well i'm stacey creamer and i'm the host for this segment my guest today is scott berle enter who was recruited as a division one swimmer for college had a detour as an american gladiator we'll hear about that today too and i started racing at a very very early age and i think that that hard wired me for the life i ended up having i think i started racing my st race at six years old how did you get started six it was your idea your parents idea i think it was a different time a much different time than now back then your parents dropped you off at your local swim club at about seven am when it opened and then they came back and pick you up for dinner and that was called the babysitter so you swam all gary besides the practices d and  there was nothing else to do so so how did you then ultimately get into triathlon adding the other two sport is the truth the matter is that when you start competing so young i think there's a burnout and i raced from that age both summer and winters on two different teams until i came out of high school and then i was recruited to go some in college and i never swam one day in college at the university of south carolina and stopped swimming and just became a student and it was it was a totally different experience you know i was d no longer on the water d i was training with a lot more weights go added to body building at a very very high level and that opened up another career for me but i think truly if i didn't take that time off i never would have gone into the sport of triathlon and when i finally left that career and came back to swimming it was the next progression i had a pipeline to run that's so interesting and how did you ever come back to swimming post collegiate so it was a totally different training you know i had to really become a cardio beast and stay away from the weights and basically cannibalizing the muscle that i'd built over eight years to live a career that was  there was just an interview it was it was an audition like any other audition you and when i graduated from university of south carolina i went to los angeles really used my business degree and one thing led to another i got into a  clothing sales which was a big bodybuilding line out there on the west coast and i was just sitting with a friend one day in our house in venice and came on contract for the american gladiators i had always been a very coordinated athlete at many different sports and he said you should go do that and i said yeah that's what i want to be and as turning the screw on me it was one of those things where he said well if you can't do it that's one thing i don't say you could do if you can i said oh the beautiful beautiful go dot com thinking a lot of fun so i was on the show for two years and then i decided that i wanted to come back to the west coast i had had my fill of i mean the east coast i had my fill the west coast and extreme fighting which was to compete group for the u f c which is a mixed martial arts so i was flown all over the country to train with the different types of martial arts and that was that was an incredible experience i mean you really start to was awesome but the more i started to make the more i realized i loved it and i started hanging out with a couple other people and as everything in my life one of my friends said you should do a triathlon so it was another dare and i said ok i'm so i worked on the bike and the run i part of bike the shoes were half a size too small and i figured that doesn't matter right what do you know back then and so i that one went off and i hit that st buoy i was so call off everyone's name and i had friends and family there was my st race and i said you know what i'm going to end this thing right so i take off and i start sprinting and i'm just going all the meanwhile everyone i run said you gotta lose some weight big man and all i could think of w requirement have to be over a certain amount of weight for women it's the athena and for that my st years on the team you're competing as a clydesdale and then when you're at least from my perspective you just that i'm not working anymore i'm going to go age group and i think in the space of a month you lost thirty pounds well that not tell me about that what actually happened this is so it actually was this really progression that happened no different than gaining weight training with weights and really getting bigger and stronger and to eventually have this career as a gladiator but to lose that it is you just become a cardio machine and you really are restricting calories and you're not a lot of fun to be around because you're cranky you're hangry and that is it was over the course of probably four years that i was losing  go now from being the guy who didn't realize that the race had two more miles at the end of the run to coaching and then ultimately starting this amazing track on teams so i think that we got lucky and i think luck always has something to do with success  y a phenomenal market you know you couldn't ask for a more competitive alpha oriented group our athletes are so driven and the coaching staff that i was some of this is really great but it all it all comes from you know the background of if you come from a team sports you really want to be involved in team sports and most athletes are coming off a college career they don't want to end or you're looking for a group for the st time in your life so when i did my st couple years of racing that didn't exist and all of a sudden i had this piffle me and said you know training alone is awful and so let's create a team and so i got together with a couple of my friends and full throttle was really rolls from the top down you know i think that arguably were certainly considered maybe the most prolific performance team in the country we certainly have done a great job in that area but i hang my hat on the social aspect now you know this group is so much fun and it trains together and it laughs together and it lives together and if d there's no arrogance you know they'd be egos are checked at the door st of all the sport if that doesn't check your ego to begin with if you run back about nobody comes up with all three and you quickly learn that you have to learn from the people around you and the you know the elites i think that we carry twenty all americans right now you being one of them and you're always so humble about that but you're probably though the winningest female we've ever had because three people who are also you know kudos to you and your hard work but it's people like yourself that the newbies come aboard and they start to really see wow this is how the all americans the elites hold themselves and and they always show up and they always do their work and when when when the worker goes up on the board the games are over and then it's just a super hard workout and people do what they have to do and then the fun starts again but you know i tell everybody life happens and this has to be fun and the minute it's not fun for you it becomes a nd job it's over you're not going to do it anymore so our job is to really create programming and a race schedule the athletes want to be a part of including the italy trip you know that we're famous for now that we go on everybody and it's just something that we have done i think a really good job building a culture a community you know it's more than a team it's it's  a real great group of people that look forward to training together each and every day i have to agree completely and some of the richest friendships i've developed in the last ten years now have been with people on the team and i know trying to explain to people at work about it because they can never get over that it requires sort of getting up at four thirty in the morning and i say no no you know when you get there it's like a party and the exact you know the party in for a while and then you work hard and then it's party again so i think the social component absolutely i mean for me i don't think i want to be training as hard if it weren't the they were the social aspect of it too for me coming as a runner we're pretty much you know the horn sounds you cover a distance you have to inishmaan the worst that ever happens is you get a stitch in your side and you can write about things traffic just seems fraught with all kinds of potential for snack foods all sorts of things when the some of the things that really years that either you or people on the team without naming names unless you want to have happened that this leave you kind of shaking your head there's so many things a overcast day you know orange or clear goggles you know those things but one of my funniest stories of racing last year in westchester and one of our lead females new to the sport but just a just a natural she she takes off out of the two you want on the bike and she's she's riding in you know it's just it just feels off she's she's not just can't figure out why it feels off and i went off and leeway for that race and i'm coming down the chute for the run but i see her come out of the transition on the bike and i'm taking a double take and i'm thinking this is not happening right now she had the aero helmet on you one more the worst was last year i'm at a race and again coming out of the run coming back from the turn around and i see this guy because the guy the bike is part of the run course and he comes by me and he's still wearing his full sleeve wetsuit he forgot to take the wetsuit on he was so juiced that he got on the bike full wetsuit and was riding the bike in a wetsuit i thought i can't even process how hat is in the summer  place in new jersey and other races went on in connecticut we might have been i think how many years now we had we won new york city as a team fifteen years consecutively i think so with a little a good run sad to not have that sixteen the opportunity will hopefully have it next year but what do you what is your assessment what do you do you have concerns about climate change for our sport what do you think is going to happen should the race have been canceled should we have been ok with that what do you think the future holds st of all i think that our mayor did didn't maybe didn't understand that new york city sets the currents a year in advance and to push it a year probably means that the current switch is completely so if you don't have that current even if you're a lease on or there's a zero percent chance you're selling a mile it's just you can't swim against the current so that was one of those things where it was we're going to have to cancel it or we're going to do it did he make the right call from a safety point probably just because it was one hundred and two degrees and you want all the emergency medical people to be able to help the elderly people who need them around the city and if they're all allocated at that one moment in time for the city try that's probably not the right call from a selfish standpoint i thought that the new jersey state did a much better job  just shortening the course isn't there i mean this swim at the new york city race is relevant when you're doing a mile swim in twelve minutes pretty much you know you it's going to be over like that you need to shorten that but what they could have done is they could have made that a limb pick distance no different than new jersey a sprint you know they could have done it just a quick out and back twelve mile or on the bike and then run people five k into the park and shut it down would've been done in half the time probably before the real he came you know later that day it was one hundred and two but everything's based on later in the day you know in the morning wasn't comfortable it was probably between eighty five and i'd be so given that so many people have that on their bucket list and you know we alone forty people people come in from ou tside to do it it's a lot of expense hotels you know car rentals flying your bike you flying and family and friends coming in you can't make that up and so it's tough yeah i think it's really a shame and i if they'd done thing anyway so they could have won it but it's a shame and that gives everybody the chance to at least experience what that new york city crowd is like and what it feels like to ride on the west side highway closed down i mean you know to race all over the country get to race in these big cities are closed down and that's a really crazy fun experience it really is great actually reminds me of near the marathon because that the other time when i feel like they close the streets for me i just feel so amazing i have been told that there is a story behind the watch you were wearing that made  a team national championship and we don't have a big team but we had a really high caliber athlete group of that group and so we flew out to las vegas and seven to try to win our st team national championship and i said to myself you know i don't have a nice watch and we're actually i said i'm going to buy a nice watch and i'm going to have an engraved team national champions if we do that and i'm going to do it every year we went right that this is what i if you don't do something like that i think i think it's lost you know there's a reason the pro sports teams hang their world championship banners it's for the fan base is for the athletes it's for the players it's for everyone to be able to look back and remember because i think if you life always just moving forward and never look back to realize what you've accomplished it's a big loss because you put all this time in and you know we've created a culture that the new people that come in now i mean you see so many new faces and you're these people looking around and they're thinking wow i mean this is this is incredible to be a part of this you know people want to be a part of that and you know we love the competition we think it's great there are so many great try teams out there so many great coaches and what we want to do is just remind our athletes of where we came from who we are now and make sure in fact this past weekend after the nationals were back in the chelsea piers and inside the trophy case which again if you just passed something on a regular basis you look at it it just becomes a part of the furniture and so i looked at it i thought to myself oh my god ok you know what this isn't happening anymore so i pulled out a couple different team pictures over four  seven just so that the young people could get it and lo and behold you are in some of the coaches they st started as athletes or house pictures and those are from fifteen years ago so these guys you know i'm saying to the athletes that and going towards finishing a lap if i go like this i can see the batters sometimes on my stroke and yeah you know we did that you know it's a great it is a great reminder i really appreciate seeing all the time and i think it's important because people want to be a part of something that is really going to elevate them to the goals that they're trying to to get to i mean it's a big commitment you know there you get it st of all you're trying to balance work and family and then a social life and then add to it i have all these goals that i want to try to reach in this sport that i'm either brand new to or i am not brand new to it but now i want to be a top age group or and so you know this is this is something that really has to be there for them and they see that there's a track record and they make that choice and then we provide the environment that gets in there yeah you certainly do and that leads to my next question was going to be about certain case studies as one person i can think of in particular won't pass them by name but when he st showed up life and really had decided he wanted to transform himself through traffic on you still with the team now you must have stories like that like it's not all about really tippy top elite people taking that extra two percent i mean what are some of the people that you're most heartened by th great example and a great friends you know on day one and i'm sure he wouldn't care if i shared a story with him but he showed up on the track is a track workout it's a five day week program and it's a big group you know when you see four thousand and fifty people training together that's a that's a every single day i believe that the total he lost was somewhere around fifty pounds which is a totally different human being any thought healthy and strong and he had a quick great year and those are the types of stories that we really thrive on i mean listen everybody starts somewhere you're a beginner in something sometime and that was his moment in time and those stories are the stories that you tell people when they arrive and then they they get it absolutely cause i think everyone's a little bit intimidated i know early on i think my st year at the team i have to post a picture of the pool where i had gotten there at like whatever five hundred and forty five dollars and one dollar of my friends said i feel like i'm seeing a picture of the bat cave where all the magic happens and i think people are maybe a little bit in awe of the team because of our success but it's important to know that really the entry points for many many people is not super elite it's really can be pretty basic and people who really are just starting the sport even and who need more guidance without a doubt you know in the beginning you know everything is hard you know we st started in two thousand and three before we really found our groove and the success that we had now you're trying to find sponsors because to put it team together and then uniforms and everything that goes with know it's a difficult part of the equation that people probably don't take into account and now after all the success we've been lucky enough to partner with arguably the best partners on the entire planet i mean we signed a long term deal with  these are partners of ours that they really allow the athletes to get access at a much bigger discount because they're a part of this program and i mean it's an expensive sport right you know that yeah not like running where it's a pair of running shoes and shorts and let's just go run you know this is you know a garmin a couple pairs a bike shoes your uniform is cycling on your farm helmets glasses air all helmet right that's different than a regular helmet maybe a road bike had a time child bike if you're able to have it so all of these things  they had up and so one of the things that we did i think unlike most people is that we decided listen we're going to make access to the athletes not only on the stuff from the companies were sponsored with but let's make travel easier so we got our st van our st trailer right now we have two vans and three trailers and and the athletes literally get to load their bikes into these trailers in their own stall and then they walk away and then they just fly to the race and on the other side the trailer is there the bike is there the stuff is there and it starts to make this very difficult you know time consuming hard process easy it amen and someone who is not very mechanical i super appreciate load and bike unload when i can just gift you my bike and it gets to south never very safely and also the discounts with our sponsors is just fantastic though i always joke there are amateur athletes are professional athletes but there needs to be a word for athletes who hemorrhage money on behalf of their sport without any hope of ever getting any remuneration so any got a discount all the expensive gear is greatly greatly appreciated i guess we have time i'd love to hear more about the annual trip to we decided i guess at some point that let's do some outside the country training you know like the big pro cycling teams and it just worked out that you know because he's a part of call of you know we would go to italy and i think that i have now done a dozen so i feel very fortunate to have seen almost all of italy on a bike with great friends it's just it's a really great thing and we do that every may and we use it as just to really build lots of miles on your legs and then you come back after riding these mountains and then you come to ride what you thought were hills here at all of a sudden it's not so hard i mean there's a there's that lag of a week d we're all beat up but after that you just feel super strong and it's also it's nice to get away and it's just a great cause everything's plan you just have to get on the plane sometimes i'm only appreciating where we're going when i'm on the plane reading the itinerary and like oh we're doing that many miles six myself i right there twenty nine to be able to train in the nicest complex in the country year round is phenomenal you know because otherwise you would kill yourself but to be able to finally break out  doors and be able to go to italy and race in south beach in april i mean we're not like the southern teams or the california teams that you roll out of your driveway you're you know the sun yeah we do a lot of pain cave work which is deep in the winter away you cave in the right where you don't want to get up because it's cold out and it's terrible but you know lucky enough we have we have partners again that have the same shared vision of performance and it makes all the difference yeah yeah and showing up for the team is half the thing we have the time i'll show up for my friend dan he'll show up for me meanwhile we neither one of us wanted to go how we could sort of had a deal that we were going to run together after the swimmers i'm in to your point that's exactly that's that's that's what this team is about to raise the bar when you know he would hit the alarm knowing that a you have to be with these people because if you don't you hear the rest of the day that they were there you were nobody wants to hear that and the next day and the next day and to just raise each other's bar right i mean you're not always going to have your a game but someone in that group is going to have their a game and then everyone elevates to that  game so all of a sudden you start to put together one hundred and two thousand and forty workouts that are really great quality workouts you're different person it really is a two strength in numbers there really is definitely part of the appeal i love that well i want to thank my guests scott and also manhattan neighborhood network and of course wolf sanchez this is really been fine interviewing my coach and thank you for t to fix d c for having me here for humility and ability to race always making it fun it was really me hanging with her coaching her and being here today a lot of fun i want to take the time to  the coaching staff and the full throttle team all the athletes without your hard work and dedication this just wouldn't be the calling of my passion it really is i mean you guys may come to work every single day complete pleasure i think chelsea piers fitness for providing and sharing a shared vision of formants in a row bikes broke a project called a view without all you guys around us and making sure that we have the best products and everything we need the performance that we have would not be where they are so i want to thank you all to it again and i got to run