The Ready State Podcast

We are kicking off this season with one of the best and most beloved CrossFit Games athletes of all time. Jason Khalipa has competed in the CrossFit Games on 8 separate occasions - as an individual for 7 consecutive years, and wrapping up an 8th year as a team competitor. Throughout his CrossFit Games career, Jason has only placed outside the Top 10 once, has won every Regional competition he has participated in, and he won the Spirit of the Games award in 2009. Not only has Jason held all podium positions at the world championships, but he was also named to Team USA 3 times. Jason opened his gym in 2008 after winning 1st place in his first CrossFit Games appearance and 11 years later has expanded to over 20 locations. Jason and his wife Ashley live in Los Gatos with their 2 children Kaden and Ava. Ava’s 2016 leukemia diagnosis has led them into a life of philanthropy with the intention of supporting other families faced with the same adversity. For more info on Jason, check out his website and podcast here, follow him on Instagram, and definitely learn more about the Khalipa’s non-profit, Ava’s Kitchen.

Season 4 of The Ready State is a "Where are they now" of early CrossFit. Juliet and Kelly are coming up on 15 years of CrossFit affiliation and a lot has changed over the years. CrossFit literally revolutionized how we think about fitness and the limits of human performance. Its innovative training style, combined with a focus on community, completely upended the fitness industry. It has led to the creation of thousands of companies that support CrossFit affiliates and athletes, and has produced countless thought leaders. With more than 15,000 current affiliates, it is arguably responsible for creating the boutique fitness industry as we know it today. This season we talk to some of the earliest affiliates, Games athletes, and SMEs that helped shape this movement to find out their CrossFit origin stories, how the journey as been, and what they are doing now.

Nic Gill has been the head strength and conditioning coach for the New Zealand All Blacks for the last 11 years, a time of great international success including World Cup titles in 2011 and 2015. In addition, Nic is a wellness and fitness consultant to numerous international corporations as well as a limited number of individuals. He continues to refine his philosophy through research at the University of Waikato. Nic recently released his first book, Health Your Self, that aims to give practical knowledge to enable readers to build their own health and fitness plan. We talk with Nic about fitness, nutrition, and simple tweaks that are both reasonable and effective at improving health and wellbeing, all through the lens of raising healthy kids. For more information on Nic, check out his website, blog, and follow him on Instagram.

Katie Wells is the founder of WellnessMama.com, an online resource for women and moms (and dads!) who want to live healthier lives. Katie works with a team of researchers and medical advisors with the goal of making every post a simple answer to a single question. In this conversation we get tons of practical advice on raising kids with a focus on prioritizing nutrition, sleep, and bringing healthy habits into our homes. We were blown away with the system that Katie has created in her own home and the amount of responsibility that all kids can and should handle to become truly valuable members of the team we call family. For more info on Katie, check out WellnessMama.com, her podcast, or follow her on Instagram.

Dr. Mark Benden is an associate professor and department head for the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health at the Texas A&M School of Public Health, where he also serves as director of the Ergonomics Center. Mark has done extensive research around kids and standing desks and actually is on the Board of the Starrett's non-profit, StandUp Kids. We get into tons of info on the negative impacts of sedentary lifestyle, and he offers up a ton of practical advice on how parents can work to combat this cultural trend. For more info on the work that Mark is doing, check out the Texas A&M Health Science Center website, the Texas A&M Ergonomics Center website, and StandUp Kids.

Gray Cook is a physical therapist, lecturer, author, and instructor. He founded Functional Movement Systems which promotes the concept of movement screening and assessment. Gray has been a seminal figure in how we think about and quantify movement, and how we communicate the language of movement. We get into the state of children's health and what's missing from global agreement about movement after a child passes the 21 month old mark. We also get some great takeaways about free play and how a half foam roller can change everything. For more information on Gray and Functional Movement Systems, check out his website, the FMS website, or follow him on Facebook and Twitter.

Dr. Stacy Sims is an exercise physiologist and nutrition scientist specializing in sex differences in response to exercise heat stress, recovery, and nutritional adaptations for health, body composition, and maximizing performance. She authored one of Juliet's all time favorite health and fitness books, Roar, which is a comprehensive guide to nutrition and training designed especially for women. We talk about all our favorite topics as they relate to kids and really start to get an understanding of why kids aren't just little adults and how girls and boys are inherently different. For more info on Stacy, follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Dr. Jose Greenspon is a board certified pediatric surgeon with a special interest in metabolic disorders, obesity, and bariatric surgery. He gives us a thorough and rather shocking state of the childhood and adult obesity epidemic, as well as a ton of practical takeaway advice for all families. We also get into the specifics of TeenLIFT, a multidisciplinary adolescent weight management program that was carefully designed to increase the likelihood of compliance, success, and long-term sustainability. Additionally, we put the fructose debate to bed once and for all. For more information on TeenLift, visit their website or follow them on Facebook and Instagram.

John O'Sullivan is the founder of Changing the Game Project, whose mission is to ensure that we return youth sports to our children by providing the resources needed to make sports a healthy, positive, and rewarding experience for kids. After two decades playing and coaching soccer, John is an expert at training high-performing athletes by creating player-centered environments. He is also the best selling author of both Changing the Game: The Parents Guide to Raising Happy, High Performing Athletes, and Giving Youth Sports Back to our Kids and Is it Wise to Specialize? John offers some really practical advice on how parents and coaches can help bring the fun back into youth sports. For more about John and Changing the Game Project, visit their website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Mark Verstegen is the founder and president of EXOS and one of the world's foremost experts on human performance. Mark has coached some of the most elite athletes on the planet and has also worked extensively with the NFL, corporations, and the military. EXOS is built around four pillars of performance - mindset, nutrition, movement, and recovery - and Mark takes us through it all. He has trained a ton of kids and gives everyone from parents to coaches a lot of great takeaways. We were so excited to have Mark in-house to talk about his philosophy and experience training youth athletes. For more information on Mark and EXOS, check out the EXOS website, or follow them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Season 3 of The Ready State is here and it's all about KIDS! We wanted to understand how to raise happy, healthy, well-adjusted kids without mucking it up. We talk extensively about nutrition, fitness, sleep, the current state of childhood obesity, sports specialization, what we are doing right, and what we are getting wrong. Our goal was to provide parents and coaches with tons of practical advice and takeaways that are both actionable and reasonable. Check out these fascinating conversations with Mark Verstegen of EXOS, John O'Sullivan, Dr. Jose Greenspon, Dr. Stacy Sims, Gray Cook, Dr. Mark Benden, Katie Wells, and Nic Gill of the All Blacks.

Amelia Boone started her racing career by winning 2nd place female (11th overall) in 2011’s World’s Toughest Mudder, her first ever obstacle race. Since then, she has become the most decorated obstacle racer of all time with over 50 podiums, all while working full-time as a corporate attorney. In 2016, Amelia suffered a debilitating femur fracture and subsequent sacral fracture that kept her from racing for over a year. Amelia talks to us about how she manages pain during competition and gives us an honest look into everything she feels she did wrong while recovering from her injuries to return to an elite level of performance. Amelia joined us via Skype.

We can not get enough of Alex Hutchinson’s book, Endure: Mind, Body, and the Curiously Elastic Limits of Human Performance (2018) this year. His book takes a detailed look into the science of endurance and covers heat, hydration, nutrition, and all the things that we love to think about! Alex takes us through many of the topics in his book and gives us some insight into how the brain may ultimately be the limiter on our ability to suffer, and how changing our perception of pain can expand the limits of our endurance. As an added bonus, we talk briefly with Erin Cafaro, a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist in rowing, about how she thinks about and manages pain while competing. Alex joined us via Skype from Toronto.

A conversation about pain would not be complete without acknowledging opioids and all of the drugs used to treat pain. Chris Bell is the award winning documentary filmmaker behind Prescription Thugs (2015) that explores the opioid crisis in America. His newest film, A Leaf of Faith (2018), covers all aspects of the controversial drug, Kratom, a plant-based supplement showing big promise in pain relief. Chris has first-hand experience with chronic pain and the all to common drug abuse that comes with it. He talks openly about his experience with pain, drugs, death, and we go deep into all things Kratom. Chris joined us via Skype.

Sue Falsone is the first female head athletic trainer in any of the four major sports in the US, most recently with the LA Dodgers for 6 years. Functioning as both an athletic trainer and physical therapist to her athletes, she was able to develop a truly innovative and successful approach to treatment. She discusses her philosophy on pain and treatment, returning injured athletes to an elite level of sport, as well as being female in a male-dominated field. Sue joined us via Skype.

You may know Laird Hamilton as a big wave surfer, innovator, actor, and writer. What you might not know, is that Laird suffered and surfed through extreme chronic pain from a hip injury (and various other injuries). Laird has an interesting perspective on pain and helps us understand how his philosophy on life, nutrition, and fitness all play into health and recovery. Laird joined us via Skype from his home.