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The Shark Bite Show Episode 30: Shanen Burns on Leaving and Coming Back

Nick 
I’m here with my friend — Shanen. Lots of people thought this one would never happen, you know that he’s just a real big talker. Loves to talk, loves to tell people about himself, loves the spotlight on him. These are all things that are true about Shanen. That’s why our friendship has worked out for so long. This is Shanen Burns, the literal longest member of this gym So first off, who are you? How would you describe yourself? 

Shanen Burns
Shanen Burns, I’m 34 years old. I was born in Delaware, moved down to Florida with my mom when I was about 10. Moved down here because she wanted to get away from the cold. I kind of grew up in Cape Coral went to elementary school, middle school and high school here and then joined the army. Kind of going back and forth from there. Still kind of in the army.

Nick 
Just a little bit, just a little portion of the army. Did you play a bunch of sports and stuff growing up?

Shanen Burns 
Actually, no. I mean, we’ve talked about this much time was a bit of a nerd. And a bit of an awful lot of nerves a little bit. A little bit of nerd Yeah, a bit of a nerd. I actually didn’t really get into sports a lot until till later in high school. But I did like it did the extra sports kind of is forcing the reader to the JROTC I think it was familiar with that, like the Raider teams like their physical fitness team sent here Raiders. So that was kind of like, my extension, my extended sports in high school. Yeah, I got into football, please watching it towards the end, but never got a chance to play.

Nick 
Okay, so not a lot of sports. So how did you end up?

Shanen Burns
It’s actually kind of a combination, a combination of things. I remember hanging out with an old friend of mine. I’m still friends with him today. Me and him would hang out. He always had this. Talking about the army. His dad was in the army, I guess. And we will say he will talk about he was joining the army. And I kind of didn’t really know as far as what I wanted to kind of be when I grew up. I guess at the time, we were like 1213 years old. I remember playing a video game called Metal Gear Solid. And we’re playing this game. And I was like, Oh, this is pretty cool game. And my buddy was playing with me. He’s like, I was like, and this is pretty realistic. Like what? Like, what do you think this looks good real job is? He was like, it’s probably like, Special Forces or something like that. I got looking in the Army. I was like, that sounds really cool.

Nick 
All right. Well, so that’s how you got in. And then you joined in what year? The army? Yeah.

 Shanen Burns
2005. Sometimes I still think to myself, I’m like, I still don’t know. I’ll see like guys that are like the same rank as me. It’s so much fun when you sit there and oh, by the way did you can’t you can’t talk crap to me were the same 

Nick 
So this is gonna lead into a better question. How did you find CrossFit?

 Shanen Burns 
So I found CrossFit as a bit of a long story, how I found it, I found it in various different ways. So I was in Iraq, this is around 2008. And just to kind of set the set the picture You’re here. If you remember when you were in Iraq, if you remember, like taskforce 16. This is open source stuff. You remember hear about him see the do all the cool stuff. I mean, you hear about them all the time.
 
Shanen Burns
So actually, we did a mission with them. We were pulling security for him one night, and they were doing a raid. And I remember seeing those guys like they were doing all the cool stuff, doing all the stuff that I thought the army would be. I mean, we got to do some cool stuff, especially back then. But it wasn’t, I wanted more. So at that point, I was like, I asked my buddy, I was like, Who are those guys? You know, I mean, like, what are they? What are they? Like, what unit? And he said he’s probably like Rangers or something like that. So I look more into it. And then at that point, I was like, Alright, I’m at that point. I was like, I was in the kind of that window where it’s like, do I want to get out don’t want to stay in and then I felt at the time like I wanted, I had done what I wanted to do.
I was like, I’m clearly not at the physical fitness level I think I should be at. So I started looking up stuff, different workouts, programs or anything like that, like, what’s good to prepare? And it’s pretty much just as long as you can run really fast do pushups and sit ups.
 But you know, it’s hard to teach an old dog new tricks. So. But anyways, I was looking at trying to like, I want to prepare, I wanted to be ready for it. The only unfortunate thing is that we were in Iraq, and resources weren’t available as far as like equipment, gym equipment, things like that, like we’d stay at. Like the little cops would call combat outposts. And that’s where we’d be standing. They usually be like, little small, like one of them. We stayed at it was literally a little little chicken coop, where the farmers kept their chickens were living. So we didn’t have a whole lot of gym equipment. And we eventually started building a lot of these places up and like adding more stuff, you know, bringing in trailers, we could put gym equipment, and like that was one of the priorities we bring up. But it was kind of hard to work out do that. At least when I started looking up, then I found something called CrossFit. I was like, What the heck is this? CrossFit? I don’t know the first thing I noticed like it’s like a 10 minute workout. And I was like that seems rather short, kind of a little bit more than that.

Nick 
Especially coming from the army PT days where it’s like, an hour.
 
Shanen Burns
But anyways, I looked at that and looked at the movements of snatch, clean, squat, clean. I remember looking at it, and I was like, I can’t do any of that. So there’s nothing I do. So anyways, I kind of got into running and somebody that was over there running on treadmills was but by the time I got back to the States, I looked more into it. And then I found this one program and called military athlete it’s actually run by this dude named Rob Shaw. He came from a Greg Glassman is like that whole crew like when they started CrossFit. He can’t he branched off and started his own kind of programming. And it was geared towards an endurance athletes and like military people and stuff like that. So I started getting into that. And then it was very CrossFit. Like it was definitely known to be cross it a little bit longer, a little bit more volume type stuff, but it was definitely CrossFit like and then he posts like little videos of like the movements so you can like you have an idea.

 Nick 
That makes it sound so old. I know exactly what you would try to search for something on the internet and you couldn’t find it like
 

Shanen Burns 
And it’s literally just somebody taking a video with their razor phone and doing one clean and that’s it. Like, here’s, here’s the power clean, walk up, do the power clean, put it down, that’s the power clean, and then that’d be another video. We’re gonna do that. That’s fine. It was funny because it’s like sync this crazy. Like thinking back now. I remember I went to a gym. I was this is when I was I was back in the day. I was in Hawaii actually. And the main post gym was big Globo gym, you know, stuff like that.
 
Nick 
So you did that thing that a lot of us did in the military where like CrossFit was like mythical unicorn we heard about Yeah, and you tried to do it on your own because I remember doing the exact same thing. We had a at our barracks, somebody had built like a three level pull up bar. Yeah, you get what I’m saying? Anybody’s in the military saying these are the barracks, they get three pull ups and they’re like 200 Guys, that’ll be just fine. Yeah. And I remember I was trying to do what I thought was called kicking pull ups with a CK instead of peas, you know, kicking butt kicking. And I remember talking to a friend later who another CrossFit guy and being like, Yo, I got kicking pull ups like, Oh, no way I wanted to get those. But like none of us, were talking about.
 
Shanen Burns 
Like, I honestly I spelled it wrong. Like, I don’t know, if you like working out like originally back in the day. It’s like, all we did was only cardio when it was run and then every other day back and bus just in trust. That’s all I knew.

Nick
I alternated through like leaders in the army. In my early times. Its like, didn’t know how to work out either. So even like back and byes didn’t happen. It was like, literally, we’re going to run every day, every day, just between three and eight miles a day. And then sometimes you do much of push ups. Sometimes you didn’t. Sometimes you do much. Situps sometimes you didn’t know that. Sometimes they yell at you or you did mountain climbers, because they were tired and they couldn’t think of what to do next.
 
Shanen Burns
Or you get the one squad leader that was tired. He’s like, well, they gotta keep working out. So I’m gonna stand there and just, you know, make them do pushups. Young kids are way faster than me. 

Nick
We eventually found some version of it like, at the time it was like yeah, it was all girls but we didn’t really know what to do and we knew like kettlebell swings and wall balls. Yeah. And like burpees and stuff. I remember for drum it’s nose like 10 months a year and we would be in this room up in the top of the barracks and are all the other squad leaders and up morale is really young squad there was like 21 or 22 at the time, all these other like old grizzled dudes are like taking their people out on runs and calling me a pansy every time they get back in because we were in the inside doing like CrossFit workouts.

 Nick 
In the winter ended we did a PT test and all my guys got like 300. The max score. They then all their guys got like 220s because they could run and nothing else. It was like I think that was the vast majority of people you know. Yeah, I know. I’m not sure about yours. But I feel like I’ve talked to other people who agree with this. A lot of it was that we were enlisted guys even me. You still are we were enlisted. We would meet officers and officers who were basically just college kids. Like literally had been in college six months prior. Were the ones like telling us about CrossFit. I think it was because it was coming from them we’re like I’m not interested.
 
Shanen Burns 
Yeah, but I mean, if you look like a lot of places nowadays, like a lot of bases they have the one of those boxes where you literally open the box like it’s like a Konnex or just a little box and you open the box. I’ve got all equipment. Jim in a box. Yeah, yeah, they got him like I was in Fort Polk a couple years ago and like they have all over the base. Like you literally just go to there if you want to do workout, so you don’t have to like go to a credit gym. I got my little box here, open it up, do my stuff. 

Nick 
When we have people come here, you know, like, I sit in this room and we do the intros with people thinking about joining the gym or trying to get fit. Pretty common conversation is like I’m trying to do in the military. I’m trying to draw on the fire department, the police department, something like that, you know? And I explained to him like, dude, if you’re not doing this kind of workout, like you’re so behind the curve at that point.

 Shanen Burns 
If you’re not gonna have to like down the floor every time you wake up, but like, You got to you got to move. You got to get your heart rate up and everything like that. You got to it’s just, uh, you know, it depends on what you’re trying to go for. Like each I would say like, depending on whether it’s law enforcement, fire department military, like each has its own little special needs that you kind of have to work on. But you know, it’s better than just, you know, doing curls in the gym and squat rack.

Nick 
Imagine showing up to basic training right now having doing only curls and semi squats on this machine.

 Shanen Burns 
It’s something a lot more available to people. Compared to when we joined.
 
Nick 
Man. I remember trying to find out anything and like not even knowing

Nick 
Alright, so you said your first actual gym that you went to, like CrossFit gym was here, right in town. It was another gym is salvation right? Down the street from here when? What like, what was it like working out around people like that for the first time because you were just out of the military?

 Shanen Burns 
Terrifying. I remember first walking. First of all, I just didn’t know anybody, obviously just walk in somebody’s like, hey, come check this gym. I was like, Alright, I literally walked in there. And then the owner of the gym walks up. She’s a buff chick. And I was like, totally crap, dude. And then another one of the coaches walked up to me, he’s like, Hey, how you doing? I was like, Oh, my God. I was terrified. And but they were super nice and everything like that. And I was like, Okay, this is cool. I didn’t actually work out when it for I but like at the time, I remember people would just go in and then start working out. But I didn’t work out. But I came back like the next day. And I think maybe it was was I think it was my first coach or second or coach one second or third day I was there ABA and if you know ABA, he doesn’t really care if you’re new or your all’s I know is I’m sitting there doing this workout and he’s yelling in my face. And I’m like, Who the heck is this guy? Doing? Let me alone dude. But I mean, that’s the kind of where it all started. 

Nick 
That was like 2012 I think it was.

Shanen Burns 
Maybe early 13. Somewhere around that timeframe.

Nick 
Yeah, cuz that’s how we met. ‘m gonna tell this part because this part makes me laugh. I would go into this gym. And just because of the time I went, generally not a lot of people talk to me. It was a great workout place, not not super friendly to the newest people. And I would like to come into the gym, in my uniform still. Remember that? I think that made people not want to talk to me. And they were like, I don’t know, I looked like too official or something. I don’t know. I come in and get me to join. I’m coming to my uniform, I change I jumped in the workout and I leave. And I’d be like, alright, like, I’m really happy I’m going to work out in but nobody talks to me in this kind of stuff. And then I remember you and I started talking. But I think the only words we said to each other for about two months were which whichever one was leaving the one coming out and be like, was it a hard workout? And the other one would go? Yeah, yeah. The conversation would end I’d be like, Oh, we’re friends to talk to Trump. And then, after months of that rousing conversation, you came up to me and you were like, Were you in the army? Yeah. Like I’m in uniform all the time, of course. And die as you have. You’re in the army. And then what did you say? 

Nick
And then the words you? You asked me if I knew a guy.

 Shanen Burns 
Oh, yeah. Yeah, I asked because I think I asked what unit you’re with. And then you said the unit urine. I was like I had a friend from high school that served in the same unit.

 Nick 
Anyone who’s ever been in the military knows this. Everybody asks you like, do you know Joe Smith?

Shanen Burns 
Yeah, we actually had we actually joined the army together we did the whole buddy program and we went through basic, let’s definitely do it together. He ended up going to Fort Drum and I’m gonna Hawaii. 

Nick 
Super long story short there. You told me hey, my buddy hates you. And he beat the shit out of you last time you saw him?

Shanen Burns 
The first it was I went back and I talked to him. I was like, Hey, do you remember a dude in the cabin? Oh, yeah, I hate that guy. He’s like, asked him about the flower suit incident

 Nick 
We did a shoot house and he broke the rules took advantage of my vantage taken self.

Shanen Burns 
Yes, well, I was like, man, small world.

Nick 
Yeah, cuz that never happens. Like everybody asks you that. You’re like, of course I haven’t met the one person you’re asking me about no. One time. And that’s been a 10 year friendship since then. Yep. Pretty much. Yeah. So we we bonded originally over our interests and wearing stupid clothing.

Shanen Burns 
Yep. Right. Hawaiian shirt thing was a was our first outing. The white

Nick 
Our love of rumble mints. Yep. Good. You guys, if you don’t know what that is, if you’re of age, just check it out. It’s just trackable. 

Shanen Burns 
I remember one of our original ideas was to do this scuba suit thing. And we still haven’t done that. 

Nick 
There’s time. Oh, yeah. Provided you come back in seven months. 

Nick 
Okay, so we, you I mean, you are technically the oldest member of the gym. Like the longest tenured member Joe was the oldest member? Yeah, Joe is the oldest person alive. Except for Mary Schweitzer. But you have been with the gym. I mean, other than me, I end with me the longest of anyone, 

Shanen Burns
It’s crazy. Like because, yeah, it’s definitely evolved a whole lot from our beginning back in that a little garage, down off Palatine road. You know, it was like a small we’re like, maybe like a third of the of the people could work out inside.

Nick 
Workout outside. Yeah, cuz you and me would be on the sloped driveway.

Shanen Burns 
And then obviously have some times where I’m away a little bit and I come back and it’s always like, there’s always something new. I feel like there’s always there’s always something new going on. We’re never stagnant. That’s one thing that I’ve always noticed throughout the years, I’m always trying to innovate. I know. And then, you know, obviously, obviously, people the people coming in and everything like that, like I don’t know, people come and go, but I noticed that you know, that sort of that same core that stays around but I say the the biggest thing man is just the just evolved devolution that’s gone from you know, from when we started back in January 2014. To You know, now in September 2021. Isn’t that crazy? It’s how far yeah, we remember back then. We’re like, I have no idea it was gonna work. Yeah, maybe it will. Maybe it won’t. But you know, I got nothing to lose.
 
Nick 
I remember like making plans to get out of the army to do that. Yeah. And being like, is this like the dumbest thing I’ve ever done? People are like, you’re gonna get out of the army to do what? Yeah. Go to the gym.

 Shanen Burns 
Yeah, no, I’m not gonna lie. I remember coming back from from North Carolina back in 2017. And then like so talking to like, the guys that I’m with now like, what do you do for work? I was like, I’m coaching CrossFit gym like what?

 Nick 
So what is this gym? What has it been for you?

Shanen Burns 
Everything? I mean, like this is like we’ve talked how many times we’ve talked like, this is like my friends are from here like i Man, I mean, met my fiancee here like, I mean, that’s a big deal. Yeah, like this is my life like my best friends are here like I’ve almost grew up in this gym like when I came home like I didn’t I had a couple people that are no I don’t really talk to many people from high school like maybe ones and twos here and there. Obviously I still talk my army buddies and everything like that, but like, like, this is like all my best friends. I mean, you know, I’ve known Charlie for years you for years. Josh for years, you know, I mean, like, and we’ve all like become really good friends or anything like that. And then obviously, I met Chelsea here. And like, yeah, it’s just been everything and like, I love coming here. Like every day, like that’s what I look forward to at the end of the day, like usually afternoons. Now, I can’t wait to go to the gym. Yes. Like the one thing I look forward to every day is coming to the gym.

 Nick 
It’s cool. That is right, because it’s like, you would think at some point that would get boring, but it doesn’t know. We’re literally like almost a decade into doing that almost every day. Yeah,

Shanen Burns
Man, I can’t wait to I can’t wait to get to the gym today. You know, I’m one of the ones that workout for and I’ll be here till like six

Nick
We have a lot we actually have a lot of people like that. Yeah, the afternoons a whole different beast. If you’re listening to this and you’re a morning member the afternoon is a whole different beast. Yes, true. The Cape Coral gyms like a party for three and a half hours. So like, we you’re still in the military. I was in one of the one of the things that comes with being in the military is leaving and coming back to places leaving and coming back. What’s it been like having a place that you know is going to be there every time?

 Shanen Burns 
Oh, it’s great, man. I remember when I was gone, like 2016-2017 I remember it coming back and like I was like, I just can’t wait to go to the gym. I can’t wait to see everybody at the gym. Or I didn’t tell anybody I was coming back. Having to come back for a coaches meeting.

 Shanen Burns 
I have a place to go to you know what I mean? Like it’s pretty scary going to new place. I remember first coming back here initially getting out of the army when I was getting off active duty. And I remember like, man, like I don’t have really many friends. I don’t really have a job. I don’t really know what’s going on here. But now it’s nice to always like come back and be like, Okay, I know I have a place and then you know, everybody, you know, I come anytime I come back. You know, I’m here really excited to see me. That’s always nice and everything like that.

 Nick 
I can relate to that I do when I moved down here. I didn’t know anybody. Yeah. You were like my first friend. When I say a friend I mean we grunted at each other. Twice a day. Yeah. Yeah. People will sometimes ask me, they’ll be like,
 
Shanen Burns
We thought we were common law married.

 Nick 
I don’t care if anybody else agrees. I think we have some great stories from competitions we’ve done, right. Oh, yeah. So when we started this gym, that the group that started this gym, I think we all thought we were good at working out. Because we had no exposure to people who were actually good at working out. That’s true. Yeah. So what was the first big completed first big competition?

Shanen Burns 
Water Palooza,

 Nick
Right one of the big one of the biggest ones in the world, one of the ones that people fly from other countries to come to. So one of who’s had a massive event for anyone doesn’t know we’re talking about last like three days. I think now it’s actually four days. You have to qualify through multiple levels to get in like it’s a badge of honor to say competed there. We competed at a time when there were none of those things. Well, they don’t tell you though, is that you’re gonna suck really badly when you’re there.

Shanen Burns 
If you’re a normal dude, don’t sign up for this one.

Nick 
Not not lots of CrossFit competitions. Super fun, local competition, super fun water Palooza when you’re not very good. Not fun. Nope, not fun. What are your number one memories, number one memory, memory and other memories from that cool
 
Shanen Burns
boy. Let’s see. First of all. There was I remember thinking the entire weekend, man I paid to be here. I’m paying to be this miserable. 

Nick 
I think I think at least 100 times he looked over at me and he said, I can’t believe I paid for this.

Shanen Burns 
Another small thing I remember we were the only losers in the entire comp who didn’t bring a tent. We’re just sitting on a cooler one cooler in the middle of the field and next to the border border crappers

 Nick 
everybody else had like, like, tons of food tent chairs be like, like, like inflatable sofas Yeah, we had one cooler between the three of us had like eight bottles of water. Yep. Monitors.

Shanen Burns
This was what after like two weeks as a gym open yeah represent across the Cape Coral with our cooler

 Nick 
Do you remember walking around the vendor tent telling everybody like oh yeah, we’re coaches at a gym and then giving us all this free stuff. Because they were like, Oh man, I’m gonna make so much money off these guys. We got like eight members 

Shanen Burns 
that’s where we’re coming in for weigh in. And I didn’t bring shorts. I was wearing jeans
 
Nick 
I totally forgot the way and so is

 Shanen Burns
that there’s also the the triathlon triathlon, the I guess it’s like triathlon sort of, yeah,

Nick 
I’m gonna tell this one because it’s really funny. So there’s a, there’s a workout.

Shanen Burns 
So each each, we did team, and you got three people per team. And then one of the workouts was kind of like a triathlon where there was a run a swim and a row. Remember that? Correct? Right? So you did the row?

Nick
Yeah, I think it was like it was something like a two mile run a 5k. Row and some 300 meters law enforcement. 300 meters, man. Yeah. Yeah. So 

Shanen Burns 
I’m already doing the rolling or the partner was doing the run. And I was like, I get 300 meters. Excellent. Three years. Super easy. I got that. Yeah, so like, I was the first one to go, I think or no, it was at the run. I think the run was very run. Yes, I was second. All right. Yeah. So I remember. As soon as we get off with this, here’s our other partner comes off the run. And it’s, he’s pretty close to the pack. So I jump in to water. And I start off like haulin ass like, I’m just like, I got this super easy. Like, I was actually in the front for like, all the three to five seconds. But yeah, I got this 300 meters is easy. And all’s I know is I started slowing down and slowing down and slowing down and then I look up and I maybe have gone maybe like 50 meters, maybe I’m gonna I’m gonna die here. I was like, literally legit, like, looking at the people on the paddle boards. I was like, I’m gonna have to go to these people like I’m gonna drown.
 
Nick 
Because it’s like, it’s not just 300 meters, 300 meters and like open water and a bay. So there’s like, waves in the in the phase

Shanen Burns 
putting that in a picture and you’re swimming with like, 300 other people. So like, nobody cares who lives or dies during those hours getting pulled under. It was terrifying. It was terrible. So I’m like, I eventually just I get to a doggy pattern. I just doggy paddle that the rest of the way like, and I get off the the out of the water. Go on tag Nick to go do the row and I find the nearest tree keel over and I’m pretty sure it was a good 2030 minutes. I was just throwing up. Eventually it wasn’t throw up. It was just dry heave. Yeah, it was a long

Nick 
because you threw up for 20 or 30 minutes late consistently. Yeah. Because I did. I did like a 5k row.

Shanen Burns 
Oh, I started went sort of throwing up when you started and I was still throwing up long after you finished.

Nick
Yeah, I remember I’m walking. I’m sitting on the road and I’m like, well, Shannon, well, he’s a fast swimmer. I’m watching other people come back. What’s going on? People are half down with the row and I’m like, This is gonna be real uncomfortable. Especially because at that time we still thought we were kind of good.

Shanen Burns 
We’re gonna do this. We’re gonna meters is super short and I can do that.
 
Nick 
I finish the row you’re you’re still puking. I remember leaving. I can’t I might have been for I don’t really like frustrated or had to pee or something. I come back like a good deal later. You’re still hugging the same tree legs around it holding one arm just just dry heaving into the ground.

 Shanen Burns 
I wanted to quit after that. I’m not doing enough this weekend. This was stupid. I want to go home I was gonna keep working out. 

Nick 
I remember the we had 10 workouts done I’m gonna get some of that nine or 10 or something? Yeah, the first one was at 7am Our last one was a 8pm

Shanen Burns
on the first day yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah, those Yeah, the first day we were done pretty frickin late

Nick
and they they had those games competitors with us right so like in the RX division the normal division there’s there wasn’t like the division for if you’re really really really good

 Shanen Burns 
yeah there was no elite It was literally RX I don’t think that intermediate and scale yeah maybe 

Nick
I do

 Shanen Burns
Yeah, cuz I think we probably would have signed up for it.

Nick 
Probably yeah. That’s what they did was a receipt it everybody afterwards they put the guys who were doing good at the top and the guys were at the bottom. Unsurprisingly we went last the rest of the weekend.

Shanen Burns 
I don’t think we finished last summer. I was pretty proud of that. We didn’t finish right that’s true. 

Nick
I didn’t quit or got injured. Yeah. I worked. We did not end up man

 Shanen Burns
And then I remember them playing this song over and over again. Martin Garrix animals. Yep. Yeah. And I hate that song. Yeah.

Nick
There’s some serious PTSD associated with that song. Yeah,

Shanen Burns 
I was, I think back to that weekend and how miserable was the entire time?

Nick
Yeah, I remember driving back and was just like, we should never do anything that again, ever
 
Shanen Burns 
tried to reevaluate some stuff.

Nick 
Luckily, we signed up for about 40 more after that. 

Shanen Burns
Yeah. We made sure we kept at it, you know, a level we can. I will say in our defense, it also didn’t help that we, for a good three or four months didn’t have a gym.

 Nick
Yeah. Right. Because it was the the in between us leaving our old gym and then our new one opening up. You’re right. I think we had only worked out maybe six or seven times during that time. Yeah. And it showed Oh, for sure. I don’t think we would have been much better having been working out but no, it was bad. Yeah. That was actually really really embarrassing now that I think about it. So we you’ve done a bunch of competitions that were like, really important point to bring up is that we had a competition recently. At the gym. We had all the gyms and all the sharpei gyms we call it the SharkBite classic. It’s our in house comp every year. You beat somebody this time?

Shanen Burns 
Yeah, that’s like this one dude that comes to the gym. Today, I remember his name. Mike Central. Yeah, he got fourth place back. Uh, yeah, he got fourth place already was where I’d heard he was back to back champ like he was he was going for the three peat.

 Nick
So that means he won twice in a row. Yeah. And then what did he do this time? And then

Shanen Burns
he didn’t win twice or three times or he didn’t win. He didn’t even podium. Now. I heard he was like a favorite podium. And then something happened. And then, you know. And then me and Rudy Lopez, we took third place. Yeah.

 Nick
So my birthday. So Mike didn’t he didn’t put it he didn’t vote it. Yeah.

 Shanen Burns 
Yeah. That’s sucks. I know, man. Poor little guy. Like he did that. That last workout? Like it literally meant nothing. Yeah.

Nick
Poor little guy, man.

Shanen Burns 
I know, dude. Breaks my heart. I hate to say it. Hate to see.

 Nick
You think he has any chance to commit a club this week?

Shanen Burns
That’s a good question.

Nick 
I’m gonna rank it. Oh, nice. Alright, so the reason we are filming, filming, recording whatever this right now is, what are you about to do rounds?
 
Shanen Burns 
Actually deploying here in the next couple of weeks? Yeah, going overseas. It’s not like a combat rotation or anything like that. So yeah, we’re getting ready to go to over the Middle East. And yeah, I’m actually kind of looking forward. It’ll be a little bit of different deployment than what I’m used to. From what I’ve heard, we’ll have a little bit more freedom to like, go out and actually see the country where we’re going to be and everything like that. Yeah, I’m actually really excited. Like I heard. I heard that this place you can you can go to the beach and go skiing like in the same day. Oh, wow. Really? Yeah. Yeah. So I’m actually looking forward to it. I don’t I mean, it sucks leaving, but like, I love my job. Like, I love what I do in the military. Yeah. The only thing that would that is like, you are gone quite a bit. Especially like, even though I’m in a National Guard capacity. 

 Shanen Burns
But I’m actually I’m pretty excited. I’m hopefully gonna do some cool stuff when we’re there. And yeah, I’m looking forward to

Nick
How different is it? Because in the other times you’ve left, even on your own, you know, now you’re not. Oh, yeah, that’s true. She recently got engaged. Yeah, he calls the engagement, I guess, get engaged, but

Shanen Burns
that’s true. This is a little bit different. Actually, you know, that makes it way harder. Anybody who’s like whoever’s listening.

Nick
He’s getting visibly uncomfortable

 Shanen Burns 
Snybody who’s been in the military like that’s listening. They know how hard is to especially leave at that point. Yeah, like actually have like family and everything like that like suffer but I think we’ll be okay. Um, yeah, I’m

Nick
All right. Is there anything else you want to bring up? It’s funny because like, we don’t know, a million stories. That’s true, but we can’t tell almost any of them. 

Shanen Burns 
Yeah, a lot of them are pretty inappropriate. Yeah, think about it. I was like trying to like I’m thinking like what can I say what can I not say? I’m not trying to get me in trouble. I’m not trying to get Nick in trouble. 

Nick
Okay, so when should we expect it back?

Shanen Burns 
Hopefully around May cool. I’m thinking yeah, I think early May is when we should be back hopefully. 

Nick 
Alright, man.I would have loved to have said a lot more. But I know that a lot of stuff we can’t say I’m recording mics, unfortunately. But I just want everyone to know so that when you come back next time and there’s, you know, a bunch of new people you don’t know. Shannon is one of the hearts of the gym man, and you’re my best friend. I’m gonna be really upset when you leave and you’re really selfish for leaving. Very rude of you what a jerk and I think is very regrettable Eagles lose all their games because you’re leaving. They probably will. Yeah, but that’s Yeah, man. Thanks for doing this.  

Shanen Burns
No problem, man. I’m honored dude.

 Nick
All right. Thanks for hanging out with us today on the Shark Bite show. If you’d like to get a hold of us, you find us on Facebook or Instagram at Shark Bite fitness Nutrition or on our website at SharkBiteFitness.com. If you’d like to learn more about our guests, their information will be in the show notes. If you’d like to talk to us about getting more fit. Feel free to schedule a free no-sweat intro at one of our locations in Cape Coral, Fort Myers, or Naples, Florida.

Check Shanen on this social link:
IG: @shanenburns 

Be sure to check out this episode of the #TheSharkBiteShow. 
Available in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or any of the podcast platforms. 
https://redcircle.com/shows/the-shark-bite-show
 
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