Today’s podcast features trainer, lifter of heavy and varied objects, and philosopher of movement, DJ Murakami.  DJ has over 15 years of experience in the coaching realm with a wide history of movement practice, including training in bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting, strongman (rock lifting), movement culture (such as Ido Portal), rock climbing, and more.  DJ has created training courses such as Chi Torque, the Predator Protocol, and others, and mentors coaches and fitness enthusiasts through his Human Strong training organization.

As life, in general, becomes more disconnected from our actual reality (think of relationships via social media, decreasing amount of exposure to nature/outdoors and local community), we can also consider how this has impacted the process of physical training.

Where we used to move purposefully as part of the daily routine, our “innate” physicality has now been replaced by treadmills, indoor training spaces, lines/lectures/laps, and the reduction of training to either the simplest of drills or fancy movements that try to replicate sport, without actually being sport.  The more we can regularly connect physical movement to the meaning and motivation behind it, not only will we have a better present-moment experience actually moving, but we can also find ourselves becoming stronger and better conditioned in the end result.

On today’s podcast, DJ speaks importance (and oftentimes, lack of) of consequence and danger in many of our modern tasks and exercise activities, as well as the difference between play and formal training.  He also goes in-depth on how we regulate our training from a mental, emotional, and social standpoint, and how this goes into fatigue, our music selection, “mental toughness”, and DJ’s own training methods.

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View more podcast episodes at the podcast homepage.



Timestamps and Main Points
2:28 – Thoughts on creating a story around the process of training and the related motivation factors

10:27 – Advantages of training athletes with higher possible levels of complexity

18:37 – The nature of physicality in DJ’s training sessions, such as manually resisted corrective training, or “human resisted” strength work

35:22 – The lack of consequence and danger in tasks, and its impact on the nature of training and coaching

40:33 – The role of music selection and training, such as how many males go towards a more angry place in training, and thoughts on the sustainability and health of that practice in the long term

51:36 – The role of emotional regulation through fatiguing movements

59:14 – DJ’s view on mental toughness, in light of a typical team sport training situation

1:05:03 – Thoughts on kid’s games, on the level of engagement, flow, and learning

1:12:04 – DJ’s primary goals in his own training routine



DJ Murakami Quotes
“Team sports is basically a replacement for military warfare”

“The splits is something.. there is a population that really wants that.  I think it is less, “ I want a certain capacity in my hips, I want a certain mobility in this joint; no it’s an “I want that skill”.”

“If you could take a group of people and work on spinal...