What if the most important training you'll ever do happens nowhere near a barbell?

Annie Thorisdottir and her co-writer Christine Bald join Patrick to discuss their new book, Iceland Annie: The Evolution of a CrossFit Games Legend — five years in the making and built on a prologue Christine wrote before Annie ever agreed to write it.

You'll hear why Annie believes character is trained the same way fitness is: in private, repeatedly, often without immediate reward. And you'll hear Christine on the discipline required to prepare for moments you can't anticipate. Together, they make the case that what most people see on the podium is the smallest part of what it took to get there.

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Short and sweet this week: Our latest challenge is kicking off today, and we don't want you to miss it.

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We’re kicking off our new 21-Day Happiness Challenge — and it's probably not what you expect. Instead of focusing on what you have to be grateful for, we flip the lens: what don't you have that you're grateful to be without?

That single shift — from counting blessings to counting absences — sits at the heart of this challenge. We explore how modern culture, the "affluenza virus," and the pull of speed and convenience are actively working against our happiness, and how 21 days of focused attention can start to change that.

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What does depression look like when nothing in your life is actually wrong?

Ben shares his first real experience with depression — not born of circumstance, but of chemistry — and why it changed everything he thought he understood about mental health.

In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Rich, Ben's physician and friend, to unpack the autoimmune response that attacked Ben's brain, the treatments that actually helped, and why the fitness buffer matters more than you'll ever know in the moment.

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What if every day you could see — in real time — whether you're drifting or chasing?

In this solo episode, Patrick unpacks the rebuilt ChaseTracker app and the foundational framework behind it: drifting is the slow, often unseen move toward convenience, comfort, and conformity, while chasing is the daily decision to organize your time, energy, attention, and money toward what truly matters.

Learn how six key areas of life and four time horizons — daily, weekly, monthly, and quarterly — give you a system to catch drift before it costs you months. Plus: why James Clear is right that you're not changing your habits as much as you're changing your identity.

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What if you could assess your mental fitness the same way you track your lifts, your miles, and your macros — with honest data, asked on a regular schedule?

In this episode, Patrick hosts Chris Irwin to build a practical self-assessment tool rooted in the Five Mind Killers: a set of diagnostic questions mapped across each mind killer that, asked honestly every three to six months, reveal whether your mental fitness is trending in the right direction.

You'll learn why the sickness-wellness-fitness continuum applies one-for-one to mental health, how the language "I have anxiety" is quietly keeping you stuck, and what twenty questions — grouped across Oblivion, Storytelling, Suppression, Fear, and Stagnation — can tell you about where you actually stand.

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What if the most important question in programming has nothing to do with the workout itself?

In this episode, Ben breaks down how to design training that works — whether you're coaching a packed class or programming for a single athlete — and why the answer starts with one question most coaches never ask.

Learn why compliance is the real metric, how logistical constraints shape every programming decision, and why the goal isn't a perfect workout — it's getting people excited to come back tomorrow.

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Hard things don't get easier when we pretend they aren't hard — they get easier when we stop wishing they were different.

In this solo 5x5, Ben answers one listener question from each of the five factors: dealing with a chaotic home situation with a napping toddler, chasing a federal special agent fitness standard, eating clean on the road, deciding whether to have more kids in your 40s, and navigating a child's fear of the dark.

Acceptance is not approval. When we stop spending energy wishing our circumstances were different, we free that energy for actual solutions. That's the thread running through all five questions — and the foundational move of the Awareness → Intention → Action cycle.

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How much responsibility do we actually carry for where our teenagers end up — and how much is simply out of our hands?

In this episode, we dig into a powerful listener question from David about parental influence, the six factors that shape teenagers, and the three things fathers can genuinely control: modeling, connection, and agency.

We explore why control and influence are two very different tools, why unconditional love may be the single most important input a parent can offer, and why the real enemy isn't bad peers or broken environments — it's an ego that's never learned it's safe to struggle.

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What do you do when the person who loves you most says something that makes you feel shame — even when they don't mean it that way?

In this episode, we answer a question from Chase Club member Ashton, who's 31 weeks pregnant and navigating the emotional complexity of a husband who keeps checking in on her workouts.

We explore the gap between what someone actually says and the story we tell ourselves about it, why seasons of life demand fundamentally different things from us, and how to communicate your real needs clearly and without judgment.

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Twenty tactics. Five factors. One episode worth pulling back from the archives.

In this replay, we walk through the four highest-leverage actions you can take in each of the five key areas of life — Move, Sleep, Eat, Think, and Connect — and unpack the why behind each one.

Drift is the enemy of excellence, and this episode is one of the sharpest tools we've built to fight it. You'll leave with a concrete checklist of daily behaviors designed to close the gap between where you are and where you want to be.

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