excellence, actually

Latest Episodes:

009 - Mental & Physical Skills of the World's Best Athlete (with Damian Warner) Feb 01, 2024

Show notes

Over the course of two days, Olympic decathletes participate in ten different track and field events, ranging from pole vault and shot put to long jump and a 1500-meter run. It’s a grueling competition that requires speed, strength, explosiveness and technical ability, which is why, in addition to receiving a gold medal, the winner is also crowned the “best athlete in the world.” Right now, that title belongs to Canada’s Damian Warner, who took home the gold in Tokyo in 2021. On today’s episode, Warner opens up about his journey to becoming a world-class athlete: how he was introduced to the decathlon by his basketball coaches (who became, and are still, his decathlon coaches); how the very same year he started training, 2010, he won silver at the Canadian championships. He also goes deep on his mental and physical approach that has helped him sustain success for over a decade: why stacking consistently good days is more important than having great days; how to focus in a two-day, 10-event competition, including how to move on not just from an event that goes poorly but from an event that goes really well; how he uses visualization and pre-competition routines to anchor himself; and what training during a Covid and having a kid taught him about the importance of being flexible.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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008 - The Coach Up: This Concept Will Change How You Think About Motivation Jan 29, 2024

Show notes

Have you ever noticed that your behavior is sometimes misaligned with your goals? You go to school to learn, or take a job to do meaningful work, or join Instagram to keep up with friends. But instead you end up chasing GPA, money, and followers. It's an increasingly prevalent complication in a society obsessed with metrics, where everything is gamified and measured. On today's episode of The Coach Up, Michael Easter, whose books The Comfort Crisis and Scarcity Brain assess the problems of our modern world, details why this happens, explaining the subtle ways in which metrics can hijack our motivation—and how you can guard against that happening.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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007 - Be Yourself and Go All the Way Jan 25, 2024

Show notes

What type of leadership builds a culture of winning and excellence? Is an approach that prioritizes joy, care, and love, more effective than one that's more demanding or authoritarian? Using examples from contemporary sports, and in the wake of the departure of three of the most storied football coaches of all-time—Nick Saban, Bill Belichick, and Pete Caroll—each of whom fostered a unique type of culture, Steve, Brad, and Clay discuss the merits of various coaching styles. You'll learn the importance of psychological safety (and how to cultivate it), the difference between demandingness and responsiveness, and why self-awareness might be the single most important attribute of a leader.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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006 - The Coach Up: 5 Lessons on Focus, Leadership, and Greatness (with NFL coach Andy Reid) Jan 22, 2024

Show notes

A special edition of The Coach Up! In the wake of the Kansas City Chiefs' playoff victory over the Buffalo Bills, Clay revisits a 2020 conversation he had with the Chiefs' head coach, Andy Reid. Coach Reid breaks down what makes Chiefs' quarterback Patrick Mahomes great, and gives an insight into the coaching philosophy that has made him one of the best coaches of all-time. Don't miss these lessons on leadership, focus, and greatness from a future Hall of Famer.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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005 - How the Cult of Wellness is Failing Us (with Kate Bowler) Jan 18, 2024

Show notes

What if I told you our country's approach to wellness was heavily influenced by the history of American religion? Kate Bowler, a professor of religious history at Duke, traces the self-betterment movement back to America's "prosperity gospel," which promised that true believers of God would be rewarded with health, wealth, and happiness. Replace "God" with diet, workouts, supplements, self-help books, and time management systems and you've pretty much described today's billion-dollar health and wellness industry. And just like the prosperity gospel, the cult of wellness makes promises—about how we're masters of our universe, and how we can conquer any limit—that it can't always keep, a realization Kate had when she was diagnosed with stage four cancer at age 35. Clay and Kate discuss Kate's story and how it complicates and deepens our cultural obsession with being the best version of ourselves.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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004 - The Coach Up: Why You Should Stop Your Workout (Just) Short Jan 15, 2024

Show notes

Throughout his many years of coaching, Steve Magness has put together a unique set of tools for training mental toughness. In this week's Coach Up, he walks you through a clever way to approach the end of your workouts that will help widen your tolerance for uncomfortable feelings. Think of it as exposure therapy for discomfort, making it easier for you to approach difficulty in your everyday life.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Get Master of Change, Do Hard Things, and The Practice of Groundedness on audible (Or in hard copy: Master of Change here Hard Things here and Groundedness here).

Please write a review on Apple Podcasts and help new listeners discover the show!

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Instagram: @bradstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

003 - Fantasy Draft: Our 12 Favorite Movies & Shows About Performance Jan 11, 2024

Show notes

We are living in an entertainment boom, which is both a blessing and a curse: there's more great content than ever before, but you have to sort through a lot of noise to find it. In an effort to help you comb through it all, Brad, Steve, and Clay do a good old fashioned fantasy draft in order to select the best movies, shows, and documentaries about performance, craft, and mastery. What does "best" mean? Well, as you'll see, that was up for some debate... Let us know who you think picked the best (or worst) team. Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com, or give us a ring at 646-893-9503.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

002 - The Coach Up: How to Set Better Goals Jan 08, 2024

Show notes

For the first episode of The Coach Up, we've got three different experts—Brad, Steve, and Katy Milkman, a behavioral scientist at Wharton—offering three different perspectives on how to think through goal-setting in the new year. You'll learn the difference between an open goal and a specific goal, when to pick a small goal versus when to pick a big goal, why something called "the what the hell effect" can derail your goals, and the subtle but powerful mindset shift that will help you stay on track when you get discouraged. Plus: why both video games and mountains are useful metaphors when thinking through goals.

Listen and subscribe to FAREWELL now!

Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

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See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

001 - Inside the (Joyful) Mind of Elite Ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter Jan 04, 2024

Show notes

Last summer, ultrarunner Courtney Dauwalter did something that had never been done before. She ran three of the sport's most iconic 100-mile races... within 10 weeks of each other... and won all three. (She also set the women's course record on two of them.) It was an incredible achievement, even for someone who has long established herself as one of the greatest ultraunners of all-time. How does she do what she does? Through a rare mixture of joy, curiosity, and intensity that will change how you think about competition and ignite your own self-belief. Here, she talks about what she calls "the triple," why she goes in search of the pain cave, the unique visualizations and mantras that she uses to help her solve problems on the trail (like the time she went 98% blind), and how she manages to always keep "joy in the front seat."

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at (646) 893-9503

Follow Courtney (@courtneydauwalter) and Clay (@clayskipper) on Instagram.

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Welcome to FAREWELL, Premiering January 4th (Trailer) Jan 02, 2024

Show notes

On January 4th, we are relaunching The Growth Equation Podcast as FAREWELL. Hosted by Clay Skipper, it's a show about performance, delivering you the insights, habits, and practices that, if done consistently, will help you perform your best on the things you care about most (and help you, more generally, fare well). You'll hear from Growth Equation founders and performance experts Brad Stulberg and Steve Magness, but also a long list of others who study or practice performance at the highest level: athletes, coaches, psychologists, digital wellness experts, nutritionists, and others.

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Got a question, feedback, or ideas for the show? Email clay.growtheq@gmail.com or leave a voicemail at

Leave us a voice memo at (646) 893-9503

Please write a review on Apple Podcasts and help new listeners discover the show!

Find Brad, Steve, and Clay on Twitter: @Bstulberg, @stevemagness, and @clayskipper

Check out our exclusive community offers on Patreon here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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