Kettlebells came calling for Kevin Jodrey

Cannabis has taken the Humboldt legend around the world. Sport brought it all back home

Straight away I need to inform you that, though Kevin Jodrey is a staggering figure in cannabis, the conversation below mainly concerns sports and father-and-son relationships. If you want to bow out on this one, I feel you.

But I really do suggest you hang out.

Dig if you will a world where weed isn’t stigmatized. In that world, Rhode Island native Jodrey gets hailed as an American original, equally regarded in the realms of business and science. Formerly an outlaw marijuana dealer, the 58-year-old Humboldt County resident has achieved international legal cannabis primacy on the strength of his cultivation wisdom and by birthing the concept of direct-to-consumer legal weed sales.

Yet, I came out of my August conversation with Jodrey feeling that neither of these gifts to the wide world of weed are the most interesting things about him. Director Rebecca Richman Cohen agrees. In the acclaimed festival-circuit hit Weed & Wine, she featured the relationship between Jodrey and his son Cona.

Executive produced by Berner, —Jodrey’s present business partner—Weed & Wine hits Apple TV and Amazon on Sunday.

(No tickets are available for Sunday’s sold-out screening at Hollywood’s Cinelounge, but Tuesday’s screening in Arcata still has availability.)

Because my younger son was skipping out on LA to get educated in The Bay Area when Jodrey and I chatted, this conversation only really delves in Jodrey’s breathtaking career near its close. My attention was drawn to how he and his son “got to be the first father-son ever to compete as pros, side by side” in a sport I did not know. He and went down tributaries concerning Orange County’s Todd Marinovich—the former USC and Raiders quarterback—and the relationship between Lakers’ rookie Bronny James and his Hall of Fame dad.

You should go into the sports chat knowing that Kevin Jodrey is a LeBron James-level industry figure who in the aughts broke new ground on medical marijuana. This, after decades of work in the traditional weed market. He’s advised growers in nearly every corner of the planet and is presently basking in the success of his cannabis sommelier program, The Ganjier.

Kevin Jodrey is also a veteran. Our conversation has been edited for concision and clarity.

Donnell Alexander: I saw that you’re doing this kettle bell competition with your son. What is that? Why are you doing it?

KJ: I turned 58 a couple of days ago. I was in my late 30s, I realized that I was just aging. And I was trying to understand, How do you take care of yourself? How do you really maintain your health through the duration of your life?

I started doing some research and I started checking out this Russian sport called kettlebell sport. The Russian government had put it on the military, and everyone in the military mandatorily had to lift kettle bells. When we say the word “sport,” that’s a Russian word. Russia has spent more money on scientific athletic studies than any country on Earth. Russia is the only country that only has organic food. Russia is a country that has an incredible education system. The ability to mine from it was what I was trying to do.

So, I mine into this kettlebell, this cannon ball with a handle. It was kinda neat, because of my background in weed. Kettlebells were originally called handle weights—girya—and they were used for weighing grain in the 1800s. They would put it on the scale to counterbalance grain and it came in a measurement called the pood. Two pood, 32 kilos—or 71 pounds—was the conversion.

The people who weigh the grain are using these weights, and over the course of time they started making games with them and they’d juggle with them. They’re pressing them and snatching them and lifting them, and all of a sudden it becomes what we would call a cultural sport, kind of like the original wrestling over in the south of the US—the catch-as-catch-can wrestling. Just grappling—cultural grappling. Not the Olympic version, just the science of grappling.

The Russian government notices that this tool and these people are exceptionally strong and the tool is so simple, what they do is put research on it and realize that they need to implement that and put it into their military as a training device.

I was just fascinated by it, right? So, I said, “Let me try kettlebell.” I buy one. I take it out and I do two sets with it. And it whipped my ass so bad that I was almost put into the garage and never touched it again. But I knew anything that made my body hurt that much from head to toe had to be good.

DA: What does your set look like?

KJ: You think of weight lifting. You think of clean and jerk. You think of snatch. Those movements were really movements that came from kettlebell lifting and other lifting, hundreds of years ago. A snatch just defines as a weight moved over the head in one continuous motion. The clean-and-jerk is a weight that’s moved over the head in two motions. One, the “clean,” in which you pull the weight from the floor and catch it. The second movement, the jerk, is where you explode it into the air and then reverse your direction to get underneath it.

What I had done with that kettlebell when I first got it was two sets of simple swings. Most people don’t have strong posterior chains, meaning your back, your hamstrings, your glutes. It felt like I got hit with a bat the next day and I just realized how weak I had become in these areas. And I was ashamed.

I put the ball in the front seat of my BMW and I seat-belted it into the passenger seat. Anybody that got in my car had to sit in the back seat. And everybody asked me, “Why is there a cannonball with a handle strapped to the front seat of your car?” I said:

Because I’m ashamed and I know that I need to use this to get healthy, but if I hide it I know I’ll never use it. If I have it in the car like this, then one day pretty soon I’ll be too ashamed and just take it out and use it.

Once I did, I started becoming healthy again: Young, strong, and vital, as a man. I didn’t want to go on any hormonal therapy, even back then. I just wanted to generate power, from exercise.

So, I get into it and I end up hooking up with some Russians. And I take my son with me out to Greece to meet this Russian World champions and these coaches. When they meet my son, he’s 12. They say to my son, “Hey, you have this incredible athletic potential that you don’t realize. If you wanted, you could become an elite endurance athlete.”

That led us to realize that I was fixated on fitness, but my son had a natural talent to be a world-class athlete.

“You know I’m a pot grower, right? I need to let you know this before we get involved in anything.” And they were like, Oh no, we’re cool. We don’t care what you do.

He and I sat down and I said, You’ve got the Russians telling you that you could be somebody—what do you want to do? And he goes, I think want to find out what it’s like to be world class. So he decides to go on his own exploration of, How do you become a world-class athlete?

I said, “I’ll go with you, and together you and I will train. That way you’ll be able to have a training partner and we’ll take this ride together.” He ends up becoming in the youngest master in the international class in the United States.

DA: How old are you when you take this journey?

Kevin Jodrey

KJ: Shit, man. I must have 41, 42 years old. So, we go over and we start developing. Then I end up getting asked to work with the Russians because I have a really good ability to… I want to say… understand complex things and then amplify them. I could understand the sports science and the methodologies.

The Russians say, Hey, if you could come over and travel with us globally and [talk to] the crowds, the seminars the methodologies, it would make our lives easy. I had to say to them, “You know I’m a pot grower, right? I need to let you know this before we get involved in anything.” And they were like, Oh no, we’re cool. We don’t care what you do.

DA: Really?

KJ: “We just want you to help us”—yes—”and in turn you’ll have access to the whole sporting world.” It allowed me to get this incredible voyage of how you really become healthy.

I wasn’t at all shot when I got into the bells. It’s just, you age. And 40 isn’t 20. When I was 20 I was in fantastic condition, from the work I did in the military, as a diver. But when I was 40, all of a sudden walking up a hill was tougher. You start to notice that your body doesn’t do what you want it to do. And that’s the motivation.

I ended up getting to lift with my son and become competitive. And he [had won] all of these competitions, all over the united States. As I got older I peaked at my strength, but he became even stronger and stronger and entered pro class division, where he competes with 70 pound bells.

I always had this fantasy that he and I would stand onstage together, using the same weight, and he wouldn’t haven’t have to come down to my weight—I would have to go up to his. And it wasn’t that we were going to fight it out, it’s the fact that no father and son had ever contended onstage in the pro class in American history.

“[T]o be able to stand next to your adult son, it’s amazing, because they’re no longer a little boy. They’re bearded, mustached men. They’re bigger than you, they’re faster than you, and you’re laughing because you remember carrying them on your shoulder.”

DA: Gotta tell you, that’s a very evolved fantasy.

KJ: It was. It was really beautiful, because I didn’t have a good relationship with my father. So, I didn’t really know how to be a father. What I was trying to do was learn as I went. I would explain that to my kid, that I really didn’t know what I was doing, but maybe together we could figure out what the relationship really is.

Because I didn’t try to live through him, it allowed me just to support him on his quest. I would send him over to Russia all of the time and he would travel all over—it’s not the Soviet bloc—but Lithuania, Latvia, Ukraine, Russian itself. He would travel all over, competing, going to all of these gyms. All these high-level strength coaches and just having a great time. He was a good prodigy of a young lifter, and the Russians really liked messing with him.

I had a dispensary at that time—this would have been 2008-2012—and all through high school, he was able to work with me at the dispensary. Four nights a week he would come over to the dispensary, and the back room of the dispensary I had put this training set in so that he could get out of high school, ride his bike over. Then as he gets older he’s got a car. And he would train four nights a week, for four years. It’s rare as a man that you get to see your son for a couple of hours a day, four days a week while they’re in high school.

DA: That is true.

KJ: I’d said, “I think I can actually get to pro level.” It took me six months of that training cycle to get to that situation, but he and I went down and we competed at his coach’s gym. And we got to be the first father-son ever to compete as pros, side by side. It was the day after my birthday, too. It was just a really nice experience. I wish every father and son got to experience what I got.

DA: Do you feel like you can identify with Lebron James and his kid? It’s such a unique class. Father-son sports doesn’t get to happen that much. Ken Griffey and Ken Griffey, Jr. got to play together. Do you have any kind of empathy or view into that?

KJ: What people have to remember more than anything is that the father-son relationship is more important than the sport. At the end of the day, your child is your child and if they are struggling in the sport or are not doing well or something’s going on, you’ve got to separate the sport from the kid. Otherwise, you’re not doing your job as a parent, right?

What happens is, you start to dictate your kid’s reality, based off what you would do, but you’re not your kid. Remember Todd Marinovich? His father—a super-genius in training—creates the combine—and says, Hey, I know how to build an athlete. He tried to build Todd’s brother, but he didn’t have the ability. Todd did. Todd was on the cover of Sports Illustrated when he was, like, 13. And he's just shelling every human on Earth. He goes in the draft, goes to the Raiders.

[Ed: Addiction issues help cancel Marinovich’s promising career.]

I was listening to Marinovich tell the story and he said, You know, After I did all of these things that were important to me, I felt satisfied. He said, Everyone else was mad at me because I wanted to be a surfer-musician, but I had been an athlete at the highest level since I was 12. He said, I don’t know any other 12 year olds who were on the cover of Sports Illustrated. He said, I don’t know anybody else who did all of the shit I did, when I did it. I had done everything ever humanly ever hoped for, so to just continuing to play football forever—like that was the zenith of my life— wasn’t really the truth. But it caused problems, because it made my dad trip out, it made everybody think I was a loser. He said that people didn’t understand that I had reached my happiness, that I was going to get no more out of this sport.

“I released all of these high-CBD cultivars into the system that moved globally and most of the hemp varieties that came out in that era all came from us, in Arcata.”

What you find is that people always envy your ability. Or they live vicariously through your skills. I think that if Lebron and his son can just enjoy the moments, Lebron’s unique. He’s like Shaq, where neither one of those guys—with all of the stuff they’ve had around them, every single thing you could possibly do wrong—all they did was good stuff. It’s funny, but Shaq and Lebron have no back story of doing shady, weird shit. They both have an incredible ethical level, as a person.

DA: Shaq has some ride-along stuff that I really don’t appreciate.

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New to West Coast Sojourn?

This is the part where I ask for a tip and pretend that I’m kidding. In actuality, I am not.

The idea initially to me when I saw a young-appearing Black journo on, some social media platform say that doing the work is traumatic stuff. This talk is real; no one is more broadly despised than the “well, actually” Black guy. (Never mind the marijuana stigma.) It’s why you see so few of us.

Thing is, my motto has long been: You knew the job was dangerous when you took it. Which is to say, in essence, There is no crying in journalism.

Then, I came across the Black Journalist Therapy Relief Fund. That legitimized the idea of seeking support, because the industry ain’t givin that.

And here we are. Leave what feels kosher.

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KJ: If Lebron can be cool with his boy and they get to be together in that regard, I think that’s one of the most fascinating… to be able to stand next to your adult son, it’s amazing, because they’re no longer a little boy. They’re bearded, mustached men. They’re bigger than you, they’re faster than you, and you’re laughing because you remember carrying them on your shoulder, and now they’re carrying you on their shoulders.

I really hope it works out good for both of them. That thing is just so rare.

DA: Lebron’s going to have a special challenge in that there’s no way Bronny’s going to be close to as good as he was. There’s going to have to be a level of support for that. And it’s probably not in his nature as the sort of demanding person that you have to be as a professional athlete.

When you watched your son get as good as he got, was there any comparison? Were you a happy warrior coach? What was the nature of encouraging him?

KJ: We were out doing a training run. We were running around the university in Arcata. I said to him, “Let’s control the pace, and if you feel comfortable, you can open it up a little bit.” He goes, “Oh, great.” He opened up and ran right by me. Then I never caught him again for the rest of my life. (Laughs) He just emerged.

It was okay, because—even with your teammates—you’re like, Damn, you got me. But if you’re a hater, you wish bad on them so that they don’t continue. And that’s not a sportsman, man. That is not an elegant way to behave. You just gotta call yourself on it.

My daughter gave me a beating the other day, too. I have an athletic daughter. We race, and she tore me up. When we got to the top of the hill we stopped and she said let’s take a break. I said, “Good, because now that I’m warmed up—I’m gonna light you up on the second part!”

She said, okay and she laughed. I said, Why are you laughing? She said, “I’m warmed up, too.” And I realized that cold she tore me up and now she was warm and she just ripped me to pieces.

DA: I let this turn into Parents’ Corner. I’m very glad I did that, but a lot of my [readers] don’t really know what I mean when I say that you’re a legend. I was wondering if we could go back to the beginning of the Humboldt Patient Resource Center.

Across the globe, over two-and-a-half billion dollars around the globe was sold by people that I trained.

KJ: There’s 30 years before that, but that’s the beginning of my public time.

I came into the Humboldt Patient Resource Center as Cultivation Director and I ended up kind of taking over the facility in operations. What we were able to do was take one of the oldest dispensaries in America, that was failing, and we won (best) dispensary of Northern California for two years in a row, the first two years that I took it over.

It gave me this incredible education on medical cannabis, because I didn’t really understand how people use cannabis medicinally and were so desperate for the access and how it was a replacement for so many other pharmaceutical drugs.

I released all of these high-cbd cultivars into the system that moved globally and most of the hemp varieties that came out in that era all came from us, in Arcata. I used to be in the hemp top 50, even though I’ve never been in hemp in my life. I’m known in the hemp industry as someone who provided the starter genetics.

DA: Just as a sidelight?

KJ: As a sidelight.

Then I leave the HPRC and I start Wonderland Nursery, which is the first true vertical cannabis nurseries in United States history. I ran that for five years. I took that and merged with Cookies. I’m in Cookies research and development now. So, the operation I have does all of the development for Cookies Global.

DA: And you’re still based in Arcata?

KJ: Everything’s in southern Humboldt. And I have a farm. I also founded Gangier. I was able to merge with Greenflower and we created The Gangier, a cannabis sommelier program. We’re on our fourth year, and in these four years we’ve been able to establish over two-and-a-half billion in sales under our graduates. Across the globe, over two-and-a-half billion dollars has been sold by people that I trained.

That’s from 2008 forward. Two thousand and eight back was just a game where I was known for large-scale cultivation, large-scale propagation.

DA: This was not just in California.

KJ: I was all over the place, mostly California. What I’ve done on the legal end is, I work on operations in Canada. I put the first dispensaries in Israel. I work in Columbia, work in other parts of Central America. I just spent a month in Pakistan doing a genetic exploration. Did some products in Jamaica, Australia, South Africa. I work globally on a lot of different stuff, developing farm operations, working on genetic optimization, genetic development, market analysis, and just kind of helping companies understand the people that they serve.

The problem with cannabis is that nobody asks the person who buys the product what they want or what they can afford. You have to be cognizant of this reality that people would access different things if they had the availability, and if they got the price to the correct range in certain areas you’d be able to have far more distribution of the work.

DA: You’re obviously a brilliant dude. I’ve met more than a few brilliant dudes in weed who haven’t had the success you’ve had. This is the last question:

What’s been your secret to success?

KJ: Oh, man. Always bring value. When you show up, you bring value. And I mean, bring value to everybody that you touch. You try to be a good, kind person, and you approach the problem from a problem-solving perspective. You try not to cheat anybody in the process.

What happens is, people begin to trust you because they understand from watching you that that’s how you’re going to treat them. What they know is, they can respect your brain, but people with heart are rare. When you mix good brain with a good strong will, good strong heart, people have faith. They have belief. That allows them to be able to take a gamble on you.

You have to be able to do this without expectation.