Never Start Over Again

The President of Finland secretly showed up at an amateur triathlon last week under a fake name. He swam, cycled, ran. Finished second. Nobody knew who he was until it was over.

That story is the opening of this episode — because it sits in sharp contrast to what the EU data says about how Europe actually manages the health of its people. The EU spends 3.7% of its healthcare budget on prevention and 13% on pharmaceuticals. If every EU citizen exercised 150 minutes a week, it would prevent 10,000 deaths annually and save €8 billion. Germany takes an average of 14–15 sick days per employee per year — nearly double the EU average. And the government's response? The Karenztag debate: make the first sick day unpaid. Punish people for being sick instead of incentivising them not to be.

Plus: why signing up for something with a date changes everything. And a quick announcement about The Zoo — a Hyrox simulation on August 22nd in Charlottenburg.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

AI can write you a perfect training programme in thirty seconds. It will not make you fit. This episode is about why most people are using AI to delay getting started — and the three moves that actually work instead.

Ingvar Kamprad built IKEA on one principle: remove every unnecessary step so the essential thing can happen. That is exactly how AI should be applied to your health. Not to replace the work. To buy back the time that keeps you from doing it.

Plus: what a week in Sweden with my kids — Astrid Lindgren's world in Småland, old friends, and training every single day on the road — taught me about what planning highlights actually looks like when you do it properly.

Theme: Action. Three moves. Ten minutes.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

Everyone has 168 hours a week. The billionaire, the lawyer, the parent of three, the business owner — same budget, different allocation. The average person spends nine times more time on screens than moving their body. Real social connection has dropped 40% in a decade. 67% of gym memberships worldwide go unused. People are already paying for fitness. They just are not going.

This week is a coaching session. The same exercise Rickard does with entrepreneurs every week — a calendar audit and a money audit that take thirty minutes and change how you see your week permanently. Benjamin Franklin asked himself two questions every day for decades. By the end of this episode you will have them too.

Theme: Systems. Two audits. Eleven minutes.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

Silver medalists are measurably less happy than bronze medalists. Third place, happier than second. The Cornell research on this is uncomfortable and completely clarifying — and it is the starting point for this week's episode.

Roald Amundsen reached the South Pole in 1911 and came home with something far more valuable than a flag in the ice. We launched The Zoo this week — a Hyrox simulation in Charlottenburg on August 22nd — and why former Olympic athletes are finding a kind of joy in Hyrox they stopped feeling on the podium. Plus the honest difference between CrossFit and Hyrox, why creatine matters more in the heat than most people realise, and what my kids have to do with why I am not crushed when I miss a goal.

Theme: Legacy. One action. Ten minutes.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

There is the fitness that looks good on Instagram. And then there is the other version — the one nobody sees. The 6am session when you are tired. The hotel gym at 40% energy. The decision made alone with nobody counting.

This week: Franz Kafka writing in the dark between midnight and 3am for years while working as an insurance clerk, telling almost nobody. A bicycle accident in Berlin where a doctor told one of our members his fitness saved him from permanent injury. And what training alone across Chicago, airports, and living room floors this week reminded me about where the decision to keep going actually lives.

Theme: Action. One session. Tell nobody.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

Running a business is lonely in a way that is hard to explain to people who haven’t done it. Not obviously lonely. Quietly lonely. You carry things because you don’t want to bring them home every time something goes sideways.

This week I am recording from Chicago, at the TwoBrain Business Summit, inside a room with some of the best gym operators in the world. Yesterday we had sixty seconds to write down our core values. No preparation. No thinking time. What came out under pressure is what this episode is about.

Plus what Seneca understood about the people around you that most people still haven’t acted on — and why finding your room is not a lifestyle choice. It is a performance variable.

Theme: Identity. One action. Ten minutes.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

A 2025 European meta-analysis of 270,000 children across 17 countries found that fitness levels have still not recovered from the pandemic. In Germany specifically, children are moving 25% less than before. Even kids at sports schools are declining. This episode covers what that data actually means, what Hippocrates argued 2,400 years ago about movement and medicine, what I witnessed inside a Hyrox affiliate keynote this weekend about what is being built for the next generation — and what you can do about it before Friday.One historical story. One piece of current data. One thing from this week. One action.This is your weekly Monday reset. Not to restart — to realign.——Links:→ Free fitness assessment with the Escapist team in Berlin: http://www.escapistcrossfit.com → Escapist Academy coaching quiz: go.escapistcrossfit.com/academy/——Never Start Over Again is a weekly podcast for professionals, entrepreneurs, and business owners who are done starting over.New episode every Monday.Hosted by Rickard LongEscapist CrossFit Berlin — escapistcrossfit.com

Does your life hand you some curve balls? Never right?! Honestly, it happens all the time and some of us get emotionally exhausted, but others seems to be just fine. Why?

It comes down to expectations. And that is in this week’s Never Start Over Again episode.

Sam Harris shared a story that genuinely changed the way I think about problems. He described sitting in a café overwhelmed by chaos, stress and setbacks when a friend asked him one simple question:

“Did you actually think one day you would wake up and have no more problems?”

It sounds almost stupidly simple but I sometimes tend to forget it.

Because I think many of us quietly believe that problems are interruptions to life instead of understanding that they ARE life.

Marcus Aurelius wrote about this nearly 2000 years ago while running an empire during wars, plagues and betrayals:

“The impediment to action advances action. What stands in the way becomes the way.”

Last year I dislocated my shoulder during the CrossFit Open. For weeks and months I could not train normally. No jumping. No running. No heavy lifting.

I had two options:

wait until life became perfect again…

or adapt and keep momentum alive.

So I did what I could and I got back on the horse and trained the things I could train. And this month 25 straight days now, 50 push-ups every day means my shoulder is back in function. I still notice a change but I am getting back.

That is the real lesson.

The obstacle did not stop the momentum.

It simply changed what momentum looked like for a while.

Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

This week: the data on what sitting all day is actually doing to your body and why your morning workout alone won't save you. Plus why most people are taking the wrong form of magnesium and what switching it changes.

A personal thread on what fifteen years of consistent fitness made possible. And the one question that reveals where you're using comfort as a ceiling.Theme: Stability. One action. Ten minutes.Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.

J.R.R. Tolkien spent seventeen years building a world nobody asked for. His colleagues had a label for him. It was technically correct and completely wrong.This week: why the people around you can't categorize what you're building — and why that's not a problem to solve. Plus a principle from game theory that explains why some people never need to restart, and one honest observation about what it feels like to be further along than anyone around you knows.Theme: Identity. One action. Nine minutes.Never Start Over Again is your weekly Monday reset — hosted by Rickard Long.