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Infiltrating a Fitness Cult (w/Alix Best)

Written by David Tao
Last updated on November 11th, 2024

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Today I’m talking Swolverine co-founder Alix Best. She has a varied and deep background in fitness, and we cover a lot of topics in this podcast, including what it’s like to infiltrate what basically amounts to a “fitness cult” — you know, the EARLY days of CrossFit. (I’m joking, just sort of.) We also talk about what it’s like to be a woman founder in the male-dominated supplement industry and broader fitness industry. Alix is a straight shooter, and she doesn’t hold much back. Some of her stories from the trenches about not being taken seriously just because she’s a woman were eye-opening for me. They changed my perspective on how much work still needs to be done in this industry so that people are given credit based on merit. I hope you get as much from this podcast as I did!

Alix Best on the BarBend Podcast

In this episode of The BarBend Podcast, David Thomas Tao and Alix Best discuss: 

  • Starting off as a four-sport varsity athlete (2:15)
  • Cutting your teeth in the supplement industry that is anything but transparent sometimes (4:30)
  • Finding their place in the CrossFit community (8:00)
  • That first time doing “Fran” (11:00)
  • Is there an “ideal” body for CrossFit? (15:00)
  • The feeling of “belonging” in sports and fitness communities (19:00)
  • Do women need to “do more” to prove themselves in fitness? (22:00)
  • How fitness consumers are getting smarter (25:00)

Relevant links and further reading

Transcription

“What’s it like being a female, what’s it like doing business as a female?” I’m like, “It’s just doing business. It’s being competitive and bringing something to the table that someone hasn’t done yet.” That’s the same kind of feeling I get in CrossFit, that you belong.

David TaoDavid Tao

Welcome to the “BarBend Podcast,” where we talk to the smartest coaches, athletes, and minds from around the world of strength. I’m your host, David Thomas Tao, and this podcast is presented by barbends.com

 

Today I’m talking to Swolverine co-founder Alix Best. She has an interesting background in fitness and we talked about a lot of topics in this episode, including what it’s like to infiltrate, well, basically a fitness cult, I mean, what else is CrossFit? I’m joking, just sort of.

 

We also talked about what it’s like to be a woman in the extraordinary male-dominated, supplement industry and broader fitness industry. Alix is a real straight shooter. She doesn’t hold anything back. Some of her stories from the trenches about not being taken seriously or being overlooked just because she’s a woman.

 

It was eye-opening for me, and it really changed my perspective on how much work is left to be done in this industry to make it more inclusive, open, and based on merit, not just what you look like or your background. I hope you get as much out of this episode, as I did. Please enjoy. Alix, I appreciate you taking the time to join me.

 

Before we started recording, we were talking about how old I was in the fitness industry and how ancient I was, but we’re going to talk about you for this podcast. I was mentioning events I went to over a decade ago and people are like, “Oh, it was around then?”

 

We’re going to talk about you. Tell us a little bit about your journey to get to where you are today in the fitness industry.

Super excited. Loaded question.

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s super loaded like a baked potato. That question has…

Overdone. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

I told people I’m going to ask that question and they get like oh, that’s fine. Then right before we start recording, they’re like, wait a minute, that’s actually really hard, but too late, go for it.

I have always been an athlete. I’m always that weird kid who would do push-up competitions at Thanksgiving. It’s cool challenge people to race and do things like that. I was [inaudible 00:45] athlete in high school. Then got into college and just did the college thing, dropped out of sports, and just lifted. I was pretty fortunate.

David TaoDavid Tao

Sorry. Did you go to college with the intention of playing one or more of those sports or no?

I did. I came from a family who had never been to school before though and I was friends with a lot of people who ended up at D1s. I did have a couple of D1 offers.

David TaoDavid Tao

In which sport?

Basketball. It wasn’t huge.

 

Just one thing after another didn’t work. I only applied to one school for academics and ended up being the University of Nevada, so I ended up going there. I’m here in Reno, Nevada and we live here in Lake Tahoe Basin.

 

I grew up skiing. I grew up going to the gym. I got introduced to lifting really early. I think that’s something that’s really uncommon. A lot of people are like, “Why do you have so much muscle?” or, “How are you so defined?” It’s I’ve been lifting weights since.

 

I would lift weights with my mom in the garage in eighth grade/sixth grade. She’d be like, “Try this one. Try that dumbbell.” I’m like, “Why? What does it do?” [laughs]

 

I guess that’s the long approach to where we got it but in college, I just lifted a lot. CrossFit started becoming a thing. I remember dropping in a couple of CrossFit classes and be like, “I’m not going to do this.” Everyone’s like, “You’d be so good at it.”

 

In hindsight, I wish I did end up starting CrossFit 10, 12 years ago, or whatever now, but it didn’t. That’s OK. It’s never too late to start something so, yeah. Then, I graduated school. I have a science degree, always was interested in being like PA or sports therapy. Then towards the end of it, I was like, “OK. I’m going to become a sports psychologist.”

 

Athletes, athletics, all of that has always been a really, really big interest, but it was like, how do I fit into that? How do I fit into that world? How do I fit into that model? OK, I don’t want to be a doctor, not smart enough for that. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

Whoa, whoa, whoa!

 

Self-deprecating humor comes later in the podcast, Alix.

I know.

David TaoDavid Tao

This is the first few minutes.

laughs] I know. Sorry, guys. I have a pretty messed-up sense of humor. [laughs] No, I’m just kidding. We’ll get to that next but, yeah.

 

From there, I had just graduated college and that’s when I met my business partner. At the time, he really wanted to start a supplement company. He had been training in a fitness industry, doing bodybuilding and that sort of thing.

 

I had that sciencey background and just this craving for sports that wasn’t getting satisfied. That competitive spirit. Just something was missing and it was this huge void. We got to talking and I had taken a ton of supplements. I remember spending 150, 200, 250 dollars at the supplement store. My mom being like, “What the fuck are you doing?

 

Don’t put that on my credit card.” I’m like, “OK, sorry. I’m just trying to get jacked.” She’s like, “No, you don’t need to.”

David TaoDavid Tao

The gains, mom. The gains, you don’t understand.

[laughs] I know.

David TaoDavid Tao

It seems like she did understand. She’s also a lifter.

[laughs] She’s like, “Just eat real food. You know how to do that?” I’m like, “Oh, yeah, but supplements, this protein powder, peanut butter,” anyways. We started talking about starting a supplement company.

 

From there it was like, “How do we make this a reality,” because there’s a bunch of garbage out there. At the time, when we started it, a couple of months later, I started having these major issues with supplements and with my kidneys and weight gain.

 

All this weird stuff happened as we’re starting this company. At the time, I was 23. We started the company when I was 24. I’m a baby in this.

 

I started realizing with an athlete focus, a performance focus, there had to have been something better out there for athletes to choose to get to that next level and to stay injury free and not blow out their MCLs and not get these breakdowns in their joints.

 

It didn’t seem there was that available in the industry. It was like, “Let’s jump off of a cliff and build a plane on the way down.” That’s how we started it. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

I’ve never heard that phrase before. I’m totally stealing that.

[laughs] OK, do it.

David TaoDavid Tao

That’s outstanding. I love that.

[laughs] It’s terrifying. [laughs] It’s a good way to explain it but it is the epitome of, we had a couple of pillars that we built the company off of that we still have as our values today. That was the birth into the fitness industry for me.

 

It was like, “I don’t know what the Kool-Aid is but I’m going to pour it all over myself and figure it out and see what it tastes like later.” Here we are completely sopping wet in the fitness industry. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

You extended the analogy. I absolutely love it. When you started the company, who were you targeting? Who was your ideal customer? Because I think that says a lot about where you go in the communities that you play in later on?

Totally. Being in the Reno-Tahoe Basin, we’re surrounded by mountain bikers, we’re surrounded by climbers, hikers, skiers, endurance athletes. We have enduro racing in the desert with dirt bikes and things like that.

 

Originally, we were like, “OK, that’s our community that’s near us.” Supplements as everyone knows, is what we call in business the red ocean. It’s an absolute disaster to start a company in a red ocean because you’re nobody, you’re nothing. You’re going against all these people and companies that are already established. It’s very, very difficult.

 

What we took from that was realizing very quickly that that is not the consumer we wanted to target, but we wanted to target endurance athletes. Then we said, “We’re not endurance athletes, but we’re strength athletes,” and then it was like, “Duh, CrossFit.”

 

That was my introduction to CrossFit. It’s like, “How do you be a strength athlete and an endurance athlete in the same two minutes?” That’s where supplements come into play and that’s where nutrition comes into play. Where we got to recognize that even though it was a red ocean for the company, it’s more so how can we not be average?

 

How are we not that average gym goer at first with the application of the supplements and how do we say, we want to help people live every day at their highest human potential? Twofold in your question, while the CrossFit community and the endurance and strength athletes clung to us, we realized that we had to step it up and serve them.

 

It wasn’t exactly one of those things where we’re like, “Yes, we see A and we’re going to get A.” It was like, “We have this value system and how does this apply.”

 

Then all of a sudden, we have this integrity or this promise to deliver to the people who take our products, who are familiar with our brand, or even with ourselves, that we had to uphold and take to the next level so that it wasn’t just another average supplement company taking up space.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

Got it. I understand. This is your real formal entry into the CrossFit community. This is not doing the occasional drop-in class. You’re like, “OK, I really need to be in this community and of this community.” Tell us how that goes. Do you walk into your gym and you’re like, “Sign me up for as long as you can?” How does that go?

[laughs] You’re pretty spot on. [laughs] At the time, we were like, “We got to start CrossFit.” Literally, we found out a gym and it was called Black Iron and it was here in Reno. I don’t know if anyone remembers Black Iron, formerly, now known as Black Iron Nutrition.

 

The gym’s not there anymore but ran by Krissy Cagney. We walked into the gym and I see Kelsey Kiel, I see Quiana Welch. I see a good other handfuls of very, very competitive successful CrossFit athletes who were newer or Olympic lifters, and looked around.

 

I have no idea who they were. They were people at the gym that had bigger delts than the other people that went to the gym. I was like, “Wow…”

David TaoDavid Tao

You’re just looking at the trap line, like traps the shoulders, and you’re like, “That’s how I’m going to judge.” OK.

Right? Yeah. They got that V-taper going on and I’m like, “OK, they work out a lot.” I was like, “What’s this CrossFit stuff?” That was the birth into the actual gym scene. It was very fortunate and a unique situation to be able to walk into a high-performance gym like that and to be really welcomed as just myself.

 

They didn’t look down on me. They didn’t say like, “Oh, well, you’re just beginning” or, “You’re this” or, “You have this company” or, “You’re trying to do this thing.” We all just went in there and I think Kelsey mentioned to me. She’s like, “Hey, you want to do Fran with me?” I was like, “Yeah, totally. Tuesday at…”

David TaoDavid Tao

Always say no. All folks, if you’re listening and if that were to happen to you and someone comes up to you and like, “Do you want to do Fran?” The more excited they seem, the faster you run away. That’s actually the workout. The workout is running away from it.

[laughs] Yeah, pretty much any benchmark right back at the door. No. No, we’re up for the challenge. We’re going positive dialogue here. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

Yeah. This is like a therapy session all over again.

You’re going to die. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

How does that go? How does that first Fran go?

Obviously, I didn’t do too much. It was great because all she said was, “It’s not about what you do, but it’s about how you do it.” You know what I mean? I think I had to ask how to do the workout probably six times. She finally wrote it on a whiteboard and was like stop asking.

 

When she said it’s about how you do it, it really struck a chord with me because it was like how you do anything is how you do everything. I mean that’s a very cliché thing but it’s really true and I think CrossFit, and just lifting in general and something that we recognize as the psychological growth as an athlete or a fitness person, it’s rep by rep and quality over quantity.

 

Yeah, obviously, I got my ass handed to me. I’ve always been a pretty skinny person. There’s one time in my life I got way out of control [laughs] and then reined it back in. It was this is hard but it fed that competitive spirit that was missing, we talked about it a couple of minutes ago, was that void all the sudden had light in it.

 

It wasn’t a shadow. It was just this, “Whoa, what is this? Can I have some more?” It’s a pretty unique thing.

 

I think anyone who’s done CrossFit or just gone into the gym for the first time or found fitness at a different point in their life, where it didn’t previously exist, it feeds our primal spirit in a lot of different ways that I don’t think there’s a lot of things in life that do that, especially in a developed society.

 

I don’t know. In a long-winded way of answering that, I got my ass kicked, I had a blast, [laughs] and it’s just been there ever since.

David TaoDavid Tao

OK, next question. What surprised you most about the CrossFit community? This could be a positive. It could be a negative. Not trying to get you in trouble here.

 

With every community, there are ups and downs, you’re right. I’m curious as to your thoughts.

[laughs] Yeah. When I got to go to that gym, I actually went to Black Iron for about two months and then we moved everything to Washington State from Nevada. I got integrated in the community, and then I left before I really feel like really getting into it, which was extremely unfortunate, but it was a unique thing that I was able to take somewhere else.

 

After moving a couple of times thereafter, I think one of the things that surprised me was the being welcomed into a gym in CrossFit is pretty synonymous across the community. It’s a very positive, optimistic way of looking at it. You can pretty much fit in anywhere, but the thing that surprised me also was you’re not going to fit in everywhere.

 

That’s not necessarily a bad thing because there’s communities that you have to explore so that you can find your individual community. If you don’t find it right away, then you can find it at another box. It’s twofold. It’s a positive and a negative, but it’s recognizing that you’re not stuck.

 

I think another thing that surprised me too is also, I went to the games pretty quickly thereafter in 2017, and it was like…

David TaoDavid Tao

As a spectator or an athlete?

As a spectator, not as an athlete. No.

David TaoDavid Tao

It’s important because they’re very different experiences.

[laughs] Totally. I think the one thing that always surprised me is how much smaller CrossFitters are in person.

David TaoDavid Tao

[laughs] I’m sorry, I shouldn’t chortle, but I just chortled.

[laughs] You definitely chortled.

David TaoDavid Tao

I’m glad we’re not releasing the video because I had a very ugly chortle.

You chortled all over that. [laughs] It’s true, though. I sit about 5’8. Right now, I’m sitting at 163, 165. I would think I’m a bigger person but in CrossFit, I remember seeing Brooke Ence for the first time going and spectating in the 2017 games. She’s like a foot smaller than me. We’re looking at each other and then, I’m like, “Stop staring at her.” [laughs] Yep, she’s shorter than you. It’s OK.

David TaoDavid Tao

I like how you found a way to make that weird.

 

That’s what I really like about that.

[laughs] I’m really good at making things awkward.

David TaoDavid Tao

[laughs] That’s why I insisted this could not be an in-person interview. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.

[laughs] I’m not going to be there, I swear.

David TaoDavid Tao

You’re like, I don’t want to become…OK. It’s interesting hearing your perspective on that because on the men’s side, I’ve seen that. There are very few elite-level CrossFitters on the men’s side who I’ve met in person who I’m not much bigger than. I’m not that big. Whip my hair, I’m six feet tall.

 

On a really good day, some big up.

And very short.

David TaoDavid Tao

Yeah. It’s always interesting hearing the perspective for the women’s competitor because I don’t really have a scale there. You know what I mean? I don’t really know how. I’m not a woman and I don’t know what that feels like…

 

…so I don’t have a good scale for that. It’s interesting, I think CrossFitters, I thought they were training to getting a little bigger and then Matt Fraser came along and he is not a huge person.

No.

David TaoDavid Tao

He was the strongest fittest guy out there all the time.

A genetic anomaly. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

Yeah. He somehow won all the strength events when he weighed 15 pounds less than a lot of the other guys. It happens, I guess.

 

I got us off track there. OK. We’re talking about surprising things in the CrossFit community.

[laughs] It’s OK. [laughs] The average CrossFitter is probably like 5’6. [laughs] No, I don’t actually know that. That’s total bullshit. That’s a very made-up thing.

 

David TaoDavid Tao

We have articles on BarBend where we’ve tracked average height, weight, age of CrossFitters across divisions. The only thing that’s gotten more true over time is that the average age has dropped significantly for elite-level CrossFitters because people are getting into it when they’re younger, especially on the women’s side.

 

Totally.

David TaoDavid Tao

You have Podium finishers who are 17, 18 years old. On the men’s and women’s side, people have gotten younger. Athletes have gotten younger. That’s pretty much the main trend we see these days.

To capitalize on that, too, being an athlete when I was younger and have made my mishaps with why I didn’t play in college and things like that, CrossFit opens the door for younger women and younger female athletes to feel like an equal or to feel competitive, or at something that they can continue that is going to be after college or during college that doesn’t exactly take a ton of money.

 

You don’t need a D1 to be recognized. I don’t know how to necessarily word that, but I think it gives a sense of hope and belonging in a sport that traditional sports have not been able to accomplish, even since Title IX started.

 

When Title IX went in, there was some amazing women who have fought for that and people have fought across the years. It’s a given the moment you sign up for CrossFit. You don’t have to feel lesser than. People will argue it and take this to next level, and we can get out of this real quick.

 

Men’s and women’s bars, I don’t know. It’s never even something I’ve thought about. It’s just like showing up and sweating and shared suffering. It doesn’t really matter what gender you are, doesn’t really matter what happens next.

 

A weird thing to do I guess was like, I’ve been asked too, how do you feel being a female business owner in the supplement space or in the fitness space? It’s not something you see very often.

 

I can’t even tell you…I probably could tell you like five but at least specifically in the supplement industry that I have connections with, I don’t really know five female business owners in the supplement industry. You know what I mean? There’s plenty of them but in my circle. We’ll say well, what’s it like doing business as a female? I’m like, it’s just doing business.

 

It’s being competitive and bringing something to the table that someone hasn’t done yet. That’s the same kind of feeling I get in CrossFit that you belong and that you can. It’s not like, oh hey guess what, once you get to college. Nobody cares about your sport and that’s the ceiling and that’s it. You know what I mean?

 

Like, cool, you got your degree paid for, and you played softball, and 10 people came to your games. It’s a pretty cool thing to be in the community and be supported. I think it’s a nice thing that we’re seeing with social media and other sports like the NPC or IFBB. There’s this, women are on the bench is just as much as men.

 

It’s not just for legs. We’re out there pushing chest day, back day, shoulder day. It’s not just full of the dumbbells or for-the-boys-type thing.

David TaoDavid Tao

You preempted my next two questions. First, get out of my head, stop making it out.

 

No, no, I appreciate that. Do you want to dig into that a little bit more? I do want to just give a quick note to say you bring it up a more level playing field in competitive CrossFit compared to more traditional sports.

 

Look, no organization is perfect. We’ve had a lot of guests on this podcast who criticize things from all over your sporting bodies including CrossFit. What I will say is, from the first iteration of the CrossFit games through to now, the compensation on the women’s side and the men’s side has been equal.

Yeah, it has been equal.

David TaoDavid Tao

If you win the CrossFit Games in the men’s division or you win the CrossFit games in the women’s division, it’s always been the same amount of money. Now there are different prize bonuses if you win more events you get bonus kicker, so it never actually like quite works out.

 

Strangely, the person who…not strangely but interestingly the person who generally at least the last two years has made the most money at the CrossFit games is a woman, is Tia-Clair Toomey. She’s not competing this year.

 

It was recently announced because she’s pregnant, but I thought that was really interesting and that’s a point that I think is easy to forget when it comes to competitive CrossFit. That since 2007, as far as money goes, how much you can win, that’s not factoring in sponsor payments or anything like that, just how much money you can win. It’s the same and it always has been.

Yeah. Totally.

David TaoDavid Tao

I am curious. You preempted my next question, which was talking about being a woman business owner in the supplement space. You also preempted my next point, which is that you are the minority in the space. There are a lot more men who own and run supplement companies, who work in that space than women.

 

Has there ever been a situation and feel free to be as specific or nonspecific as you’d like, where you felt like you have to go further to prove your knowledge of the space and the space than maybe a male counterpart might have to?

That’s a good question. There’s a couple of things that have worked in my favor that I’ll start with is having the name Alix. It’s short for Alexandria. I grew up as Alley. A lot of people assume with names what genders are. Kind of behind a computer, it’s like, “I’m Alix. You know what I mean?” They’re like, “OK, could go either way.” That eliminates some things.

 

I do remember when we first started and it still happens but like, will be at an event and will be vendoring. I have a booth or sponsoring competition or something and you talk to some people and you can tell…my business partner is a man.

 

We do have a woman-owned for-myself business. Wishful Brain is a woman-owned operated, but you can tell what people gravitate towards more when you’re talking to them.

 

We have the same level of knowledge on our products. We have the same level of knowledge on what the benefits are, what amino acids are, and collagen, and all this kind of stuff. Why it works, the efficacies. Some people tend to gravitate more towards a male or trust more of a female.

 

Rather than looking at it as an obstacle that gets in your way, it’s more like let it be the way. Where I’ll be like, “Actually, Walter, why don’t you talk to Jim a little bit more about amino acids while I go get his taster?”

 

In my mind he doesn’t give a shit about anything that I’m saying because it feels like it’s coming from a woman. You know what I mean? The moment, though, he starts talking to Walter, it’s like, “Oh, yeah, man. Totally, totally, yeah.” I’m like, “OK, next.”

David TaoDavid Tao

 

That’s a great impression of every conversation at supplement conventions by the way. That’s a great impression.

[laughs] They’re like, “For real, Alix Best, you did really good.” Anyways. [laughs] I would say probably that’s the only time it’s gotten that way. I have had some people be like, “Yeah, but do you own it? Do you do anything? Do you do what you say you do with the company?”

 

I had that a couple of times and that’s pretty shitty. Then I’m just like, “Yeah. I do.” You assert yourself. You don’t look at it as something to do with you, that it’s more so that projection of somebody else’s insecurities because you’re challenging their belief system and you’re challenging their value system.

David TaoDavid Tao

Alix, are you telling me that there are people who are insecure in the fitness industry? I’ve never heard. This is my sarcastic face. I need to be clear I’m being sarcastic. I can’t believe that. People in this industry, they don’t overcompensate for anything. What are you talking about?

I know. [laughs] It’s like taking the lifted trucks 12 times too far. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

ou have some good metaphors and analogies. I need to take better notes here. I’m going to steal some of these but I’m going to have to give credit because I was like, “That joke came from a woman. That’s a woman known humor.”

 

That wasn’t very, very funny. Forget I said that. Anyway.

 

[laughs] It’s all right.

David TaoDavid Tao

What do you think has changed for the better if anything, about the supplement space since you’ve been involved? It could be due to your involvement, it could be separate from your involvement. Let’s talk about a positive trend in the space.

People ask questions about what they’re taking. It’s not as much. If we’re going to go the positive optimistic route, people ask questions. They say, “What is this going to do? Why should I take it?”

 

What used to happen and myself included, especially before I got into the industry and before we started the company was, I remember going in a complete nutrition or GNC and eating up whatever that salesperson wanted to sell me.

 

Granted one of those people ends up being one of my good friends still. I’m like, “Man, you made a lot of money off of me because I didn’t know shit.” I wasn’t willing to ask questions. One of the big things that I feel like we do with our company is we produce a lot of content so that…

 

We want our consumer to understand what they’re going to put in their body, what it’s going to do, and what to look for when they do. Ultimately, our responsibility to our customer is that they’re physically putting something in their body.

 

It’s not like, “I wear this T-shirt. It might make me itchy because I’m allergic to cotton but I’m going to risk it today.”

 

No, these are people’s organs, these are people’s performances, and what they’re choosing to do. Before anyone chooses to spend their money, we want them to be informed and I feel like that’s how we in our own communities have been able to produce that content.

 

You guys produce a ton of amazing content too and that’s why we align as companies, is because is, it’s not opinion-based, it’s very factual, and it’s very like, “Here’s the evidence to decide what you’re going to do and why.”

 

That’s good. Especially in the CrossFit space, it started out and you maybe can remember this. People used to be so against supplements. It was like paleo. It was like, “No, it has to come out of the ground. I’m going to eat dirt,” not really. I know. [laughs]

David TaoDavid Tao

There’s some hardliners, let me tell you.

[laughs] There were. When we got into the industry, I do remember a lot of CrossFitters being like, “I don’t believe in supplements. Supplements don’t exist in my mind.” It was like, “How can we rewire that so that you can understand that there is a place and time for supplements, but there is also a place and time for food.”

 

That’s why we take a very food-first approach. That’s another option or thing where the supplement industry has gotten better to where it is food first. It’s not as much of just wild who knows what’s going in it type cross-contamination stuff.

 

If I were to take a non-optimistic approach with that, I also think there’s people who don’t give two shits about what they put in their product, and who they’re selling it to and why.

 

They’re very, very big companies in our space and other spaces that do not care, and who are willing to throw all those marketing dollars and put those athletes as the face of their company to just pursue that financials spend.

 

I’d like to think that the CrossFit Community is pretty niche in that sense where we’ve watched a lot of companies try to come in and do that in our space specifically, and they haven’t lasted. That’s not the integrity of CrossFit.

 

With drug testing, water, and things like that, people are starting to notice like, “I should give a shit what I put in my body.” Especially at the higher athletic level, that’s a really good thing, too.

David TaoDavid Tao

Alix, where is the best place for people to follow along with you personally or at the company level moving forward?

Totally. Instagram’s pretty easy. I’m a little slow to the TikTok game, so maybe follow me [laughs] on Instagram. My handle is A-Y-E-A-L-I-X, @ayealix. So sign on my DM, say hey.

 

Swolverine is pretty much our handle on everything, @swolverine, S-W-O-L-V-E-R-I-N-E. You can also always email us and say what’s up or hop on the live chat on the website. We would love to hear from you guys.

David TaoDavid Tao

Excellent, thank you so much. We’re recording this on a Friday, so have a great weekend, but these podcasts always come out on Mondays. Forget I said that, folks. Just ignore that.

 

[laughs] Happy Monday, everyone.

About David Tao

BarBend's Co-Founder and CEO, David is a veteran of the health & fitness industry, with nearly a decade of experience building and running editorial teams in the space. He also serves as a color commentator for both National and International weightlifting competitions, many through USA Weightlifting.

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