area. I hope I can come down there soon and maybe bring you over to Stanford and hang out in the gym a little bit.

Kelly: [00:57:09] Deal. 

Juliet: [00:57:10] We’d love to.

Dave Durante: [00:57:10] I don’t know. As a Cal Bear, I don’t know if-

Juliet: [00:57:12] Yeah, they may not let me in.

Dave Durante: [00:57:15] Make an exception.

Kelly: [00:57:16] Thanks very much. 

Dave Durante: [00:57:17] Thanks guys.

[music]

Kelly: [00:57:23] Thank you for listening to The Ready State Podcast. If you like what you’re hearing, check out all our episodes here or at thereadystate.com. And be sure to subscribe or leave a review on iTunes to help others find our show. 

Juliet: [00:57:34] Check us out and follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter @thereadystate.

Kelly: [00:57:39] Until next time, cheers everyone. 

 

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