From Childhood Addiction To Becoming The Fittest On Earth - Michael Cazayoux - #008

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Hi, friends. Today, I am sitting down with Michael Cazayoux, who is the CEO and founder of Brute Strength Training and 2-Times CrossFit Games team champion. He is also the man behind Brooke Ence, Jacob Heppner, Cara Webb and the winning team from last year's CrossFit Games, the Wasatch Brutes. What makes his story so compelling is the fact that he does not come from what you would consider to be the typical perfect environment for an elite athlete or a fantastic businessman. He's an ex drug and alcohol addict. He's been to rehab a number of times. It is apparent that he has suffered with some really dark places in his life, and yet he's managed to come out the other side and be this incredibly well balanced, very altruistic, very shrewd, intelligent and compassionate guy who also has an unbelievable capacity as an athlete and as a coach. It's definitely one of the best conversations that I've had. I found it incredibly empowering. A lot of the conversation isn't about sport. It's to do with his approach for how to mentally overcome obstacles within your life. He's been to a stage where he was smoking heroin and injecting cocaine, which I didn't even know that you could do. And out of the other side of that, he's got this fantastic life where he's flourishing and he's doing something that he really cares about and is well regarded within his field. It was a wonderful chat. And I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to sit down with him. So that's enough for intros. Here he is, the man himself, Mr. Michael Cazayoux.
So, Mr. Michael Cazayoux, welcome to Modern Wisdom.

**Michael Cazayoux** (2:09)
Thanks for having me, brother, I'm excited.

**Chris Williamson** (2:11)
Yeah, me too, man, me too. So, CEO of Brute Strength, 2-Times CrossFit Games winner, and all around good guy, how are you doing today?

**Michael Cazayoux** (2:19)
Doing great, man. Other than the fact that my water got shut off, they sent me like three warnings, but I thought it was all spam, so I just threw them away, and today they shut it off. And my wife's family is in town, so we're having to use the bathroom and stuff.

**Chris Williamson** (2:37)
No way. Not at the house.

**Michael Cazayoux** (2:38)
That's pretty funny.

**Chris Williamson** (2:39)
That's funny.

**Michael Cazayoux** (2:40)
It's a great day, though.

**Chris Williamson** (2:41)
Yeah. So I wanted yourself to give a little bit of background.
I think pretty much everybody in the CrossFit community will have heard of brute strength, brute body in one form or another, but I think it would be interesting for you to give us a little bit of a background as to what you did as an athlete when you were younger. I know that you said that you did a lot of sports when you were younger. So if you could try and just give us a little bit of background to begin with, that would be great.

**Michael Cazayoux** (3:08)
Yeah. I grew up playing as many sports as possible. I play football, baseball, soccer, basketball, golf. I did power lifting, weightlifting, and I was above average at all of them naturally, but I never applied myself at all. I loved competing, I loved playing games, and I just didn't see the value and practicing as a kid. So, I never really developed much in my younger years in high school until right before I left for Utah.
I started to see that if I practiced hard, I would get better at hitting, I would get better as an outfielder, and I started to practice really hard, and then I moved away and took a couple of years off of sports. But yeah, I was very active, loved sports, and was just not a very hard worker.

**Chris Williamson** (4:05)
Yeah, which is interesting when you've managed to make it to the elite in a sport as well, I suppose. It's an interesting dichotomy. So, the other day I had Dominic McGregor, who's the COO of Social Chain On, and he was very candid about his problems that he'd had with substances. And I think it's very humbling and quite eye-opening to see stories firsthand of people that are operating at such a high level, but have also had such problems, such serious problems that would break a lot of people's spirits, and yet they're still able to perform at a level that most people would consider to be. They've made it up the hierarchy and they're really successful.
Could you take us through your problems with substances and how that came about, and then sort of where that took you, where you ended up?