Thank you for checking out The Community Conversation, brought to you by Prototype Training Systems, home of CrossFit Prototype. The Community Conversation highlights a different member of the Prototype Community each week and allows them to tell their story, share their life experience, and communicate their perspective on all things fitness.

We’ve all listened to podcasts and watched YouTube videos that highlight some of the world’s greatest leaders and visionaries. We believe we have some AMAZING people at Prototype and we want you to get to know them! (Check out our last episode here!)

To that end, I want to introduce Heather and Jay Clancy. These two have been part of the Prototype community near its inception. I’m not sure who got who into CrossFit, but both Jay and Heather are two of our most committed members, hitting the virtual classes we offer almost every day. It’s a family affair with the Clancy’s at Prototype as Jess (their sister-in-law) and Mary (Heather’s mom) are part of the community! They have 3 boys, who are all practically grown up at this point (I remember when they were just little kids). And these two are just another awesome couple that is part of the Prototype community and I’m so happy to have them on!

So, click the link below to watch this Community Conversation on our YouTube page! You can also check out The Community Conversation on all major streaming platforms including Spotify! Don’t forget to subscribe!

 

Mike Collette 0:02
Hey everyone, thank you for tuning in to the community conversation brought to you by protect train systems home of CrossFit prototype. community conversation. It is a different member of the project community each week and allows them to share their story, their life experience, and communicate their perspective on all things fitness. We’ve all listen to podcasts and watch YouTube videos that highlight some of the world’s greatest leaders and visionaries. And we believe we have some amazing people here a prototype want you to get to know them. So to that end, I want to introduce Heather J. Clancy, these two have been part of the project community near its inception. I’m not sure who got into CrossFit first. But I know both Jay and Heather are two of our most committed members in the virtual classes we offer almost every day 5am or 6am, or sometimes 7am. It’s a It’s a family affair with the clancys at prototype as Jess plansee, their sister in law and Heather’s mom, Mary are part of the community as well. They have three boys who are all practically grown up at this point. I remember when they were just little kids. And you know, these are just two awesome people. Just another awesome couple that we have part of the project community. I’m just happy to have them on today. So Heather, and Jay, thank you for being part of the community conversation.

Heather and Jay Clancy 1:16
Thanks for having us.

Mike Collette 1:17
You got it. So uh, let’s start here. Why don’t you guys share with everyone like a little bit of your background? How did you guys get into CrossFit? You guys have been doing this for like, almost 10 years? And like, How’d you find prototype? Like, let’s, let’s start there. Let people get to know you guys a bit.

Heather and Jay Clancy 1:34
Sure. Do you want to start? Yeah, so I, um, I was working at Reebok at the time they partnered with, with CrossFit to be the official sponsor for the game. So Reebok went all in in terms of building a converting a gym, that or an old factory that that was on the campus into a gym, they brought in all the trainers, and you know, the the culture at Reebok really immersed itself in CrossFit. And after about three to six months, I think I kind of tested the waters and was sold real quickly on it. So he did it first. And we had just moved back. We lived overseas for three years. So we had just moved back, I think this was like 2011. And I had always been part of a gym, you know, I was at the why or anywhere I would work out. But I came back and didn’t really I don’t know, just find something I could get into. So he’s like, you know, I’ve been crossfitting at work. And at the time, the only one around was center mass and Worcester. The kids were little and I you know, I needed like a five o’clock class. And so I started my on ramp there. And that was maybe the beginning of 2012. And Jessica at the time, when I told her I was like, Oh, wait, I’m trying You know, my trainer at BSc is opening up a gym. And so I think pretty much right when you opened I switched over from center mass. And that was it.

Mike Collette 3:08
I remember that call because I remember talking to you on the phone. And I think it was like getting my oil change or something. I don’t know, I remember this. But I remember like the conversation because I think it was like one of the first like conversations with someone that what we didn’t know, from like PSE or some of the workouts we were doing before we open the gym. But back to like 2011 you guys, you said you were overseas? What were you guys doing there? And like, Where were you in? Like, how long were you there? I know you said 2011 when you came back, like what were you guys doing?

Heather and Jay Clancy 3:39
So we went over in 2008 for Jay’s work. I was working in finance. And the my boss came to me and said, you know, what do you think about Hong Kong moving to Hong Kong, because we had an office there. And I kind of looked at him. I’m like, you know, I? I lived in Rhode Island for a couple of years. But that’s you know. And I didn’t even tell Heather A week later. He’s like, so did you think about that? And I was like, No, you know, I came home and mentioned it to Heather. And she’s like, why not? Well, he came home and you have to understand at the time the kids were like three and a half, two and three and a half, two and one just and Jay came home and I was staying at home with them and kind of just in this whole like toddler, you know, craziness. And he’s like, they offered me Hong Kong. I was like, let’s go. Like why not? Yeah. So we ended up moving? January of oh eight until 11.

Mike Collette 4:44
So what was that experience? like being in a couple? I mean, this is the firt You said you lived in Rhode Island, which

Heather and Jay Clancy 4:50
was cool. Rhode Island.

Mike Collette 4:52
Yeah. Oh, shoot. Oh, you went to school and you said you went to school in Rhode Island. Providence College. Yeah. Oh, cool. And then so that was like you’re basically as far as you did that. Have you been basically outside of like, mass? She’s Okay, got it. And then so what was that experience like being overseas in Hong Kong? I know. And that was another one of our members. So Nicole St. Pierre, she lived out overseas for a while to she mentioned that was one of the one of the her conversations, but what was what was that experience? Like in terms of like, culture? How did you manage that with three little kids? Like, I mean, this is like, sounds kind of incredible.

Heather and Jay Clancy 5:25
Yeah, I mean, it was we were just so like, inundated and kind of like that, you know, family, toddler life. It was Hong Kong is it’s a really neat place. And it was ruled by Britain for so long. So English is actually one of the official languages. So when the aspect of moving to you know another country, there wasn’t a language barrier, they have a huge x pack commute community. So there were a lot of resources, it. I mean, it was the internet at the time, but I don’t feel like it was you know, Facebook didn’t exist yet. There wasn’t like that. You know, you had to kind of dig for like forums on places, but there was still information there. And so, you know, before we went, I just, you know, found a scoop found schools and, you know, things to kind of get the kids and so we just did pretty easily

it we tried to live like tourists for for three years basically doing, you know, traveling, it was very easy to travel there to other countries. So we saw a lot of the of Asia and even within Hong Kong, just the different tourist attractions, you know, we’d kind of pick something on the weekend, we jump on the ferry and off we go for the day. And it was a

Yeah, because we’ve rented so we didn’t have, you know, we came came from having a house. So, you know, on the weekends, we’re doing yard work and things around the house. So we went to renting where we didn’t really have any of those responsibilities. So it kind of opened up the weekend. And we just, you know, would go see different things, which was, you know, it’s just a really beautiful part of the world. And you know, I tell anybody who has a chance to it’s a lot of travel time worth it.

Mike Collette 7:09
What was the favorite? What was your favorite place? Or Park you said, you traveled all over the place, it was pretty easy to get to. So you guys are in Hong Kong, but like, where else did you guys go? What was your favorite place? Where do you remember I do the kids he did the kids even remember, today, he

Heather and Jay Clancy 7:24
was actually funny because you know, Dylan’s the youngest and one of the so within three, a three hour flight from Hong Kong puts you into you know, Indonesia, and Thailand and Vietnam and all these kind of neat places. And so we had done with the kids that little we looked for family resorts, you know, go to Bali and have a nice resort. And so when we when we moved back home, you know, Dylan, who was maybe you know, five at the time, would just go around saying, We vacation in Bali. When do we go back to Bali? And I’m like, that sounds but so we did. I did some trips, there was a woman’s group that I did some trips to some of the more like non resort II places. So there was a trip to Java, which is really neat. And we tore like coffee plantations, and we did a weekend trip to Bangkok, which we didn’t take the kids to. But you know, it was just really a neat, neat places to see. So we family like that was the hardest part is we lost kind of that, you know, our his family’s in Marlborough. My family’s in Worcester. And, you know, we had very involved grandparents, and we kind of lost that support system. So that was an adjustment

Mike Collette 8:49
would ever come and visit you guys are now

Heather and Jay Clancy 8:52
they Yeah, his mom. His mom came and moved us over. So she came with us initially. And then my mom came maybe two or three times. And then your sister came. Yeah, my sister came. Yeah, yeah, they did come. Awesome. Yeah, but we missed a lot.

Mike Collette 9:10
So the next question is, would you ever do it again?

Heather and Jay Clancy 9:14
I it’s funny, because I’ll randomly out of the blue say, is there a job available overseas?

See, when we went the kids were at the perfect age to do something like that. They we were still their world they were in you know, preschool Jake hadn’t even started kindergarten yet. Like we weren’t really uprooting them. I mean, other than, you know, them not seeing that the family as much we weren’t uprooting them from school or their friends. So it was a perfect time to do it. And then as, um, you know, there was one chance a couple years ago, it was like five years ago that Japan came up on the on the you know, as a possibility. And it just gets harder as the kids get older because they’re just more ingrained. They’re schooling and so I think now that they’re high schoolers, we’d have to wait until they were graduated high school and then probably, but

Mike Collette 10:11
so like I mentioned in the in the intro, like, I remember when your kids are just like just little peanuts now they’re all in high school. And they’re older. So what’s that been like, now that they’re like, basically, you got four men in your house together, right? So what? What, what is that? Like?

Heather and Jay Clancy 10:32
Yeah, we had this such good kids. But teens are hard. It’s it’s hard. And busy and crazy. Jake graduated high school in May or June, beginning of June. So he committed to University of South Carolina. Cool. Oh, he’s, he’s taking off. And then Tyler is finishing up junior year, and Dylan is finishing up freshman year. So all three are written in high school right now. So it’s there. It’s weird. I feel like we’re at that point, like, you know, they all have jobs, and they just kind of you know, Tyler will get his license soon. Jake drives in Dillon hops on his bike first thing in the morning, and it’s just gone. So it’s I feel like we’re empty nesting, which is kind of a weird thing. We went from having these ridiculously busy weekends of sports and activities. And yeah, unless it’s a ride or money from us,

Mike Collette 11:36
sounds like teenage boys.

Heather and Jay Clancy 11:38
Yeah.

Mike Collette 11:39
I remember that wasn’t Yeah, well, I guess it’s getting further away from me now but I remember those days too. So they can you guys are all in on on the fitness or the kids in the same the same boat seems like the whole family is like, all about working out and stuff is the same thing with the kids are

Heather and Jay Clancy 11:58
not really they you know, Tyler was really big into baseball for a long time. In that’s kind of eased out a little bit in the last couple of years. So he, he works like 30 hours at his job. And you know, Jake, always ran track. And he did actually he did training with john for a while and did some of the classes. And then Dylan’s just kind of you know, plays basketball plays taught like just kind of plays a whole bunch of stuff. But we can’t we keep saying you know, grasp it with us. And

Mike Collette 12:31
I was gonna say because you guys have I would say arguably hands down the best home gym setup of anyone that I’ve seen. And if people that are listening to this, they haven’t seen Jane Heather’s home gym setup. I mean, I think I’ve made a blog post about building out a home gym. You guys have like, taken it to a whole nother level. Like, when did you guys put a home gym in your house because it was before COVID like, and you guys have a rock wall like boots, you

Heather and Jay Clancy 13:02
got to get the scoop. We just took down the rock wall. Oh, you did. He did it was it was slanted. And it was kind of interfering with our overhead barbell. You know, we wanted it a little bit more space. So we’ve been in this house Seven, eight, almost eight years. And at the time that we moved, I was working at the y and had clients I was a trainer. So when we moved here, my goal was always to have just a workout room that I could train clients. And so when we moved, you know, I was had some stuff, I had it in the garage. And then we had this finished basement. And it’s and I was fine just in the garage. And it’s funny, like the ages of the kids were they were downstairs with their friends and we couldn’t really keep an eye on them. And you know, there’s sliders to outside and it just seems like it provided a whole lot of invitation to mischief. So bring this in. And so it slowly became half the space. And then we had a bedroom that my mom was commuting to the cape. So she was living with us. And then when she moved to the cape full time Jays, like, why don’t you know why don’t we just make that a bigger space and we’re still doing it primarily to block the kids from having this like boy cave that we don’t know what’s going on in it. So we brought like, you know, we set up space up here for their like Xbox and stuff but more. So it kind of grew out of that as more of just blocking the kids from having this this space than anything so

Mike Collette 14:55
so what else are you going to add to this space you’ve taken down the Did you take down the hole? While I just took off the like the parts that made the like the rock into a rock climbing wall did you actually like just blow out the wall to give you more space?

Heather and Jay Clancy 15:10
Originally, I mean, there was a full room down there that someone came in and demoed and added kind of doubled the space down there but got it we I just took down the rock wall this this past weekend

because there was a window underneath there and we weren’t getting that light and then you know, the kid like it’s the kids are taller than the rock wall now. Nobody was nobody was using it.

Mike Collette 15:34
What’s the next piece of equipment you guys are adding into your into your home gym setup? Are you guys are you guys done? You guys like we’re good. We don’t need anything else.

Heather and Jay Clancy 15:41
We’re done. I think with Jays last purchase last week have a new 20 pound med ball because it was the one we had was all the scenes came on down and it was duct taped and oblong. So we added that but I think

I don’t know. I think we’re I think we’re, I think we’re Okay,

Mike Collette 16:03
you guys everything you need. So you guys sit. I mean, you guys have the setup, which is like check the box on that. But like working out during COVID for the majority of human beings has been like incredibly challenging, even if you have like access to all that stuff. Like how are you guys so successful at like staying consistent? Doing like you’re keeping with your routine? Like, you know, I mean, like how like, and then I assume, Jay, you’ve been working from home or you were working maybe I don’t know if you guys changed at all, but like sticking with that routine, like and just talk a little bit about that.

Heather and Jay Clancy 16:38
So it’s actually really funny, because, you know, like I said, we moved in here eight years ago, and that we’ve had that space. And you know, I belong to CFP, I belong to the why I never used it. You’ll be like you have this space and you don’t use it. And I’m like, No, I don’t. It was kind of like, you know, ironic that I would I had it and didn’t so it wasn’t until COVID I was kind of in last year I was coming out of like the winter blues, I wasn’t working out at all, I think I had gone for months without working out at all. And you stayed up.

I mean, as humbling as it is it you know, it’s still part of, you know, my favorite part of the day is kind of just getting up and getting that done. And it kind of when you miss it for an extended period of time, it just kind of throws off the rest of the day of the week. So that’s kind of that’s convenient, too.

Mike Collette 17:37
Isn’t it? Like you just wake up? Like, earlier? You’d probably have your coffee. You work out shut it off then Okay. Oh, now I don’t have to like commute or like doing. By the way. Are you going? Like, are you back in office?

Heather and Jay Clancy 17:50
Are you back in the office since mid July last year? You know, two to three days a week. So it’s not too bad.

Mike Collette 17:58
There’s obviously no traffic out now. But then I was gonna say there’s there’s no there’s no traffic. I’m sorry. So we’ve talked about literally your guy’s journey overseas, talk about family, the fitness stuff like what are you guys doing outside of like, fitness? Now the kids are out like what are your What are your, like, favorite things to do? Like, let’s talk about a little bit about like, your hobbies and that sort of stuff.

Heather and Jay Clancy 18:22
I think sadly, we play an incredible amount of cribbage

cribbage we’re 90. Right?

Mike Collette 18:29
So I’m like so ignorant. What is cribbage

Heather and Jay Clancy 18:32
cribbage is a card game that you just you know, there’s a board that you have to earn you earn points by you know, the combination of cards you have in your hand and you just kind of you know, play 1515 hands to a game and whoever gets to 120 points first.

Mike Collette 18:53
You guys just go back and forth. You guys in like a league. You guys play with your kids. Like

Heather and Jay Clancy 18:58
we have kind of a weekend tournament or you know, just just

Mike Collette 19:02
it’s just, it’s awesome. You know,

Heather and Jay Clancy 19:05
even if Lino before COVID you know, we go to pick the kids up, but they’re working out Ward or at baseball. You know, we go sit at the bar and bring our cribbage board and cards in place. That’s awesome. Thank you.

Mike Collette 19:21
You guys don’t even need technology.

Heather and Jay Clancy 19:24
Exactly.

But I mean before COVID I mean, we would we would go hiking. We would kayak we would like we would go out and do stuff but like, really since we’ve been kind of empty nesting has only been during COVID it’s really been the last year. Like we’re kind of

Mike Collette 19:42
like what’s the biggest thing you’ve like you miss? I guess doing for since like, for COVID and all that stuff.

Heather and Jay Clancy 19:49
Um, kid wise or just like in general?

Mike Collette 19:53
Yeah, life. Yeah.

Heather and Jay Clancy 19:56
Um, sadly, I think our life was kind of messy. For

a pandemic.

I mean, we would, you know, we miss having fires with our friends that and, you know, on the weekends and you know, meeting up with people and having cookouts and stuff. Kids wise we miss the baseball games and yeah, I think we kind of joked at the beginning of lockdown that our life was really kind of set up.

Mike Collette 20:30
Just winning, right? Hey, do you miss? Do you miss live shows because everyone listen to your your, your, your dead guy. So you had to be the missing like live music and that sort of stuff.

Heather and Jay Clancy 20:43
That that is a one of the biggest things that kind of has obviously stopped all together. So looking forward to hopefully by the end of the summer things picking up a little bit. But you know, whether it’s a big show or just some guy guitar, down at the local land vets or wherever, you know, playing, you know, I’m looking forward to that.

Mike Collette 21:06
So, like, I wasn’t really into the Grateful Dead until I started dating Aaron. And I the first song that I heard was like that she played in the car, we were driving to the cape was friend of the devil and I was like, this is a band. She’s like, I’m really grateful dead. And then I became like, immersed in that because my father in law’s big dead. deadhead. Heather. Have you got into the Grateful Dead music? Or were you had it like that? Is Jay rubbed off on you and tasted music? Or no, it was? Play? It’s played a lot.

Heather and Jay Clancy 21:44
But I do like, there’s a lot of music with no words.

It’s definitely the best reason. It’s,

like 15 minutes long. And no, I like to sing along to stuff.

Mike Collette 21:57
That’s true. You can say this.

Heather and Jay Clancy 22:00
I like it when it’s on. It’s not my choice. Like if I was by myself, I wouldn’t put it on

Mike Collette 22:06
your it’s very, like, politically correct answer there. You sound like my mother in law, Karen. But she would be a little bit more candid with how she would respond to that. What was that

Heather and Jay Clancy 22:22
said? I’ve heard her talk about the other Grateful Dead stuff around the house and down there at the gate.

Mike Collette 22:28
Yeah, it’s it’s awesome. Uh, one thing we didn’t talk about is like, how did you guys like meet? Like, what, like, give us your like, that’s that story, too. You know,

Heather and Jay Clancy 22:39
that’s funny. That was Sam’s Question of the day this morning is How did you meet your significant

other was Oh,

I didn’t know perfect. Kind of the I gave kind of the quick answer that we met at work. But I’m kind of the funnier answer is we both worked for the same company. And I was really good friends with the girl that sat next to Jay. So he’s quiet. I didn’t really know him. And so I was driving to work. And I had my sunroof open and as I’m driving a bird died. Mid flight, came through my sunroof and landed in my cup holder. And now I’m driving this car and I’m freaking out because I didn’t know this guide is just, like just straight dive bombed into my cup holder. So I go into work. I go to my girlfriend’s cube and I’m just like, a dead bird came through my sunroof in j without saying anything grabs a shoe box, goes outside to my car, scooped it up, cut it out for me. And I was like, Oh, that was that was really that was really kind of thing to do. And yeah, then we were ended up being on the same softball team and kind of hanging out and then it was but he rescued me from the dead bird.

Mike Collette 24:01
I thought you were gonna say that he like made a joke that he shot it out of the air and that’s funny jokes about but that was a nice thing to do. Oh, look at that. That’s a good story. Yeah. All right. So we’ve we’ve touched on a lot of stuff here now we got to hit you with the the Spitfire round of these questions. I asked a couple I asked one of them I already know the answer to one of these questions but first one is what it This could be different. for the both of you doesn’t need to be the same but what’s your favorite movie and TV show of all time and then what are you currently binge watching if you are binge watching it?

Heather and Jay Clancy 24:43
Okay, so I think my all time favorite movie is stand by me. But I think both of us it’s probably Shawshank

i i’d say The Big Lebowski or ASCII, dude.

Yes. And then we kind of have like Top yeah Shawshank

Mike Collette 25:02
Shawshank is your is like you as you’re both yours but like individually

Heather and Jay Clancy 25:07
it’s it’s the if it’s on TV we’re stopping and watching it.

Mike Collette 25:11
It’s such a common response on on this I feel like there’s two or three other people that have said that because it’s such a good movie. Yeah such a good movie. Favorite TV show.

Heather and Jay Clancy 25:22
Seinfeld,

shits Creek

Mike Collette 25:25
Creek Erins watching that I really got into shits Creek Seinfeld like that. I’ve never really got into it I watched a couple episodes. It’s it’s funny. But it’s not like necessarily like type of humor but it’s such a popular show. Oh, my god like taking over like the like the internet. And is that what you’re binge watching right now? What do you guys bingeing guys engineering together?

Heather and Jay Clancy 25:49
I’m done that. We did. We don’t do we don’t do much together with TV. I think the last one we’ve been watched together was Cobra Kai. Cobra Kai. Yeah. Pretty much just watched Jeopardy every night because again, we’re not at

Mike Collette 26:07
jeopardy. Hmm, nothing wrong with jeopardy. No, Jeopardy is awesome. Alright,

Heather and Jay Clancy 26:13
then it leads right into bedtime because we get up at you know,

Mike Collette 26:16
you get the crack of dawn. Yeah. Before cracking down and I should say, so favorite musician, or band or artist of all time. I Jerry know you’re it’s got to be the Grateful Dead. Unless

Heather and Jay Clancy 26:26
you’re no

other What’s yours?

I’m probably Bruce Springsteen for like, longevity wise.

Mike Collette 26:35
It’s another good answer.

Heather and Jay Clancy 26:36
Yeah.

Mike Collette 26:37
And then last question is we kind of asked this a little bit is what is your favorite thing to do when you’re not working out? Or at the gym? with your family?

Heather and Jay Clancy 26:50
I like the whole family. Because we have three teenagers, we don’t see them.

Mike Collette 26:56
Then you already talked about your your big hobbies. This cribbage but anything any big things you guys do the court you just give me like pre COVID to

Heather and Jay Clancy 27:07
a couple of the boys scheme. You know those every once in a while though. They’ll come out fishing with me. And you golf? Yeah. So it’s it’s more kind of one on one or one on, you know, with a couple of them to get all three of them to do the same activity is Yeah.

Mike Collette 27:25
It’s hard. Yeah. I know you golf and you guys ski too.

Heather and Jay Clancy 27:30
Yeah, we spend a lot of time up but uh, what you said, you know, we get the head up there once a week or so. Just for a couple of hours. snowboarding and I’ll ski That’s awesome.

Mike Collette 27:45
Well, guys, I appreciate you guys being on this conversation today. So much thing, so many different things I learned about you guys. It means a lot to me and it means a lot to everyone. That’s listening. So also everyone that is listening. Thank you for tuning in and watching. Remember every week we’ll be releasing a new community conversation with a new guest to get your week started. Also to be the first to know when the community conversations posted, subscribe to our YouTube page also on streaming on Spotify, or join our daily newsletter. We also post this in our community members only group on Facebook so if you remember prototype and not in the group for some reason, just let us know get you in. And lastly if you interested in being like community conversation, just shoot us a message and we would love to have you so Jade Heather. Thank you guys so much.

Heather and Jay Clancy 28:31
Thanks for having us