“We treat others like we treat ourselves"

Hey! I write this flying over the South China Sea from Seoul to Xiamen.

I was in Seoul for less than 24 hours, but I WODed at Reebok CrossFit Sentinel One. If you’re ever in Seoul, I strongly recommend this box. The manager Howard was super nice and accommodating, and even though the coach spoke little/no English, the international language of barbell enabled us to get through.

 

It’s amazing what this physical movement has built, truly. Halfway across the world, you can drop in on a class, and sweat and bond with people. At the beginning of class, you are strangers. An hour later, brothers and sisters.

It’s one of the things we love about the movement, and how we are blessed to be able to do what we do.

Moving on.

Our sale this week is on our bumper plates: FringeSport.com/Bumpers

And I’ve got to say, I have a little angst about these bumpers.

I am on a lot of internet forums and private Facebook groups, and I see a sentiment expressed often:

“All bumpers are the same. There are a couple of factories in CHINA pumping these things out and everyone puts their brand on them"

Maybe I’m too thin-skinned.

But, Sorry, no, WRONG.

There are factories all over the world producing bumpers.

I know because I’ve been to them.

And right now, the best bumper plates in the world are manufactured in a dedicated facility, in Qingdao China.

They are branded OneFitWonder- our brand.

It’s true that some other brands are also producing in this factory.

But not even close to “all” brands.

And even with this factory, there are different quality levels, prices, and innovations.

We work closely with this factory to ensure that we are on the cutting edge of training bumper technology- turning out the best bumper plates in the world.

A few things we do:

• Work with this factory vs. all the rest. Most bumper plates are made in tire and gasket factories that devote 1-2 lines within the factory to bumpers. This is a problem since the engineers at these factories are tire engineers. At our factory, they only produce bumper plates. Their engineers are bumper plate engineers.
• Pay more to get the best rubber, and the newest innovations in our bumpers, things like rebar around the steel insert, making the 10/15s of a stiffer durometer than the 25/35/45/55s, making the 10’s slightly smaller diameter than the other plates, and more
• Roll innovations into our bumpers ASAP- before everyone else
• Code all bumpers with production dates so we can collect long term data on durability

And here’s how we back it up:

• We offer the best warranty in the world on these bumpers- 1 year on 10/15s, 3 years on 25/35/45/55s.
• We don’t play games with our warranty. Think your plates are failing? We replace them. No arguments over what constitutes failure, no pro-rating
• Offer the most reviews in the world on our bumpers. And our reviews are unbiased, unfiltered. Give em a read.

OK.

One more reminder- they are on sale this week only.

Buy them, you’ll LOVE them

Or we’ll buy them back from you.

OK, got that off my chest.

Onwards.

While in Morocco last week, I read Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike by Phil Knight- the story of the early days of Nike.

Inspirational!

And I have taken a few lessons for Fringe. we’ve been very reluctant to do any athlete sponsorship for Fringe, but reading about Nike’s connection with Pre and others (John McEnroe) makes me think Fringe could make it work… with the right partners.

Coincidentally, I grabbed (stole) a copy of Wired magazine from an airline lounge. It had a feature on Nike, and one of the things that it mentioned is that in the shoe design team’s workspace, there is a big sign on the wall that says something like:

At the end of the day, we are just kids who get paid to draw shoes

Wow.

I need to wordsmith this, but here’s who we are at Fringe:

At the end of the day, we are just kids who get paid to throw barbells around

Wow.

What do you think? Email me at peter@fringesport.com

Actually, I am really jet lagged right now, so you may have noticed this email is even more rambling than usual.

Anyway.

I also just finished on this flight, reading and working through the exercises in Inner Drive by Dave Arch.

One of the most powerful quotes from the book for me is:

“We treat others like we treat ourselves"

If you don’t love yourself, how can you love others?

It’s an interesting inversion of the golden rule you mom told you. (No, not the one your dad told you).


This is really powerful personal development stuff. If you’re interested, I suggest printing out the entire ebook (it’s not long) and setting aside 2-3 solid hours to do the exercises.

If you actually do read and work through the book, can you please email me to tell me what you think? I’d appreciate it peter@fringesport.com

One more thing and I’ll wrap up.

I know everyone is mad about Apple killing the headset jack.

But I have been rocking some new Bose Bluetooth Noise Cancelling headphones on the past few trips.

Gamechangers. Great headphones, long battery life, noise cancellation.

They kinda suck for voice calls, but I guess you can’t have it all.

OK, I’m done for now. Check out our bumper plates.

Be well, be safe,

PK

 

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