CHRIS CROWELL
Philosopher, Cancer Survivor & Brutal Exponent

Hey there Chris, tell us firstly where you are from and what sort of background you have in training whether it be for sport, life or otherwise.
Thanks for the interview Haydn; as far as where I’m from I live in the United States and my background in training goes back to the time I was about 11 or 12 and my dad brought some weights down from a barn on our farm and I started to work with them. I always played baseball and a year or two later I started working with a coach in the off-season and he had me working with weights and doing conditioning routines and I didn’t necessarily see anything wrong with that but I was already starting to realize that I could get much more physical benefit by carrying firewood or rocks or running with a backpack on, etc. I really didn’t get serious about training until about my junior year of high school, which would have been about age 17.

Tell us also about your cancer diagnosis, current treatment and how this has served to evolve your mindset and encourage your personal evolution.
Well, I left for college about the middle of August 2003. About 10 days later my left ribcage started feeling tender. Over the next 6 weeks or so that got progressively worse to the point where I was having trouble sleeping at night and even moving around was difficult. After that things started to get bad. I can remember sleeping 10, 12, 14 hours a day, passing out 3 or 4 times during morning conditioning drills, and not being able to breathe. So I came home to see my parents the weekend before Thanksgiving break and I had my mother schedule me an appointment to see my doctor for the following Tuesday. That was a Friday evening about 4 o’clock. Less than twelve hours later I was in the emergency room listening to the on-call doctor tell me I had a White Blood Cell count of 67,000 (Normal is between 4,000 and 11,000.) and that he couldn’t officially diagnose me without a biopsy but he was all but certain that I had leukemia. I didn’t really know what to think because I was expecting to be told I had appendicitis or something so I was just kinda like, “Gosh dammit.” Anyway I got sent to another hospital that night and I spent 3 nights there having tests run and being very, very high on narcotics. It was a trip man; I was walking around to all the other patient rooms telling them I was an airplane and that they needed to turn their cell phones off so I could take off and then one night I took all the ceiling tiles out of my room and tried sneak out through the vents and too much other stuff to mention, hahaha. So after my stay there I went straight to Vanderbilt University in Nashville, TN where I started chemotherapy. I spent almost a month there in the hospital room where I couldn’t have any visitors or leave the room and that sucked pretty bad; but my mother did stay with me the whole time I was down there so that made things a lot better - thank you Mommy. It was rough man. There were times I was too weak to get out of bed so instead of getting up to piss I just stayed in the bed and did it. Then my kidneys shut down and I had a blood clot and I don’t think I ever slept more than 3 or 4 hours a day. The whole experience.. it’s just not the kind of thing you do for a good time. If I had to do things over again I probably would not have taken chemotherapy but as far along as I was (remember I was sick for 3 months before I ever went to the emergency room.) there really weren’t any other options. Right now I am taking a light load of chemotherapy to prevent any relapse or similar occurrences, which does affect me quite a bit, but not to the point that I can’t live life. On the best days I have maybe 88-90% the oxygen of most people but it’s usually down around 82-85% and sometimes even lower which obviously would affect my work capacity. I’m scheduled to finish all that up this March and I should be back to 100% within 6 or 8 weeks of that.

.When and how did you find out about Brutal Training and what was the attraction to stick
around?
From the time I was old enough to think and talk, everything I thought and said was so far outside the bounds of what people were used to hearing that I was discouraged from thinking and saying what was on my heart so I sort of drifted away from doing that quite a bit and all I remember is I was on the computer one night right after I got out of the hospital (early-mid 2004) and I was looking for training websites and such and somehow or other I found a link to the BT site and I started reading some of the stuff on there and how it really went hand in hand with what I had always believed and I’ve been reading the Ezine ever since but only recently (15-18 months) have I started to consciously use physical training as a way to develop mental stillness.

I know you’ve got some exercise goals you’re working toward at the moment. What are the exercises you’ve emphasized and why have you chosen them?
Well, I try to make my training as mental as possible and by that I mean it’s geared towards breaking down mental barriers first and foremost and for me to throw up a 215 lb bench press would break down quite a few mental barriers due to having my shoulder surgically repaired and the fact that over the years I have been around people who have almost vilified the exercise, which rubbed off on me quite a bit to the point that I didn’t even want to put up big numbers on it. So it’s not so much a 215 lb bench press I’m working towards as it is mastering my mind which is what all of my training is geared towards because personal statistics mean little to nothing when it comes time to actually getting the job done.

This leads me into the awesome quote you sent me by Bruce Lee, "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times." Explain the impact this quote has had on you and how it has evolved your mindset toward your training.
Yeah, that goes back to what I was saying about making training as mental as possible. We perform at our best when we are in a state of no thought. Train the mind to be still and watch and there’s no need to train the body to do anything. Training aimed at developing the body needs thought in order to be successful. However, training aimed at developing the mind requires that there be no thought. So in order to develop our mind we have to eliminate thought, which will inevitably lead to improved physical results.

What’s your favourite and least favourite part about Brutal?
I’ve never been to a BT session so I’m sure there’s quite a bit I’m missing out on but the best thing I see is that there is always something to remind me that the limits and boundaries we create aren’t any more real than the Boogeyman. There are so many douche bags out there who think they know it all so it’s good to see that there are still people out there who aren’t afraid to ask questions and aren’t afraid to admit when they don’t know and aren’t afraid to explore what they don’t know. My least favorite part is that there isn’t much scientific material regarding the mind and reality. There are more parallels between science and philosophy than ever before and I think it’s a very interesting area of study.

What exercise do you love doing and why?
Hahaha, I can’t tell you that man, it’s my top-secret exercise.

What exercise do you hate the most and why?
That varies but one that stays fairly constant is sledgehammer swinging just because I don’t have a very good tire to hit so I always manage to sock myself in the shins with the hammerhead about every third swing when it rebounds. That always makes for a good R-rated monologue.

Tell us about some of the influences you derive inspiration and motivation from.
I try to be motivated by love. There are a thousand different kinds but it’s all real and you can’t go wrong being motivated by it. Call it a philosophical ideal or a hopeless dream created by weak minds but there’s nothing any higher than love. Of course it’s easier said than done, being motivated by love that is, and I’m FAR from perfect. It’s not always easy to put aside anger or hate but when you start to realize that you aren’t punished for feeling that way towards someone but instead you are punished by feeling that way, then it becomes easier to love, which, you aren’t rewarded for doing, but by doing.

What sort of music do you like to train to?
I really don’t listen to music much when I train, maybe some meditation bells or something.

You’ve done 400 burpees in row more than once. Tell us about the pain, suffering and personal evolution involved.They weren’t actually done in a row as in “without stopping” they were just done in the same workout with as little rest as possible. I managed about a 100 burpees/7 minute pace and that was fairly difficult as it was but certainly nothing extraordinary. I would say the most difficult physical feat I’ve accomplished since I’ve gotten back into shape is an 11 minute 52 second back bridge last spring and I really don’t know what to say about it. There wasn’t any planning or expectation or waiting for everything to be perfect or for an easier way to show itself. I didn’t train for it, I didn’t progress up to it; I just did it. Now that you mention it though, I will go for 400 burpees in a row and a 20 minute bridge.

You’ve faced some difficult times in the health and love departments, what would you say to others that are facing hardships and need to understand how someone can show so much strength?
I used to look at everything that happened as either a blessing or a curse but now I realize that nothing in this life is a blessing and nothing is a curse. Life is the blessing and everything in it is a challenge.

So the hand fate has bitten you and yet you’ve used it as a launching pad to self-exploration. Would you say events have conspired to bring you down or wake you up Neo?
All I can say is that I’m definitely a different person now than I was 3 years ago but for that matter I’m a different person than I was at the start of this interview. And so are you.

So what’s with the Beavis and Butthead T-shirt?
Haha, the day that pic was taken I was doing an experiment for a chemistry class I was taking in college and all of the sudden it hit me, “College is pretty homosexual and going to college is probably the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.. so I quit.” Instead of doing the experiment as planned I decided to blow something up instead. So I put that shirt on so I wouldn’t get the one I had on before it dirty. But yeah, I loved those guys man. Haha. I don’t know what’s on TV in Australia nowadays but here in the U.S. its nothing but men dating each other and reality shows. It’s really a bummer.