Shawnee Harle rode the bench at the number one program in the country. Then she got cut — and the coach who cut her is the one who pushed her into coaching.

Twenty years a university head coach and two Olympic Games with Canada followed. But the moment that made her a mental toughness coach was a quarterfinal in Rio, against a team they'd already beaten twice in eighteen months, where she felt her team go from playing to win to playing not to lose. Her words: that's not a strategy shift. That's fear, and you can feel it.

This one gets practical fast. Her toolkit in three words — chill, change, choose. The voice of fear and how to tell it to shut up. Why we only fear the things we believe we can't handle. Good anger versus bad anger. And the two-step nobody teaches: face the fear, then ask whether you'd actually survive it.

CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:21 What riding the bench teaches you that starters never learn 3:10 You are what the scoreboard says you are 5:23 Atlanta 1996 — coaching through a bombing 8:27 Rio 2016 — higher expectations, higher agony 9:44 The moment it turned from playing to win to playing not to lose 12:59 Getting cut, and the ego that almost stopped her 16:49 You don't change behavior by addressing behavior 19:14 We only fear what we believe we can't handle 21:25 Bill Buckner and speaking it into existence 23:11 The voice of fear steals the microphone 25:45 Chill. Change. Choose. 30:14 Good anger and bad anger 35:18 The yips, the F words, and what sport teaches you to fake 43:16 The 14-year-old, the parents, and how they measure success 46:22 The limiting factor is always fear 50:27 "Shawnee taught me how to save myself"

Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — about ten minutes, six blocks, a real assessment: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest The Two Minute Drill: athlete-builder.com/newsletter Find Shawnee: @shawneeharle · shawneeharle.com

Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

Jesse Dale was on episode three of this show. This is episode 154.

In between he earned his IFBB pro card — and then used it, which most people never do. Two pro shows in about sixty days. He won Masters Bodybuilding and Classic Physique 45+ in Chicago, won Classic Physique 45+ in Tampa, took second in bodybuilding, and cracked the top five in an Olympia qualifying class. He's in his late forties, stepping on stage in the upper 180s against men carrying 220 and 240.

But the trophies aren't why he came back.

His coaching business used to be about building better bodies. It isn't anymore. Jesse walks through what changed: releasing pride and finally hiring a coach after thirty years of doing it alone, letting go of the clients who take and never give, giving up pieces of a business he built himself, and going back to one-on-one training in a garage studio — which looks like a step backward and isn't.

Plus: how he reads a gym's culture in forty-five seconds, why he thinks men have the guilt of training backwards, and what nineteen hundred and eighty-six consecutive days of public logging actually does to a coaching group.

CHAPTERS 0:00 Cold open 1:39 A hundred and fifty episodes later: what actually changed 3:59 Two pro shows in sixty days — the real numbers 8:03 Setting a standard, then raising it 11:24 Upper 180s against 240 — where the insecurity comes from 13:26 The price nobody wants to pay in the off-season 15:54 Backstage: spray tans, rice cakes, and zero dignity 18:04 From building bodies to building men 22:08 Setbacks as weight on the bar 25:07 Good, why is this good, and now what 30:34 Choosing what's next without just chasing more 32:45 What separates a real coach from a certification 33:32 Why men feel guilty training — and why they have it backwards 36:20 Reading a gym's culture in forty-five seconds 44:54 Mastering the mundane: day 1,986 of public logs 54:12 The eulogy question 59:21 Rapid fire: the Derby, Derek Lunsford, and the squat song

Where is your athlete actually losing ground? Free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday: athlete-builder.com/newsletter

Find Jesse: @jessethesharkdale on Instagram

Questions for the show: [email protected]

Frank Weisser went to the Naval Academy to become a Navy SEAL. He didn't get it. The Navy handed him aviation instead, and he arrived at flight school having spent four years skydiving and rock climbing while everyone around him had spent theirs flying. He was so far behind that instructors wouldn't clear him to take off — he couldn't taxi the airplane properly.

Twenty-one years later: three combat deployments, two tours as a Blue Angels demonstration pilot, and a seat in the cockpit as one of the pilots who flew the canyon runs in Top Gun: Maverick.

This is a strength and conditioning conversation wearing a flight suit. Frank explains why Blue Angels pilots deadlift and squat heavy, what an hour under G actually costs a body, the centrifuge session where they took the whole team to the point of blacking out on purpose, and the debrief where every pilot names every mistake they made that day out loud — including the ones nobody else saw.

EP 153 — CHAPTERS (16) 0:00 Cold open 1:03 Flying the Top Gun: Maverick canyon runs 5:05 Eighteen inches apart at 400 mph 15:03 The centrifuge: taken to blackout on purpose 17:38 The shoulder that ended his football career 24:54 What to say to the kid whose injury took their identity 30:28 The emptiness nobody warned him about after retirement 34:36 "I couldn't taxi the airplane" 38:50 Preparing to the point of diminishing returns 44:01 Push it to failure to find the envelope 54:04 What actually builds trust in a leader 1:00:12 Why the Blue Angels fly without G-suits 1:03:30 The squat rack before the call home 1:09:15 The debrief: every pilot names every failure out loud 1:16:17 LIMFACs — how naval aviation finds limiting factors 1:21:39 Rapid fire: movies, lifts, and Lead Solo

Where is your athlete actually losing ground? Take the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes, one honest answer: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday for coaches and parents who want athletes built right: athlete-builder.com/newsletter

Guest: Cdr. Frank Weisser — frankweisser.net. His book Lead Solo: Learning Life's Vectors from an F/A-18 Blue Angels Aviator is available on Amazon and through Naval Institute Press. All proceeds go to the Wingman Foundation.

Questions for the show: [email protected]

Ten episodes. One system. Turn opinions into a plan.

A coach scores his 12-kid roster on Tuesday and rearranges practice by Thursday — because almost nothing was where he thought. The "lazy" kid was under-recovered; the "choker" was under-informed. In the finale of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe runs the full system on a whole team: the mechanics, the four rules for reading results, one inch per kid per quarter, the clipboard method that turns a habit into an identity, and the operating rhythm — score, prescribe, win the days, re-score, forever. Coaches: run your roster this week. Parents: run your kid tonight.

▶️ The scoring tool (free, ~10 min per athlete): https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 🎬 New listener? Start at Episode 1 and run the series in order. 📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter · 📘 Book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Ten episodes. One system. Keep stacking wins.

Win the day. Stay relentless.

Brian Harper walked on at Weber State as a quarterback and worked his way to number two on the depth chart. Then, two weeks before the season opener, they moved him to tight end. He weighed 215. The next lightest tight end on the roster was 235.

He didn't quit and he didn't pout. He said it felt like being back in seventh grade — the game was brand new again.

That instinct is the whole episode. Brian is a decathlete, a former D1 football player, a CrossFit coach who made the online semifinals this year, an ocean lifeguard in San Diego, a soon-to-be firefighter, and a bobsled push athlete chasing the next Olympic quad. We get into what a position change actually does to an athlete, how you coach someone who isn't wired to compete, why he thinks the hardest rep anybody does is walking through the door, and how he's structuring four years across a career and two sports without going broke or burning out.

IN THIS EPISODE 01:24 — Coaching CrossFit: from an internship credit to running classes 01:51 — Making the online semifinals, and the goal for next year 02:43 — First bobsled run: "get in, hold on" — pure adrenaline and chaos 03:58 — Green Wall: nearly drowning during lifeguard academy, and the four weeks that fixed it 06:31 — Jim's Statue of Liberty swim and the buoy that ripped on impact 15:29 — Narpocalypse: Brian's new show on life after sports 16:20 — Ten events, one nemesis — the decathlon event that humbles him 17:53 — Walk-on to number two: the spring that changed everything 19:20 — The meeting: "Creighton had a better day, we're moving you to tight end" 20:18 — 215 to 225 in two weeks, and why it felt like seventh grade again 21:58 — Head and body: running Brian's story through the six blocks 23:29 — Getting fired from a job you've held your whole life 25:24 — The offer he turned down out of high school, and what he'd tell himself now 26:19 — Too many irons in the fire: how do you plan a four-year quad 29:05 — Olympic champion or CrossFit champion? 31:24 — Coaching competitors and coaching everybody else in the same hour 33:54 — Why trust gets built off the field, and what one selfish player does to a room 35:45 — "If I'm not competing, I don't know what I'm doing" 39:48 — Finding the spark in an athlete who doesn't think they're competitive 43:01 — The hardest rep is walking through the door 45:03 — What a week actually looks like, and why sleep is non-negotiable 49:12 — How Brian finds the limiting factor in a new athlete 52:11 — What he wants people to say about him in thirty years 54:24 — Bobsled metrics: the body weight and squat numbers on the World Cup team 55:59 — Jim on adding size the right way, and why you retest instead of guess 58:11 — Lightning round: Warrior, Brett Favre, Isabel, and a Lombardi quote worth keeping

Where's your athlete actually losing ground? Take the free Athlete Builder Scorecard — six blocks, six minutes, one honest answer: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest

The Two Minute Drill — one short read every Thursday for coaches and parents who want athletes built right: athlete-builder.com/newsletter

Find Brian: @_brianharper on Instagram · his show @narpocalypsepod Connector credit: Sydney Milani, @syd_milani — founder of Peerless, supporting Olympic hopefuls.

Three tenths off the 200m race isn't chased in May — it's built in January, in a thousand invisible reps. In Episode 9 of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe hands over the operating system of the whole series: Win the Day. The cascade from quarter goal to one daily habit, streak over mood, the identity shift ("I don't miss"), killing the two lies, the weekly stick, and the boring wins that separate good from great from elite. Goals are just targets. The system that gets you there — that's for winners.

▶️ Free assessment (finds the inch your habit should attack): https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter ·

📘 Book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Win the day. Stay relentless.

Conor Hughes runs the weight room at West Point — ten years at Army, a 635-pound school-record squat, and five former assistants who've become FBS head strength coaches. Every time he loses one, his program gets better. A self-described D3 lineman who wasn't a great athlete, Conor fell in love with coaching on day one and built one of college football's most respected development programs. In this conversation, he and Jim dig into his ten daily non-negotiables, the "hive brain" of a team, radical ownership, telling the truth, and building a culture strong enough to survive losing your best people.

🎧 Full episode everywhere you listen 📊 Free Athlete Builder Scorecard: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 🌐 athlete-builder.com | ✉️ [email protected]

Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

A wrestler drills harder than anyone in the room and keeps losing off the same tie-up. He doesn't need more effort — he needs a diagnosis. In Episode 8 of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe delivers the system that ties all six inches together: the SWOT, translated for athletes. Strength becomes your competitive advantage, weakness your limiting factor, opportunity your target, threat the enemy. Run it on all six blocks, find the real weak link (it's almost never where you think), and turn the diagnosis into one daily habit.

▶️ The free assessment runs this exact system on your whole team in ~10 minutes: https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter · 📘 Book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Win the day. Stay relentless.

Matt King walked into Maine as a four-sport kid and left an All-American linebacker. Then he chased the NFL through three leagues — arena, the CFL, and pro camps with the Jets and Steelers — before spending 14 years building college weight rooms at UConn, Michigan State, and Texas. Today he coaches in the NFL with the Arizona Cardinals. In this conversation, Matt and Jim talk about process over outcome, developing people in the weight room, and what it takes to chase a dream across three leagues and never give up on it.

🎧 Full episode everywhere you listen 📊 Free Athlete Builder Scorecard: athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 🌐 athlete-builder.com | ✉️ [email protected]

Win the Day. Stay Relentless.

Five matches, one Saturday. Match one she's flying; match four she's a step slow. Same skill — the difference is who recovered. In Episode 7 of Build Champion Athletes, Jim Beebe covers the most neglected inch: Recovery. Sleep as the #1 steroid, recovering on purpose between games, recovery as a system, the 50% rule for wrecked days, the Gift of Injury, and the downshift that prevents burnout. The best ability is availability.

Lingering or sharp pain goes to a medical professional — rehab is run by pros.

▶️ Free assessment (10 min): https://athlete-builder.com/assessmenttest 📬 Newsletter: https://athlete-builder.com/newsletter · 📘 Book: https://athlete-builder.com/booka

Keep stacking wins. Win the day. Stay relentless.