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Hola, welcome to the Chibi Journal podcast special episode. I'm your host, Camille Yang. Today, we have the pleasure of welcoming three individuals to our conversation. Joining us are Edu Ahuda, not only a head coach, but also a co-owner of the Bakery CrossFit. Alongside him is Melissa Hong, a formidable athlete representing the Bakery Athletics team.
And last but not least, we have Diogo Costa, who wears dual hats as both a data analyst at Revolut and an athlete within the bakery athletics team. This podcast is being recorded live at Bakery Cafe. If you happen to be nearby, why not stop in for a cup of coffee or even join us for a training session at the Bakery CrossFit? We'd be super happy to have you here.
So get comfortable and let's dive into today's conversation. Welcome, Lisa, Diogo, and Edu. Welcome to my podcast. To start with, let's do a round-of-the-table introduction to let my listeners familiarize with your voice and your involvement with bakery.
I'm Melissa and I've been at the bakery since January 2020. I'm originally from the United States but yeah I've been living in Lisbon for the past four years and in Europe since 2016 and I've been doing CrossFit for a long time. I started when I was a teenager just kind of off and on since then but I didn't really get super into it until I started at the bakery and then I met Edu who you'll hear from in a second who's my coach and also my boyfriend. Well
I'm Diogo, I'm from Madeira. I actually started CrossFit, I think, three, four years ago. At that time, I was doing CrossFit in Madeira. Then I met someone who used to train at the bakery and was there. I think it was during COVID. Basically, they recommended me the bakery and when I came to Lisbon, I joined the bakery and I couldn't leave. Yeah, I've done CrossFit for a while. When I came here, I already did it twice.
more than most people do it. But yeah, the environment in bakery make me like just I do it like every day a lot of
for a long time. Yeah, I got a similar story. When I first moved from UK to Portugal, I went to Madeira and the people from there, they introduced me to the CrossFit because back then I have no idea what it is. It's more like a bootcamp. We train outside and they say it's a CrossFit. And when I moved to Lisbon, they introduced me here and I just live across the road back then. So this become my go-to gym. Nice. Hi.
Hi, my name is Edu. I'm the head coach here at the bakery. I started the bakery in 2018 as a member. I started doing the classes. Back then, our head coach was Miranda, who left to live in the U.S. And I became co-owner around two years ago and head coach around two years ago. I've been doing CrossFit since 2008.
2014 and I've been doing like physical activities my whole life. I started training regular gym when I was 16 years old. So yeah, that's a little bit of my story. So as we wrap up the CrossFit game, I'd like to know how is everyone feeling about this game and
And maybe start with some brief introduction to my listener who are not familiar with what is CrossFit and what is CrossFit Open. The Open is basically the beginning of the season for the athletes who compete at the Games, but also is the start of the challenging part for regular members. That's why we here at the bakery like so much to push for the Open because it's an opportunity for you to push a little bit more than you go in a regular event.
Class environment. There's nothing wrong doing the class and not pushing every day That's actually something that we preach a lot respecting of limitations But also you need that extra push sometimes to progress forward So I think the open is the perfect opportunity to do that and we do that not only at the open but also at our winter games and summer games, that's why we like those events so much and
So from my perspective, the Open is really important not only for being the beginning of the season, but also for giving the members the opportunity to push themselves in a competitive environment. People who usually wouldn't go to a competition can have a little bit of that feeling and overcome a little bit their limitations and their level, let's say. For me as an athlete,
Especially the Open has been different for every year, because maybe giving a bit more introduction into this. So before the Open, you used to qualify only top 10% to the next phase, which are the quarterfinals. Nowadays you qualify 25%. 10% was a bit restrictive. So at the beginning, the Open was where I would go all in, do everything I could, try to get to those 10% so I could qualify to the next phase.
This year, I've tried to approach it in a different way. I tried to control myself. Whereas there were years where I would redo about three times just to make sure I could get that score. This year, I tried with some guidance from my coach. We decided that no redos. We'll just do it once and focus on the next phase because it's more...
It's less restrictive than it was before. We knew we would get to the next phase, so focusing on that quarterfinals next month, and it's probably where I want to actually be at my best and do everything I can to have a really good score. Okay, I'm going to back up a little bit because you said maybe people don't know what the Open is, so also just to explain.
I do mention that it's the beginning of the CrossFit Games season. So the way that the competitive season for the world works is that you start with the Open, and there's three weeks. And every week, they release one workout, and everybody does the workout. All around the world does the same workout, and you have from about Thursday until Monday to do that workout. And you can redo it as many times as you want to try to improve your score, and then you submit it online, and there's a global leaderboard that...
compares everybody in the world so you can see how you stack up against everyone, which is really nice because as great as local and even national competitions are, when there's that many people, hundreds of thousands of scores, it really shows you a more accurate representation of where you are in comparison to everybody else.
because it takes away like that margin of error, you know, it's a bigger sample size, I guess. So I think that's one thing that's really cool about the Open. And then as Diogo mentioned, from that, you can qualify onto the quarterfinals, which is another, we say like an online competition. But that one is more like the structure of a regular CrossFit competition. So you have about five WODs, five workouts that you have to do over a five-day period. This year, I guess it's six days. They increased it a little bit.
And then from that, only a very, very, very small number of people move on to semifinals, which is an in-person CrossFit competition. They have one for each region of the world. And then from that, only the top 40 men and women in the world and in each category move on to the CrossFit Games. So for normal people like us, the Open and the quarterfinals are really for now.
the only thing that's within reach. One day, semifinals would be like amazing. But yeah, and then my personal experience with the Open is that I actually did it for the first time in 2015 when I was in college in the US, in Miami. I went to a CrossFit box there, but I wasn't very serious about it, obviously. It was like a hobby and I was terrified to compete like in any form. And I remember so clearly, I did it in 2015 and 2016 at that box in Miami. And it was like,
it was such a big deal because I was so nervous and I was like not used to being in that kind of environment at all with that kind of pressure with someone judging me with people watching, with having like a ranking. So I, you know, it's different now because I compete now and I'm used to it, but I remember what it feels like, you know, for the vast majority of people who do CrossFit, the open is like,
this very unique experience where you get to challenge yourself in a way that you're probably not comfortable with. And it really is a huge accomplishment, like just to do it at all. It doesn't matter what your score is. Or if you do it scaled or Rx or foundations. So like I did it, everything scaled in 2015 and 2016. And it's cool because I can actually look back and see my scores from those years and see how much I've progressed and how far I've come. Yeah.
So after that, you know, after 2016, when I moved to Europe, I sort of stopped doing CrossFit. And then when I settled in Lisbon, I started at the bakery and I started training more seriously. And then when the next Open came up, I was super excited because it was this opportunity to, like, prove my fitness level, sort of. Like, I knew that I had...
gotten a lot stronger and a lot fitter but it was this kind of benchmark to have like a tangible representation of how far I'd come and how much progress I'd made and then from then the next year my goal was to make quarterfinals and yeah this year so I've been doing it now 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and this year my goal was very similar to Diogo's which was to sort of
step back a bit and have a good time, enjoy it a little bit more, not put so much pressure on myself, not worry about redoing the workouts or trying to get the best possible score, just being confident in my own fitness level and try not to overthink too much because that's probably my biggest problem in CrossFit and in life. But yeah, I'd say to answer how I'm feeling, I'm feeling like
Me and also I think Diogo and the other people that we train with definitely achieved our goal this year of just enjoying it and not being so competitive with the Open. Because for us at least, it's really not about that. It's about the community experience and about enjoying the process and just...
Yeah, having a good time. Nice. Sorry, that was a long answer. That was great, yeah. Thanks for the answer. It's great. Yeah, I want to learn your story. Because for me, the first day I came back to bakery and it was open and I was forced to sign up. After like three months, no training and I said, okay, fine.
whatever, I'll just do it. Yeah, but that's my first time doing open and before I have no idea what is that. And after these three weeks, I feel I learn a lot, I can say. Not just my physical, but my mental strength. But a lot of works, it's not just depends on how strong you are. It's like how you can just
just not give up. Yeah, do your best. Yeah, and I also found the strategy part is very important. It's not just do it, but you need to be like, pace yourself or try some different method. Yeah, I find it. So you got it? Yeah, finally it's over!
Yeah, as you mentioned, if you look back, maybe you can see how your progress, I find that's more important, not about the ranking. Exactly. Yeah, and back to you, I do. I want to know how did you get up into coaching and how you become the co-owner of this bakery, CrossFit?
So I started in 2006, I started my college graduation, I got into college to get my bachelor's. Right now I have a bachelor degree in physical training, I have an ongoing master's, I haven't finished yet, I have to finish my master's. I have a physiology degree by the Duke University.
So I have 16 years of experience training, but I only started with CrossFit per se, as I said, like I started training in 2014.
My first contact with CrossFit wasn't like the greatest because back then we had like this kind of like rivalry between regular gym and CrossFitters and the place that I got to know CrossFit was the place that was being a trainer like in a regular gym so I had this like very like defensive mode against CrossFit.
For a while I kept that mindset so in 2000 and later in 2014 I tore my ACL doing jiu-jitsu and After the surgery I gained like a lot of weight I became like overweight and when I recover from that surgery One of my friends came to me also training came to me and said hey, why don't you do this class? It's not crossfit. It's just similar, but you know, you're gonna you're gonna join it and
And it was actually CrossFit. So like I did it and I loved it and I got like in love with the methodology and made sense to me. And then I started doing in 2016. I got my level one in, I want to say 2017. So one year later. So in 2016, I started coaching without my level one because I already like had a background in physical training.
But then I got my level 1, now I have my level 2. And in 2018 I came to the bakery, I came from Brazil. And then I came to the bakery, I started as a member and I visited like two or three boxes here in Lisbon, other than the bakery. But the bakery got me since I got here. When I put my foot on that box, I was like: "Okay, there is something about this place that welcomes you."
And then in 2019 one of the coaches had to leave and then they offered me Hugo, the owner who is now my partner now, offered me a spot and then I started teaching the classes and it just kept growing from there. Two years ago he offered me to become his partner and to be the head coach and obviously I said yes.
And that's when those two, Melissa and Diogo, were starting to get a little bit more serious about the competitive side. So they were the ones that pushed me to like, hey, we should have something designed for people who want to compete. And you should do it. And that's something that I never had put more thought into it. So they made me start thinking about that and put all of those years that I have in
the background that I have. And I just started from there, like developing. And now the bakery athletics is the part that we have for people who want to compete.
Our regular members can do our classes, we have a lot of specific classes to help develop that. And the athletics, Slavic and I are responsible for the programming and the classes, I'm responsible for the programming. How do you design the whole program? It's an old system. I know it's a complicated one.
So basically I really believe in CrossFit philosophy that we have to like give different stimulus and try to be as variable as possible so people don't get into like the comfort zone and don't let into plateaus.
So the way that I think of programming is the athletes have a little bit different approach. So when I start to program, I divide the athletics, what they're going to do, and I try to fit in what the class is going to do into what I plan for the athletes.
One thing that I find really important is to integrate everyone. Our box is about that, it's about the community. So I don't want to leave the athletes in one side and the normal people who just want to get fitter and fitter. Normal quotes, right? Get fitter and healthier and better mentally or physically.
And I want to divide, I want everyone to be a community. So that's why I try to like keep this stimulus similar from the athletes and the people who come to do the class just for one hour and then go home. There's a lot more than that but I... Yeah, yeah, it's like a top level answer. You got the gist, you got the gist. Yeah, it's a lot of effort.
And Diogo, I know you have a daytime job. You are the data analyst from Revolut, right? So how do you balance your life and training as an athlete? Maybe you need to use your analytic brand to help you with the training. So how do you apply these strengths to your training?
I was already in a different job when we started Lightix. As Edu said, this was two years ago. I joined Revolut as a data analyst almost a year ago. Time flies by. But yeah, at the beginning, the idea here is to give some perspective into how I nowadays manage it. But for it, I need to kind of put it into perspective. At the beginning, we were training me, Mel, and Flo.
who now moved to France, but he was part of our initial group of training. And we would train in the morning and I was able to work, come, train in between 10, midday and then go back to work. Nowadays it's not as easy, so in this sense I had to kind of adapt, find a way to make sure that I could prioritize both.
And actually that's where, I mean, there are a lot of people who say I'm like the spreadsheet guy, but that's where being very analyst also allows me because I like to kind of, first of all, I have a spreadsheet with all my training since probably two years, three years ago. I know Mel has one as well. It's kind of a thing. But having this type of data allows you to understand when you're slacking off because, you know, if you've,
If you're used to doing everything that's being programmed and then now you're not, you need to either assume that there's no way you can manage it, which is normal, but also there's other ways that you can try to find out where you could be optimizing your day and your life to kind of fit in. So, for example, I bought a couple months ago, I bought a Viker because I knew like
Now I moved a bit further away from the bakery, so I know for some days where we have to do low intensity at the bike, I can just do it at home. And this way I can still do all the same amount of work without having to take the commute. And this type of decisions allows you to kind of...
manage both things at the same time. Also, I feel like our programming is quite well thought in this sense. So there are a lot of people who have different jobs, who work a long time and still manage to fit in because we cannot always have like one hour in the morning, then have all day and then have another hour in the afternoon. It just depends on how you decide to prioritize it as well.
Of course, when you decide to spend the first hour of your day training and the last hour of your day training, it means you won't be maybe watching Netflix at night or... But it's kind of the decisions you need to make. But also, for me, it's one that's easy. Yeah.
Mel, how did you end up in Europe? And a bit of a love story about you and Edu, if possible. I know a lot of members are curious to know, especially me. People have been asking. Yeah, and your routine for you every day.
Yes. Okay, so first of all, I grew up in North Carolina. I went to college in Miami. And when I was in college, I studied abroad in Argentina. And when I was in Argentina, I did a lot of traveling, and I really got this idea of, like, I want to live outside of the U.S.,
And so when I graduated from college, I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I didn't really want to get like a full-time job or go to graduate school. And so I ended up applying for a program in Spain where they hire native English speakers to be like English teaching assistants in public schools. And it's a year-long program. So you go, I was placed in Madrid, in a school in Madrid for like the academic year. It's basically a part-time job.
and they pay you and you get a degree, like a certification for teaching English, so it's a pretty cool deal. You get to live abroad for a year. So I was like, great, I'm just gonna do that while I figure out what's next for me, like what I wanna do with my life. I'd always wanted to go to Spain. I'd never been to Europe before.
So I moved to Madrid without knowing anybody. Luckily I already spoke Spanish, so that made it a little bit easier. And I ended up loving it and ended up getting a job there. I actually started working as a freelancer while I was teaching English to make a little bit of extra money. And then I ended up getting a full-time job with a company in Madrid. That allowed me to stay there after that year was up. So I lived in Madrid for almost three years.
And then one summer I did like a solo trip to Portugal for a month and just kind of traveled all around the country, started learning how to surf, started learning Portuguese and loved it and decided, okay, I need to move to Portugal because I liked it way better than Madrid. And then I went back.
to Madrid and figured out a plan for how I could quit my full-time job, become a full-time freelancer and move to Portugal. So I did that in 2019. And again, I was sort of like traveling around. I was volunteering at hostels mostly. So I would have like free room and board and learning how to surf, improving my Portuguese.
And then eventually after about six months of that, I decided I needed to kind of settle a little bit, have like my own space, have more of like a home base. And that's why I came to Lisbon. So I came to Lisbon to settle and then COVID happened. So I got a bit stuck in Lisbon, which turned out to be a good thing. This was in obviously beginning of 2020. So I ended up staying here for maybe longer than I would have otherwise and
And I actually started at the bakery, like right when I moved to Lisbon before COVID, I started coming here almost immediately. So that's when I first met Ado in like the beginning of 2020. And then of course the box closed for several months in the middle of 2020, but I kept doing like the bakery workouts at home in my apartment while I was in lockdown.
And then when it reopened, I came back and I started getting more and more committed to training, partly because I just didn't have anything else to do. And I didn't really know anybody in Lisbon because a lot of people had left.
a lot of like international people had gone back to their home countries because of COVID so I was a little bit like lonely and I started training here and of course you know you meet so many people at the bakery it's such a good community and I started you know talking more to the coaches and getting them to help me practice my Portuguese but Edu was really the only one that would speak Portuguese to me the others were always talking to me in English
So I remember I liked that about him right away. And then, yeah, we, I guess we started like talking on Instagram. He messaged me on Instagram, slid into my DMs. And then eventually we went on like a few dates, hung out outside of the gym, you know, and I mean, you know, progressed from there. And after a few months we started dating.
like dating made it like official and this was about the same time that the second lockdown happened in Portugal so we had just sort of become a couple no one at the bakery knew well I think people suspected but no one like really knew so it was a little bit of a secret and then we went into lockdown the bakery closed again and yeah we just obviously started spending a lot of time together because we were in lockdown we were in each other's like COVID bubble you know
And yeah, and that's also, yeah, around the time that I started getting more serious about training, partially because I was just trying to keep up with a do. And I wanted to like prove that I could, you know, that I could do like,
more intense workouts and more volume. And he really started encouraging me. And again, you know, it was COVID. So there wasn't that much else to do other than train. I guess the, my daily routine now. So I've been a full-time freelancer. Well, I say full-time, but it's not really full-time. You know, I've been like a freelancer for my main source of income for years now, which is great because I have a lot of flexibility and,
not only with when I work, but also how much work I take on. So it's very easy for me to prioritize training. So I do basically what Diogo was saying that he used to do, where I wake up in the morning, I work for an hour or two, then I come to the bakery around 10, do usually about two, two and a half hours of training, and then work more in the afternoon and sometimes have another training session depending on the day in the afternoon. But yeah, I really like
work my work around my training. My training is like the main thing that defines my schedule for each day, which is a huge privilege and also very helpful in terms of like making progress and being consistent. I'm really really lucky that I'm able to design my whole life around training basically. And as you mentioned the community concept for CrossFit, can you tell us what makes Bakery stand out?
If there's a new member who wants to join the bakery, what advice would you give to them? To be completely honest, I think that when I got here, the bakery already had this culture. What I try to do is to keep the levels...
acceptance. I think that's the biggest thing here at The Bakery. What I try to like keep doing is like whoever comes, doesn't matter like what's your fitness level, what's your life been before, what you have done, who you are, where you're from, like everyone is accepted here. And I really don't have any advice for people who want to join. It's just like come and you like you can feel it on the walls. Yeah. How welcoming you're gonna be.
And the way that I always try to keep that like that is by promoting those events, put people to work together and do team events or do something outside the bakery so you can know each other and create bonds between each other. Everyone is going to create bonds to different people. And that's what I've tried to do. I think beyond the fitness level,
the importance of the bakery and the role of the bakery in people's lives is to develop those relationships. So I just try to do my best to make people create those relationships and develop those relationships with each other. Can you tell us more about the Winter Games and the Summer Games? Yeah, the Summer Games is basically our anniversary.
I think it's June now you caught me I don't know the proper the actual date Melissa is the one that knows the dates in our relationship session not that one so yeah the summer games is the celebration of our anniversary and the winter games is just like the end of the year not our anniversary we should have
now you can see why we gotta look so well it's like i get like the gist of it and she gets the details she gets like she organizes my thoughts um so yeah like the bakeries anniversary and so yeah like that's the as i said in the beginning like it's the same principle as the open is to get people into that
competition environment again, not in like an unhealthy way quite the contrary is super healthy and like accepting environment
That's why we're doing teams so people can like do with someone that they like or someone that they feel that would be comfortable with competing and There is no pressure, but there is a little bit of pressure so you can like push yourself You participate. Yeah, you participate, you know how it is So yeah, so every year we have the summer games and winter games. We already know the date I'm not gonna tell you right now, but we already know the date for this year's summer's game and we always try to make like a
a surprise, like, yeah, surprise people to what they're going to do. And Diogo, can you tell me more about the BigQuery Athlete Program and what do you enjoy most and any good story you can share? Also, I'll go back to when it started. It's been really interesting to see how it has developed because this started with Edu writing some things on the board for two or three of us and then
we having some type of training on one app and then this evolved to something more concrete and then so it's really interesting looking backwards and see how much effort Edu has put into this and how different it got and more than that the amount of people that have joined and how it has changed because we used to be three and now we are at least three in the morning three in the afternoon three in another box so it's like
It's really interesting. And also, it's really well thought for us in the sense of we get an input on what we want. And so giving some perspective into it, we tell Edu what competitions we may want to do or may not want to do. Edu has this into account when programming the whole season. When we're starting new blocks, so...
Because, so to give a perspective, when you're doing this type of training, you need to have some type of blocks so that you're not always going full send. Because when you're kind of a beginner, if you do strength every now and then, you're always going to get stronger. When you've been doing strength work for some time, that's not the case. It's not like I can come and do strength every other week and get stronger. So,
Edu has put a lot of thoughts into these blocks and then this allows us to... When we start a block, we always have this meeting where we understand why we're doing what we do because that's something that I really need. If I don't understand why I'm doing something, I'm not going to do it for a long time because, again, it comes back to the prioritization and if I don't know why I'm doing something, maybe I should be doing something else that's more important, you know?
So that's something that's really resonated with me, understanding why I'm doing what I'm doing and feeling that if I have some type of
Concern or if I want like something change this is always taken into account Which is something that because I know a lot of people enjoy and these programs I think have their own merit, but I know a lot of people enjoy like the proven Program that you pay 30. I don't want to be quoted on this I don't know how much but the proven you have the mayhem program you have the HWP o program which are good and
But you don't have someone that looks at you every day that knows what you're actually like, how you're feeling today, what you want to do in two weeks and this type of knowledge is something that really makes a difference when you're at a different level. Because I used to do, and going back to this, I used to do proven fitness when I started in CrossFit, which was good. I developed a lot.
But at the same time, if I wanted to go in a competition in two months, the program was not, as I was talking about the blocks, so the program might be in a strength block and I would get to the competition, I would be strong for sure, but I wouldn't be able to do a lot because that's not what we're focusing on. So this type of individualized thinking and also from weightlifting, so...
I didn't mention it, but even in weightlifting, we send our videos, we have some review from Slavic. Slavic tells us, okay, this week we're going to do this extra thing because your hips are going too high. Or I see that you're scared to get under the bar this week. We're going to do this extra thing for you. And this type of thing, you don't get it. Or at least you don't get it with this type of quality, in my opinion. That's good.
Amel, I know you participated in a lot of competitions last year. What's the biggest challenge you are facing when you are doing all these types of competitions? Do you have any tips for training your mind? Especially for me because I'm still a beginner and every time I see the competition,
weights, like heavy weights or the gymnastic movement. I'm super scared and I don't know how you overcome this fear and keep challenging yourself. Yeah, good question. Well, so first of all, I have to say like I was very resistant to competing at first. The only reason I started competing was because Diogo convinced us to go to a competition in Madeira and
in 2022 and I was nervous about it probably for like three months leading up to it and when I say nervous like I mean like I had like anxiety it was I was like terrified I was thinking of like all the things that could go wrong like all the worst case scenarios um and you know I also I
I still have this experience, but especially at the beginning, the first couple of competitions that we did in 2022. So in 2022, we only did two competitions. And both times, for the few days leading up to the competition, I was like, I don't want to do it. I don't know why I signed up for this. This was a terrible idea. I wanted to back out, basically. So it definitely isn't something that comes naturally to me. I'm
really had to like force myself to face that fear and do it. And the thing is, is that while you're doing it, you have a lot of anxiety and nerves as well. Every time before you go out to do another WOD, you know, you have to go to the warmup area. You get nervous all over again. You go out on the floor. There's all these people looking at you. It's a lot of pressure. So I'm not going to say like, oh yeah, I've
yeah, I love it. It's super fun. I've always loved it. Like I definitely had to learn to love it. Um, but the thing is that after you finish a competition, you feel so good. Um, like it's this huge sense of accomplishment, not even so much for, you know, like,
your ranking or how you actually did in the competition, but just that feeling of being so scared to do something and then doing it, I mean, that's a universal, like that applies to a lot of things, right? So after I did those first two competitions, I was like, okay, I think I actually want to do this. And I knew that, you know, I want to enjoy it more. I want to be less nervous for upcoming competitions. And the only way to achieve that is to just do a lot of them.
Because the more you do it, the less nervous you get. The more used to... It's not that you stop getting nervous, but you start to learn how to handle the nerves and how to not let it make you miserable and to expect it. So now every time I go to a competition or do the Open or any... We do online qualifiers here sometimes at the box. I always get nervous. It's just that now I am better at...
I expect to get nervous, I know I'm gonna get nervous, and I know that I'm gonna be able to perform well even with those nerves. Because that was the main thing that scared me at the beginning was like,
How am I going to go out there and lift a heavy barbell or do a complex gymnastics movement when I'm this nervous? I'm going to mess up. And now I've been in so many situations where I was under so much pressure and somehow I managed to still go out there and do it that I don't let it bother me as much now when I get nervous. So I would say the main thing is...
Whatever scares you, you know, whatever you're scared of doing, like you just have to do it and force yourself to keep doing it until it gets less scary. And it's really a skill. Like I do says a lot that competing is its own skill set. It's different from just coming into the box and doing workouts in your comfort zone, in the place that you're used to, surrounded by the people that you're used to train with.
competing and going out into like an unfamiliar environment and not knowing what to expect and having people watching you like that's something that is it's a different type of accomplishment and it's it's something that I think everyone should do like you asked to do like what some advice would be and I think yeah like participating like for new members or people who want to maybe get more into CrossFit like participating in things like the open or the winter games in the summer games and
And then maybe if you get a little bit more experienced and you want to try a competition, a lot of people say, oh, I'm not good enough to compete yet, or even I'm not good enough to do the Open yet. And I always am like, but you are. Everyone is. There's no such thing as like, there's no point that you're going to reach where now you're good enough to compete. Everybody can compete if they want to. And I think it's a very rewarding experience for everyone.
everybody like no one I don't think anybody goes to a competition and then it's like oh I wish I hadn't done that you know it's like it doesn't matter what happens it's always a positive experience or like a growth experience so my main advice is just try it like just do it and see what happens you know when you think about competing it's like you always think about the best but I mean if we were like that even us we won't compete because we're not like the best and
For that reason, there are a lot of competitions and probably 80% of the competitions I go to, they have scale divisions, they have masters divisions, they have these divisions that allow anyone who wants to start competing to start competing. And that's something that I totally agree with Mel, it makes sense.
especially if you're planning in the long term because I see a lot of people who are like no no I'm gonna start competing in two years then why are you waiting two years just start just get that first competition out of the way start getting that experience so that's that's going to help you a lot that's something that I always like tell them because
In the beginning, there was like an issue before a competition like what Melissa is saying like she would get like very nervous and she would like have second thoughts and all kinds of fears like Diogo as well and I would always say this to like reassure them that everyone passes through that so when in my experience competing I would also feel the same so I remember my first competition it wasn't CrossFit it was Jiu-Jitsu competition I
Like, it was a little bit cloudy, and I remember thinking, "Oh, it's gonna rain, so good. They're gonna cancel the competition. Like, they're not gonna have a competition, 'cause it's gonna rain. Good." And everyone passed through that. Like, they can lie about it and say they are like, "I know, I'm comfortable. I don't get, like, nervous and all of that."
I don't believe it. I think everyone gets nervous. The good thing about the competition is to learn how to control those nerves and turn that into something positive. And I told Diogo and Melissa already this year, this is the year that I feel that both of them learned how to do that. Diogo and Desir was like completely different than what was last year because they learned how to like
use that in their favor not against them so yeah just wanted to like finish with that I mean and we could also add that not only in terms of CrossFit but in terms of like the person you are it allows it to grow a lot because
For example, I used to compete in handball, so I didn't feel this nervousness that Melissa was talking about, but I did feel this urge or this necessity to compare myself to others. So I remember clearly my first two years of competition,
I used to like get on the floor, start competing and then look around and I'm like, where am I compared to others? Is everyone ahead of me? Like, like, and it doesn't matter because at the end of the day, like I'm not going to do better if they are stronger than me. And I shouldn't do worse, which happened if they are not as good as me in that world. So even in this sense of like,
learning more about yourself and dealing with this mental work that you need to do and this type of personality things that come, that are like more clear when you are under distress is really good like to just start, just do it. Yeah, true. I do feel like, like before, every time I do the wall, I will say, okay, it was a hater with a macella day. I see.
But later I feel like there's no point you compare with each other because we all have different hats, waist and the jeans. So if I'm getting better than my yesterday's performance, I'm super happy. And in the competition, it's a good thing. You can see the benchmark performance.
globally because you know your place and you know there's a huge potential for you to grow. Yeah, I love it. Okay, and Edu, can you introduce the team in Bakery? Because apart from you, there are many other coaches and staff. Can you give us a brief introduction? Thank you.
So yeah, we at the bakery we have Hugo who is the co-owner with me, he's the founder. He's one of the original CrossFit members at CrossFit Portugal. So Hugo to this day is a translator for CrossFit. He's not as active as he used to be but Hugo is one of the original ones. The bakery I think is the oldest one in the center of Lisbon.
So there we have Google, then we have BIA which takes care of the management and the desk work and manage the team under the desk. The team under the desk is Thais and Rebecca and they are under the BIA scope.
And to the coach we have Sara, which is a level 2 CrossFit trainer. Sara was a member here at the bakery a long time ago, before me actually, before I came to the bakery, Sara was one of the members. She left, she changed a little bit of boxes, she worked in other boxes and now she came back as a coach.
We have Slavic, which started as a weightlifting coach. He didn't have his level one, but gradually he started falling in love with CrossFit and he's getting more and more into that. And now he has a level one. Then we have Hugo Moita, which was a member as well. Hugo Moita started, I think, one year before I started The Bakery as a member. And he's been with us for a long time now. He's a level two as well.
Then we have Gui, which is a level one and he came from Brazil and he's like the most recent coach here at the bakery. And then we have me, CrossFit level two. How do you collaborate with them? Do you have a weekly meeting? Yeah, what we do is every 15 days we have meetings.
when you get everyone together and we talk about dates of the events that we want to do, we talk about any issues that we might find on the classes, we have to try to understand where everyone level is, so sometimes you can like discuss one specific member that had an issue or had like injury or is like pregnant for example, and then so everyone can be on the same page, so what to do with those members.
And the good thing about our team right now is that like you can trust in everyone's work. So like I have absolutely trust in their capacity to adapt
any workout to anyone doing a WOD. So when I program, I program for everyone and whatever adaptations need to come from that WOD, I know that our coaches are more than capable to adapt and making the most of the workout for each of our members. Now another love story. I do mention beer. So what's your story?
We were also involved in that love story. Yeah, so giving some perspective into the people listening, Bia is my to-be wife in a couple of months, actually. Congratulations. And yeah, so when I joined the bakery, I joined around...
May because I remember I at the time I was still in college And I came here to do some exams and that's actually the first time I me and Bea had some sort of interaction because I messaged the bakery I still have that message
I messaged the bakery that I wanted to train here. She replied that for me to come here, I came. We talked. I trained. Nothing happened. And then soon enough, I started following the coaches and then Bia. And Bia was on vacation, so I also slid into her DMs. That's kind of the way to do it.
And no, but nothing ever happened. Like I texted her now and then, but nothing happened. And six months later, actually, we started talking here. We hit it off like things were going great, but she didn't want to have something with anybody from the box because she didn't want to mix those sides.
But I'm a very persistent person. I won by getting her tired. And yeah, then it was, from then on, it's been great. It's also a huge, I'm really lucky because she works actually in one of the places I spend most of my time in.
and although it's her work she still finds time to if i go to a competition she finds time to go there if i have
If I want to talk about CrossFit, which I talk a lot, she 80% of the time listens to me. So I'm pretty lucky in that sense, to be honest. That's good. That's nice. And Mel, can you share something about your vegan lifestyle? Because some of us are very curious how do you keep the...
this kind of lifestyle, you know, a lot of people have this stereotype. If you are vegan, you probably lack of nutrition. But how do you manage it with your training? So to give some background, I've only been vegan since
like fully vegan since the beginning of 2022, I guess, so about two years now. And I became vegan because of Adu. So Adu was vegan when we started dating and I was not. I was like kind of vegetarian, but not like fully committed to it. And I didn't have like super strong ideas about it. I was just kind of like...
"Oh, maybe I'll eat less meat." And I remember actually when we started dating, I was kind of like concerned. I was like, "He's vegan, how am I gonna relate?" Because I love food, you know? I always like when I traveled, it was always about food and I would eat anything, I was not picky. And so it just seemed like very out of my comfort zone basically, I was not used to that. But once we started dating,
you know, of course, like, I'm open minded, right? So I would like, just eat whatever he was eating, like I sort of gradually started like, eating less, like completely stopping eating meat and then eating less dairy. And you know, I kind of just gradually like accidentally became vegan, I like to say, I didn't like, make a concrete choice any like, it wasn't like one day to the next. But I owe a lot of that to Ado, because he showed me, you know, I think a lot of people think that
not only the thing about like nutrients, but just that it's so difficult like to be vegan. Like they don't know where to begin or like what kind of food to eat or what recipes to make or how to get enough protein and things like that. And I do already had a lot of experience with that. So I learned a lot from him and he showed me like it's possible. And not only that it's possible, but that it's like really enjoyable, right? Like I was very surprised like
It sort of, you know, like I said, I was really into food. I always have been. And it just like opened this whole new like window of things to eat like that I was completely unfamiliar with. So it was exciting. It didn't feel like
depriving myself of anything. It felt more like opening my diet to lots of new things. And obviously that came about at around the same time that I was getting more into training. So a lot of people ask me, "Oh, do you think that, did you notice a difference in your strength levels or in your training, your fitness level with eating vegan?" And it's really hard for me to say.
because I became mostly vegan about the same time that I really started dedicating myself to training. So both of those things happened at the same time. Obviously, I got a lot stronger and a lot fitter. And I don't know how much of that is due to the diet. But I do know that the diet definitely didn't hold me back in any way. I think...
it's really important, not just if you're vegan or vegetarian, but like for anybody who's training at the volume that we do, you have to think about nutrition in a way that most people aren't used to. And I think that's, you know, Diogo can probably say like, that's true for him as well, not being vegan. But you have to like, you know, have a little bit more
like involvement in your own diet and, you know, be a little bit more careful that you're getting enough protein. And also for me, the biggest challenge isn't
Like, it doesn't even have to do with being vegan or getting enough protein. It's just, like, eating enough because you have to eat a lot more than you're used to eating to support that kind of, you know, volume in training. But, yeah, we just eat a lot of food. That's what it really comes down to. We eat a lot, and I try not to worry so much about... Like, obviously, I try to eat a lot of protein, but I try not to worry so much about, like,
because I think that... I don't know if it's how much of it is, like, being a woman. I think it's everybody, but definitely especially women. Like, I've definitely in the past had a lot of periods of my life where I was, like, worried about eating too much or eating too little or, you know, how many calories am I eating? Like, I think everybody has that to some extent just because of our culture. Becoming, like, a more competitive athlete and also becoming vegan, like, the biggest effect of that has been I don't worry about that stuff as much. Like, I know that I need to eat a lot and, like...
it's not as important to like micromanage what I'm eating as long as I know that I'm getting enough calories and enough protein and carbs and fat like on a sort of macro level. So yeah for me it's been it's been great and being vegan is just like one small part of that it's not even the main the main thing. So yeah like what Melissa said is like true to me for me as well like as I said like after I have like my ACL tore my ACL I gained like a lot of weight
and I was weighing 120 kilos, so I was like pretty heavy and that was before I was vegan. And I relate completely to Melo in terms of I don't feel the necessity of like weighting and having like control of how precisely how many grams of each macronutrient we're eating.
We just have to have the baseline and go from there. For some people, it works like weight and have control of every single gram that you're eating. And that's great if you can do that, if you work like that, perfect. But I think that for me and for Melissa as well, that will be a setback. We start getting to our minds and that will become a source of stress instead of just nutrition.
And the way that I transitioned to veganism was like basically the same thing that happened to Melissa but with my ex-girlfriend. She was vegan and I had the same concerns and I just realized that I like... To be honest, I never thought about it why someone should be vegan. And the first time that I thought was when she said...
I'm gonna become vegan and I was like, okay, stop thinking about it and the first reaction is always it doesn't make sense. It's too extreme or ah, but how I'm gonna do that? What about this lunch with my you start like putting like those excuses in front of it and little by little just start to learn that you're just making excuses. You know that deep down, you know that it makes sense. So for me at least I'm not saying that
makes sense for everyone but for me it made sense to not hurt animals, to not cause any unnecessary harm and the more I start digging into like the subject and more and more sense made to me and now I'm vegan for I think almost seven years, seven eight years now I think yeah the only thing that you need to like in my opinion the only thing that you need to be really concerned about is supplementing yourself with B12
And other than that, just try to like control how many calories you're eating and like see if you can get the minimum protein. But it's basically a regular diet. It's just not causing any harm, I would say. What about you, Diogo? What's your diet look like? So I'm not vegan, as well said. Not yet. Just kidding. But yeah, like, so that's something that...
I mean, it's not amazing. Like, I know my diet could be better. I know my diet has been worse and it has been like the main source of most injuries I've had. I can trace it back to periods where not only I was not eating right, but I was eating lots of sugar, lots of... Oh, the pastry in Portugal. I'm more guilty because... And I think this kind of ties back to what Mel said. It's like...
If you have a two-hour session workout, especially in the evening, and then I go home, I have dinner, and then I would buy this pint of ice cream and have the pint of ice cream on top of dinner because I would spend most of my day working, so little food intake, then train, then my body would say, give me something because I need it. And since I've started actually taking that into account, first of all,
Most of it was due to hydration. Most of us don't think too much about how much water we drink, which is something that is really important. And then just making sure that I don't not eat too much. So in this sense, it's like...
I try to have a big breakfast, a big lunch, so that when I come training and then I go back home, I know that I can have dinner and not feel this urge to go on like a lot of sugar, a lot of food that are calorie dense because my body is needing it. But yeah, my diet is mostly focused on, so nowadays, trying to avoid sugar.
As Mel said, I don't measure my food. I don't weight it. I don't fill this need. I'm also very lucky because we split tasks at home, so I'm not cooking my own meals. I'm trying to learn with Matt Fraser, you know, like making BMI. But I'm lucky that I don't cook most of my meals. But also just making sure that
I also have enough protein because that's also... I feel that the Portuguese diet does not have much into account. So most Portuguese food is very...
Cheese based very which are very high fat foods, but not Protein so and the other only option would be having big steaks Having tuna, but then you can also have eggs. So these are all non-vegetarian you can also have like chickpeas things like that, which are lentils beans all these type of things that are
we don't normally cook with, at least most people I know, but it's what gives you that extra protein that you need without having to think too much about it. And then also like supplementing. So you have like whey, you can just grab a scoop of whey, put it in your coffee. You can just buy a bar or a yogurt with whey. So that's kind of how I try to think about nutrition, especially because I don't think...
Going down to the grams, first of all, I don't think it's accurate because if we think about it, first, the labels are not accurate. When you look at the label at some product, by law, it only needs to be around 20% of that. So if you see that something is like...
300 calories it can be 360 it can be 240 and on top of that you weight it and then so all these details you're then measuring something that is not accurate by itself so there's not much point on it it makes much more sense for you to make sure that first you feel you're satisfied and then you can also so for me it's about like waiting myself every week or things like that and see a trend so if i see like okay maybe i'm losing
half a kilo every week then I'm probably not eating enough. I'm gaining half a kilo every week then I'm probably eating too much. But again on this I'm very lucky because I'm a guy so I don't have to deal with all weight fluctuations that women have too and this allows me to just kind of understand okay I'm eating well I'm not eating well. Yeah nice. Okay last question.
So what's your vision for the bakery? And it's an exciting coming up soon this year. The next thing coming up is the summer games. So that's going to be exciting. We already have like some things planned. But my vision for the bakery, I have like no fear of saying this. Like my goal is to make the bakery the best box in Europe in terms of
how good the classes are, how well received people are, the technical level and also like being known as a box that has standards like high level quality coaching and everyone being welcome, being received so that's the goal.
And in order to do that, it's just like expanding and be able to like have more members join our family. So yeah, that's my vision for the future. Like having more bakeries spread out to Portugal and to Europe. Nice. And what about you as an athlete? Again, as I said, we have the quarterfinals in one month. But this plan hopefully won't change. I do think I won't be able to commit to it.
But yeah, my main plan for the next of this year is to first, after the quarterfinals, I'll have my honeymoon. I'll have one month kind of almost off. And then my main goal is to take some time to work all the bases that when we're competing a lot, which is the other downside. I mean, putting it into perspective, in probably the last two years, I did 15 competitions. So for me, that's the other extreme.
But yeah, turning a bit down the volume on that, on competing and putting the work in the foundation, making sure... Because again, I feel like, especially the way I am, when I'm preparing for... If I know I have a competition in one month and we're doing, let's say, some strength work with snatches, and for some reason today the weight feels heavy or something like that, I know I'll try to do it either way, even if it's ugly.
And this in turn leads to like me not working on the technique, me just focusing on the outcome, which is good, but it's not what we want in the long term. So circling back to the question. Yeah, the plan is to then work on the base, make sure that I have a solid foundation to build upon and to next year, hopefully have some good news and some really interesting output, I hope.
Just on that topic, just to help understanding for people who don't know how the programming works. Every time we go to a competition, we have to pass through a phase that's like a preparation for that competition, those specific blocks. So in that specific block, one week before the competition, we have a tapering phase. After the competition, we also have like a deload phase to recover and go back to normal. So what Diogo is saying is that if you keep doing competitions in a...
many competitions one after the other you spend too little time focusing on what actually we're trying to develop on that block so I think it's really important for him to like say that because it is important to recognize when you have to tune down a little bit competition and focus on what we want to develop on that block so we can have like a better outcome two or three years from now so
just to have a better understanding why DO is taking that decision is totally supported by me, yeah. And I hope you stick to it. So yeah, I have a bit of a different vision for the year ahead. I want to keep competing. I'm definitely going to do more competitions this year. Not too many, you know, based on what Ado just said, but for sure I want to compete as much as possible to keep improving that thing I was talking about of like
being able to go to competitions and handle the nerves and be comfortable in that environment. But I've also been competing for less time than Diogo, so I still have more work to do. But yeah, sometimes, yeah, and I'm going to try to convince Diogo to do that again with me this year, even if he's taking a break from competing. He still has to do at least one competition with me because it's tradition.
And we compete very well together. I think we make a really good team in terms of mindset and strategy. And I always have a really good time competing with Diogo. So yeah, definitely going to do that. But I think my goals moving forward, first of all, it's just to stay consistent, to keep improving compared to where I was last week, last month, last year.
and keep focusing on my own development rather than comparing myself to other people because I think the main thing that I need to improve at this point as an athlete is my mindset. I can be really, really hard on myself after competitions or after the Open, for example, and I think that's the main thing that gets in my way is that
you know, rather than focusing on like the good things and on the progress I'm making, I tend to really fixate on, you know, where I need to be better or mistakes that I made or, you know, comparing myself to other people and, you know,
that can really get in your way, you know, as an athlete, because it's really not about any of that. It's about like, of course, knowing your weaknesses and working on them, but focusing on yourself and also like celebrating the wins. So that's really like my main goal at the moment is,
like developing a good like healthy mental relationship with competing because I know that that's the main thing that like over the long term over time will allow me to improve as an athlete and also the only thing that I think could really get in my way of improving is you know self-sabotage so trying not to do that as much
since Obi is here, let's wrap up this episode with his story. So, can you... Because when I first joined the gym, I saw him at the door. I was like,
Kind of the reason I stay here. Yeah. Can you share? Yeah. Yeah. Obi has been with us for almost two years now. Yeah. We got him in May of 2022. And Edu and I had been talking about getting a dog, but I'm allergic to dogs. So it wasn't
So simple. We had to find a type of dog that wouldn't provoke my allergies. And we went through a whole process of...
finding Obi and meeting Obi. And to be honest, at the last minute I had a lot of doubts because I was like, I don't think we can take on the responsibility of having a dog. But thank God we did. And we brought him home. And since the very beginning, he's spent a lot of time at the bakery. We brought him here from when he was a very small puppy.
And so he's very, very comfortable here. And he loves seeing all the members and saying hi to everybody who comes in. He spends, yeah, like every day, pretty much part of every day at the bakery. So it's like his second home. And he's a very good boy.
Just two things that is really important that Melissa forgot to mention. The first is that we always talked about having a dog but we decided when we were taking care of Boris, which is the original dog from the box. Boris is on the t-shirt from the bakery since, I don't know, 2015, 2014. So we spent one week taking care of Boris.
And then when we got back home, we were like, "Okay, the house is empty. Yeah, we need to get a dog." So she did all the research, she found Dobby in Spain, and we drove to Spain to get him. And when we were like 10 minutes away from the place that we were supposed to see him, that's when she started having second thoughts.
Yeah, but like everything turned out great and he's just like the best thing. Yeah, the best dog. I remember after my first summer game and Obi was greeting me and Lotte because we were in Arsenal together and just that feeling like yeah, it's all finished and he's such a calm energy to give to you.
Yeah, that's the best part. Thank you! And thank you Melissa, Aydoo and Diogo for your time today. Thank you!
