Chasing Excellence
Chasing Excellence
Ben Bergeron & Patrick Cummings
Most people aren't stuck because they lack information. They're stuck because they know what to do and can't quite do it consistently. The slow drift keeps winning.Chasing Excellence is for people who are already trying — working out, eating well, staying positive — but find themselves in the one-good-week, one-bad-week cycle.Ben Bergeron, Patrick Cummings, and a crew of authors, thinkers, and doers explore the five factors of health — how we eat, move, think, connect, and rest — and what it actually takes to crowd out the drift and build the life you keep almost living.New episodes every Monday and Thursday.Beyond the podcast: the Chase Club brings together a crew for daily lessons, monthly challenges, and the real work of crowding out the drift. The ChaseTracker app helps you track the Five Factors daily.
Ben’s Battle With Depression & What’s Helping Now (w/ Dr Rich Joseph)
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here🐾 Start your Free Trial of the ChaseTracker❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Aug 17
58 min
3 Simple Principles for a Life of Health, Happiness, & Hearts on Fire
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here🐾 Start your Free Trial of the ChaseTracker❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Aug 13
35 min
20 Questions That Map Your Mental Fitness (w/ Chris Irwin)
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here🐾 Start your Free Trial of the ChaseTracker❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Aug 10
1 hr 16 min
Individual vs. Class Programming: What Actually Matters
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Aug 6
11 min
5x5 | Accepting Adversity & Eating Clean When Going Out
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.🖐 We love your questions!👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Aug 3
36 min
Unconditional Love Isn't Soft. It's What Makes Our Kids Brave
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jul 27
55 min
When "Did You Work Out?" Feels Like an Attack
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jul 23
13 min
20 Simple Ways to Fight Drift — That Invisible Shift Away from Your Best Self
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.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jul 20
51 min
Raise | Screens Are Only 1 of 5 Causes of Anxious Kids (w/ Kim John Payne)
What if the thing overwhelming your kids isn't screens — it's a culture of too much?In this episode, Patrick sits down with Kim John Payne, author of Simplicity Parenting, to explore why children today are exhibiting what used to be considered trauma responses, and what parents can actually do about it.We explore the five causes of childhood overwhelm, why the antidote starts with the parents — not the kids — and how defining "enoughness" for yourself is the most powerful act of social activism a parent can make.👉🏼 Get the full Listener's Guide here❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here! See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jul 13
48 min
Chase Challenge | You Don't Need Anyone's Permission to Be a High Performer
Is the label "high performer" quietly holding you back from becoming one?In this episode, Patrick unpacks four lessons from the 21-day High Performance Challenge — and makes the case that high performance isn't a status reserved for athletes and CEOs. It's a set of actions anyone can adopt.From Tony Robbins' "musts vs. shoulds" to Kobe Bryant's marathon gym session, we connect high performance to the core belief that true excellence is something we pursue for others, not for ourselves.❤️‍🔥 Free Newsletter & the Chase Club👋 New to Chasing Excellence? Start here See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
Jul 9
25 min
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