PODCAST · health
The Heavy Meta Podcast
by Michael Blevins
Heavy Meta is a podcast about training as a lifelong practice, not a program you finish. Hosted by Michael Blevins — coach, writer, and founder of We Are Heavy Meta — it treats fitness as a laboratory for agency, self-assessment, and survival rather than another optimization game or trend slop of common fitness culture.Each episode interrogates the assumptions the fitness industry sells as gospel: that intensity equals progress, that aesthetics are the point, that strength is something you can measure and be done with. Expect ruthless self-assessment, philosophy applied to the body, and a refusal to flatter the listener. If you've ever suspected the standard advice was built for someone else's goals, this is the conversation you've been missing.For the practitioner who wants to think as hard as they train.
Episodes
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The Final Assault on the DusitD2 Hotel, Told by the SAS Operator Who Led It (Part 3 of 3)
Just after first light they heard the terrorists praying for the first time all night. Christian Craighead told the Kenyans to get ready, then started singing the Hail Mary. On "amen," four grenades came down the stairs. Part 3 of 3 — the finale. The seventh-floor standoff through the night: the...
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"They Were Already Planning My Court-Martial" — Christian Craighead, Part 2
He's inside 14 Riverside Drive alone. His own side is planning his court-martial. Nobody sends him maps, mug shots, or orders — and 150 people are hiding in a hair salon. Part 2 of 3. Christian Craighead — former SAS — walks through the DusitD2 assault door by door: the kitchen full of wounded…
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SAS Operator Breaks His Silence: Christian Craighead, In His Own Words (Part 1)
In January 2019, an SAS operator walked alone into a terrorist attack on the DusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi. More than 700 people got out alive. Then his name started disappearing from the coverage. This is the first time Christian Craighead has told his story. His book, One Man In, was blocked...
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If You Are Not Going Longer, You Are Not Training Endurance
Endurance is not a pace. It's not a zone. It's not a finish line. Endurance is how long you can keep going, and almost nothing we call endurance training is training that. Three of us rode 575 miles in 24 hours on an assault bike. I was back on the bike within days. One of us took months. One of…
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Sub • Stance | Peptides: What Nobody Selling Or Regulating Them Will Tell You
A peptide is legal or illegal depending on a court calendar, not a toxicology report. In September 2024 Eli Lilly sued the FDA over whether retatrutide contains 40 amino acids or 41 — a dispute worth seven extra years of market exclusivity, four extra years of protection from Medicare price...
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Most Men Dress to Disappear | Tanner Guzy
Style is identity made visible. Most men dress in a way that communicates nothing, because they'd rather be invisible than be a liar with their appearance. Tanner Guzy is an appearance strategist — not a stylist — and the author of The Appearance of Power. In this conversation we take the same...
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A Metric Is a Point. Fitness Is a Shape | Hybrid Training
Hybrid training is specialization pointed in two directions at once, not general physical preparation. A big deadlift next to a fast mile is impressive. It is not evidence of general capability. Two above-average expressions don't sum into a generalist, because there was never a general trait...
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How to Train in a Hotel Gym (5 Rules, 5 Real Sessions)
Hotel training is filler training. Its job is to keep the practice intact when the conditions won't support progressive overload — not to break records, not to test anything, and not to run the program you'd run at home. Last week in Punta Mita the resort had a genuinely good gym — squat racks,...
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I Just Commited Brand Su*cide
After a year and a half building OLLIN, I'm renaming everything. This is why. The short version: OLLIN was a placeholder born out of a dissolution I couldn't talk about, the pronunciation never worked, and the business had grown into something the name couldn't hold — a gym that isn't a gym, a...
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Nobody Knows What They're Doing | Josh Tyler
Nobody knows what they're doing. Not you, not your heroes, not the guy selling you the answer. This is a conversation, not an interview. No agenda, no promotion, no guest hitting the same talking points they hit on the last five podcasts. Michael Blevins sits down with Josh Tyler and follows the...
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The Reason You Can't Think Your Way Into Change
You don't think your way into a new self. You move your way there — and then you turn around and the person who started walking isn't the person who arrived. ???? Read the full article: https://www.weareollin.com/articles/you-are-not-who-you-think-youre-how-you-stand A client stands in front of…
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TRAINING FOR PROFIT
The best companies in the world aren't the ones that pay the most. They're the ones that refuse to set their most valuable asset on fire. In 2024 I ran a project with a desk of elite commodities traders where the only metric that mattered was money. If they made more, we succeeded. If they…
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Endurance Q&A: Your Most-Asked Questions, Answered
Before launching the new OLLIN endurance program, I opened a Q&A to the membership and answered what came back. This is that conversation. The through-line: most endurance programs make you good at one thing — one movement, one event, one finish line. That's a finite game. This program is built…
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The Witching Hour: What Endurance Actually Teaches You
How do you describe a feeling to someone who's never felt it? There's no single word for what the 12th hour of a maximal effort does to a person — the pain, the haunting that arrives when it's just you, your effort, and the dark. I can't give you the word, but I've spent more than 20 years in the...
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Training vs. Exercise: The Word You've Never Understood
There's a word hiding inside the thing you do every day, and almost nobody who does it knows what it means. Trahere — Latin, to drag, to draw a living thing out of its current state and into a new one. It's the root of "training," and for most of its life it had nothing to do with barbells. You...
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Training For The Apocalypse
The apocalypse is a useful frame. Not because the world is ending — because it strips fitness down to one question: does this body work when it has to? Most lifters, after years of chasing PRs and stacking calories, are no harder to kill than they were on day one. Just bigger, hungrier, and more...
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What is Exercise? How is it Different than Training?
Most people confuse the two. Here is how I make an intentional difference. Training is using the psychological and sensational potential to push the physiological boundaries. Exercise is using physiological process to change the psychological or emotional state. This is part of an excerpt form a...
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Being Unfit Is a Superpower. Most People Waste It.
Being out of shape is the single highest-leverage position you will ever occupy in your fitness life — and most people waste it because they're too embarrassed to use it. In this episode I cover why untrained systems respond to everything, why no program is appropriate as written for someone...
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The UNFVCKD Podcast w/Stuart Diplock
About the episode: In an industry obsessed with 15-second clips and "hack-based" transformations, genuine physical mastery is being lost. In this episode, Stuart Diplock and I attempt to dismantle the transactional mindset of modern fitness. We explore why long-form storytelling is the antidote…
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Are You Bankrupting Your Body? The Perils of the "Get-Fit-Quick" Scheme
Today, we're talking about fitness—a topic that feels rigged from the start. You've probably seen people with perfect genetics, natural talent, or the resources to take shortcuts, and you've told yourself, "The whole system is unfair." And you're right. The fitness world isn’t "perfectly...
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Why Your "Perfect" Deadlift Is Setting You Up For Injury | Strange Grayson
world, Strange Grayson. We explore our shared history of hitting rock bottom with injuries from traditional training and how a few key conceptual shifts completely changed the game. Grayson details his "Matrix moment" at his first Functional Range Conditioning (FRC) certification, where he…
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The UNFVCKD Podcast: Why Your Squat Isn't Making You Stronger
Are you hitting a strength plateau or dealing with nagging injuries despite your training? This episode reveals why your program is likely failing you. We're not talking about reps or sets, but the two inescapable biological laws that govern ALL strength: The Law of Specificity and The Law of...
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Sean Waxman On Strength Culture
The UNFVCKD Podcast welcomes, Sean Waxman, a renowned strength and conditioning coach with over 30 years of experience. Sean shares his journey in strength training, starting from his early days in the projects where his father introduced him to weightlifting. Sean discusses how his initial...
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Strength UNFVCKD
In this episode, host Michael Blevins dives deep into the misunderstood world of strength. Explore the ancient history of strength training, uncover common misconceptions that plague modern fitness, and discover transformative ways to redefine how you conceptualize and train strength. Michael...
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The UNFCKD Podcast Ep. 1 Introduction: Cynicism Almost Broke Me
Welcome to The UNFVCKD Podcast, hosted by Michael Blevins. In this groundbreaking first episode, Michael shares a pivotal moment that reshaped his worldview, sparked by the comments on an Instagram post. He reflects on the shortcomings he identified in his previous venture, The Nonprophet…
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Trailer
Welcome to Unfvcked. A podcast about progress.
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
Heavy Meta is a podcast about training as a lifelong practice, not a program you finish. Hosted by Michael Blevins — coach, writer, and founder of We Are Heavy Meta — it treats fitness as a laboratory for agency, self-assessment, and survival rather than another optimization game or trend slop of common fitness culture.Each episode interrogates the assumptions the fitness industry sells as gospel: that intensity equals progress, that aesthetics are the point, that strength is something you can measure and be done with. Expect ruthless self-assessment, philosophy applied to the body, and a refusal to flatter the listener. If you've ever suspected the standard advice was built for someone else's goals, this is the conversation you've been missing.For the practitioner who wants to think as hard as they train.
HOSTED BY
Michael Blevins
CATEGORIES
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many episodes does The Heavy Meta Podcast have?
The Heavy Meta Podcast currently has 26 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
What is The Heavy Meta Podcast about?
Heavy Meta is a podcast about training as a lifelong practice, not a program you finish. Hosted by Michael Blevins — coach, writer, and founder of We Are Heavy Meta — it treats fitness as a laboratory for agency, self-assessment, and survival rather than another optimization game or trend slop of...
How often does The Heavy Meta Podcast release new episodes?
The Heavy Meta Podcast has 26 episodes. Check the episode list to see recent publication dates and frequency.
Where can I listen to The Heavy Meta Podcast?
You can listen to The Heavy Meta Podcast 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 The Heavy Meta Podcast?
The Heavy Meta Podcast is created and hosted by Michael Blevins.
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