AXEL WINO | Workout, Injuries & Being Influencer | Interview | The Athlete Insider Podcast #32

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and that's called overtraining so yeah because people always want to go hard and that's kind of the calisthenics mentality and i i likeit and that's why i also like calisthenicsbecause you just go for fun and give your best at each training but that also means risking injury yo gorillas welcome to the athlete insiderpodcast by GORNATION my name is phil and today's guest is a french calisthenics athlete somebody who had a crazy 2020 i think an incredible year and an incredible uh story and i'm really looking forward to talk to you about your 2020 about your life about your workout advice welcome to the show axel wino thank you phil for inviting me here and i really can't wait to talk with you i'm really looking forward also i had to smile when i saw your christmas decoration in the back yeah well i had no place else to do that so that's supposed to be the streaming background for twitch but you know it's christmas so i guess it's appropriate okay are you a big fan of christmas or um not not not really but i feel like this is what you have to do now on social media so everybody's just pleased to see that and people enjoy it so we just did it okay nice what looks really cool looks really um yeah really i don't know just just cool yeah i would say it's unfinished but it's just like i told you earlier it's temporary so nice so yeah uh let's kick off how do you present yourself to somebody who doesn't know you how do you present to the maybe a lot of listeners who don't know you yet um all right well i guess i'm just a content creator now um i've been doing that for a long time now i it all started with calisthenics and creating content around calisthenics around well statics freestyle and pictures because i was all i always liked making pictures and videos so yeah i think that's where it all started um oh well wait hold on no it might have started way before but it was not around calisthenics um when i was like 14 um i used to just shoot like short movies with my friends and and yeah that's how it started that patient with um visual and videos and all that around around this world you know yeah and then i started creating myself content around about calisthenics okay so if i give you a camera you can do some really nice photos with it some really nice videos yeah but yeah yeah you i can't that's good nice and yeah before we uh come to the uh hard facts like how tall heavy old etc um i want to tell the story how wemet each other because maybe it's important um because we know each other since two yearsapproximately i think it's been more than that i think it's been three years three yearsalready yeah yeah already time goes fastand uh you were introduced to me uh to through iris um or she was the the connector between us yeah yeah well um do you want me to tell the story do it do it all right all right well i think it was i think it was three years ago um i was in barcelona because my parents lived here now and and then irish was there as well so we just met there and i heard she was working for you at the time for good nation and asi told you i was always passionate aboutfilming and editing pictures and stuff so i was really into photoshop um and i don't know talking with her she just kind of pushed me to send you a message on instagram and just telling you that i was down to helping with coordination because i wanted to improve myself improve my skills in editing and stuff like that and also i wanted to be part of the project in calisthenicsso yeah she kind of got got me to to just send the message and i feel like you you took it well yeah and then from that from that westarted working together so that's trueand i don't know if that's a good sum up do you have anything to add about that but nobut it's it's true like for me itit will i will never forget likein a few years when coronation is like really big where our vision is i will still remember that like there were people like you who were like really putting their passion putting their time uh into this project and even like far from barcelona we have never met each other personally um you were like so passionate helping and um this is something that i will never forget and never uh understand or like real life maybe to 100 because it's like for me it's so crazy you know like we didn't know each other and you were like so giving and yeah this is why i'm really really happy to interview you today because i really feel um that you deserve all this stuff that happened in this year for you all the good stuff you deserve and yeah this is why i'm really happy to do this interview thank you phil i appreciate it yes and you know you know it's funny because i've done that in a path with you you know like just telling you that i could help without asking anything in return and now now that we started twitch and streaming and stuff like that you know it's kind of a different community and there's a lot to learn on that platform because it's not easy to use discord to use twitch and all that and what's funny is that i don't know if it's karma or something like that but uh we we are getting help from so many people that just they're just telling us that they can help for free and we have like a discord team that we don't know each other we've never met before but people are just like helping and giving their time for us and it's just great because i see myself doing that with you a couple years ago and i'm just like that's that's great you know it's i like that kind of mood so that's true yeah it feels good it feels good for the person who's getting help but also for the people who can help yeah because it's it's just great yeah let's go back to the beginning of 2020. let's kick off with this one so everybody understands why where you're sitting here and why we are sitting here because i really i am so impressed by your story um by your year 2020 that you and um justine did yeah your girlfriend and um yeah let's get back to 2020 in the beginning maybe january february i think it all started in march but yeah it all started in in march january february was very calm and usual you know i was just a student um so yeah the story began in in march well it begins way before but everything blew up in march um well i was always just like i told you i was always shooting and and um yeah shooting videos like calisthenics and also for fun um i don't know you know what a vine is yeah well i was kind of shooting vines as well but not posting it on internet because i wanted to do to stick to calisthenics you know and not just go everywhere and i don't know why in march i made a story of in my instagram story of justin in the car and i just you know knocked knocked the window she she just down the the window and say something and i don't know i got so many answered uh to that story everybody was just saying that it was very funny and they just loved it and i knew by the time that tick-tock was kind of you know blowing up at the moment so i was like all right let's just try to put that story in tik tok and see see how it goes and the video just went viral so from that we understood that it was all about uh justin's voice you know that's kind of different and she know how to make the baby voice and and on that video uh people noticed that it sounded just like do you know sangoku yeah well i don't know why but somehow there was such a hype around sangoku's voice that was really close to justin's voice so that's how the the video went viral and from that we understood that it was a thing and that we should do something around it um so i decided to drop not drop calisthenics but instead of doing only calisthenics doing both and posting both and so i wanted to keep my instagram private and calisthenics and then on tick tock just do all the things i used to do but not posting and putting it on tick tock and i don't know it just went viral because so it's just comedy you know it's just some some scenarios some funny funny scenarios and uh yeah people liked it just um because ofat first it was because of justin's voicethat made the difference and then we started living streaming like every day during thequarantine and that's how i feel we wegot people's attention and we could createsome kind of relationship with the community um that was thanks to to living and streaming all day for like two months and and that i think that's that was the the kickoff you know because then then then because we created that kind ofrelationship with the community um everything we did after that people liked it not not i don't know just because it it's hard to explain it was not about the content it was just about us because we we created that kind of relationship so so yeah that's how it started just tick tock tick tock in march just a random instagram story that went to to tick-tock and went viral so yeah and then we never stopped because we love it yes and and the numbers speak for you i think i looked it up um like do you know your numbers right now from tiktok instagram youtube uh i have i have 1.7 million followers on tick tock and i have um 145 000 on instagram and youtube is about 170k followers yes and i don't know we got into twitch and we've got 11k now in three weeks so it's great that's that's insane like yeah it's insane numbers because yeah you were like a normal instagram account you know like before this happens and before all thishappened until march you had how many followers before march i was like i had like two k's on instagram but not more and i looked it up you know like um i saw in march you were like you you in one month you gained uh 3 000 followers and then from april on 20k in average every month you know like it's on instagram yeah on instagram yeah yeah and in the beginning i just did tick tock and i it feels for me that you only did your humor thing your uh your vines etc and then afterwardsyou connected in with it connected it withcalisthenics yeah well that was that was the plan actually because i i figured that calisthenics sports in general except of extreme sports isn't isn't that well appreciated by the people in general you know when i stopped calisthenics i kind of sowed discipline in a different angle and i started um understanding that there is more people that just don't care about sports that don't like sports and don't give a [ __ ] about that oh sorry i don't know if i can say that but okay um uh and so yeah i understood that there was not that many people interested in in sports so i was like all right uh the plan is i'm just gonna i'm just gonna do my thing i'm just gonna do humor on on tick tock and grow a community around that and once i have a good amountand a good base of followers then maybe i can introduce and start doing a bit of sports a bit of yeah calisthenics but around humor still and see how it goes and and it worked in work because that's how it goes on on social media it's always about interacting it's always about engagement and if you if you if you are if you just do statics on tick tock it won't it won't go viral because because there is no no one at the beginning when you just launch the video that's gonna help the the video blow up you know uh so so yeah the point is to just throw a community that will make your video blow up once you once you do it later you know whatever your you'll do in the future if you have a fan base that will they will help you blow the video up but if you have no one then it's hard yeah i get it and um how many people do you think in your community to not today knowwhat street workout is in my community yeah you mean on tick tock yeah let's say tick tock yeah well i i would say 80 80 percent of the community i have knows that i do college to next notes i mean the thing with me is that i don't do only calisthenic and that's why i think people are kind of confused because sometimes i see people talking about me on tick tock and saying oh he's the guy that does parkour i'm like no i don't do parkour i mean i like doing it and because i like to do everything so sometimes i do a bit of like backflips and parkour and cool stuff because also that's also what people like you know theylike to see cool cool stuff not not a straddle planche or a full planche they won't even make difference between the straddle and the full so there is no point of titling with that um so yeah i just do cool stuff so people think i do parkour and then i do a bit of freestyle andstraight workout and people are like ohyou do street workout as well and then i move on to weightlifting so people are kind of confused so they just know i do stuff yeah i i do sports and i i think they they see that i i have passion for sports in general and um learning new skills and just doing cool stuff i guess i don't know i'm not really a straight workoutathlete or a park or athlete andi'm just trying to be complete and and that's what i also like what i respected about you um in the in the last years because you always combined like freestyle let it be statics plus dynamics um with weightlifting and you were like really uh also dedicated for deadlifts and squats and yeah like was it olympic weightlifting what you did olympic lifts yeah yeah so that'sreally something i enjoy as well and not many people see this fitting together you know like um every every gram that you have in your in your legs for the front lever blanche because i i lost lots of a level in static because of that but i don't think that was the only reason i think it was also because i stoppedtraining you know i stopped doingaesthetics as much as i used to not only because i got bigger legs i think it's the combo of the of stopping statics and then doing legs that just killed me you know but it's all right it's all right because whenever i go back to static i i can't just get the the full planche back in in two or three weeks so it's all right okay and what are your current goals in in workout is it to maintain your form is it to learn new skills what is it um yeah it's um you know my goal now i think i've i've went around pretty much everything you can do in in work workout in general so my goal is just to i want to i want to have the full planche i mean i i'm getting back now i'm getting it back but i want to keep the full planche uh i want to be the pr i want to have the prince uh the prince the press i want to have i want to have good balance so i'm trying to save also the the one arm handstand maybe the the one arm planche uh and also i wanna i wanna have good legs and i want to lift uh in olympic lifts i want to snatch my goal is to snatch about 90 90 kilograms and clean and jerk about 1 1 and 10 kilograms yeah yeah that's that's my goal uh and also i want to do flipping i want to freestyle uh i want to learn bregmans as well the the airflare is my dream move but i know it's uh it's a long road to get that but yeah that's kind of one of my goal as well i want to improve in breakdowns because i'm not that good in that that discipline sothat's a lot a lot it's a it's a it's a it's a lot it's a lot but it's also my my vision of how how i want to practice so i don't get injured because in my opinion if you go too specific then you expose yourself to more risk of getting injured so that's why i'm trying to switch in in the different disciplines so so i don't work too much on a specific tendon or in a specific angle and then i don't expose myself to s to too much injuries and too much risk of getting injured and that's also why i stopped calisthenics for a while because i got myself too much injured after i after i did legs actually because i did i did legs for for one year without static and then the next summer i was back in barcelona with old people in calisthenics and i was so hyped and i knew i lost level but i wanted to be back at it like quick so i went back to training maltese on floor and stuff and then i got my biceps tendon hurt so i was like yeah not not a good idea to just do it too fast and not a good idea to go too hard you know okay so your your learnings from calisthenics when you speak about injuries and you can give some some advice to the people who want to avoid injuries because it's a common question and calisthenics what would be your advice right now my best advice is don't think you're a a sangoku or whatever because you're just human and i don't know i think people are just admiring the the top 10 in the world static guysathletes or female athletes whatever and the thing is that i think most people don't understand that these guys are top 10 in the worldwhich is huge and in my in my opinionwe don't have we don't have the same nervous system as them we don't have the same genetic as them and maybe their body can um can how do you say um take take that much tension that much effort damage training without getting hurt but most people will because because that's not what we are meant for we need to rest we need to schedule what the training we need to to take good times of resting in between sets we need we need all that otherwise you just over train and that's how you see in calisthenics most of the time people are just super good and then and then they go down and for two months you don't hear about about the athlete and then two months later down video and great level and then down and up and down and up and that's called overtraining so so yeah because people always want to go hard and that's kind of the calisthenics mentality and i i like it and that's why i also likecalisthenics and training calisthenics because you just go for fun and give your best at each training but that also means risking injury okay yeah makes sense it's funny that you say i realize that you're not goku because the interview before was with uh mike the saiyan from from spain uh who who looks like goku and yeah but it's true he he said basically the same he's like um a lot about basics um that you have to not neglect the the basics even though if you can do a plan she said right you have to do your push-ups you have to do your dips um yeah and you sure have to take some rest whenever you don't feel like you're doing well whenever you feel pain whenever you you feel like you have no strength that means your body is tired and you should listen to it yeah that's that's my guess except for the ones that don't care and are still okay but they're not normal yeah some people have extraordinary nervous systems that just allows them to go hard every day without getting without being overtrained you know and i think that's something we should know and tell because people are misunderstanding that part my opinion that's true that's true and it's one in 100 who has like the all the tendons all the uh like the joints who make all this uh like daily daily workout that's true it's not one of a hundred it's like one out of you know you could count you could count the people that can do that in your hand like and i don't know how many calisthenics athletes there is in the world but out of the 10 people they can just go hard every day without getting hurt and still still most of the athletes i know that are extremely good and like just like valentine for example that is a great athlete with great friends he's he still got injured so yeah even him you know got injured and i don't know i don't know any maybe maybe except cam enough because i've never seen him but kind of is specialbecause i remember i met him in ken and hehas like really strict diet and he he tries to sleep good amount of sleep every night he really take care of his health that's why he might not have got injured but most of the other athletes had had got injured once in in jail life and it's also professional level so that's whywhenever you go pro whenever you go pro you take risk yeah that's why i don't want to go pro and get specific in the discipline okay because it's not it's not only about calisthenicsany discipline that you just do toohard you can get injured dancing runningjust anything anything yeah because last year you you competed uh you did your freestyle competition in in uh in the netherlands yeah but i was dumb that was common and not ex no it was not example because you know it's just against what i just told you i was injured and for some reason i i still went there and tried to do my besteven though i was injured and that's why i i have troubles you know healing from that well now it's getting better but it took me like a year to recover from that from that injury you know yeah because i like it i often see that people like the pro athletes they say yeah you have to do basics etcetera but you don't see them doing basics um like sometimes it's like that maybe they do the basics in the background or um they think oh it doesn't count for me or something i idon't know like what was the reason that you knew that you shouldn't compete but you still competed what was happening in your headi think it's just ego yeah which isa bad thing but i think it's just egoi want i don't know why i wanted to prove myself maybe because i knew deep down that that it was gonna be my last competition because i knew i knew this couldn't last more that i should stop doing that because i was badly injured so maybe yeah it was just like come on it's my last comp like just just do it and then you'll rest so yeah that was kind of the mood i was in but it's you i don't i wouldn't i wouldn't advise anyone to do that because you won't be able to do your best and and i i'm i'm pretty sure you won't be proud of the performance you made because you are injured after all and also then people will just criticize and until yeah stop saying that it was because you're injured you know like it's always like that because people complain yeah i'm not at my best because i'm injured you know everybody then and then and theneverybody hates on each other about that so yeah just if you're if you're injured just rest start stop training you won't lose what you've got until so far you know you won't lose everything in in two weeks or even in a month it goesback pretty fast it's called muscle memory so so yeah it's just something it's you gotto be very uh i don't know how to call that but you you need lots of wisdom to understand that and apply it you know it's self-control self-control is the most important in incalisthenics as we don't have trainersso if you want to last in the discipline and progress in the long run without getting hurt you need to control yourself because no one is going to do it for you it's not like in other sports where there is coaches and trainers that just tells you you you stop you know there is no other way you just stop and you have nothing to say because it's your coach but in calisthenics there's no there's nothing about that so you have to do it yourself which is hard and that's i couldn't do it myself that's why i got myself hurt and the the people that can do it are the people that will last longer and will be the best in my opinion i'm making i'm just making uh um i'm just making how do you say i'm just assuming or yeah i'm assuming that kaminov did it himself and i i don't know if uh tony gaze does it as well but i see him uh doing cool stuff doing like lots of preparation i see him doing workouts on the side uh i see him sometimes not doing freestyle for a while and announcing on his past that he will be back in like a month and so that's why i'm like i think he's thinking about the workouts he does and i don't know if he's getting any health i think he's a coach as well so maybe he's aware of all that he has approaches makes he takes long long periods of rest and purpose to to get better when he comes back it's just an opinion you know i'm just assuming because i've never talked to him but it's just something i can see and as he's so good at calisthenics i'm just like yeah that might be the reason that's true i like we uh we i did an interview with tony garcia as well and he's like it was really impressive because he has uh three coaches um he's surrounded yeah he's surrounded like for sleep for nutrition and i think a life coach was the third one but you can check the interview like um to all the listeners um but it was really really impressive that's true and it's it's interesting maybe kaminov has uh has the skill to do it um himself to um i think so i think so the way i saw him he's very um serious i don't know if he couldn't if you can say that but he he's not joking you know he's not he really is doing it with good attention and as a professional athletes he takes care of rest he takes care of doing things the right way and and not just having fun you know yeah that's true um how does your workout schedule look like right now for the for the week uh it's been tough it's been tough since social media has blown up because we have we have so much to do and also lots of pressure to deal with uh because you don't you don't see it like that but it's it's still lots of pressure because i i'm so happy right now that i'm i'm i'm afraid to lose it so i'm like come on i gotta i gotta do more content i gotta i gotta make my content better i get i gotta you know overcome everythingand and push the limits otherwise i'll i'll just be done you know i'll be gone and and and get back to a normal job uh 35 hours a week in a in a shop you know i don't i don't want that and i'm so scared about that that i'm putting myself so much pressure to deal with that i'm just focusing on creating content and then i i just i just don't have time sometimes to work out so i'm it's tough it's tough to to schedule um but i'm trying to so what i do is i try to go every day at the park even though sometimes i can and then i do i just i just try to do pretty much everything in a session so i try i try to work on my balance and then i do a bit of statics and then i'll end up with doing sets and reps so i'm sure that i preserve myself and then sometimes i go to the gym and do olympic lifts and then sometimes i go out and i just do flipping and then i don't know it's just it depends on my mood and also the way i feel i listen now a lot to how i feel and what i want to do i won't i won't go to the park if i don't feel like going going to the park you know so i'll just wake up in the morning and like all right what i've worked on before the next day all right yesterday yesterday i have worked on planches so let's not be dumb and let's not work again on planches let's just do something else and then i'll decide between weightlifting and fridge style and flipping or sometimes at four yoga it it's just it just depends of the way i feel and what i've done the the day before and does your social media content production influence your workouts do you sometimes think uh wow i um i would like to work out without filming something but i have to film something and then you like um you do your workout because of constant content creation um no no sometimes i know i'm gonna go to the to the park for filming but i don't consider that as a workout okay you know it's just uh it's just a filming day okay it's just uh yeah and then when i go workout i just don't shoot or i make some instagram starters but that's like 10 seconds so it's not impacting my workout okay because i think i can relate to what's what's happening for you maybe in a different way because like with coronation since five years now like we are posting nearly every day uh like everyday stories we never have like uh a day without an active story or like an hour um and it's like five years so um it's it's it's a lot of pressure and um that's why i thought like um do you build your life around social media or is social media like influencing your life um in the way of workout etc um i would sayi would say i'm building my life aroundsocial media because i don't see any otherway to succeed if i don't do it this wayyou know if i just consider that as a as aside side kick stuff you know it it won'tlast so i have to make that my priority otherwise although i can't give my best and i can give 100 into what i'm doing and if i don't do that i don't think i don't think i can last in the social media uh world i guess yeah because maybe it also came that fast you know like since uh march until now it's nine months you're like maybe this iswhy you're you also have the pressure ifit came so fast if i don't uh work hard tomaintain it um yeah it will it will go away this fast again yeah because that's that's social media i guess yeah yeah yeah and also when you are into into influencing stuff you i've learned so much and i've been working with many companies many brands many agencies like we we've we've met people and we know now how it works we've met other influencers we um the most famous in france we we've had discussion with people around us and and once once you are into this world youjust realize many things and that's how that's that's when you know that youcan just go away like thatand if you if you don't work your ass off if you don't post every day if you don't make content consistent content and every day we post tic tac every day and well except for some days where i don't know we couldn't we couldn't but it's just exception uh we try to post every dayand and that's what most peopledo and if you don't do that thenyeah you can just disappear in uh in a second and yeah because because the brands don't need you there's there's so many influencers that if you don't make the difference you you'll just pass away you know like there's there's no need for you because there's so many people so so that's how you that's why you get a you know keep working hard to to save your spot in the in the game and still there are like how do your parents uh see this situation is it like um because i can imagine social media isn't the work you know like there are like yeah especially the older people for them social media is is not a work it's not a profession well we receive a lot of hating hating messages about people telling us that it's not a job there are some guys on ticktock that have accounts and that keeps hating on other creators and and trying to informthe people about not doing like us i'm like come on why why would you tell people not to do like us why would you tell people it's not real life what would you tell people it's not a jobum because you don't they don't see the background they don't see what we do they don't see how much time we spend into into writing scenarios into um i think this the thinking part takes a lot of time as well their reflection part it's just always trying to think about new ideas better ideas writing down shooting editing posting and it's not only in one platform because as i told you we are on youtube as well with youtubeyoutube is maybe the the worst platform ever uh it's it takes it takes forever to shoot and edit a video and the the feedbacks or just the feedbacks from the community is great but the the algorithm from you i mean for us actually in these days it's not it's not giving us anything back in return but we still do it because we like it and and we know you we well you have to to you have to go through that you know there are downs and up so so yeah we just keep creating content and in the combination of tick tock youtube instagram live streaming on twitch and all that uh