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We cover the sport of CrossFit from all angles. We talk with athletes, coaches and celebrities that compete and surround in the sport of CrossFit at all levels. We also bring you Breaking News, Human Interest Stories and report on the Methodology of CrossFit. We also use the methodology to make ourselves the fittest we can be.
In the kitchen you decide
What's going on, everybody?
Welcome to the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
My name is Scott Schweitzer.
I'm the Clydesdale.
She is Julie Schaefer,
CrossFit Games Masters
athlete in the 55 to
59-year-old division.
Is that right?
That's correct.
That's correct.
Congratulations on that.
Thank you.
And this is your rookie season.
It is rookie.
It's kind of funny when
you're talking about 55 to
59 year olds rookie season.
Yes.
So you've been doing CrossFit since, well,
at least the open since 2014.
Yep.
I actually started in like 2009, but yeah,
didn't really think about
going in the open and being
able to do kind of RX until 14, 15.
So, so you're like, Oh gee, Oh gee.
I guess so.
Yeah.
It was a small gym in
Madison with Keisha and Skip Benzing.
I don't know if you know,
but in Madtown CrossFit.
So yeah,
they kind of stumbled into it like
everybody else does.
So you were,
you started in Wisconsin and
you make your first games
when it moved away from Wisconsin.
Right.
I was so hoping I've been
trying for a while to make the games.
And I was like,
I want to go when it was in Madison.
And of course I make it and
we're not in Madison.
Still awesome to make it.
It is,
but I would have had a better
cheering section, I think.
Yeah, yeah.
Where are you located now?
In New Jersey.
Okay.
In New Jersey.
And did I see you go to CrossFit Roseland?
I do.
That's where I'm at right now,
CrossFit Roseland.
And so Mark Juan Jones is
working out with him.
He's my inspiration.
Yeah, great guy too.
Yep.
So, sorry.
answer.
Um,
so so what is your athletic background?
Or did you not have one?
No,
I would say I was fairly athletic in
high school.
Played the three sports.
You know,
that was back when you could
actually play three sports, you know,
in a season.
You had, you know, the fall, the winter,
and the spring seasons.
And then in college,
I was in Marine Corps ROTC,
in the Navy ROTC.
And so, obviously,
you have to stay physically fit for that.
And then through my – I was
in the Marine Corps for 30 years.
So, just –
you know have to be
physically fit and they
have fitness tests every
year for those and it was I
just I just loved always
being active and working
out so I'm going to try to
guess the three sports
volleyball basketball softball
My school was really, really small.
So we didn't even have
softball at the time.
I played, we ran cross country.
My sophomore year is the
inaugural year that they
actually had cross country.
Before that was a cheerleader.
I tried that for one thing
that didn't really work out really well,
but I did play basketball and then track.
Okay.
Okay.
What did you do distance and
track being a cross country runner?
Yeah.
800 mile to mile.
Oh, the boring stuff.
Yep.
Do you,
do you follow the elite CrossFit
athletes?
I do some, some of them.
Um, I'm, you know,
I don't know the names all
of them all the time, but yeah, well,
mostly the women and the men, I guess.
Yeah.
When they released the 1600, if it,
if that gets released at
the masters games, would you get excited?
Um, actually normally I would,
but the last year, two years,
I've really struggled with, uh,
some knee arthritis.
So it has cut my running
down significantly, but yes,
normally like that would
have been a year ago.
I would have been a static.
So yes, that would, that would,
those were any running was
my go-to before kind of
knee issues as we all get older.
So, so you went into the Marine,
you went into the Marines after ROTC?
Yeah.
Was it your military
background that helped you
find CrossFit or did you
find it another way?
Well,
just always wanting to be physically
fit and being able to take care of the
know be better at being a
marine and trying to find
stuff that worked like a
full body workout you know
the core all the way to the
extremities and I just was
doing some research and I
happened to kind of see
this new thing called
crossfit and there was a
gym about two miles down
the road so I stopped in
and there you have it how
long did it take you to fall in love
I'm not very long.
Um, yeah, I just, I,
I'd never held a bar like that before.
Like any of the Olympic
lifts are powerless, you know,
coming up in our age, my age group,
you know, it's small school.
Again, we never had the opportunity to, to,
to do that.
And it just makes you,
they made me feel so much
stronger and powerful.
I was like, Hey,
I can pick up this body and
move my body around this
bar and lift this weight.
And so, yeah.
So what would you consider
to be your wheelhouse movements?
I would say any body weight movements.
I am short.
I am little.
And so anytime you put lots
of weight or having to do a
lot of weight and move that,
it slows me down a little bit.
But if you just gave me my
body and like gymnastics movement,
handstand pushups, things like that,
where I can just move.
That would save my wheelhouse.
That's why running normally
would be good too.
But even when you're putting on the vest,
that takes a little bit more,
but it's good.
So at what point in your
CrossFit life did you
realize you could be good
at this and do some competitions?
I don't know.
It was probably...
I'd have to go back and look
at my open records of like, yo, hey,
I actually did the open.
I completed it with, you know,
doing RX and not scaling it.
And it was probably just a
couple years ago.
I was like, hey,
I'm going to try this competition thing.
I think I went to the Fizz
Experience in Texas.
It was one of the first ones I went to,
and I was like, hey, you know,
I should just try this.
You know, it's right down the road.
And so I did the qualifications for it,
and I made it,
and that was kind of just surprising.
And so...
I don't know,
probably about four or five years.
And then I kind of get the bug of like,
okay, I really like to, to compete.
I think I do better in
person than I do even
online just because of the
energy levels that you get,
the game speed.
But so I just,
I think it's a lot of fun to
go there and compete.
And you know,
if you go out at a gym and you know,
I think I'm all good or I'm
doing really well.
And then you go to these
competitions and you have all these,
these women that are just crushing it.
It's like, this is awesome.
So what competitions are
available to you Masters athletes?
Well, there was the Fins Experience,
and I think they still have
a Masters division.
Guadalupe is a nice one.
I've been to that one.
And then the Open.
I know there's a few.
I think there might be a few others.
I don't think I've done any anymore.
Because normally they
consider Masters like 35
and older or something, and I'm like,
okay.
You did Legends last year, correct?
Oh, that's right.
It was Legends,
and I also did the Masters
Fitness Collective.
Okay.
I stumbled on those.
Also, I mean, I don't know.
As you get the competition bug.
Yeah, I've been to every MFC,
and I was at Legends last year,
which that facility was just gorgeous.
It was.
It was nice.
And what I loved about that,
there was no machines.
Yeah.
Oh, there was?
There was no machines in that one.
So for me, again, being a little person,
a little smaller in frame,
it's harder on machines.
So the one drawback there
was just no warm-up area.
Yeah, that's true.
But now you're going to be in a big arena.
I'm excited.
Have you been there?
I've not been to the location,
but I've heard nothing but
great things about the arena.
We did.
Yeah.
So, um,
and I've heard from people who live
in the Birmingham area that it's awesome.
Yeah.
Kind of like I went to granite games.
I did that and I had a
really nice big one where
we actually had our whole
separate kind of arena.
And then they did all the
competitions kind of out on
the field in the stage.
If you're running a master's competition,
warmup is important.
We are old.
You need to lubricate those
joints a little more than
your average athlete.
Yeah.
Some people say,
how much longer do you spend at the gym?
I'm like, well,
working out or like warming up included.
Cause that's a very, like you said, very,
very important.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So, um, so I,
I was looking through your
Instagram a little bit and
I found this really cool
shirt that you put together
and I'm going to pull that
up for everybody to see.
I have a question about it.
So, and then I was scrolling.
I lost it.
Let's, there we go.
So I don't know if people can see this.
It'll come back here in a second.
But it says, shoot, it keeps flashing.
I'm going to try to pause at
the right moment.
There we go.
It says Tiny Titan.
Yes.
Is that a nickname?
It is a nickname.
Yeah.
I got that from Veronica.
She was actually in the army
when we were in Kuwait together.
And after working out, she's like,
you're like a little tiny Titan.
And so since then,
it's kind of been a nickname.
Who designed the shirt?
It's awesome.
Yes.
That's also Juan Cortez.
He's also, he was in San Antonio.
We've like moved all over the place.
So he was one of an artist in San Antonio.
And Juan did that for me.
As soon as we talked about
fundraising t-shirts and everything else,
he's the first one I thought of.
I'm like, hey, because he's so creative.
I said, that's what I want.
I want a tiny Titan, you know,
Titan theme.
I don't know, just something.
And it has CrossFit Games on.
That's what he created.
It's pretty awesome.
It's almost like Athena,
the goddess of war, right?
Yeah, I guess.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Pretty cool.
I really, really thought that was awesome.
And you were given that when
you were serving overseas, the nickname.
The nickname, yeah.
How many deployments did you do?
two kind of deployments
three well I had like one
stateside after like 9 11
we were kind of a backup
unit so you know deployed
but we never went overseas
but you're kind of away
from your home and your
family uh then I did go
over uh you know to iraq
and then I've been to
kuwait and then recently
though my hard deployment
was when I went to germany
so okay um jody lynn says
uh the shirt is art deco-ish
And very much so.
One should be proud.
He did really well.
So how,
how long did you serve or are you
still serving?
I served 30 years.
I retired in 21 and that's
kind of where I was like, okay, now I'm,
what am I doing with my time?
And I was able to, you know,
kind of come to the gym and
warm up longer and, you know,
kind of do a specific programming.
What, what job did you do for the Marines?
was a logistics officer okay
yeah so the logistics
officer and then when I was
deployed I did some civil
affairs um and then kind of
you just do eyes and ends
when you're trying to get
special you don't you have
a specialty logistics but
you can you get stuck doing
anything staff work yeah
I've family members that
have served say that you
have a job but then you you
just do whatever they tell
you to do anyway pretty much yeah
But I was very fortunate.
I had some really good
commands and really good
times and met some awesome people.
It was a really good
opportunity for me that I took.
They paid for my school and
I just stayed in.
I did some reserve time too,
but a total of 30 years.
What did you get your degree in?
Operational, organizational behavior.
Although I always said it
was making people do what
they don't want to do and be good at it.
And I'm like, perfect.
That's what you got to do with Marines,
right?
Right, right.
And I take it you enjoyed your time.
I did.
Yeah, it was good.
I mean, it's always a challenge, you know,
again, you know, just having the,
you know,
there's not a lot of women in
the Marine Corps.
Not a lot of, you know,
just being shorter and smaller.
Again, it's just always that fight to,
you know, try to,
prove myself that I could, I can do this.
I can, you know,
I can physically be part of
this unit and hold my own weight.
So everybody brings
different qualities to the things.
You know, obviously I can't,
you can't put a 400 pound pack on me,
but I can, you know,
crawl under things faster and whatever.
You're 375.
You're good.
400.
That's too much.
Exactly.
Do you have like a big
booming voice to command a presence?
No, I don't.
I rely on my sorry major for that.
I'm not.
Organizational behavior degree.
Yes.
Business organizational behavior.
Awesome.
So this season,
was it your goal to make
the games the whole time?
Yes, it was.
I mean,
it was my goal to make the games
last year and the year before.
And this year it was just awesome.
Everything just kind of came together.
I've been trying, like, last year,
and I only made it to semifinals.
I didn't make it all the way through.
Like I said,
I was hoping to go because it
was in Madison.
And not that I'm giving up, but, again,
just trying to get through
the qualifications to get there.
I mean, it's tough.
I mean,
there's a lot of great women out there,
and there's usually a max
weight or something heavy qualifier,
and that usually knocks me
out and happened to be that
the semifinals –
and it all came together
that there was a heavy lift
it was a snatch it was I
hit it twice it was a pr so
I was happy I was just
stoked on that um so but
luckily it didn't knock me
out too far so when you did
the open this year uh be
friendly fitness did some
analysis and there was a
lot of talk about what
colton mertens did in 24.1
and how dominating it was
over the rest of the field in the open.
What many people don't know
is you actually had an even
more dominating performance
in 24.1 than Colton did in
your age group.
Yes.
That one was in my wheelhouse.
And that was the burpee over
barbell or burpee over dumbbell.
It was just a burpee over, was it?
Yeah.
Over.
And then the snatch.
Yeah.
And luckily again, with the masters,
we were,
they had the weight that they had for us.
I can't remember.
It was 25 pounds.
It was,
so it knocked it down because if it
would have been like a 35 pound dumbbell,
it would have been a little bit harder.
But because I can burpee, I can burpee.
And again,
usually then I have to make up
on my burpees for the lift.
But it just so happened the
snatch wasn't too bad.
That was fun.
I take it you're really fast at burpees.
I don't know if I'm really fast.
I mean, I can burpees.
And part of me, I think,
is you just got to keep going.
I mean, you just can't think about it.
You just got to do the next one.
So you said you don't know if you're fast,
but...
Everybody was in awe of what Colton did.
You doubled his performance
index on that particular workout.
You had to be fine.
Yeah.
I think I, I ended up because just,
I know all the stuff around
the drama around sometimes like, Oh,
did you really do it?
I, I think I, I opened my link,
the thing for public for a while.
I shut it down now, but yeah,
just to show people, yes, I did it.
Yeah.
What was your time?
Was it 6-13 or something?
I don't remember.
That was so long ago.
That is crazy, crazy time.
Yeah,
that was... So that's the first event
you did for this season.
What kind of confidence did
that give you going forward?
I mean, it was awesome.
It was kind of like, wow, that...
I didn't think you'd ever
win an open workout.
So that was just,
it did give me a lot of confidence.
But then again, I was like, oh,
all I got to do is the next
one and I'm going to get like shot down.
I can't remember what kind
of lift or something there was.
And I'm like, you know, it all,
like CrossFit said,
it all kind of plays out in the end of,
you know,
one might be good for you in one thing,
but it evens out on something else.
So you make it, um, two quarters,
you finished 20.
Uh, I don't even have that number.
Nevermind.
Uh,
you finished 13th though in semifinals
and with the new layout,
like more than 10 get to go to the games,
which is awesome.
Yeah.
I made it.
That's yeah.
That does really help.
10 was always way too small
for an online competition.
Um,
Because you just don't know
what reality is when you're
doing online comps.
Yep.
And now you get to go show
what you can do in person.
Yeah.
I do like that.
You know,
everybody's held to the same
standards or closer.
It's the same environment,
the same everything.
What I loved about Legends
when we did that is they
did not release the workouts.
And I don't know what
they're going to do this year with –
the CrossFit Games, the Masters Games.
But you remember in Legends,
they didn't release our
workouts until Wednesday
night at the athlete
briefing for the next two days.
And then Friday we went for Saturday.
And I love that because it's like, okay,
you can't really prepare.
You just have to show up and
see what you got, you know.
Yeah.
I just asked the last person
I interviewed if they liked
that idea of waiting for
the release or to get it ahead of time.
And they were like, absolutely not.
I hate it when they wait.
I want to know them all now.
And I want to be able to get
my head around it.
See original CrossFit though.
You showed up that morning
at the gym and you didn't
know what your workout was
going to be until you showed up to class.
She admitted she was type a
and that that's the way she was.
But, um,
And she was like,
I don't even care if I
don't practice them.
I just need to know I can do them.
Yeah.
I like the challenge of it's go time.
Go.
Can you do it?
Figure it out on the fly.
I like it too.
I think that especially with online,
too many people repeat.
Too many people do redos.
When you're in a competition,
you don't get a redo.
Right.
It's one shot and you're done.
Yep.
And either you pick the
right strategy or you didn't.
Yeah.
But you have the benefit of
also seeing other people's
strategy kind of unfolding
at the same time.
So you went to legends last year.
How did you do?
Uh, fourth or fifth, fifth, maybe.
I don't, I don't remember.
And it was a big competition,
and that was their programming.
Do you take more from that
than even what you're doing
this year during the season?
You mean like looking at
what their holiday programs?
Yeah.
Not really.
I mean, actually, my programming coach,
I don't know exactly.
I mean, he might look at some of that,
but I don't know exactly.
But a lot of the stuff they did, I mean,
they did burpees.
It was all a lot of bar work.
Surprisingly,
we only got in the bar one time,
and that was for the bar muscle-ups.
And then, you know, I liked the program.
It seemed like there was a
lot of squats and a lot of
shoulder overhead.
But, you know, that's what CrossFit is,
too.
Yeah, yeah.
What are your realistic
expectations for yourself this year?
I...
I want to be healthy going into the games.
Like I said, you know,
your body holds together
for a little bit longer.
I really just want to have
fun and enjoy the moment.
Again,
it will totally depend on the
workouts that come out.
I mean, if they're body, some body weight,
I'm hoping that I can crush
those and then I can hang
on to the ones that have
the heavier lifts.
and kind of stay together
and actually finish.
I mean,
I would love to be able to be in
the top 50%.
Top 10 would be like,
I couldn't believe it.
But again,
that's all been independent of
what programs there are.
So my final question is,
who are you taking with you
to Birmingham?
So my husband,
who's my biggest cheerleader,
will be there.
He needs the loudest in the crowd,
so that's good.
But Coach Klon, he's going to come down.
He's my coach for the weekend,
and his wife are coming.
And then I have some friends
kind of in the area that will stop by.
But other than that, I mean,
it's a long trip to go to Birmingham.
Yeah, but with the Marines,
you've lived all over the country.
You can pull people from Texas.
Yeah, you have people like, hey,
who's there?
They show up.
i hope we can bring a lot of
people to birmingham and
really show out for these
amazing athletes yeah like
yourself because um you
guys deserve it yeah
hopefully I'll put pack a
crowd in there it'll be
good so yeah there are some
amazing even yeah every age
group has its like
competitions going on so
So Corey needs hearing aids.
He said, Coach Klein from the Waterboy.
No, she said Coach Kwan.
You missed the beginning.
Marquand Jones is her coach
and the owner of her
affiliate there in New Jersey.
He's kind of fit.
He's kind of fit.
So, you know,
that's why when you think I'm,
when I have a house in
Wisconsin that we go up to
in the summertime,
although this summer I'm
back here specifically so I
can work out with him and the group.
Because when I'm working out by yourself,
you know, you think, oh yeah, I'm good.
And then you come out here,
even like burpees, I think I'm fast.
And then you go there and you're like,
okay,
I got to step up my burpee game now too.
So yeah,
he's a great motivation and just
having the, you know, the family,
the crew to work out with
here is awesome.
cory says marquand is
awesome and apologizes you
can follow me find him um so
So you're bringing your husband,
and Marquand's coming down,
which is awesome.
We're going to be there.
We've got full permission to
go behind the scenes,
and we're going to do a
behind the scenes of the
Masters CrossFit Games,
just like they do for the elite athletes.
Ellie Hiller and myself will
be back in the warm-up area
and in the back just having
conversations with everybody,
and we'll put it out as a
documentary after it's all over.
be awesome that'd be good I
saw you at a syndicate
crown too because I was
there watching okay yeah
yeah yeah I i interviewed
mark one at uh syndicate
crown did you yeah yeah it
is uh prince purple rain
t-shirt yes that's right
yeah um jody lynn I thought
I heard that midwestern
wisconsin accent did I yeah
were you just in michigan did I see I was
Yeah, we were up there for Fresh Coast,
which is a competition held
on the beach of Lake Michigan.
Yeah, we were on Lake Michigan also,
but on the Wisconsin side.
Okay.
Yeah, this one was my co-host, Jamie,
who's competing in Birmingham.
She was competing.
And then Rich Froning and
Dan Bailey showed up to compete.
with some other guys from
mayhem and we got some
footage of that and some stuff.
So that was kind of my dry
run for the masters CrossFit games.
At least this time I won't
have to run through sand.
Yeah.
Hopefully you never know.
Yeah.
Not a lot.
Well, Julie,
thank you so much for being with us.
Thank you to everybody in the chat.
This has been a blast.
Can't wait to meet you in
person in Birmingham and
get to chat with you a
little bit behind the scenes.
Thank you.
Awesome.
Thank you, Julie.
We'll see everybody next
time on the Clydesdale Media Podcast.
Bye, guys.