The Breaking Muscle Podcast

Alex Maclin and I chat about how he starts his coaching process with building trust and asking the right questions. While his strategy includes talking about food, it’s really about empowering the whole person. He has learned the value of early wins to create positive momentum, and that creating change isn’t about telling people what to do. It’s about helping people realize what they really want, what it will take to get there, and then giving them the tools and knowledge to keep doing it for a lifeti

Doug McClintock and Jon Wolery of the Cincinnati Off-Road Alliance (CORA) cover how communities are built around a unifying struggle, and how not everybody has to agree, or even get along, for the group to be cohesive and productive. We talk about how to harness passion, create buy-in, and create connections to become part of a rising tide. The result is a fun and candid conversation that contains lessons for members of any community that wants to see their tribe grow and succeed.

Kevin Moore is among those striving for a better answer in health and wellness. His Reembody Method is a modality that combines physics, evolutionary biology, neurology, and fundamental psychology. He unpacks what side dominance really means, and how a sense of environmental safety can unlock movement potential in any situation. When the brain perceives a threat, he explains, it reorganizes itself in a way that may not be conducive to performance, and may even create pain to avoid uncertainty.

Jess Pilling, Director of Operations at Max Oxygen CrossFit Downtown in Des Moines, Iowa, recently became Iowa’s second female CrossFit Level 3 Certified Trainer, just two and a half years after first getting her L1. Her passion and professionalism has lit the fire under her whole staff, and permeates the community at her gym. She sat down with me to cover how she's helped make that happen, MO2CFDT's plans for the open, and how her experience as a mental health professional has helped shape her coaching.

Danny Clark is the performance director for MovNat, a comprehensive training system whose core philosophy is that if you want to develop the most capable humans, you should regularly engage the broadest possible range of their capability. To do that, says Danny, you need to get out of the gym humans built, and into the gym that nature has always provided.

Matt and Megin Sharp founded KidStrong because they wanted something better for their daughter than the physical incapacity that most kids today will endure. Today, their staff of therapists, physical educators, and exercise physiologists have created an innovative program that helps kids be confident and competent in both body and mind. They believe that movement is the best teacher of character and positive self-talk, and after you hear what they're doing, you'll agree.

Being wealthy in life isn't just about having money. Fitness plays a big role in creating a fulfilled and full life. So, you have to make time for the things that matter that often means redefining your personal wealth in terms of what you value and not just what's in your bank account.

Starting Strength Coach CJ Gotcher sat down with me to explore some of the ideas he recently presented in a talk at the Starting Strength Coach’s Conference, including what the interference effect is, and how to mitigate it in your training. We also cover how people mangle the idea of sport-specific training, and why strength is your best defense against the effects of aging.

This week's show is an “Ask Daru” episode, with a primary focus on what he believes are the important strength training practices to focus on in a fight camp, training methods for fighters with fast and slow twitch muscle fibers, exercises geared specifically for professional fighters, and of course weight-cutting. All of these topics are major facets in preparation leading up to a fight, be it in a cage or a boxing ring. 

Rochelle Basil uses the lessons from the crucible of her own running career to help her athletes avoid the same mistakes, as a coach for Lift | Run | Perform. She sat down with me to cover her unexpected recruitment from a single road race in New Zealand to a full-ride Division I scholarship in the States. She details the struggles that soon drove her to quit running, tells the story of two very different marathon experiences, and we chat about the magic a coach can add to any training plan.

Master coach Mike Tromello sits down to cover how he’s getting his athletes prepared for this year’s CrossFit Games season. Then we zoom out and talk about what you should look for if you’re shopping for a gym this January, how he brings new members into his fitness family, and what he’s learned from the wide variety of coaching certifications he’s completed. Last, we talk about the lifelong mentors who continue to shape him as a person and a coach, and why his 2018 goals have nothing to do with t

Philip K Howard has researched and written for decades about the effective role government can play (and most often doesn’t) in improving the lives of its citizens. We discuss how our obsession with eliminating risk is stunting the development of our children, and the simple reforms we could enact. We also cover the unintended consequences that result from well-intended regulation, what avenues are available to address standardization in the fitness industry, and where we can expect the revolution to begi

Carleen Matthews has scratched and clawed her way to the top of her sport of CrossFit, overcoming a history of substance abuse, an eating disorder, and addiction. Today, she is a 3x CrossFit Games competitor, owner of CrossFit St Helens, and a leader in her community. She sat down with us to discuss the roots of her drive to keep fighting, what she learned from a tough 2017 season, and how her life experiences have shaped her coaching.

Just because you’ve built your own personal barbell paradise doesn’t mean you know what to do with it. Enter Jerred Moon, founder of End of Three Fitness. After an injury spelled the end of his career as an Air Force pilot, he dove head-first into becoming a fitness professional, and never looked back. Jerred creates programs to take the garage athlete to elite levels of fitness, without the need for a lot of fancy equipment or excessive risk.

National-level weightlifting coach Daniel Bell of Rubber City Weightlifting sat down with me to recap Worlds, talk about the future of the sport in America, and explore the damage that doping culture has had on even clean athletes. We also cover why women are flocking to (and succeeding in) weightlifting faster than men, why it’s stupid to have PRs in your assistance exercises, and the dilemma of transgender athletes in competitive sports.