I was finally able to track down our final Winter 2024 Spotlight Athlete down on a warm May Thursday at Lazarus Brewing on Airport. Unsurprisingly, the wait was worth it as we two ex-patriots of the American Southwest engaged in a wide ranging conversation that covered everything from 90’s fashion to the death penalty.
Coach Chad: Gretchen Weber! With one “b” right?
Gretchen Weber: One “b”! I wish that I was related to the grill, but I’m not.
You’re not a grilling heiress? Not the Paris Hilton of propane?
Nope, I wish I was.
Well thanks for the clarification. So I think an interesting place to start is that you have confessed to me that you are a fitness nerd- like you’ll go down youtube rabbit holes. Can you think of 2 or 3 of the most fascinating things you’ve learned or people you’ve come across?
Oh sure! People I love are Brian Carroll & Stuart McGill- the McGill method. That has been one of the biggest things I have learned; abs aren’t just the six pack. I also like the gentleman from Squat University- they have some practical tips.
Can you think of one particular tip or tidbit you’ve learned from these people?
Hmm… You should do lots of core stabilization before you lift heavy.
The warm up in our Strength classes is usually all core stability, so that backs that up- very cool!
I like the way that it supplements what (the coaches at The Shop) teach. People cue differently.
Be honest here, have you come across anything that is completely different than what we do- anything that made you think “Dane’s is full of shit!”?
No! Sometimes when I see people do a bird dog, according to the McGill method, the leg is up too high and it causes an arch in the low back. You guys do teach it correctly.
That is a really great observation. I’ve seen it too- particularly with women because of the way the hips are shaped. Okay guys, listen to Coach Gretchen! What else are you a nerd about?
I’m a super nerd about nutrition- about how much protein I get. I make all of my own food and probably eat out, at most, twice a week.
Maybe we can link to a favorite recipe at the bottom of the interview?
Honestly, I’m such a good at home chef, that I just open the refrigerator, see what we have and just go for it!
Woah! Okay, maybe we can link to something you like to make.
I have some incredible salad photos.
Maybe I’ll use that instead of a photo of you for the newsletter/website!
Yeah!
When and how did you get into fitness?
My family are sports fanatics. Even though it is a very female-heavy family, we all watch sports. My mother benefited from Title 9 and she played high school sports-
Which ones?
Softball & track were her big sports. So I was raised that we always had sports on tv- particularly women’s sports.
That is neat! You’re a similar age as me and that was not a common exposure when were growing up.
Yes! Tennis- Martina Navritalova & Steffi Graf. Being from Nebraska, there is nothing there but corn and sports.
What sports did you play?
I played volleyball-
Even as a shorter person?
Yeah, I was a setter! I blew out my knee before my senior year.
Do you still play? That is a sport that ages pretty well.
I did intramurals in college but then hurt my knee again. What I’m really into now is weightlifting!
Cool! When did you start weightlifting seriously?
Dane’s!
When and how did you start at Dane’s Body Shop?
I went to physical therapy at Austin Sports Medicine. I used to do a lot of cycling in New Mexico and I wanted to get into a fitness community. When I moved to Texas I needed to develop my community again and I had gone to a yoga studio and some other places and, I don’t know how to say this, but they weren’t my people. So I went in to get some work on my knee and I asked for recommendations of a good gym that wasn’t going to treat me like an old lady and they recommended Dane’s. I went to a community workout first. I went up to Dane and was like “Okay, I want to join- what is your spiel?” and he just blushed- so modest.
That dude! The tours we give to new members are our lifeblood and he’s more or less taken himself off the schedule for those. He’s too modest!
Honestly, I have a bullshit detector so he would have blown it if he came on too strong. He’s just genuine.
He’s on the far end of the sales spectrum away from bullshit- I mean he actually has a good product to sell!
Totally! I brag to everyone about Dane’s.
That’s great. It isn’t intended at all, but there is always a marketing component that surfaces in these interviews. How long did it take you to hit a rhythm taking class?
Oh right away! I was like these are my people. The first person was Janelle-
Janelle Fondry!
Yes! She was one of the very first people in those early morning classes. She is amazing.
I’m glad you said her name. I love having her in class and then just her as a person. My favorite t-shirt, because I have a baby girl, is in the style of the poster for “The Godfather” but it says “The Girl Father” and that was a baby shower gift from Janelle. Anyone else you wanted to shout out from your early times taking class?
Shelley!
Which one? We have insane amounts of Shelleys.
Shelley Norton. She’s great.
I love her- we lose one Shelley and three more grow back in her place. Ok, so you grew up in Nebraska- when did you move to New Mexico?
Um- 96′! Albuquerque- go Lobos!
Go Lobos! I want you to riff on Albuquerque a bit. Think about the board of tourism for Albuquerque, how would you pitch the city to someone who has never been there?
Albuquerque is home to The University of New Mexico and is in the backdrop of the Sandia Mountains which are unbelievably beautiful. It has a wonderful historic downtown area and has the world’s largest tram- let me fact check myself- yes! (reading from phone) “the Sandia Peak Tramway- ride to new heights- takes visitors 2.7 miles or ten thousand feet up to the Sandia Mountains”. It is a really spectacular thing and Albuquerque is also home to the international hot air balloon festival every October. It is really amazing, you’ll just be living there and a hot air balloon flies over your house.
That is so cool! Okay, if the vibe in Austin is something like the struggle between the “Keep Austin Weird” ethos and “okay, enough tech bros already!”, what is the vibe of Albuquerque?
Oh it is a chill vibe- mountain air, Subarus, weed is legal in New Mexico. Everybody spends so much time outside that I think they are calmer. New Mexico has this very deep and rich history and is very much the southwest which is way different than the south which you understand as someone from Arizona.
Yes! I was curious how you would describe Albuquerque specifically as someone from Tucson, because I’ve always viewed the two cities as through the looking glass versions of one another.
Yeah! Also it is a minority majority city- I spoke Spanish every day that I lived there.
And I want the readers to notice that not once have you mentioned meth while talking about Albuquerque-
*roaring laughter!* I was actually on set for one of the scenes during Breaking Bad- I’ve seen Aaron Paul and Brian Cranston. I had to sign an NDA! They did filming on my ex wife’s property. I am a fan of that show- big time. Albuquerque also does have a great deal of poverty and so there is a lot of sadness there. But we loved Breaking Bad- they pronounced the name of our streets correctly- like they actually pronounced San Mateo as “San Mateo”- not like here in Texas-
We’d call it something like Son Made! You just mentioned your ex- how long have you been with your current partner- Kreesa?
Karessa! Uh… 6 years!
What do you two do together- what is your life like?
We are pretty big nerds! We love outdoor stuff- she 3-D prints while I cook.
At home?
Yeah, we have a 3-D printer at the house. She’s printing herself a micro-sized laboratory.
Wow! We had a member years ago who brought one in and printed these name tags for all of the coaches, so I got to see it working. So cool! Do you two ever workout together?
She is not a gym enthusiast- we like to walk and hike together. I can be a little intimidating when working out. *big laugh*
You do get locked in! If she was a gym person would you want her to workout with you?
I don’t think so, Dane’s is like therapy for me and I don’t bring her to therapy unless we’re doing couple’s counseling. I think something surprising about me is that I am not an extrovert. I probably wouldn’t be as open to other people if I had my own person with me. It forces me to connect with other people.
I would say that “forces” feels like an odd verb here because you connect so naturally.
It is so flattering that you say that- I always feel like a spaz!
Not at all! You can be overly apologetic when asking questions, but us coaches love it when members ask us questions. Okay, well let’s talk about what you do for work. I usually go into these interviews with a vague idea about what folks do, but I have a more than vague idea about what you do and I think it is fucking fascinating and terrifying. So don’t trauma yourself talking about this!
*laughing* No, I love my work. Okay, I am a paralegal for the Federal Public Defender’s Office which is a fancy way of saying that we represent people on the last stage of appeal on death penalty cases out of the state of Texas and that if we’re unsuccessful, then the client is executed. So if someone gets a death sentence from a county court, an appeals process starts. There are a couple levels of appeal at the state level where you go back and look at what did or didn’t get told at earlier levels and if those are not successful then the federal appeal starts. We overlook what every other legal team did and what didn’t get told and then we tell it.
That is a big ball of yarn to untangle-
It is a big fucking tangled ball of yarn. And then if we are unsuccessful the individual gets executed.
Wow! How did you get into that- did you work in the legal field before this?
Yes, I have been a paralegal for seventeen years now. I have a bachelors in Spanish and political science and I started with the state public defenders in Albuquerque. I worked for seven years as a paralegal dealing with violent offenses; rape, murder, rape that results in death- all the good stuff! *dark laughter*. Then I went to work for the federal office and that could be anything from bank robberies because banks are federally insured to felonies committed on reservations because those are considered federal lands. So I go to visit people on death row and organize the case- kind of like how a nurse sets everything up for a doctor, I set everything up for the attorneys.
I feel like it is almost more interesting to be a paralegal than a lawyer.
I think so! A lot of the attorneys say they couldn’t do it without a paralegal; I joke that my middle name is “where is that thing, I know I saw it somewhere”. I can work a word document like nobody’s business. I’m really a project manager- I manage the timelines and request all the records. I get to work with the best experts!
Another question just occurred to me. The death penalty is like a classic high school debate class topic where you get assigned a side to defend. Can you give a brief case against it?
Yes. We are more than the worst thing that we’ve done. The criminal justice system is fraught with racism and the system was meant to enslave people. Also, it is not a deterrent- Texas executes the most people as a state, but if Harris County were a state, it would be second in line. There is such disproportionality to how the death sentence is handed out. It isn’t a fair system.
And for our fiscally conservative friends- isn’t the death penalty a major financial drain?
Yes. It would be awesome if I could argue myself out of a job.
That might be the title of the interview. Awesome! So I got a couple questions from the coaches and I also asked my 4:15pm class a couple hours ago for questions even though I don’t think any of them know you. Doug Zullo, who has been a member since like 2012, great dude, he is a little sassy and he said to ask her why she thinks she deserves to be athlete of the season.
*stung laughter* Oh I’d be the last person to say that I deserve it!
That is how a lot of people respond to that sort of question. Do you have any inclination?
I don’t. I hope that I’m pleasant to be around and I like to be a cheerleader for Dane’s. Following up on my work, when I started doing death penalty specific work, it was heavier than anything that I’d done before. I have had to sit with people and talk about their autopsy. I started drinking a little too much wine when I got home- nothing crazy, but that was my release valve. I discovered that didn’t make me feel better and that is when I knew my body was holding all of this (heaviness from work) and I needed to release it. Dane’s Body Shop is really my release for all the stuff I see at work. I get to slam balls and throw weight around- Dane’s provides such a cathartic release.
That is really cool. I wasn’t angling for a compliment for us, so I’ll answer for you! Why does Gretchen Weber deserve to be a spotlight athlete?
*laughing*
It is that thing we were talking about earlier in the interview- you are so approachable and charismatic in the sense that people want to be around you. You may be an introvert, but at least within the context of the Shop, you are so open. You participate in events at The Shop. The fact that you are a fitness nerd, that you actually take the time outside of class to learn stuff matters.
You know I’m too shy to ask to be on someone’s team (for the team mini-meets we hold) and I was only asked once.
We just had our Brains & Brawn Mini-Meet, and I would say roughly half the teams were made up of people just emailing us and saying “hey, put me on a team” as opposed to having a team they formed. It is a great way to participate and meet people- the team that won was actually a team like that.
Really? I didn’t know that.
August 3rd is Field Day, mark it on your calendar!
Okay! I totally will.
Well thank you for letting me get my Field Day plug in! Now I have to look at my notes because the questions from the coaches were about reality television and I know nothing about that. Stormie-
I love Stormie!
She asked if you and Karessa were on “The Challenge”, what sort of events would you excel at?
Oh gosh! It would have to be two different things. I would do all the physical stuff and Karessa would puzzle and eat gross stuff.
Oh wow! So there is a Fear Factor element to it?
They’ve taken Fear Factor and morphed it into an athletic competition.
Stormie also wanted to know if you had a current guilty pleasure with respect to reality television.
I do- The Jinx season 2. Oh and Catfish- oh and wait, I guess I have a couple. Also “Help, I Think I’m in a Secret Relationship” also on MTV.
I think Stormie will be very pleased with those answers. I asked for questions on the coach text thread and Jess got super excited when she saw you were a fan of The Challenge. She wanted to know which challenger you resonated with. This means nothing to me, but presumably will mean something to Jess.
I don’t know if I want to relate to anyone- I think MTV picks them not just for their athletic prowess but also their sassy behavior. I really like Killer Cam- she just had a baby. I like the moms. She left her 8 month old baby at home to do The Challenge- she’s pumping and freezing her milk so her baby can get her milk.
That is crazy! As someone who has just tangentially experienced a year of pumping and what that entails- hopefully MTV sprung for someone to wash the pump parts for her. That was my job! Okay, here are some random questions. In an election year, I always ask this question- Trump or Biden? Jokes! If you were to elect someone from the Shop community to be president who would it be?
Dane! He’s even tempered.
For a man who has that much CTE-
*laughs* a man who has four children-
A man who has four children and that much CTE, it is incredible how even tempered he is.
He’s also humble- I wish my president was more humble.
I crib questions from other interviewers sometimes and this one is from Inside The Actor’s Studio way back in the day- when you get to heaven, what would you want god to say to you or what do you think he would say?
I would like god to say- thanks for all that work you did saving people on death row-
Because the afterworld is getting crowded! I love that. This one is from a music centered podcast called 24 Question Party People where the host asks the same 24 questions of different musicians. What is the horniest song ever?
AC/DC “All Night Long”. It is a banger!
I love that you didn’t have to pause or think about it. Chunky or smooth peanut butter?
Chunky!
Really? You know you’re living a lie right? People think it is less ground than smooth peanut butter, but it really is just smooth peanut butter with chunks added in.
Really? I didn’t know that. I just like the texture!
There is a thing that happens where I see people at The Shop all the time and then I see them outside of working out and am like “wow, you clean up really nice!” You’ve always struck me as someone with great style- how would you describe your aesthetic? Do you have a color that you anchor to?
I love pink and black.
Which you are sporting right now!
I love the 90’s vibe, I really do. I loved Avril Lavigne’s style- flannel, Doc Martens. I looked like a skater girl, but I didn’t skate. I liked the 90’s style and I am happy that I get to do it again. I think I emulate Jennifer Aniston when I dress up for court.
Very cute! If you were a fruit or vegetable, what would you be and why?
A peach! Just kidding! *laughing*
Oh great, then I’d be an eggplant and we’ll just go there!
*cackling* Okay, I would be a raspberry- found naturally in the wild, a little bit sweet and a little bit tart.
When does the tart side come out?
I get road rage hence when you initially suggested meeting at the LINC, I was against spending that much time on I-35. Being from a town of 350 people and then Albuquerque, I have a hard time putting my destination in and then seeing it is five miles away and it is going to take me twenty minutes to get there. I hate driving.
I’m an extreme defensive driver.
How has that been having Hero (Chad’s daughter) to protect in the car? I’ve always been curious about that
Well I’ve always been the driver when Becca and I are going places, so I’ve had her to protect and now it is just more so. I used to drive like every other car was trying to kill me and now I drive like they are trying to murder my entire family. So I’m worrying about what every other car anywhere near me is doing- “that car 1/4 mile back is going fast, I’m going to start tapping my brakes now so that he knows I’m going to be stopping at that next light”. Well that is getting toward the end of things and I always like to conclude with a more open ended question. Let’s say that someone didn’t come from an athletic background and an athletic family, what advice would you have for them getting started at The Shop?
Yeah, I would say that there are absolutely no expectations. The expectation is for you to do what feels good for you and your body and what feels good at that time. Dane’s will never make you feel like you have to compete with people or that if you don’t want to do the workout as written, you scale it to fit your body and where you are. The coaches will always have something to substitute for you and they won’t roll their eyes about it. Dane’s really is my happy place. I’m taking Spanish classes with Virginia at The Learning House and that connection came from Dane’s. I moved to Austin when I was 39 and when you get older you tend to meet people in just a couple of ways: your work or if you have children, but otherwise it is not as common to seek out those connections. Dane’s has provided that space for me to meet people that have nothing to do with where I work.
That’s lovely! And I’m just going to do this obnoxious thing I had in the back of my mind. Yasi Salek, who hosts that podcast I referenced earlier with the horny song, asks a deliciously obnoxious question towards the end of each interview. What do you think about me? She asks this to musicians who are a fairly big deal sometimes. You’re a fairly big deal at The Shop Gretchen, what do you think about me?
I think you’re the extrovert that introverts like me need to be around. You have a confidence that I don’t have. It makes going into spaces that seem overwhelming more comfortable.
That’s good to hear and thank you! Though I think if we were to really compare what is actually going on in our insides that maybe you are actually more confident than me. I am a classically trained actor, so maybe I can just sell it better than you can. Circling back to the question of why you deserve to be a spotlight athlete, I think making other people feel comfortable is a big part of it and you definitely do that.
I just love the space! People are so welcoming.
Well Gretchen, thank you for that and thank you for the interview!
