The We Are OLLIN Podcast

Michael Blevins
  • 4.8 (16)
  • Fitness

We Are OLLIN is a podcast about training as a lifelong practice, not a program you finish. Hosted by Michael Blevins — coach, writer, and founder of OLLIN — it treats fitness as a laboratory for agency, self-assessment, and survival readiness rather than another optimization game. 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.

  1. 2d ago

    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 to develop aerobic ability generally, the capacity to provide oxygen and blood flow across anything you ask your body to do. Running and cycling are in there because they're the easiest ways to extend effort, but so are carries, sleds, rows, lunges, burpees. You build the base; you make it your own. What we get into: how to find your real deficiency (nine times out of ten it's base, not intensity); what the German team that broke the four-minute team-pursuit barrier actually did in training, and why it was mostly low intensity; whether nasal breathing and conversational pace are good zone-two cues (they get you in the neighborhood, no further); why chasing a precise zone two is close to useless if you're not racing; the minimum dose to maintain endurance once you have it; stable versus volatile traits and why most people defend the wrong ones; wear, tear, and longevity with running; and the hybrid problem — trying to hold strength, power, and endurance at once is how you end up with none of them. There's a story in here about accidentally hitting my best competition shape ever while training out of a backpack in London — all zone one and zone five, no gray middle — and a friend named Jamie whose aerobic base makes him, in his own words, light-years ahead on the mat. Endurance is compound interest. It's the trait that amplifies every other trait you have. The endurance program is a 12-week build, live now and included in the OLLIN membership: https://weareollin.com Got a question I didn't cover? Send it in and I'll do another one of these. 00:00 Endurance is compound interest 00:21 What this Q&A is, and what the program is 05:06 Finding your deficiency: base vs. intensity 06:13 What the German pursuit team actually did 09:53 The London backpack story 12:03 Is conversational pace / nasal breathing good for zone two? 18:10 Why precise zone two is useless if you're not racing 19:15 Building vs. maintaining: the minimum dose 21:18 Recovery and how endurance fits the week 24:40 Stable vs. volatile traits 25:23 Wear, tear, and longevity with running 30:50 Concurrent strength, power, and endurance 31:32 The cookie jar: interference 33:26 The hybrid / SOF problem 35:02 Why "that day" never arrives 38:24 What most endurance programs get wrong 39:44 What this program is (and isn't) 40:36 Fueling and recovery alongside strength 49:33 How many days a week of each 46:54 Jamie Lavelle: endurance on the mat 50:37 Why endurance amplifies everything

    52 min

  2. 4d ago

    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 country it belongs to: triathlons, a decade of road racing, 100-mile gravel, a 24-hour assault bike world record. Next to the athletes I've coached, my own résumé looks amateur. That's the humbling part — the further in you go, the less of it you realize you've touched. This episode is about endurance, and the argument runs against almost everything the fitness industry sells. We have the origin story backwards. Bramble and Lieberman (Nature, 2004) found 26 traits in the human body that make little sense for walking and perfect sense for running long — springs in the leg, a foot built to push off, shoulders free of the head, and the ability to sweat. A chimp is stronger than any of us; nearly everything on the savannah is faster. We won because nothing could outlast us. The persistence hunt is the whole philosophy in one act: the antelope chose intensity, the human chose duration, and duration won. From there: why intensity is the inverse of duration and you can't buy one with the other; why endurance isn't a thing you possess but a process you move with; the empires that ran their most urgent messages on legs, not horses; the monks who built a religion around the thing you feel at hour 12. Then the practical map — the three training traps, the 80/20 split (Seiler), Maffetone's 180-minus-age, and the "can you double it" gut check. And finally the part it took 20 years to say clearly: endurance is a relationship with yourself, and the word for what you're building is trust. Show me yourself after 12 hours of continuous effort, and I won't need to tell you who you are. The full endurance program is live and included in the OLLIN membership: https://weareollin.com 00:00 No word for the witching hour 01:00 20 years in endurance — and still an amateur 02:00 We have the origin story backwards 02:28 Bramble & Lieberman: born to run (Nature, 2004) 03:22 The persistence hunt: duration beats intensity 04:28 Intensity is the inverse of duration 05:03 Endurance isn't a thing you possess — it's a process 06:51 Aerobic system as infrastructure, not accessory 07:13 The Aztec couriers and "ollin" 07:46 The Inca road and the Chaski relay 08:36 Pheidippides: the myth we chose to keep 09:13 The Tarahumara — running as prayer 09:51 The Tendai monks and the kaihōgyō 11:10 Songlines and the walkabout 12:00 How we got seduced: the intensity deficiency 13:07 The three traps and the gray zone 13:32 The 80/20 split (Seiler) 14:02 Finding "easy" without a lab: Maffetone and the double test 15:01 Endurance is a relationship — and the word is trust 16:43 "Just go" is the highest expression of trust 16:59 The revolt: when the math says you can't 17:15 24 hours on the assault bike, one minute at a time 18:36 What's on the other side: dissolution 19:23 Underneath it all: love 19:59 Back to "ollin" — the movement that holds up the world

    21 min

  3. Jun 7

    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 trained a vine. This episode draws the line between training and exercise and refuses to let them be synonyms. Training uses your psychological and sensational capability to alter your physiological state — it runs inside-out, intention dragging the body toward a capacity it doesn't have yet. Exercise runs outside-in: you move, and the movement changes how you feel. Both are worth doing. They cannot happen in the same session at the same intensity, and most people attempt both at once and get neither. The neuroscience has caught up with the etymology. The anterior mid-cingulate cortex — the brain's cost-benefit engine — physically grows when you do things you don't want to do, and ignores comfort entirely (Touroutoglou et al., Cortex, 2020). BDNF, the fertilizer for your nervous system, doesn't respond to movement; it responds to intensity above your ventilatory threshold. The body doesn't adapt to activity. It adapts to a signal strong enough to convince it that what it can do right now isn't enough. Inside: why the "I train hard every day" crowd is building fatigue resistance instead of adaptation, the lion-tamer and the stool, using exercise as the apprenticeship to training, and the simplest test there is — if you genuinely trained, you won't be able to repeat it tomorrow. Three days a week, you drag yourself somewhere new. The other days, you keep the body from going slack. The effort was never the problem. The direction was. The full OLLIN training library and the philosophy behind it: https://weareollin.com 00:00 Trahere — the word hiding inside "training" 00:54 Exercere — to unpen, with no direction 01:48 The line: inside-out vs. outside-in 02:46 Into the skull: the anterior mid-cingulate cortex 03:41 The aMCC grows when you override yourself 04:59 BDNF responds to intensity, not movement 06:25 Why the "little of everything" week adapts nothing 07:12 Protecting intensity, and why intention breaks for most people 08:00 The lion tamer and the stool 09:27 Exercise as the apprenticeship to training 10:30 Fatigue resistance is not training 11:14 The simplest test: you can't repeat it tomorrow 11:31 Three days new, the rest keep from going slack

    12 min

  4. May 29

    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 expensive to keep alive. In this episode I break down why the strongest guy in the room is usually the easiest to outlast, why specialization is a liability when the demand is unknown, and what training for survival readiness actually looks like in practice. Watch the video version: https://youtu.be/ggzBD4DW0bE Read the article: https://www.weareollin.com/articles/training-for-the-apocalypse More at weareollin.com Follow: @gritandteeth

    24 min

  5. May 29

    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 longer article that will be posted in a few weeks. The full session can be found on www.weareollin.com  Playlist:    / osdju0ld2xdvct8t0z

    7 min

  6. May 29

    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 starting or restarting, and why formerly fit people actually have a harder time coming back than total beginners. Your nervous system recovers faster than your connective tissue, and that mismatch is where most people get hurt and quit. Full article: weareollin.com/articles/being-unfit-is-a-superpower-most-people-waste-it

    4 min

  7. 12/18/2025

    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 to superficial trends, how personality traits dictate the sports we choose, and the profound psychological differences between Western (external) and Eastern (internal) coaching styles. We also dive deep into the concept of "Infinite Fitness"—moving away from finite goals to build a practice that sustains mental health and prevents burnout. From the fragility of narcissism in powerlifting to the mental strategies of endurance athletes, this conversation redefines what it means to be strong. Key Topics Discussed: * The Death of Nuance: Why short-form content fails to capture the reality of health and why we are pivoting to long-form writing and Substack. * Psychology of the Athlete: Why lone wolves choose endurance and communal personalities choose CrossFit. * East vs. West: Comparing the external cue-based coaching of the West with the sensation-based mastery of Eastern/Soviet systems. * Strength as Sensitivity: Why true strength is about emotional regulation, and how "power" is actually an expression of free will. * Finite vs. Infinite Games: shifting from "getting fit for a wedding" to fitness as a lifelong vehicle for self-discovery. Timestamps: * 00:00 - Intro & The shift to Long-Form Content * 09:17 - Why Substack? Escaping the "Short-Form" trap * 16:13 - Storytelling in Fitness: Connection over quick hooks * 25:50 - Redefining Strength: Sensitivity vs. Brute Force * 31:12 - Personality Profiling: Which sport matches your psyche? * 34:42 - Power Expression as Human Agency * 40:52 - Western vs. Eastern Coaching Philosophies (External vs. Internal Cues) * 45:00 - Mental Strategies: Gratitude vs. Goggins Approach * 51:06 - The Lost Art of General Physical Preparedness (GPP) * 01:11:54 - Infinite Fitness: Stopping the cycle of burnout https://elvtecoachstuart.substack.com/ https://www.instagram.com/stuartdiplock/ https://elvtesg.rezerv.co/home

    2h 27m

  8. 08/11/2025

    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 efficient." Some people have an advantage. But what if that unfairness isn't a reason to quit, but an opportunity? We're going to stop looking at fitness as a cause-and-effect equation and start seeing it as an investment strategy. Drawing on the wisdom of the late investor Charlie Munger, we'll apply his "Inversion Theory" to identify and avoid the three most common fallacies that hold people back. This isn't about new diets or magic pills; it's about changing your thinking. Because the difference between the successful and the unsuccessful isn't their genes or their bank account—it's their mental model. Read the article here: https://www.weareollin.com/articles/g...

    11 min
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4.8
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

We Are OLLIN is a podcast about training as a lifelong practice, not a program you finish. Hosted by Michael Blevins — coach, writer, and founder of OLLIN — it treats fitness as a laboratory for agency, self-assessment, and survival readiness rather than another optimization game. 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.

Information

  • Creator
    Michael Blevins
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    14
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Copyrigth 2026 We Are OLLIN
  • Show Website
    The We Are OLLIN Podcast

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