All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Fulfillment Is Different From Fleeting Happiness

• Brad Stulberg says happiness is ephemeral and often decreases when forced.

• In interviews people described feeling “energized,” “satisfied,” or “alive” rather than using the word happy, which signals deeper fulfillment.

Excellence Feels Like Intimacy Not Happiness

• Excellence produces fulfillment and intimacy, not constant happiness.

• Brad Stulberg: intimacy can be with a craft — being locked in during a deadlift, coaching, or writing creates that excellence feeling.

Choose Friction Over Convenience For Fulfillment

• Pursuing convenience and instant happiness leads to short-lived pleasure and addiction, while voluntarily chosen challenges create lasting fulfillment.

• Brad contrasts sitting on the couch pleasure with effortful, value-aligned challenges that cause discomfort then satisfaction.

Choose Stress That Has Purpose For Growth

• Voluntarily chosen, meaningful stress plus rest promotes adaptation and growth more than forced or purposeless stress.

• Example: choosing to lift because it aligns with values leads to psychological and physical adaptation; being forced feels like torture.

Right Dose of Stress Drives Growth

• Hormesis means the right dose, at the right time, with the right recovery produces adaptation and growth.

• Start with manageable challenges (programming 101) then add recovery to avoid burnout or injury.

Deadlifting Reveals Everyday Excellence

• Brad frames deadlifting as a purposeful practice that teaches facing fear and vulnerability.

• He describes a surprise 530 lb lift in a regular session and how sport lets him intimately explore craft and excellence.

Periodize Your Life With Highs and Easy Seasons

• Aim for periods of intense effort (8–10) punctuated by easier recovery phases rather than constant high difficulty.

• Brad recommends short bursts of 2–4 easy days/months after peak efforts and mostly steady 5–7 effort days to enable breakthroughs.

Design Your Environment And Community For Excellence

• Remove obvious friction and distractions (no phone in sessions, keep fruit not candy) to make desired behavior the default.

• Surround yourself with people pursuing self-chosen challenges who model commitment and uplift you.

Your People Shape Your Trajectory

• Surroundings and community shape whether you pursue excellence; physical and social environments both matter.

• Brad cites research: we fall to the lowest common denominator, so remove toxic people and seek supportive peers.

What Zombie Burnout Means

• Brad Stulberg defines zombie burnout as a form of burnout not caused by overwork but by lack of meaningful engagement.

• It happens when life is tedious and numbed: boring job, passive TV, scrolling the internet, repeat.

• Even at 35–40 hours a week you can burn out if nothing in your life “lights you up.”

• Burnout depends on what fills your hours, not just how many hours you work.

• Two people can work identical long weeks but one flourishes if their work brings aliveness while the other burns out without fulfillment.

Find Fulfillment Even When Work Is Tedious

• Burnout can come from not doing things that make you feel alive, not just from overwork.

• Seek fulfillment by developing competence in your work or finding sources of aliveness outside the tedious parts.

Make Your Job Fund Your Purpose Elsewhere

• Not every job must be meaningful; sometimes it’s okay to treat work as a means to an end.

• Use a stable, boring job to fund and free time for fulfilling pursuits (example: powerlifters with boring day jobs).

How Internet Brain Erodes Attention And Sanity

• Internet brain is cognitive fog from overusing the internet, especially social media, making you agitated, restless, and unable to think clearly.

• Brad recommends setting constraints, using social media with purpose, and prioritizing real‑world activities and relationships to stay sane.

Dr. David Skolnik is a doctor of physical therapy, strength coach, and educator working at the intersection of rehab and performance for adults who have “been through some things” physically. He primarily coaches clients between 40 and 75 years old who show up with real injury histories, chronic pain, and the usual wear-and-tear that makes the average cookie-cutter program a non-starter. Through his company Stronger In Motion, David helps clients move from pain management and medical dependency toward confident, capable strength that shows up in day-to-day life, not just on a spreadsheet.

On the education side, you’ll find David teaching coaches how to think, not just what to cue, so they can better serve the “in-between” clients who are too complex for standard PT discharge but not ready for high-intensity group fitness either. He also hosts the Smarter Strength podcast, where he digs into coaching, critical thinking, and the messy reality of helping humans get stronger, healthier, and more resilient.

All links below are current and active within the last six months or represent David’s evergreen home bases.

• Instagram – @dr.davidskolnik.dpt (online coach, educator, and host)
  https://www.instagram.com/dr.davidskolnik.dpt/

• Smarter Strength Podcast:

  https://smarterstrength.buzzsprout.com/

• Stronger In Motion – Coaching & Programs
  https://www.strongerinmotion.com/

Key themes and takeaways

Serving the “in-between” client: from pain management to real-life strength

David’s core niche is the client who lives between rehab discharge and traditional personal training: often 40–75 years old, with minor to significant injury histories, lingering pain, and a history of bouncing between PT, injections, and “trying to figure it out.” He describes one client who went from monthly pain-management visits for low back pain to a place where his “bad” days today would have been his best days a year earlier. The win wasn’t just a better MRI; it was being able to carry a 35‑pound grandchild more easily than when that same child weighed 10 pounds.

For David, these are the performance markers that matter: picking up a toddler, traveling without flare-ups, and living life without constantly thinking about pain first. That framing lines up with his broader mission: to use exercise as the vehicle to improve quality of life, not to chase arbitrary performance standards that don’t match the client’s reality.

Strength is king… but the barbell is just a tool

Earlier in his career, especially when he was immersed in powerlifting, David believed the barbell was the non-negotiable centerpiece of effective strength training. Over time, exposure to more diverse clients and contexts led him to rethink that stance; he still sees strength as arguably the most important adaptation to pursue, but no longer elevates any single tool above the rest. He now happily builds strength using dumbbells, kettlebells, machines, cables, and landmine variations, especially when those better suit a client’s history, psychology, or environment.

The key shift is away from tool dogma and toward individual design within solid programming principles: sets, reps, rest, intensity, and progression are non-negotiable, but whether that structure runs through a barbell back squat, a leg press, or a landmine pattern is fully negotiable. For coaches, this is permission to stop forcing square-peg tools into round-hole client needs and instead get obsessed with outcomes and adherence.

Handling “I’ll get a trainer when I’m in better shape”

David takes a refreshingly honest stance: he’s not in the business of convincing people who don’t truly want coaching—he’s in the business of helping people who are ready to change but might need clarity. When someone says they don’t feel ready for a coach yet, instead of pushing harder, he gets curious and asks better questions: What do you want exercise to help you accomplish? What can’t you do now that you’d like to do? What have you already tried, and what were the results?

He uses assessment and education to gently challenge their logic and help them see that “getting in shape first” is usually the very reason they would benefit from having guidance now. His programs are built individually from the ground up, so there is no expectation that a client fit into a pre-written template; instead, the assessment reveals strengths, areas for immediate maintenance, and capacities with the most room for improvement. The goal is for the client to arrive at the conclusion themselves that working with him is the efficient path forward, not to feel sold or pressured.

When clients resist your advice, assume the gap is on you

When a client pushes back on an exercise, training style, or progression, David’s default assumption is not that the client is “difficult”—it’s that something in his communication or planning isn’t aligned with what they want from training. Resistance often signals that the client has either lost the thread between the prescription and their goal or that their goals have quietly shifted without the coach knowing.

His solution is to return to curiosity and clarity: confirm what the client currently wants exercise to do for them, explore whether anything in their life or priorities has changed, and then reconnect the dots between the program decisions and the outcomes they care about. Sometimes that conversation confirms the plan but fixes the understanding; sometimes it reveals that the plan needs to evolve because the target has moved. This approach protects the relationship and keeps training collaborative rather than adversarial.

A “seasonal” model for general population clients

David borrows a seasonal framework from sports performance—pre‑season, in‑season, post‑season, and off‑season and maps it onto general population training. For some clients, their “in‑season” is simply a hypertrophy block; for others, like endurance mountain bikers, it’s literally their racing calendar. The power of this model is that it immediately zooms the lens out from a 4‑week block to a 52‑week training year, which changes how both coach and client react to disruptions.

When you think in months, a one‑week vacation looks like a 25% disruption; when you think in a year, it’s one out of 52, which is emotionally and mathematically much easier to absorb. David also emphasizes layering long-term “buzzword” goals like longevity and the centenarian decathlon into medium and short-term objectives: you don’t train for your 80‑year‑old self directly; you win your 27‑year‑old, 28‑year‑old, 29‑year‑old years, and stack enough of those to build successful decades. For adherence, this is huge: it makes the far-off goal tangible through near-term wins.

Career advice for coaches: deepen your current lane before chasing new ones

When coaches ask, “I’ve taken your course, now what should I study next?”, David zooms out to the business realities of coaching as a career. To stay in the game, a coach has to earn enough from their work not to need a second or third job; that requires being tangibly valuable to the clients they already attract. His advice is to choose continuing education based on the gaps your current clients expose: what questions do they keep asking that you don’t feel fully equipped to answer? What problems do they have that you’re only partially solving?

He warns against “shiny object” CE decisions like advanced kettlebell courses for coaches who mostly work with older adults, or deep dives into running gait mechanics when only two of 22 clients run regularly. Once your business is stable and you’re no longer scrambling for income, then you can afford to layer on niche skills to expand into new avatars. Until then, the fastest way to grow is to become undeniably good at solving increasingly complex problems for the clients you already serve.

Standout quotes from David

You can weave these into the page or use them as pull-quotes in Substack/email.

“Through the magical powers and science of exercise, we’ve given someone a greater quality of life.”

“I no longer feel that the barbell is superior to all other tools or that it has to be incorporated into every single client’s training plan.”

“The thing that determines success for coaching is a combination of ongoing learning and then putting that knowledge into action.”

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The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— 🌶️I have a bunch of new subscribers here, and I just wanted to say hello and reintroduce the Nexus in its current state.

The Resource Nexus is organized into “branches,” which let you find what you need with branch-specific search filters. So, if you are looking for a summit, conference, or workshop to attend, you go to the In-Person & Virtual Events branch. If you want to look for a course to take at your own pace online, then you go to the Online Courses Branch. If you are looking for more business-related options, like a job or a mentor, you go to the Career Opportunity or Biz Growth branches. If you are looking for physical and digital tools to enhance your facility or coaching practice, then head to the Equipment branch and the soon-to-launch Software branch. Now some behind-the-curtain stuff.

1. You don’t need a login to access the branches or unlock special features.

2. I am not tracking your activity through your internet use.

   1. hence why there is no annoying “accept cookies” banner when you visit and use FITLETE.COM

3. However, I do log anonymous site usage for the Resource Nexus using Simple Analytics event logging, so I can see which areas are used most and prioritize which projects to improve first. But no identifiable data is logged.

4. I personally reach out to companies and organizations to build stronger relationships.

5. The Resource Nexus does not compete with the companies/organizations listed for SEO. If you search for them, you won’t see FITLETE.COM listed near them in search results.

6. I’m a full-time coach in Miami, training about 35-40 in-person sessions per week and an additional 8-12 clients in a hybrid format (in-person to 100% online). So, the resource nexus is made for me first as a coach working “in the thick of it”

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

— 🌶️🌶️🌶️It’s HERE!!!!!!! 1st episode of season 3 of the Coaches spotlight podcast! I’m proud to have Ashley on and kick us off into season 3 with a solid lineup of coaches you need to know.

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— 🌶️I’m getting excited for my 4-day weekend vacation in a few weeks! Summertime is coming, and while I don’t have many clients who leave for the summer, this can contribute to a “summer time lull.” I am excited about random weeks with breaks and maybe playing more golf, reading, and painting again. Golf gets a little cheaper in Miami during the summer because it’s a million degrees, bursts of rain daily, and humidity you can cut through, but I’m frugal, and it’s my time to shine when that price drops. 🤣

Who is Ashley Beeman?

Ashley is an online fitness and nutrition coach for women, a bikini athlete, wife, and mom of two teens. She shares her decade-long experience with yo‑yo dieting to inspire her coaching. Now, she helps women in their late 30s and 40s achieve strength, leanness, and confidence through macro-based nutrition and strength training tailored to real life. She also creates programs on Podia aimed at ending the yo‑yo diet cycle and fostering sustainable habits. As an NPC bikini athlete and content creator, she shares her prep, lifestyle, and business behind the scenes on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, and her podcast.

Ashley’s coaching lane and philosophy

Ashley helps ambitious women ditch crash diets by using macros, strength training, and mindset work to build sustainable skills and habits. She aims for clients to become independent of coaches and rigid plans, boosting confidence and healthier habits. Her approach, inspired by her own yo-yo dieting, empowers women to feel powerful in their bodies and see strength as vital to an “unstoppable life.’

Her coaching philosophy was shaped by her yo-yo dieting and quick fixes. Now, she aims to help women feel powerful, not just smaller, viewing a strong body as the gateway to an “unstoppable life.” She uses mindset work, referencing her NLP and personal training background, to boost self-confidence, consistency, and food relationships.

The moment that changed how she coaches

Ashley recalls a client who lost 50 pounds. Beyond the impressive scale result, Ashley was inspired by the client’s mindset shift from seeking quick weight loss to embracing sustainable living. Months later, the client maintained the weight without struggle, which Ashley considers “the real win.”

That experience reinforced for her that the outcome isn’t just the weight loss; it’s sustainable autonomy. Watching a client move from dependence on a coach or plan to genuine confidence in their own skills and habits has become one of the core metrics of success in her practice. It’s also why she structures her programs around education and self‑trust rather than rigid compliance.

From “perfect plans” to real‑world behavior change

Ashley, as a newer coach, believed giving a perfect plan would lead to results, thinking, “Here’s your macros, here’s your training, go be consistent.” When it didn’t work, she assumed the plan needed tweaking. Over time, she learned that the plan is rarely the main problem; instead, it’s whether the plan fits real life and if the client has the skills, support, and belief to follow it.

She now emphasizes aligning coaching with a client’s real life, not an idealized one. Instead of fixing programs, she targets scheduling, stress, beliefs, and behaviors to help clients follow through. This shift from perfect programs to human behavior has made her more patient, collaborative, and focused on long-term transformation.

What she wants newer coaches to remember

Ashley emphasizes that no coach begins with a perfect system, and beliefs, methods, and approaches evolve over time. Many enter the industry with good intentions—wanting to help—and refine their craft with experience, education, and exposure to clients. She highlights that “no one’s perfect when we start” and stresses the importance of being open to learning and change.

Her key lesson is that coaching involves meeting people where they are and building from there, not enforcing strict protocols. She urges coaches to see their growth as parallel to their clients': both are continuously evolving, becoming clearer, and more effective.

Where to find more about Ashley

Ashley runs her coaching offers and free experiences through her WEBSITE, where women can join programs focused on fit-freedom. She also hosts The Fit Freedom Podcast, where she shares mindset shifts, “real talk,” and no‑BS strategies for sustainable weight loss and strength. Across platforms like Instagram (@the.ashley.beeman), where she documents her life as an NPC bikini athlete and coach, mixing education with a very human, relatable lens.

Key takeaways for listeners

1. “My job is to teach you the skills that build the habits so that the results are yours for life.”

2. “I yo‑yo dieted for over a decade… now I help ambitious women get shredded strong without giving up their entire lives to do it.”

3. “The 50 pounds, that’s amazing. But the fact that she kept it off without white‑knuckling her way through life—that is the real win.”

Ashley’s story is a masterclass in evolving from a plan‑centric trainer to a behavior‑centric coach. She shows how lived experience with yo‑yo dieting can become an asset when used to build empathy, realistic structures, and a focus on autonomy for clients.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Heavy Lifts Build Tension Not Sprint Ground Force

• Squat/deadlift strength produces internal muscle tension, which is different from the external ground force used in sprinting.

• Sprint ground force occurs in ~0.1s bounces; heavy lifts are slow contractions and don’t directly equal sprint force.

Sprinting Maintains Neural Drive More Than Squatting

• Daniel Back describes an athlete who stopped lifting for three months, ran track-only, and still got markedly faster (three seconds in the 400m).

• Removing heavy lifting in-season often doesn’t cause a catastrophic loss of strength or sprint performance if the athlete built strength in the off-season.

• Sprinting and jumping maintain and even enhance neural drive more effectively than heavy squatting because they require instant maximal output.

• A small loss of quad muscle from not squatting usually doesn’t translate to worse 400m performance.

• Context matters: if an athlete didn’t build strength preseason, you may need to reintroduce lifting during the season rather than remove it entirely.

Fascia Is Not Just A Tendon Substitute

• Researchers proposed broadening “fascia” to include other fibrous connective tissues, effectively grouping ligaments and tendons into a body‑wide fascial net.

• Daniel Back warns this reclassification lets people take tendon research (like the tendon catapult mechanism) and improperly apply it to fascia.

• Tendons and fascia differ anatomically and functionally: the calf transmits force primarily through the Achilles tendon, not through surrounding fascia.

• You cannot simply co‑opt tendon mechanics to explain fascial behavior; structural position and primary force paths matter.

• Back highlights the risk of overgeneralizing mechanistic findings from one connective tissue to another without anatomical justification.

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The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— Working within my new schedule( a good, busy though, added new full-time clients!) has been a new challenge to get the projects finished that I was working on.

I made sure to finish the Annual events updates, so that was a huge plus, but the “software” heading above is still not linked because…I didn’t finish it yet(sad face).

According to my Tasks schedule, here is the general list of what I will be working on:

1. Update Live workshops and in-person courses.

2. Clean up lower-quality or defunct companies and organizations from the directory

3. Finalizing some aspects of the Business Dashboard

4. Updating the Business Sign Up Page

   1. Reaching out to new organizations

5. Finishing the software branch

6. Improving the online course branch

7. Move completely over to the new database system

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

—A little delay in getting some responses back from coaches, but the first will be released this coming Friday! Excited to jump into season 3!

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— I’ll say it once, and then I’ll say it again, but louder for the people in the back; new referrals are reminders that you’re serving your current clients’ needs well enough to have them trust you with their friends, family, and or colleagues. Not all new referrals convert, but if you stop getting referrals, take a look in the mirror.

I’ve been putting more focus on being intentional with how I use my time, whether it’s for relaxing or for being productive. I don’t think I’m capable of doing both at the same time, no matter how much I might like what I’m working on.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Equinox’s Deep Internal Education System

• Clifton describes Equinox’s internal certification as a dedicated, functionality-first education system (the Equinox Functional Training Institute).

• Their curriculum leaned heavily on tools like FMS and ViPR and hosted different speakers across the country.

• Clifton says it was the best corporate internal education he saw, but it largely died with COVID when budgets and staffing fell.

• He contrasts that institutional training with his own travel-teaching experience and later freelance work for kettlebell and movement brands.

• The loss of industry-wide corporate education made ongoing, centralized trainer development much harder post-COVID.

Avoid Being a Fraud

• Clifton Harski recommends continuing to practice what you teach to avoid losing touch with reality and sounding like a fraud.

• Also, avoid delivering advice based solely on one type of training or avatar.

Focus On Through Lines Not Unique Fads

• Clifton ignores the gimmicks and looks for the consistent “through lines” across methods (kettlebell, barbell, mace, bodyweight, TRX).

• He highlights common basics: everyone does some form of squat and hinge — the fundamental movements matter most.

• After the essentials, training should follow personal interest and enjoyment, not tribal purity.

• Clifton calls out the fitness industry for being needlessly condescending about different approaches.

• He credits his broad perspective to years as a fitness consumer running multi-week experiments (e.g., doing only Bikram yoga) before working as a professional.

Training Athletically vs. Training Like an Athlete

• Clifton Harski distinguishes between training athletically and training like an athlete.

• Training athletically focuses on giving people opportunities to express athletic qualities in the gym, while training like an athlete is specific to their sport.

When Fitness Becomes Someone’s Entire Identity

• Clifton explains that improving movement and feeling better gives people confidence to try new activities, breaking limiting beliefs like “I can’t do that.”

• He warns against tribal fitness identities that celebrate narrow feats (e.g., huge deadlifts) while leaving real-world movement gaps (e.g., struggling with a bodyweight lunge or stairs).

• The problem isn’t the training style itself but when it becomes someone’s entire identity, creating blind spots and condescension toward other approaches.

• This identity-driven thinking blocks practical progress: people cling to what proves status instead of addressing everyday functional weaknesses.

• Clifton’s point reframes coaching: prioritize broad movement competence and confidence over tribal signaling.

Beware Social Media Fitness Education

• Newer trainers should know that watching TikTok and Instagram is not fitness education.

• One-minute snippets don’t provide enough context to truly understand complex training concepts.

Fitness Education Decline

• Clifton Harski rants that newer trainers think watching TikTok and Instagram is fitness education.

• The education space is hurting because of social media, and big box gyms no longer incentivize trainers to get more education.

Share This Week In FITLETE Newsletter

The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— Added over 100 Annual events in the last 2 weeks, and that should bring us to the close of the majority of the 2026 annual conferences and seminars outside of some late Q4 events, which sometimes come trickling in in July.

A bunch of my friends just got done with “The Real Coaches Summit,” so I am eager to chat with them to see how it went.

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

— A little delay on getting some of these new things out, but that’s OK. I gotta take the fast with the slow.

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— What a busy last 2 weeks. Went to see my niece and nephew last weekend, had a blast hanging out, and found some shark teeth fossils. Then got back to work and closed 2 new referrals from current clients, converting them into full-time and part-time in-person clients! Good thing I have some systems in place, or accommodating these new people who are really close to one another would have been really stressful.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Weight Loss Medication

• Daniel Ibsen sees weight loss medication as a powerful nutrition intervention that is not treated as such.

• He wants to know how the composition of people’s diets changes when they start taking weight loss medication.

Methodology in Nutrition Science

• Understanding the methodology helps to understand why there is confusion in nutrition science.

• Daniel Ibsen emphasizes that asking the right question is key to understanding anything.

The Importance of Food Substitution Analysis

• When studying nutrition, recognize that it’s not like a pill, but always a comparison of one food versus another.

• Be aware of what a food is being compared to, as this is crucial for interpreting results.

The Importance of Baselines

• When studying nutrition, always compare something to something else; there is no true control group.

• The baseline diet of the studied population impacts the interpretation of any intervention’s effect.

Dietary Effects Depend On What You Compare And Who You Start With

• The effect of a dietary intervention depends critically on the substitution: what you replace the food with (e.g., red meat vs fish vs plant alternative) changes the outcome.

• Baseline diet matters: if participants already consume little of the target food or have sufficient nutrient levels (e.g., vitamin D), an intervention will show smaller changes.

• The same intervention applied to populations with different starting intakes can produce different effects, so apparent contradictions across studies may reflect different baselines.

• Diet is multidimensional: foods, nutrients, and processing (e.g., whole apple vs apple juice) are different exposures and must be specified when asking clear causal questions.

• Better clarity about the comparison, population baseline, and the exact foods or patterns being tested improves interpretation and reduces misleading conclusions.

Isolated Food Effects

• Daniel Ibsen states that many people want to know the isolated effect of a food on health, but this is not how nutrition works.

• It’s about what the food is being compared to, such as minimally processed foods versus ultra-processed foods.

Consistency in Nutrition Interventions

• Define nutrition interventions precisely to ensure consistent effects, like specifying what constitutes a ‘low-carb diet’.

• Without a clear definition, variable compositions can lead to conflicting results, obscuring any causal effect on metabolic health.

Target Trial Redefines What Following DASH Actually Means

• Ibsen explains the target trial approach: instead of ranking people by points, define explicit threshold interventions for each food group (e.g., intervene to ensure anyone eating <3 servings of fruit moves to ≥3).

• That definition differs from the usual DASH score method where people are ranked into fifths and given points across foods; no one in the cohort actually followed the original DASH exactly.

• Because nobody met the original DASH, they adapted the thresholds to find a realistic group representing adherence, avoiding positivity problems.

• The counterfactual comparison also changes: target trial compares everyone following the intervention vs. continuing their usual diet, not vs. the cohort’s lowest-scoring group.

• These two choices (how you define the intervention and what you compare it to) create fundamentally different causal questions and public-health implications.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Change vs. Relief

• Krysta believes people often seek relief instead of change, especially in January, due to expectations of immediate ease.

• When goals for a new vision don’t materialize within a month, people feel like something is wrong, but they’re aiming at the wrong outcome.

• Relief vs. Progress

• Seeking relief can trick your brain into thinking you’re making progress without actually achieving it.

• Avoid reorganizing tasks endlessly to sidestep making uncomfortable but necessary decisions.

Relief Is Not The Same As Change

• Krysta defines relief as a reduction in pressure or friction — wanting things to feel easier, not necessarily accomplishing real change.

• People chase relief in two broken ways: overplanning with rigid direction or having no direction at all and expecting outcomes without steps.

• Those behaviors become band‑aids: reorganizing planners or consuming content feels productive but avoids the uncomfortable decisions that actually produce change.

• The urge for relief explains why many New Year goals fail quickly — we confuse temporary comfort with progress.

• To get real change, notice when you’re seeking relief and ask what uncomfortable decision you’re avoiding, then take one concrete step toward it.

Change Requires Effort

• Real change requires effort, which doesn’t immediately feel good and is often uncomfortable.

• Many people wait for life to slow down, especially at the end of the year, but it rarely happens.

Preparation vs. Execution

• Many people focus on preparation (buying planners, reorganizing) instead of execution. This is because they haven’t addressed the deeper pattern that keeps coming up for them.

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The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform.

Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— Luckily, a lot of my processes do not live locally on my laptop because it was not running as smoothly last week. I haven't lost any data, but it's just taken some time to complete some project steps.

A lot of my friends will be going to The Real Coaches Summit this coming weekend into next week in Las Vegas(I won’t be joining this year).

If you ever hear me talk about a conference here and wonder how you can stay informed or even find new workshops, courses, and conferences around your neighborhood.

Discover Education Events

FITLETE Radio

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— Still working on season 3!

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

THANKS FOR THE SUPPORT!!

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— I had to get a new Laptop, and unlike other years prior, where I would just use the old one until it was inoperable, I chose not to obsess over trying to fix it, and just got a new one. It was already old as it is, and for me it was a huge step in understanding the current and future time and cost benefit of getting a new one. Previously, I would have just sat here grumbling behind the keyboard as I tried to diagnose the issue, reformat the thing to factory settings, and spend countless hours and a lot of frustration that I do not have as a one-man business. Getting a new laptop was the frugal choice.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Discipline and Identity

• Paul O’Neill realized that habits tied to one’s identity don’t require discipline, similar to brushing teeth.

• Lisa Lewis relates this to self-determination theory, noting varying qualities of motivation.

Extrinsic Motivation

• People do activities for a desired outcome, even if the activity itself isn’t pleasurable.

• This extrinsic motivation drives health-related behaviors, where the activity leads to a beneficial result.

Piano Practice

• Lisa Lewis illustrates the need for repetition with the example of learning piano.

• Initially, piano practice is unenjoyable, but after many hours, it becomes pleasurable.

Competing Priorities

• People have many competing priorities, such as family, job stress, or medical issues.

• When overwhelmed, health priorities like caloric deficit or exercise are often sacrificed for comfort or urgent tasks.

Therapy Duration

• Lisa Lewis shares a story about a man who wanted to book only six to eight therapy sessions to solve his alcohol issues.

• She explains that personal growth and addressing issues like alcohol dependency is an ongoing process, not a quick fix.

People Give Up When They’re Stuck Not Because They’re Lazy

• Paul suggests some people lack the desire to keep improving because they feel too far gone or that effort won’t pay off.

• Lisa points to external forces (societal discouragement) and internal pathology as causes for giving up rather than a simple lack of will.

• She frames mental illness as different forms of being “stuck”: anxiety = stuck in worry, depression = stuck in the past, trauma = stuck in a negative experience, addiction = stuck in a substance, OCD = stuck in obsessions/compulsions.

• When someone is “stuck” this way, they may not be well enough to want to grow physically or psychologically.

• Growth and discipline require conditions where a person is sufficiently well to engage in change; otherwise attempts to force motivation miss the underlying problem.

Motivational Interviewing

• Dr. Lisa Lewis advises young coaches to get training in motivational interviewing. Avoid being an authority figure who dictates what to do; instead, learn how to interact with clients to help them achieve change.

• Many coaches get trained in the X’s and O’s, but not in how to interact with another human being to help them get the change that they want in their lives.

AI Therapy Limitations

• Talking helps people, and AI can provide basic reflection, but AI therapy has limitations. It can’t handle nuanced diagnoses, trauma treatment, or emergencies.

• AI may reinforce screwed-up thinking if a person’s thinking is already flawed.

Get Your Reps In To Build Identity

• Curiosity (a Wondering mindset) opens growth; replace “I have to” with “Hmm, I wonder” to stay positive and exploratory.

• Discipline and identity form by repeated action: practice the behaviors you want to become known for.

• Lisa: self-esteem grows through “esteemable acts”—doing the thing builds the sense of being the kind of person who does it.

• If you want what someone else has, don’t just admire it; repeatedly practice those actions to internalize the identity.

• Small, consistent reps (e.g., choosing to run instead of walk) create payoff and expand capacity over time.

Share This Week In FITLETE Newsletter

The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— 🌶️ Last week, I successfully completed almost all of the annual events, while also incorporating several new ones from organizations that were previously absent from the Nexus. The restructuring of the backend and data organization is taking longer than initially anticipated, which necessitates that any new company or event be registered in two separate systems. Although I am inclined to avoid this duplication, it may be advantageous for overall progress to delay entering new directories until the old system is decommissioned.

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

— Started asking more coaches! Waiting to hear back from most of them on whether they would like to participate this season. Having 2 seasons under my belt, I am trying to do a better job of explaining the format and that it’s not a Live Interview. While it’s not a new concept, I know it is still unique compared to most other shows, and I have to do a better job of getting this across in my ask.

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

This Week In FITLETE

Iron Culture- ep 361. Are N=1 Anecdotes meaningless?

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers…

Read more

2 months ago

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— My wife and I joined a pretty cool golf social community app called Spark Golf. They work with courses to fill twilight tee times and pair random golfers together in a low-stakes golf league, low stakes meaning you can participate as often or infrequently as you want. I like this low-pressure way to support a hobby; it’s pretty rare in most organized adult sports.

I also found this cool tool called “Handy” that is a free open source project that will run locally on your computer and offline, which allows you to use speech-to-text dictation in any text field you're working in(even in a browser), and it creates and saves an audio file to your computer automatically.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Science Communication Sits On A Spectrum

• Eric Trexler introduces a spectrum of science communicators from the overly open-minded “I’ll try anything” side to the highly skeptical “defensive” side.

• The two poles influence how communicators interpret and present fitness claims: one leans toward optimism and gullibility, the other toward policing and debunking.

• Trexler suggests where a communicator positions themselves on this spectrum shapes their philosophical approach to evidence and messaging.

• He frames the upcoming discussion as focusing on claims rather than people, emphasizing idea-based critique over personal attacks.

• This setup primes listeners to evaluate both the merits of claims and the communicator’s epistemic stance when interpreting fitness science.

The Three Pillars That Prevent Siloed Thinking

• Emphasizing Iron Culture’s three pillars in 2025: history, science, and culture as essential lenses for evaluating claims.

• I argue that leaning on one pillar while ignoring the others produces predictable errors and blind spots.

• If you’re trapped in a single culture, your sense of what’s normal and possible becomes biased and skewed.

• If you cling only to historical precedent, you risk being surprised by or resistant to future possibilities.

• Balancing all three pillars lets you see why some critiques of self-experimentation miss nuance and why anecdotes can still be informative.

Exercise Science Has Hidden Statistical Blind Spots

• Many exercise scientists aren’t engaging with biostatisticians, so common methods for identifying responders/non-responders are often flawed.

• Fields that have thought about single-subject designs more deeply show better approaches that most in exercise science don’t know about.

• This creates an internal consensus that feels correct but actually reflects collective blind spots rather than rigorous understanding.

• Bringing in legitimate statisticians and looking to other fields reveals these gaps and improves how we interpret individual response data.

Humility in New Areas

• When venturing into new areas of thought, realize you might not be the first person to ask the question.

• Before making claims, look into it deeper and avoid absolute statements.

Humility in Communication

• Early in your career, when you feel like you’re getting what no one else is, default to thinking you don’t understand it.

• Frame your communication with humility by inviting discussion instead of presenting hot takes.

Repeatable Effects Can Hide The Real Cause

• Eric Trexler uses the Clever Hans story to show that a repeatable effect doesn’t prove the attributed cause — the horse read the trainer’s cues, not arithmetic.

• Single-subject repeatability can mislead: you may observe consistent improvement but misattribute it to the intervention rather than hidden factors.

• Helms and Trexler note real-world confounders: ramping training volume can trigger subconscious behavior changes (eating more, prioritizing sleep) that drive the result.

• This is why controlled study designs (randomized, double-blind, placebo) exist when we want population-level causal claims.

• Use self-experiments to find signals, but be cautious about assigning causality without controlling for other simultaneous changes.

Population vs Individual Data

• Population level data and individual results are different contexts. Don’t assume individual results must always align with population-level data found in controlled studies.

Humility in Science

• Accept that individual responses may not align with population-level data.

• Be comfortable not knowing why an observation happened; more knowledge may be needed.

Evidence-Based Practice Requires Humility And Multiple Information Sources

• Helms and Trexler argue that becoming evidence-based means integrating research, personal experience, coaching experience, and others’ experiences rather than trusting a single source.

• Hitting a reality check (Dunning-Kruger drop) forces recognition of blind spots and prompts evaluation of limitations in research and practice.

• Assess likely contributions of non-research factors (stress, life events) to performance and whether they are mitigatable.

• Many who enter exercise science expect near-perfect answers from research and become disillusioned after seeing methodological flaws firsthand.

• Choosing to rely on only one type of evidence is effectively “tying a hand behind your back” if your goal is to optimize strength and size.

Share This Week In FITLETE Newsletter

The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

—🌶️ I will be finishing updating the last ~280 annual events this week, and then will not update these again until mid to late June. Other branches will be continually updated as per usual. I am currently sitting at over 1,300 companies listed and organized in The Nexus.

— 🌶️ The Nexus website will most likely(eventually) move to a Webflow site on the backend because they integrate well with some other tools I am already using. Based on what I have already learned, this won’t change your experience as a public user, but it will give me more wiggle room in development without ballooning cost to a level that distracts from my mission.

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

— I was on a Podcast that was published last week! Hosted, created, edited, and published by my friend Chris.

Insight by Chris Liddle

Why High Performers Burn Out (And How To Fix It) | George Pagan III

Most coaches don’t burn out because they’re lazy…

Listen now

2 months ago · 2 likes · Chris Liddle

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— My personality is golf now. lol

Well, not entirely because it’s so expensive to play down here in Miami. I do enjoy the practice and how similar it can be to practicing with art hobby: it doesn’t have to be perfect, you don’t need to be the best at it, your creative quirks make the result unique to you, you can’t rush it, & you have to take a step back to avoid frustration when something just isn’t working.

BTW, I absolutely smoked this ball!

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Recreating Personal Training With Software

• Ladder recreates personal training by combining programming, coaching, and accountability into software.

• They designed the app to maximize consistency and results without endless content creation.

Persona Programming Beats One-Off Personalization

• Personalization was overrated; high-quality, persona-specific programming plus community drove retention.

• Coaches scaling via audience-led group programs proved more durable than one-to-one training.

Prioritize For A Single North Star

• Ruthlessly prioritize features that increase workout completions as your North Star.

• Prove every feature will move the completion metric before building it.

Let Users Create Your Roadmap

• Use deep surveys and app-store reviews to build feature blueprints and validate bets.

• Read and synthesize user words to define what to build next.

Use AI To Augment Coaches, Not Replace Them

• Use AI to scale personalization and reduce headcount for repeat tasks, not to replace human coaches.

• Build purpose-built AI tools to automate support and surface coach actions.

Prioritize Ruthlessly

• Tom Digan says many businesses die from doing too much at once.

• Prioritize new ventures based on clear member demand and their potential to solve important problems.

Ladder’s Vision

• Tom Digan and Greg Stewart want Ladder to become the category winner in health and fitness like Uber is for transportation.

• They envision expanding into commerce, biomarkers, and user demographics to make Ladder the go-to fitness app.

Family Support Behind The Scenes

• Tom credits his wife for giving him room to pursue Ladder despite financial and family risk.

• He says her support was indispensable to the company’s survival.

Greg’s Sales Lessons

• Greg Stewart learned sales from his dad during their daily commute, listening to him on the phone as a mortgage originator.

• His dad taught him the importance of being likable, trustworthy, and relentlessly persistent in sales.

Reaching for the top is brave, but coming close still means great achievement; don’t let falling short shame you.

Share This Week In FITLETE Newsletter

The FITLETE Resource Nexus

A free, organized hub for entrepreneurial personal trainers and coaches, uniting live events, online courses, mentorships, jobs, and resources in one platform. Find what you need quickly to grow your career.

Discover: In-Person & Virtual Events | Online Courses | Career Opportunity | Biz Growth | Equipment | Software

— 🌶️Added 20 more annual events to the latter part of the year, including 1 that I MISSED from earlier in March! As useless as it might seem to post an event that has already passed, there are benefits to future planning, especially for annual events. Typically, annual events will take place at the same time each year! So, if you see one on the map in your neighborhood but missed it this year, there’s a really good chance you can count on it again during the same time of year for next year.

Knowing that, here are some other commonalities between larger annual conferences:

• Most are 2-3 days

• It’s very rare to find a conference lasting 5+ days. (I’d be exhausted!)

• 2-day conferences are typically on the weekends

• 3+ day ones love Wednesday or Thursday starts rather than Monday or Tuesday.

• Most have a host city they repeat each year.

• Only a few really big international/national events rotate their location between at least 3 cities while keeping the time of year consistent year over year.

• Almost 100% of these conferences have an exhibitor hall completely separate from the presentation area.

• The majority of them do not include any food or beverage with the purchase of a registration ticket.

🌶️I will be adding more online courses and equipment manufacturers to their branches.

FITLETE Radio

Listen Here: Apple | Spotify | Snipd | PocketCasts | YouTube | ListenNotes | OverCast

— The Q&A is all ready to start recording new guests. I already have my feelers out there. I will be sending an email to each guest who has been on and asking for a referral, because there are always amazing coaches that I have yet to meet.

FITLETE Nation

— When you purchase Fitlete apparel, you’re not just wearing the brand—you’re helping support FITLETE’s mission to educate, inspire, and elevate the fitness industry through quality content, innovation, and community outreach.

Wear FITLETE

*tax and shipping are included in the displayed prices…no checkout surprises.

George’s Podcast Reflection Notes:

They have a free app you can use, or, with this link, you get 1 month of their Premium version for free: 1 Free Month Of Premium Snipd.

*I use SnipD to enhance my learning when listening to podcasts, and have a premium account. If you sign up for a premium, I will not receive anything in compensation.

Personal Update

— I know I'm saying a bit prematurely, but I think I figured out the fix to hitting the golf ball more consistently with my driver. I say that because I played a round of golf with a group of players who are way better than I am, which gave me an opportunity to do some in-person observational learning. Being able to see some things in their setup, where they stand, and how they hold the clubs was valuable to how I look at the videos I take of myself for visual feedback. That being said, I really hope the practice on the range after the round sticks with me for the next time I go out there. lol.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Disdain in Fitness

• Mike Boyle finds it interesting that younger people in the fitness field are openly disdainful of older, more experienced people.

• He suggests that this might speak to the general insecurity within the fitness field.

Insecurity in the Fitness Field

• Mike Boyle suggests many enter the fitness field to feel better about themselves, and that drive doesn’t disappear even after they achieve their goals.

• This insecurity may explain why less experienced people are openly critical of those with more experience in the fitness industry.

Statistical Significance

• People often cite statistical significance without considering the study’s essence.

• Mike Boyle believes there’s information manipulation, exposed when scrutinized.

Lifelong Learning

• Mike Boyle addresses accusations that he is set in his ways by explaining that he’s a lifelong learner who is constantly trying to figure out the best program.

• He shares an anecdote about people unfollowing him because he disagreed with their barbell lifting preferences.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

Underdog Advantage

• As an underdog in business, you often lack connections, so make the most of any opportunity to pitch.

• Show up prepared and deliver, because you may not get another chance to connect with potential investors.

Confront Weaknesses Early

• Don’t feel like you need to follow the four avenues of approach in a linear or sequential order.

• Address weaknesses early, such as public speaking or focusing as a leader; if you can’t overcome them, find a team member to compensate.

Underdog Mentality

• Quang X. Pham advises to replace the underdog feeling of inadequacy with the realization that nobody really cares about your insecurities.

• When he was a young entrepreneur, he felt insufficient because he was a Marine veteran with no executive experience.

Nobody Cares

• The feeling of inadequacy is often self-imposed; replace the insecurity with the realization that nobody really cares as much as you think.

• People care about results, outcomes, and what you can do for them, not your resume or MBA.

All these clips and short segments are made with the help of Snipd, the AI-powered podcast app for knowledge seekers.

How To Interpret And Raise Free Testosterone

• SHBG rises with age and binds testosterone, so total testosterone can look normal while free (bioavailable) testosterone is low.

• For accurate assessment measure free testosterone directly or measure SHBG and calculate free testosterone with online calculators.

• Women (and those who’ve used birth control) often have higher SHBG, making total testosterone especially unreliable for them.

• If free testosterone remains low on treatment, raising the testosterone dose (e.g., from 150 mg/week toward 200 mg/week) may be necessary under medical supervision.

• Free testosterone is the biologically active fraction that actually enters cells and drives effects, so it’s the key metric to guide dosing decisions.

Testosterone Can Resolve Unexplained Anemia

• Two large randomized controlled trials showed testosterone outperforms placebo at resolving unexplained anemia when no bleeding or genetic cause is found.

• Testosterone raises hematocrit toward the male range (around 45%), correcting low counts caused by testosterone deficiency.

• Morgentaler shares a case where a young man underwent extensive GI workup for anemia that was ultimately unexplained, but normalized after testosterone treatment.

• Because testosterone increases red blood cells, hematocrit can sometimes rise above desired levels, which is a monitored risk rather than a proven harm.

• Endocrine Society guidance sets a conservative hematocrit ceiling of 54% but Morgentaler says values around 52–53% usually don’t require intervention.

Increase Testosterone

• To increase testosterone naturally, improve your lifestyle, including sleep, diet, and exercise. Prioritize sleep, as men produce testosterone during sleep.

Male Menopause

• ‘Male menopause’ or andropause does not exist, as aging alone doesn’t drop testosterone levels in men.

• Comorbid conditions such as obesity, HIV, AIDS, and hypertension are the real culprits for decreasing testosterone.