Interview with: the fellas of CrossFit Austin

As CrossFit blows up and takes Austin–and me–by storm, I thought I’d sit down with the fellas that got me hooked and let them talk about the sport they’ve built their life around. I say life because roommates Wes Kimball and Boone Putney share a lot—they met through a shared best friend, were co-Best-Man in that friend’s wedding, live together, and opened a six-month-old CrossFit gym in South Austin together. We sat down in Novemberish of last year; their gym opened December 6. I haven’t had a chance to sit down with them again, but this is timeless info on what in the heck CrossFit is. Here are the deets:

Me: What is CrossFit?
Wes: CrossFit is a relatively new fitness movement. It’s a combination of three main pillars: it’s all functional movement, it’s all constantly varied, and it’s all done at a very high intensity.
When I say functional movement, it’s gonna be anything that you can use for independent living and natural motor patterns in your body. We use a lot of gymnastics skills, Olympic lifting, dumbbell lifting, mono-structural movement—what most people would call cardio—running, biking, rowing, things like that.
The constantly varied part is that every time we do a workout, it’s gonna be different. It’s going to be different exercises, different style of exercises, different tempo, so you’re never going to see the same workout within the same week much less the same month.
The intensity aspect of it: we do everything for time, so not only are you competing against yourself, and you’re competing against other people at the gym, but you’re competing against the clock.
Boone: The way I explain it and the way it differentiates itself from other methods is motivation. I think motivation is key in CrossFit; it’s centered around a community. There’s a big community aspect to it, everybody encouraging each other on. Time is another thing that differentiates us. You go in at such high intensity, like Wes says, and always competing against the clock. You’re looking at ten to twenty minutes for a workout, the high intensity part. It’s short and sweet but you definitely feel it, it’s no walk in the park.

Me: How did each of you get started with CrossFit?
Boone: I went up to see Wes in Chicago, and at that point I was working out six, seven days a week. I thought I was in great shape. And then he took me to a gym, to one of the official CrossFit workouts. I was not in great shape, I came to find out. It felt great afterwards but I thought I was going to die during it. And after that I was sore for days. It opened my eyes and made me start doing it on my own.
Wes: I’ve been CrossFitting for about two years now. When I moved to Chicago, I got into a great affiliate up there, Windy City CrossFit, and the community there was just amazing. Not only did I get in the best shape of my life and be at a physical point in my life that I’ve never been at before, but I gained 40 friends automatically, all my friends up there were my CrossFit community.

Me: How do you guys know each other?
Boone: Basically his best friend moved to Round Rock and became my best friend, and they went to Texas A&M together, so we crossed paths in college. Once Wes moved to Austin after he graduated, we’d hang out quite a bit, then he moved away and I cried myself to sleep every night for awhile.
Wes: We were co-best men in the friend’s wedding.
Boone: He was the Best Man, I was assistant to the Best Man.
Wes: That is correct.

Me: Were you worried about starting a business with a friend?
Boone: The thing I like about Wes is that he gets along with everybody, first of all, and he loves CrossFit more than humanly possible. This guy is walking CrossFit incarnate. I love how fired up he is about it, that’s how I am too, but he’s much better about letting the whole world see how much he loves it. With those two being his super strong points and his background in fitness and sports and my background in business, it’s a good synergy of our strengths.
Wes: Boone says I get along with everybody, but this guy has got more friends in Austin, Texas than I’ve ever seen. There was never any hesitation, doing the gym with somebody, Boone was the perfect fit. He’s a great business man, a phenomenal athlete, disciplined in his fitness, we get along well. (My note: Gross, they love each other so much. Don’t they EVER fight?!)

Me: Is there a clear division of labor?
Boone: Not really, there’s a priority, I guess. He’s the lead trainer, and I’m there in a supporting role. For the business side of things, accounting or website technical stuff, I take the lead. He does, we call it box lifting, he can move technical boxes.
Wes: Boone is what we call the e-machine.
Boone: Until we found out it was a cheap brand of PC, now we’re not using that term.
Wes: Obviously Boone has a ton of experience and knowledge on the e-business side of things, which is a huge aspect of the business of CrossFit and affiliates, he does the technical stuff, if there’s something I can help him with—type something up on Word and send it over—he’ll make it look nice. I do the programming and I take the lead on the training aspect of it because that’s where my expertise is.
Boone: Every other business I’ve started, there have been clear business agreements. But I knew with Wes that we both cared so much about what we were doing that we’d just work as hard as we could and we didn’t have to worry. Which has worked out really well.

Me: What’s the gym like?
Boone: It’s a perfect spot for what we’re looking for, we looked all over Austin before we found this place. It’s brand new, big open space, perfect for what we’re looking for. We’re going to have a 40-foot pullup bar from one side to the other so we can have 15 people doing pull-ups at once, which is going to be awesome. To watch, it’ll probably be brutal for the people doing it!

Me: Can all ages do CrossFit?
Boone: The main people that come out are 20 to 30 year old young professionals, but across the board everybody benefits from it.
Wes: We say that our needs as people don’t differ by type. Everybody can do these workouts, it’s more a matter of scaling to your fitness level. Is somebody that’s 75 going to do the same things that you or I or Boone is going to do as far as weight and reps? No, of course not, but we all need to squat, we all need to get up off the couch. That’s where the functionality comes in, it really is applicable to every population.
Boone: That’s a big thing, people look at the website and they’re scared because they see these crazy workouts, and they’re afraid they’re not going to be able to do it. But that’s what we’re here for, to help you take it to a level you can do and grow with it.

Me: How do you come up with workouts?
Wes: A lot of it looks random, but we’re looking at different styles of exercise, different metabolic pathways that we want to train each and every week. We use different tools and plug those into different places. We post the Workout of the Day on our website and you take the workout and do it on your own.

Me: Does the “recession” scare you?
Boone: Now is probably not an ideal time to start a business with the recession and all, but people are always going to need to be in good shape. If you look at the nation as a whole, the trend is starting to change, people are starting to put a lot more emphasis on fitness. The times are coming, I mean, we’ve had a great reception in the Austin area.Austin’s a great city for fitness. It’s a great time to throw something down south, there’s a huge need for CrossFit in the area and people have been loving it. We’re confident. Positive.

Me: What’s a gym membership cost?
Boone: Memberships start at $150/month. A lot of people get sticker shock when they see that, because they’re used 24 Hour Fitness where it’s $30, $40, $50 dollars a month. But if you look at what you’re getting, this is pretty much unlimited personal training. If you do personal training somewhere else its 50 up to 150 dollars an hour, we’re looking at: if you come 3 times a week, 4 weeks a month, you’re looking at $600-$1200 somewhere else. So $150 dollars is a small price to pay. We offer first class free, so anybody can try it, no obligation, and see if you like it. If you do it and think it’s worth 150 dollars, we’d love to have you, if not, our feelings aren’t going to be hurt.
Wes: We do that first class because we want people to come try it out and be exposed to it, because we think this is the premier way to train and be fit. We wouldn’t be doing it if we didn’t believe in it 100%.

Me: What’s the format like?
Wes: Class-like format, it’s a group setting. Group warmup, go through a skill session. We’ll be teaching a lot of the movements, because they aren’t commonly done, people don’t know how to do them correctly.
Boone: The funny thing is, they’re natural movements, but just the way we live, sitting in front of a computer all day, the body gets away from that, so we try to take it back to natural movement that’s healthy for the body.
Wes: Right, so then we go into the workout as a group, there’s always going to be—we’re going to be there pushing and supporting you—but the beauty of it is everybody else around you. It feels back like football in college or high school, that team aspect. Just like on a team, when your teammates are around you and they’re pushing it, you wanna do that much more. You wanna do that much better. You want to perform for everybody in the group and within the CrossFit community.
There are 4 evening classes a night, starting at 4:30. In the morning it’s more up in the air, we’re looking at doing more of an open-gym style where people can come in. We’ll still be there, but you can come and go.

Me: What are your future plans?
Boone: We’re considering boot camp for the future, we’re trying to focus on the gym right now and make that a success first, then we definitely have plans for doing boot camp.
Wes: I think every day Boone and I tell each other something, “oh we should do this!” We’re trying to take everything one step at a time. I’d love a CrossFit Kids program. I think one untapped community is sports and performance in high schools. The bootcamp is definitely on the docket, living in such a nice city year round like this, people want to be outside. Right now it’s just focused on getting this gym off the ground.

Me: Do you guys worry about your youth affecting starting a business?
Boone: I quit my “real job” two years ago and started my first business. I don’t think there’s any right age to start businesses, if you look at the super wealthy people, I’ve read a bunch of their biographies, they all started their first businesses when they were ten, twelve years old out of their house with their parents helping them. So I’m actually behind the curve!
I love it, it’s not for everybody, but when I see something like this where you can help people out and see that you’re actually making a difference, that’s the best part. You hear somebody say how their body has changed or how great they feel about themselves, it’s awesome. You don’t get that working in a cubicle.
Wes: I’ve never been one to shy away from risks. I spent four years in college preparing to be a football coach, and then I moved to Paris for three months and was a bike tour guide over there, then I moved back here and went to Chicago, managed a Segway tour company, so it’s just kind of a natural thing for me. Maybe it’s lack of intelligence on my part, when I see something I’d like to do and I enjoy, I just go for it.
Boone: That’s the best part, so many people are miserable out there and just staying with the status quo. Finding something that we like and making a life out of it, I don’t see much risk in that. It’s just money really, but money will happen, there’s always jobs out there. I’d rather be happy with just a little bit on the table.
Wes: We’re pursuing excellence with what we do, we believe in what we do. My belief is that if we pursue that excellence and do everything with that air of excellence to it, then the money aspect will follow suit.

Me: You guys live together too?
Boone: Yeah, we do pretty much hang out 24 hours a day. We haven’t killed each other yet so things can only get smoother as the business stabilizes! We’ve knocked out pretty much all our major goals for having the gym open, we’ve made a ton of progress. We’re well ahead of where we thought we’d be. We’ve been really lucky and had so much help from so many people.

Check them out online: CrossFit Austin or hit their gym at Slaughter & 35ish: 8708 South Congress, 78745

Disclaimer: You guys know I love CrossFit, and I must reveal that I don’t work out at CrossFit Austin’s gym–it’s too far from my house. I work out at CrossFit Central, and I love the community Central has built. I’m doing the Spartan 300 Challenge, and it’s ridiculous (awesome). CrossFit Austin is definitely developing the same kind of strong community down south. And I still try to do everything I can with CrossFit Austin, including Murph Day!