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Understanding one missing adaptation could be what’s limiting your progress.
For nearly thirteen years, I’ve been hosting this podcast—and for most of that time, I’ve been an ultra-endurance athlete, navigating the paradox of effort versus results. First in chlorinated pools chasing milliseconds, then across asphalt pursuing that elusive flow state where suffering transforms into something meaningful. But six months ago, I underwent spinal fusion surgery, which forced me into stillness and stripped away the fitness I’d built over two decades.
That forced stillness has been instructive. It’s given me time to recognize something I’ve long missed: training often fails not from insufficient intensity but from category errors—mistaking sensation for adaptation, conflating activity with improvement, letting reductive thinking obscure what actually drives human performance.
As I prepare to rebuild from the ground up, no one I know better understands this than Dr. Andy Galpin.
A PhD in exercise bioenergetics, Andy is a professor of kinesiology at Parker University and executive director of the Human Performance Center, where he studies and works with professional, Olympic, and world champion athletes. Amidst all the confusing online debates about fitness and nutrition, he is the evidence-based expert we need.
“Physiology doesn’t know you’re training for speed or endurance. It simply knows stress demand.”
- ANDY GALPIN
Today, we discuss:
- The Nine Fitness Adaptations
- Why People Plateau: Movement Quality vs. Intensity
- Functional Overreaching vs. Overtraining
- Stress, Recovery, Consistency & Intensity
- Fat Adaptation & Metabolic Flexibility
- Setting Goals & Achieving Them
- The Role of Exercise in Longevity & Health
My goal was to cover enough to provide essential basics while leaving you hungry for more, which you’ll find in depth in Andy’s podcast series, Perform.
For those who prefer a visual experience, the conversation is available on YouTube. And as always, the podcast streams wild and free on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.
Peace + Plants,
Listen, Watch, & Subscribe
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- Connect With Andy: Website | Instagram | YouTube | X
- Andy’s Podcast: Perform
- Watch on YouTube: Found My Fitness: Dr. Andy Galpin: The Optimal Diet, Supplement, & Recovery Protocol for Peak Performance
- Watch on YouTube: ZOE: Exercise Doctor: Workout routine to build muscle, boost your brain and slow aging | Dr. Andy Galpin
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Thank The Team: I do not do this alone. Send your love to Jason Camiolo for audio engineering, production, show notes and interstitial music; with additional audio engineering by Cale Curtis and additional music by Moby; Blake Curtis & Dan Drake for video, & editing; graphics by Jessica Miranda & Daniel Solis; portraits by Davy Greenberg, Grayson Wilder & Gizelle Peters; copywriting by Ben Pryor; and theme music by Tyler Piatt, Trapper Piatt & Hari Mathis.
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