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JAMIE 0:00
So I don’t know, you know, if you’ve got 12 miles left, you can’t move your legs anymore. What is going through your head?
JUSTIN 0:06
It’s kind of one of those things where what’s the worst thing that could happen? Well, death definitely will be the worst thing for me I think could happen and well, I’m not going to die. So let’s get past this.
INTRODUCTION 0:20
Welcome to the fit and healthy Denver podcast where we discuss all things revolving around health, fitness and wellness in the amazing state of Colorado so you can get behind the scenes information from industry insiders, special events, and more. Coming up is our host, physical therapist and strength coach, Dr. Jamie Beauvais. And here we go.
JAMIE 0:46
Today we talked with Justin Holley of E three fitness. I’ve known Justin for a while and he’s one of the most intense and focused people that I’ve ever met. In this interview, we talk about what goes through your head when you’re in a 100 mile bike race that is so intense, you think you might die. We talk about what clouds you from reaching your ultimate abilities. And we talk about what Chalk Talks are and why they’re an integral part of eateries workouts. All right, I would like to welcome Justin Holly with E three, Justin runs a hit gym on Mississippi and Broadway, and has for several years, including the previous location, and is also an extreme athlete, mountain biker extraordinaire, and many other things as well. So Justin, once you just get started with kind of telling us a little bit about you and how you got into fitness.
JUSTIN 1:39
Yeah, that’s going to be for the PG clientele. I got into fitness through something really like my own battle, you know, a kind of dark story where I ran into some trouble not necessarily knowing who I was where I wanted to be in those things. And without going too deep into that fitness, the simple aspect of fitness, I be able to see tangible results through numbers, right, I can lift more, do more and move faster, those super simple, basic ways to catalog growth and success became the foundation, the platform upon which I built who I was like as an adult male, you know. And with that, I realized it gave me the opportunity to do kind of whatever I wanted so I knew that I was gonna do fitness, I was gonna do it in some way. I didn’t really know how I started in the sales and marketing side of a fitness brand. I got a big gym, and it evolved into working with people. And so that was what kicked it off. And that’s actually honestly, that’s the passion that still fuels me today. Not to make it sound like a resume, but it literally saved the life path that I was on. I put it on the right track.
JAMIE 2:52
Okay, and how about E three? How did he do it? What’s the Genesis story there?
JUSTIN 2:57
Yeah, bamboo, is the answer to your question. I was deciding on being a firefighter, or on getting into fitness full time. And I’ve been dragging my feet, I’m making the decision. And a friend of mine had introduced me virtually back then. It was just a text message to a guy in Denver, who had about 20 clients give or take that he was training in. He’s gonna move to Texas, and he wanted to leave him with somebody that he trusted. And so he’d heard of me from a friend and wanted to link up with me and talk about potentially taking over his client book. And I didn’t know if I wanted to do that. Or if I wanted to be a firefighter and I had this little vase that I received as a gift would I get one of those edible arrangements, you know, like the fruit flower basket deals. And I had a day off from this big box gym I was working at and went to Whole Foods in Fort Collins and I wanted to put a bamboo arrangement in there. I was a single dude living alone and had no plans. You don’t. That was a good idea. And so I learned about bamboo and I learned about different numbers of bamboo sticks and different heights and all that I learned about how to make an arrangement of bamboo. And I picked one that stood for like promotion in life and like wealth in life and not just monetary wealth, which is wealth and life. And so that’s all put together as five pieces of bamboo of varying heights. This guy calls me again. You must have been calling me for like a week and a half. I finally answered and we just had to link up and that really is what kicked off me moving away from working in a structured fitness business to try and to develop my own thing it’s I picked up his book clients and started their cluster people together. And the next thing you know it created the small group formula that took many years to perfect but was the beginning the petri dish for E three
JAMIE 4:45
okay. And you guys started in a much smaller location than you are now so you know had some some decent growth
JUSTIN 4:54
We started in a basement gym at a corporation like a cork office park. So neon rubber weights, dingy carpet, like a real, creepy little environment, if I really think about it. From there, I went to rent space from a gym downtown like a hip Rhino district, cool garage gym. And then from there, that’s when we really, you know, I really saw a lot of growth, and was able to leverage that and actually bought a gym, from the owner of the space I was renting from he had purchased multiple other gyms, and he’s still a gym owner in town, great guy. And I bought a gym from him. And when I say I bought it, I mean, we negotiated a monthly payment because I had no money when I was in my 20s, you know. So I negotiated a deal and now became our first gym. That was 2011, July of 2011. And from there, we had a second location down south, in the same general area. And then we leverage the success of both of those to build the currently our flagship space on Broadway. And then the success of that has allowed us to now open this year, a new location and riverfront, so it’s been kind of a stepping stone. And it wasn’t until the Broadway spot that we actually had a gym that we built for our program instead of just kind of spitting and squatting.
JAMIE 6:11
Yeah, yeah. And you’re also in nurture doing classes there now. Right?
JUSTIN 6:15
Yeah. So that was, you know, what a wild path and nurture has been, unfortunately, such a great idea. 100%, based on communities coming together to build a new bigger community and commingling communities of other people mingling with the communities of other people like that, actually, the exact stuff you should not do COVID style necessary for nurture work, and fortunately, the leaders there have, have mitigated a lot of concerns, and it’s gonna be awesome. We’re super excited to get started there and look forward to being part of that project.
JAMIE 6:51
Yeah, I think I think the whole nurture thing is fascinating, and it’s gonna be a, it’s gonna be interesting to see how that plays out, and how you guys are able to use that. So, you know, tell us about the classes that d3 Because you have different styles of classes. Tell us a little bit about those and who they’re for.
JUSTIN 7:08
Yeah, you know, that question was so much easier in the beginning when we didn’t have as many members, because we could control everything, and we our target market and really fit a very specific subset of personal person who wanted personal training, but they want it to be a bit more entertaining, of an experience, I guess, is kind of a way to say it, than just sit there one on one in the CAC or the, you know, something like that working with one guy, him counting your reps, right now with a list of what to do on the other days. And so the small group group program was built to serve as the personal training client, but to see them more frequently, instead of once a week or to see three, four times a week. And that became something easy to manage the success of that program. And that is still alive today. That’s our small group program we call our focus program. And our focus program is just that it’s focused on specific visits layering, to create a goal track. So if you are wanting to lose weight, if that’s your number one focus is weight loss, you do a series of our focus classes each week. And that will get you to that goal. And that’s very different from somebody who wants to do muscle development, I want to build some muscle, you’re going to do a different cluster of our focus classes. And it’s kind of a diagram style, you’ll have people on different gold tracks interacting within the same small group session, but their frequency and their session choices indicate cannibal path thrown. But as I got successful, we added in large group training for a conditioning element. And the large group training is really for that for the person who wants to come in and just get conditioning work, you know, we’re going to do definitely going to move stuff, we’re going to use equipment, we’re going to be challenging, they’re hard workouts, I’m not saying that they’re easy, they’re just what we would call kind of more surface level fitness, you know, a little bit of burden here, a little bit activation, there’s a lot of bit of sweat there. But we’re not going to get super deep in with our focus training program, our small group program, we get real deep, we find ourselves really pushing the limit of what the body can do so that we can change the body.
JAMIE 9:16
And I’ve done both, and I think kind of my feedback would be that, you know, the the large group and let’s define large group because it’s not large, you know, there’s
JUSTIN 9:25
20 people, right at the most is 20 people, because we have so frequently throughout the week in the day, you have anywhere between six and 16 on average in class. Yeah,
JAMIE 9:37
I’ve done it a lot. And I don’t think I’ve ever seen more than about eight in there. And I go midday, but I would say you know that style classes is a little bit more of a cardio hit like a little bit more breath and you’re getting out of breath, you know, you’re sweating, and you’re just like, oh my god, I can’t catch my breath. Whereas the other one is more strenuous from a weight perspective. So you’re working the muscles harder you’re you know, you may get a little absorbed in a good way. Any good from the other one too, but I think cardio wise, you know, the larger group training is a little bit more intense.
JUSTIN 10:09
Yeah, I agree 100% Also, the interval timers help with that, you know, in the small group training is typically going to be rep counts, based on your ability, those are going to change, you know what I mean, whether you’re on a development path or a real strength building path. So we’re just reps with large companies at all intervals.
JAMIE 10:27
Yeah. And you do have different focuses in each of those classes. You have cardio, which is core and cardio, you’ve got your battle ropes, which have a lot of rope work, which are exhausting and, and others as well. So there’s a good variety in there. So who do you think, Who do you think II three attracts as a customer, as a client?
JUSTIN 10:46
Okay, on the surface, people who are athletes outside of the gym. So if you like to, if you, you know, played sports in school, if you hike, bike run ski, if your idea of fitness is simply going out and exploring life, like your hobbies are active, and that’s our key most member, because the level of training we do, on the outline on the onset, when you first walk in many people’s experiences, like man, I better be in shape, before I go to this place to get in shape, it can be intimidating, because we’re gonna I guess that we’re gonna push somebody almost to that edge and then just passed it on every workout. That’s the goal. And so they’re high octane, you know, and so people who are athletes outside of the gym are gonna grab onto that right away. It’s not a First off, like people who are athletic outside of the gym. That’s our first target market. As we get below that, then we get into the coaching program, I think we do a really good job working with people who don’t see gyms as necessary in their fitness program. So people who say, I’ve never been part of the gym, I need you to do gym work, I like to, you know, run or do yoga, or I like to, you know, maybe I don’t do anything, right, just I’m not a gym person. That would be the second group of people that I think we do a really good job of capturing. Because we aren’t a brand name, like we’re not a CrossFit right, if you’re for CrossFit, and nothing, I think cost was great workouts. But if you’re not a CrossFitter, cos it’s very hard to just kind of jump into it, we’re not an orange theory either. Where, again, we’re not falling into a chain. So our niche or boutique element, I think, helps us capture a person that’s not a typical gym, gym rat.
JAMIE 12:30
And I was thinking about this, because I was like, I think this would be a good question. I was trying to think of who I think is who I think it attracts. And I think it attracts kind of what you were saying that person that wants to use the gym was training for life, you know, not not, as I wanna go to the gym, but like, I want to get better as a mountain biker, I want to run and enjoy the mountains, I want to use this as training to get better at the other things I do. And then the other person that I thought I think that it attracts, there’s a lot of intense people there that are like, seriously driven. And I don’t mean that like in a competitive way, because I don’t really get any aspect of like, competitive as far as like negativity or anything, everybody supporting each other, but like they are entirely competitive with themselves. They just want to push themselves to their top limits, just for themselves. And I think that’s where you can see it. And I think that actually motivates other people that work out even harder, and I think is testament to you and your coaches on how good of a good job you guys do with that. So let’s switch gears here a little bit and talk about mountain biking because I know that your passion, and you have done some incredibly hard races that most people couldn’t even fathom. So tell us about some of your harder races that you’ve done recently. And what I want to know is Well, good. And tell us that and then I have a follow up question.
JUSTIN 13:45
Okay. It’s funny, because when I reflect back, I tried to write about one of my big passions. And so I tried to write these race reports that read more like stories, and try to practice becoming a better writer through them. So as I go back, I tried to relive each of my race experiences and write a blog about it. It’s funny the feelings in the race where I do, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done like I would if I want to be anywhere else in the world right now. But right here. That feeling goes away so quickly after you cross the finish line right across the finish line. Oh, Lina wasn’t that bad. This is great. And you get like the burger from the food truck and you’re sitting down, just enjoying the moment your cow wasn’t that bad. But without a doubt the worst moment I’ve ever had was at the top 100 in 2018. And this race is in the Black Hills of South Dakota. It starts in Sturgis and it’s a three lap course that comes back to Sturgis at the end of each lap and ends up being 100 miles. an ungodly amount of elevation at like 12,000 feet elevation gain. But the day was just under 100 degrees temperature and at 90 plus percent humidity. It scorched us so hot. There was one part of the race We’re on blacktop, and you can just feel the blacktop melting your soul. That AIDS day was dangerous. The aid stations ended up last minute, the race director is having, you know, those giant white coolers, he’s having giant like coolers full of ice taken to all the aid stations, and you get to an aid station and they would just dump ice down your back on that three on my last lap. As I’m coming up into the woods, I had a hard, not a saddle effort. So I get up out of the saddle and I go to crank up the hill in both of my quads lock up and seize. And I looked down and I saw every fiber of each muscle fully flexed and locked in, they wouldn’t let go. And I just been trying to figure out what to do and all that good news, I fall sideways on the ground, still clipped into my pedals and can grab an ice cold bottle of water just gotten an aid station, and I’m spraying it on my quads hoping that it’ll let them just release. So I can pedal to the finish line. I drank 20 Plus bottles of fluids during that race. And I didn’t pee at all in the five hours. And when I did, I mean Citrus Blast Gatorade, neon orange, I don’t worse. I mean, it scared me. That’s the worst I’ve ever felt in a race. I’ve done a Ruta in Costa Rica, which is dubbed as the hardest three days or hardest stage race in the world. We’ve done that. I’ve done 100 a few times, I’ve done some really big iconic races. But it was that moment. When my quads were seized up, and I’m laying on the ground stuck a little I can’t move. I’ve pushed past the point that my body can even function. That’s got to be the hardest moment.
JAMIE 16:39
So I don’t know, you know, if you’ve got 12 miles left, you can’t move your legs anymore. What is going through your head?
JUSTIN 16:45
Oh, dude, I was in the top 10 position, it didn’t matter. I was Go, go go. Like the only thing in the head is just a green light, like figuring out how to get some spray in this cold water on my quads. I’m like sitting there punching my quads. I’m drinking a pickle juice that i Anything I can do. And I knew it would eventually go away. Right? I have. It’s kind of one of those things where what’s the worst thing that could happen? Well, death is definitely the worst thing for me to think could happen and well, I’m not gonna die. So let’s get past this position. You’re in the top 10.
JAMIE 17:17
Okay, and how did it go? How do you use that intensity and that mindset in E three, with your workouts with your clients? How do you incorporate that? Yeah,
JUSTIN 17:27
We try very hard. myself and all my coaches, we try very hard to put something else in the forefront of the mind when people go into a workout. So we do these little chalk talks before our small group sessions. And we do tend to do them in large group sessions as well. But we just want to get people away from all the different roles that they have outside of the vestibule, like our entryway, when you walk in, you leave there and you’re you’re Jamie, the husband, you’re Jamie, the podcast host, you’re Jamie, the PT you’re Jamie, the friend Jamie, the selling get all these people. And we carry those roles into most of our activities. Right? When we’re making lunch, we’re thinking about the other things that we need to do for these other roles, these other things we must serve others in doing. And it can really cloud our ultimate abilities, right? That can really cloud the depth of us that we can dig into because frankly, at times that was pretty dry. And so before we start a session, our whole idea is to like fill that well, by simply saying like, what what are you training for, because if it’s to do a deadlift, perfectly great, we’re not the gym, like we’re not the community because, and the honest, if our coaches get you to do the exercise 95% of perfect, like, that’s amazing, right, and we’re gonna point out that other 5%, especially if it’s an injury causing 5%, but for the most part, like good form and perfect form, or the difference between injury and injury, it’s definitely not fully getting everything from the exercise. And there’s more to be gained from challenging yourself to get that box, that box job, that height that you didn’t think you could do. There’s such a better thing to glean from what you are actually doing even if you land a little off balanced and you’re on your toes a little bit. It wasn’t like a perfect Box Jump textbook style. You walk out of here feeling that victory is so much more important than espionage. Dude, that was a perfect box job playing even I mean, and when you have in the forefront of your mind I why you’re there who you are when you’re there. We can draw those moments. And so I tried to take my experiences from racing, because it’s a really strong parallel but Hello, I’ll read a book about Andrew Jackson in a battle in New Orleans and be able to pull some of those same sorts of ideas which is I know what your greater good is in training that athlete. And so we try to incorporate that into the gym Allah. Okay,
JAMIE 19:55
That’s great. Yeah. And I think anytime you can connect life with the gym Right, you just have that much more motivation and understanding. And it’s nice to know what you’re working out for. Right? Like, you need to have a purpose. And I will say, you know, you guys, so my wife went to you guys for a cup several years before I ever jumped in, and I’ve got a strength and conditioning background, and I was always like, I’m just gonna design my own workouts, you know, I don’t need to pay anybody for this. And there’s another reason I didn’t come either. And it’s because, you know, I’ve been to a lot of gyms, a lot of instructors, a lot of coaches. And sometimes, you know, with my background, I have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, where I don’t agree with the form or the workout or something like that. And I think, you know, finally I went in and tried you guys, I loved it, it was great. You did a great job with correcting form. And I agreed with the programming and how everything was running. And you know, all of a sudden, it was nice not to have to think of a workout, right? It was nice not to have to design it. You guys did it and did it well. And so, you know, and I’ve joined and I’ve been a member now for a couple years. And you know, I love the workouts, I think they’re fantastic. And I, you know, and I don’t have a hard time keeping my mouth shut, which is great.
JUSTIN 21:03
Dude, I’m so glad you said that. Because I, every time I demonstrate like what we’re going to do, or more importantly, if I see one of my staff members, because I can’t be in their head, right? Like, I think the hardest part about training your staff to execute a program that’s going to your brainchild is, you know, the fifth sixth, seventh eighth layer deep of why we’re doing this, but you you could spend all day training them on a move and never be able to get that deep into why we’re doing it. And so if somebody were to question that, would they be able to defend it? And so even when I’m coaching you, I’ve always been I always look at you and you have this very yet the frickin no hands beard, like super skillet bloated and not crazy emotive when we’re doing the workouts because you know, you got your blinders on, you’re there for you. I’m sitting in my seat for a while. I just felt like I’m Judging You better on it, like don’t mess this up. Like is that the way you should do it? You know, like, should we switch the leg like what you know, like, make sure you know what you’re doing. And so you’ve actually been? You’ve kept you haven’t commented a lot, and I hope it’s gonna do a good job. But
JAMIE 22:19
but we want to tell the other coaches and we’ll keep them on their toes.
JUSTIN 22:23
Because it’s been somewhat intimidating, but in a good way. You mean, you’ve had that effect. So
JAMIE 22:29
yeah. So I want to respect your time, but I know do you have anything else you want to talk about? I know you guys do some mountain biking training, you’re coaching, mountain biking, you’re running races, you’re setting up races, you’re just so involved in that community. What else? Do you want non bikers out there to know whether that be you know, training with you? Or just to know that your podcast?
JUSTIN 22:50
Yeah, so Oh, pull up, pull back one bit. When COVID Hit it, we had to shut it down. That was it. There was a moment in there when I had to figure out if we wanted to find a way to fight through, right. Like, the easiest way to close up shop at any point in time for any business was in those eight weeks, right? Like restaurants, the mom and pop shops at a hardware store in the corner. You know, there’s like a weird yarn store in our neighborhood, right? Like you. This was the moment to get out. And as an owner operator of a business. We don’t all have succession plans, right? Like, if you were to ask, like, what’s the succession plan you went through? I don’t know, like super jacked up right now I got tons of cold brew in the fridge. Like, we keep driving this thing you know. And so when I looked at what the hardships were gonna be with COVID, I thought that if there was a time, I wanted to get out that this would make sense, right? I could do it and move on to maybe another chapter in my life. And our community of people that we have, I don’t see our agenda. Again, everyone feels this way about their business. But I don’t see our gym as a fitness resource. I genuinely see it as an integral part of most of our members’ lives, that place where they’re safe to be who they are, but also a challenge themselves. And I thought about not having that and not providing that role. And it literally just crumbled. The person that I wasn’t emotional with. None of them. I do like that. Like, I couldn’t let this go, right. Like, we couldn’t not be a part of this process of life for all of these people and the people we don’t yet know. With that with COVID came a lot of challenges. And so when we could start back up, our point was let’s satisfy that role then, and now my racing has been canceled nationwide, for the most part, because it’s hard to do group events, right? Like how do you get 500 racers or 1000 racers? And so we heard the call and we started our own race series. So we have my podcast called no ride around. It stands for just that when you want to note my trail, if there’s a really technical feature via like a log or a rock or a drop or something like that, there will oftentimes be a little path that goes around it. And that’s called a ride around. And so the podcast mill ratar O means go send that thing, you know, go straight at that big scary. I don’t know if I can do it as an obstacle and just go over it. Because that’s the way we run. Go straight. And so we created a race series, and we’ll be doing our fourth race here on July 4. They’re all row. They’re not sanctioned, right? There’s no There’s no crew out there telling you which way to go. They’re all GPX courses that you have to download from your computer and we all start together distanced. But we got number plates on our front and we’re racing and we’re literally riding as hard as this. The three hardest rides I’ve had all year have been races that I just made up. And so we started racers that are not right around so you can follow us on any of the socials there. We’ve worked the gym, we let down our guards. I’ve never since 2008, there’s never been a discounted price. There’s never been, for lack of a better word, like a cheap way to try our gym. We don’t do a free session. We don’t have a free week. But during COVID We made it so that all of our sessions cover everything. And so we said hey, do you have 10 bucks come take a class that’s usually 35 bucks. And with that we’ve seen so many new faces come into our doors. And we’ve been able to share like what we do in that we’ve been able to pull new membership that we’ve never had before. So you’re fulfilling our role. I think sometimes a lot of fitness brands they trade like an online program, which is great. And some were really successful at it. I knew we weren’t going to be because it’s visceral our experience. We want to feel your touch and yell at you. Right, Hi Fi via noon, we can do that by bonding through fitness, there’s something as stupid as push ups that can become real because today you did more push ups or today you actually learned how to actually do a push up. And that’s something that we can remember forever. So we want those visceral experiences. Cool, great. Great.
JAMIE 27:07
All right, well, that’s gonna be it for today. All of you out there who are interested even remotely in mountain biking, and want to see somebody who is truly intense at mountain biking and life. Follow no ride around. Look up Justin and eat three. And that’s going to be it for today. Justin, thank you for coming on and telling us about IE three mountain biking, you know you are setting up your races. You got a lot going on, man. So thank you very much. And that’s it. All right. Thanks. Bye.
OUTRODUCTION 27:40
Thank you for listening to the fit and healthy Denver podcast brought to you by kinetic chain Denver physical therapy. If you know anybody that you think would benefit from listening to this podcast, please share it with them. And don’t forget to hit that subscribe button so you can enjoy all the great information we’re bringing you in the next episode.
