PODCAST · health
Chasing Excellence
by 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
Episodes
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Track Phone Pickups, Not Screen Time
We're exploring why counting how many times we pick up our phone each day matters more than tracking total screen time. By paying attention to that one number — and setting a realistic weekly limit instead of chasing zero — we build awareness of where our time, energy, attention, and money…
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The Practice of Noticing in a Busy Life
We're talking with installation artist Christina Watka, to explore the quiet practice of noticing — meeting life as it is, without judgment, right in the middle of the noise and chaos of raising young kids. Noticing sharpens our awareness of what's actually in front of us, builds the intention to...
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Two Daily Habits for More Focused Days
We're exploring two practices that turn scattered effort into focused work - planning the day before it starts, and reviewing it before it ends. By building our plan around what actually matters and asking five honest questions at the close of each day, we create awareness around how we're…
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Dopamine Culture Is Quietly Hijacking Your Focus
We're exploring Ted Gioia's idea of "dopamine culture" — how so many parts of life have drifted from slow, traditional pursuits through faster, modern versions into addictive, bite-sized hits of instant gratification. By naming where our attention actually goes versus where we want it to go, we...
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You Can't Unsee This Food Insanity
We're exploring why our modern food environment is insane - and why once you see it, you can't unsee it. With our friend EC Synkowski, author of A Good Nutrition Book, we build awareness around how ultra-processed foods are engineered to be everywhere and impossible to escape. From there, we…
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You Don't Have to Quit to Feel Fulfilled
We're exploring how to find real fulfillment inside a job that already gives us balance and security, without needing to blow it all up for something new. By treating our work as a calling instead of just a career, we build awareness around what's already working, intention around where we point...
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How to Know When to Change Course
We're exploring how to tell the difference between a challenge worth pushing through and a misalignment worth walking away from. By anchoring the decision in whether our values are actually aligned, we build awareness around what's really driving our discomfort, intention around when to work on…
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Why Discomfort Means You're Growing (Not Failing)
We're revisiting a favorite conversation with Trevor Ragan to unpack his simple equation for discomfort: caring plus uncertainty. When we treat that discomfort as proof we're on the wrong path, we shrink from the exact challenges that build us - but when we see it as a signal that the work…
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Am I Building Grit Or Burning Out?
We're exploring how to know whether we're building grit or slipping toward burnout when life leaves almost no room for training. By understanding allostatic load and finding our minimum effective dose, we build awareness of what our body and season of life can actually handle, intention around...
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Life Is a Frisbee Balanced on a Pencil
We're exploring why we can't maximize every goal at once, and how picturing life as a Frisbee balanced on a pencil - instead of a seesaw - changes the way we chase what matters. By identifying the 20% of effort that drives 80% of the results across our health, work, and relationships, we build...
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Person First, Process Second, Goal Third
We're exploring how to pursue ambitious goals without making our identity dependent on the outcome. By placing the person and the process ahead of the goal, we build awareness around what we can control, intention around the habits and character traits we want to practice, and action toward a…
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Why Chasing Excellence Is Going Daily
We're kicking off an October Experiment, a shift from one longer weekly episode to short, daily episodes every weekday. Today, we explore why this change matters: showing up with something short to think about each day keeps us focused on today's choices, instead of waiting for one big leap...
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Why Smart People Keep Outsourcing Their Diet to Strangers (w/ EC Synkowski)
What if the problem with your diet isn't discipline — it's that you've never learned to think for yourself about food? In this episode, our friend EC Synkowski (author of A Good Nutrition Book) joins us to explain why calories, macros, and micros — not keto, paleo, or intermittent fasting — are…
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Forever Fit | Why Your Fitness Feels Stalled (And Why That's Normal)
Plateaus, leaderboards, and the real reason most people stop making progress in the gym — we answer the questions you've been too afraid to ask. In part two of our training Q&A, Jamison and Ben explore why fitness follows the stock market (not a straight line), how to use the leaderboard as a…
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Forever Fit | The 2 Signs You're Too Sore to Train
Ever wonder whether that soreness means rest—or push through? If one bad night of sleep wrecks your training? Or whether all those YouTube influencers are right that rep ranges don't really matter? In this episode, Jamison fires community questions at Ben, and the answers are exactly what coaches...
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Why We Keep Choosing Work Over the People We Love (w/ Robert Waldinger)
What if the single greatest predictor of your health at 80 isn't your cholesterol or blood pressure — but how satisfied you are in your relationships? In this conversation, we sit down with Dr. Robert Waldinger, director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development — the longest-running study of…
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Annie Thorisdottir Talks Training Character, Consistency, & Collaboration (w/ Christine Bald)
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...
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Our 21-Day Happiness Challenges Starts Today!
Short and sweet this week: Our latest challenge is kicking off today, and we don't want you to miss it. ❤️🔥 More information on the Happiness Challenge 🐾 Join us inside the ChaseTracker app 👊 Jump into the Chase Club See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy…
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Chase Challenge | Happiness Is a Subtraction Problem We’re Solving All Wrong
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…
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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,...
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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…
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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...
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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...
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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…
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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...
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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…
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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...
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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...
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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...
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5x5 | Building Real Friendships After 40 & Asking Questions That Connect
What does it actually take to connect — with your kids, your partner, your community, and the strangers you meet every day? In this episode, Ben answers five listener questions on the CONNECT factor, from parenting across different households to rebuilding friendships in your 40s and 50s. You'll...
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Forever Fit | Learn to Breathe (+ 9 More Habits That Upgrade Your Training)
What if the problem isn't your program — it's how you're showing up for it? In this episode, Ben and Jamison break down 10 training hygiene habits that can transform your results, regardless of what you're training for, where you train, or what program you follow. From intentional intensity and…
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You Don't Owe Your Past More Than You Owe Your Future
What if the guilt you're calling loyalty is the very thing keeping you stuck? In this episode, we answer a question from Chase Club member Mike about whether to switch gyms — and it turns out, it's not really about gyms at all. We unpack the difference between loyalty (a choice) and guilt (a...
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Raise | Receive Your Kids — Don't Just Shape Them (w/ Christina Watka)
What if raising a child well means releasing your vision of who they're supposed to become — and learning instead to see who they actually are? Patrick is joined this week by Christina Watka, an installation artist whose entire practice is built around entering a space without a plan, noticing...
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The High Performer's Playbook: 2 Rules, 5 Habits, & 7 Traps
High performance isn't a talent — it's a system. This week, we bring together three of our most foundational conversations to show you exactly what that system looks like in practice. From the two non-negotiables that underpin every kind of success, to the five specific characteristics we see in...
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Chase Challenge | High Performance Isn't a Talent. Prove It in 21 Days
What if high performance at work isn't a talent you either have or don't — but a system you can practice starting today? In this episode, Patrick introduces the 21-Day High Performance Challenge and walks through the five interdependent characteristics that, together, make up a practice for doing...
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Purpose Effect | Athena Perez on Fasting 40 Days to Face Emotional Eating
What does it look like to go from 500 pounds to a CrossFit coach - not out of inspiration, but because fear was the only thing in the room? In this episode, Jamison sits down with Athena Perez: affiliate owner, coach, and author of a two-part memoir about identity, worth, and what fitness spaces...
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The External-to-Internal Method for Raising Healthy Kids
Every parent who cares about health eventually hits this wall: your kids don't want to do what you know is good for them — and the more you push, the harder they pull away. In this episode, we tackle Chase Club member Brendan's question about getting his 16-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter…
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7 Habits of People Who Make Other People Better (w/ Jon Gordon)
What if becoming extraordinary isn't really about your own habits — it's about the habits you build that make everyone around you better? In this episode, we sit down with Jon Gordon, author of 33 books and 18 bestsellers, to explore seven habits that transform ordinary people into the kind of...
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Chase Challenge | Why You Need to Reverse Engineer Your Triggers
What if your triggers aren't random — they're a map back to yourself? In this close-out episode, Patrick reflects on the 21-day trigger challenge with two reframes that change everything: the tug of war between wants and reality, and the difference between surface triggers (your mental dojo) and...
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Forever Fit | Train Heavy, Fast, Far, and Free: How to Stay Formidable for Life
What if the key to being capable at 75 isn't training harder — it's training more completely? In this episode, we introduce the Heavy, Fast, Far, and Free framework: a simple weekly approach to strength, power, endurance, and mobility that keeps every fitness bucket full. You'll learn why power...
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Coaches Aren't Essential. Here's Why You Need One Anyway.
Coaches and mentors aren't essential — but they might be the best shortcut you'll ever find. In this episode, we answer Chase Club member David's question about whether coaches need coaches, and explore how Ben has built three very different mentorship relationships, each running on a different...
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How to Persuade Yourself Into the Person You Want to Be (w/ Jay Heinrichs)
What if the reason you keep falling back on old habits isn't a lack of discipline — but a failure of persuasion? In this episode, we sit down with New York Times bestselling author Jay Heinrichs to explore how ancient rhetoric holds the secret to becoming the person your best self already…
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5x5 | Fixing Your Testosterone Without HRT & Building a Legit Home Gym
What if you didn't need a prescription to fix your testosterone — and what if training through surgery was simpler than you thought? In this 5x5 episode, Ben answers five listener questions about training — covering HRT, surgery recovery, rucking, bite-sized movement for busy parents, and the...
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Raise | How to Build Emotional Immunity in Your Kids (w/ Jenna Cain)
What if the most powerful thing you can do for your kids' emotional health is regulate yourself first? In this episode of our Raise series, Patrick sits down with Jenna Cain — a pediatric physical therapist, Level 3 Enlifted coach, and mother of two — to explore why the nervous system of the…
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Purpose Effect | Ryan Rivard on the Climb From Overdose to Everest
Ryan Rivard went from a homeless overdose survivor at 19 to summiting Mount Everest at 40 — and the most powerful thing he learned is that neither rock bottom nor the summit was the point. We explore how gratitude transforms daily life, why everyone is recovering from something, and why the…
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How to Adjust the 5 Factors of Health at 40, 50, 60, and Beyond
As we age, the Five Factors don't disappear — they shift. And most people wait until something breaks before they start paying attention. Answering a Chase Club member’s question, we break down exactly how to adjust how we train, eat, sleep, think, and connect across each decade of life — and why...
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Chase Challenge | Stop Letting Your Triggers Run Your Life
We're launching a 21-Day Trigger Challenge: a structured daily practice built around five pillars (trigger identification, recovery speed, response vs. reaction, regulation strategies, and self-compassion) designed to shorten the gap between stimulus and choice. Whether you join the Chase Club…
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Forever Fit | 6 Training Principles for a Yes-to-Anything Life
What does it actually mean to be fit for life — not just for a competition, a season, or a phase? In this episode, Ben, Cole, and Jamison unpack six foundational principles for anyone who wants to build fitness that serves them today, tomorrow, and forever. You'll walk away with a clear framework...
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5x5 | Reading for Recall Over Ego & Letting Flow Happen at Home
In the first of our new 5x5 series, Ben takes five listener questions on the THINK factor, covering growth mindset, the Fragmented → Focused → Flow framework, and the distillation process behind the CE frameworks we talk about all the time. You'll walk away with a clear process for building a...
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Raise | Of the 272 Emotions, Most Parents Only Know 12 (w/ D. Earl Johnston)
What if most of what your kids are learning about emotions isn't coming from what you say — it's coming from what they watch you do? In this first episode of our new Raise series, we explore Doug Earl Johnston's groundbreaking book Choosing Emotions — now the single most comprehensive reference…
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
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
HOSTED BY
Ben Bergeron & Patrick Cummings
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does Chasing Excellence have?
Chasing Excellence currently has 542 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is Chasing Excellence about?
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...
How often does Chasing Excellence release new episodes?
Chasing Excellence releases new episodes frequently with a large back catalog of 542 episodes. Check the episode list for recent publication dates.
Where can I listen to Chasing Excellence?
You can listen to Chasing Excellence on PodParley by clicking any episode. We provide an embedded audio player for direct listening, and you can also subscribe via your preferred podcast app using the RSS feed.
Who hosts Chasing Excellence?
Chasing Excellence is created and hosted by Ben Bergeron & Patrick Cummings.
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