For the first 5 years of Aaron's coaching business he kept a running doc of every question a client ever asked. Hundreds. The single most asked question was a form of: "What actually counts as a training day?" Sounds simple, right up until you have to draw the line. And that line quietly decides whether you run one set of macros or two, and how you feed a surplus, a deficit, and everything in between. The definition we keep coming back to is dead simple: a training day is something you need t...

ETP226 comes from a DM question posed to Bryan wondering whether we have taken the "abs are made in the kitchen" idea too far. That question opened up into a bigger one, and it is the question this whole episode chases: for muscle groups like abs and arms, how much does training them directly actually change your physique relative to the extra time it costs you? We work through it from a few angles. Whether a base of prior ab development carries over through years of compound lifting, how cor...

Another month, another batch of questions pulled straight from the Instagram audience. This one runs the full range, from how to build a bro split around daily cardio, to the zone 2 discourse currently making the rounds, to a couple of surprisingly good questions from Bryan's nine year old. We take each one in turn and give the honest answer rather than the tidy one. A lot of this episode lives in the nuance. How to read research when you do not have a science background and whether reviews a...

This week we have a slightly different kind of episode. We talk less about the mechanics of training and more about the benefits of using your fitness out in the world, specifically outdoors. We talk about environment, how the right gym or the mountains can pull effort out of you when your own motivation is low. The back half of the episode revisits the Misogi Challenge and the value of planning something with a real chance of failure, why hard physical challenges reframe everyday life, and h...

This one came straight out of the DMs. Aaron gets messages from people who are interested in coaching and they usually lay out everything they have been doing and everything they have tried. The same handful of problems keep showing up over and over again, so instead of answering them one at a time, this episode is the full breakdown. The whole thing is built around three buckets. Poor metrics, where the plateau only exists in perception because there was never a baseline, a rate of loss targ...

Episode 222 is our July Instagram Q&A, and per usual the questions did not disappoint. We dig through a big stack covering everything from exercise sequencing and deloads to GLP-1s, telehealth companies, and what we actually learned in our late-stage natty years that still apply. There is a lot of practical programming talk in this one. Where RDLs should actually go in your session, how to build a minimum effective program on three 45-minute sessions per week, the five exercises we would ...

We have covered volume a handful of times on the podcast — ETP#167 (Personalizing Your Training Volume), ETP#188 (Quality Volume), and most recently ETP#207 (The Training Volume Model). This one comes at it from a different angle: not "what's the right number of sets," but how that number can change over a training career as skill as a lifter improves. The whole thing started with Aaron's quads. They used to be the body part he was almost ashamed of, and now they're on par with everything els...

ETP#220 is the part two follow-up to last week's episode, and this is the one we really wanted to get to. We ran out of road last week before doing CrossFit Pacific Beach any justice, so this episode picks right back up there and runs all the way through the rest of the arc: going online, the failed business that taught Bryan everything, the origins of Straker Nutrition, building Undefeated, and Aaron winning his pro card on the first try. The throughline is the same as part one. Spotting the...

ETP#219 (Part 1) is all about chasing big goals. If you've listened for a while you know we talk a ton about training, a decent amount about nutrition, and honestly not enough about the prosper side. This episode leans into that third pillar. Between the two of us we've moved across the country (and the world), changed careers, built gyms, build successful coaching and training businesses, and turned pro. With plenty of wins and a fair share of losses along the way. And the behind the scenes ...

ETP 218 is all about progression models. The whole conversation starts from one non-negotiable idea: eventually there has to be real, tangible progression. Most of the "models" people get excited about are really just different ways to make the process less mundane than running linear or double progression forever. And to be clear, LP and DP are still the GOAT. They're proven, time-tested, and they work. We break down what they actually are and why they've earned that status. The catch with a...