The Growth Through Adversity Podcast

Unlock the truth about building real strength the way elite athletes and fighters do. In this episode, Ragnar breaks down the fundamentals of strength training — effective rep ranges (1–6), RPE 7–8, power training, optimal volume, carb fueling, and protein requirements — so you can finally get stronger without burning out.

Most men train too heavy, too often, and too sloppy. Strength isn’t built through ego lifting — it’s built through precision, speed, recovery, and proper nutrition. Inside this live training you’ll learn how to train movements, maximize force production, increase power, fuel with carbs, and...

Most men will never hear this because they’re too comfortable being weak.

Porn isn’t harmless.
It hijacks your dopamine, erodes your confidence, and trains your nervous system for instant gratification instead of control.

I quit porn because:

When I stopped:

Most guys waste hundreds on fancy supplements chasing shortcuts — but the truth is, you only need five. These are the ones that actually move the needle:

1️⃣ Creatine – boosts strength, power, and muscle fullness.
2️⃣ Whey Protein – the most efficient way to hit daily protein targets.
3️⃣ NAC – protects your liver, boosts recovery, and supports longevity.
4️⃣ Collagen – joint, tendon, and skin health; crucial for men who train hard.
5️⃣ Electrolytes – hydration, performance, and endurance — especially if you sweat heavy.

Everything else is marketing fluff. Master these five, and your...

Most guys waste years hopping from split to split thinking the structure is the secret — it’s not. What actually drives growth is weekly volume, intensity, and progression.

Whether you train 3 or 6 days a week, if you’re not tracking your lifts, managing recovery, and hitting 10–15 quality sets per muscle weekly… you’re just exercising, not training.

🎯 Message me “COACHING” on Instagram and I’ll help you design a setup that fits your life and gets results.

Most people can calculate macros but have no idea how to live them.
They get lost in the numbers — tracking, weighing, obsessing — yet never look, feel, or perform any better.

Here’s the truth:
It’s not about hitting perfect numbers.
It’s about mastering food selection, timing, and structure — turning data into daily discipline.

In this episode, I break down:

Most guys are stuck because they don’t actually know how much they should be eating.

They chase diets, cut carbs, skip meals — all without understanding the math that drives fat loss or muscle growth.

In this live, I’m breaking down exactly how to build your own nutrition plan:

How to calculate your calories using bodyweight multipliers
The exact macro ratios I use for my clients
How to adjust weekly for fat loss or muscle gain
And why cycling between deficit and maintenance keeps your metabolism firing

No flu...

Everyone thinks the key to fat loss is eating less.
So they slash calories, double cardio, and wonder why they feel like shit…
…and still don’t lose fat.

Here’s the truth: your metabolism isn’t broken — you just tanked it.
Your body adapted to the starvation. It’s burning less, conserving energy, and holding onto fat like it’s fighting for survival.

That’s where metabolic priming comes in — the process of eating more to reignite your metabolism before a fat loss phase.

Here’s the breakdown 👇

🔥 Duration: 00:13:16

Most lifters don’t understand why they’ve stopped growing.
It’s not genetics. It’s not your program.
It’s the lack of progressive overload — the single most important law of strength and hypertrophy.

Your body only grows when it’s forced to adapt to a new level of stress.
If the load, volume, or intensity doesn’t increase, your body has zero reason to change.

Here’s how I teach my clients to break this down 👇

🔥 Vertical Overload (Adding Weight):
— The classic move. Gradually increase load on...

Everybody wants abs.
Nobody wants to do what actually builds them.

You don’t carve out a six-pack by doing 1000 crunches or some influencer’s “10-minute ab burner.”
You do it by getting your body fat low enough for the muscle you built to actually show.

Here’s how I program it for my clients:
🔥 Step 1: Nutrition — You cannot out-train a poor diet. I set calories to drop 1–1.5 lbs per week, high protein, moderate carbs, and controlled fats.
🔥 Step 2: Compound Lifts — Squats, deads, overhead presses — every heavy lift is an ab workout wh...

Most men fail to lose weight because they overcomplicate the process.
They download apps, weigh every gram of food, obsess over numbers—and then quit.

In this episode I break down EXACTLY how my clients lose up to 30 pounds in just 6 weeks without tracking a single thing.
No apps. No endless calorie counting. No food scales. Just simple, savage principles that work.

This isn’t theory—it’s the same system I use to help busy men drop fat, build muscle, and reclaim their confidence without wasting time.

If you’ve t...

Most men stay weak because they cling to comfort. Growth isn’t found in ease — it’s forged in adversity.

In this live, I’m breaking down the 5 most powerful lessons I’ve learned on my journey of building myself, my body, and my business from the ground up. These are the exact truths that took me from broken and lost to strong, disciplined, and successful — and they’ll do the same for you if you’re ready to hear them.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

Most men break in the dark. I refused.

In this episode of the Growth Through Adversity podcast, I open up about my 10 years in maximum security prison — the violence, the isolation, the suffering — and how I forged myself into the man I am today.

This isn’t just a story about survival. It’s about transformation. About how the fires of adversity can either destroy you or harden you into steel.

You’ll hear:

Summer’s here — barbecues, beers, vacations, and late nights can destroy your progress if you let them. But staying lean, strong, and in control doesn’t have to mean living in the gym or skipping every social event.

In this episode of the Growth Through Adversity podcast, I break down the 3 core principles that will keep you dialed in all summer long:

You’re training hard. You’re eating clean. But one habit might be destroying everything you’re working for—and most men ignore it.

In this episode of Growth Through Adversity, Ragnar breaks down exactly how alcohol sabotages your training, recovery, testosterone, fat loss, and mental clarity. This isn’t about shaming you—it’s about exposing the truth the fitness industry won’t say loud enough.

You’ll learn:

In this raw, no-BS episode of Growth Through Adversity, Ragnar breaks down the toxic cycle that’s sabotaging your progress — the Restart Loop. If you’re stuck in the mindset of starting over every Monday, quitting every time life gets hard, or chasing perfection only to fall flat, this is your wake-up call.

We expose the all-or-nothing trap that makes you soft, and teach you how to build ironclad consistency, even when life throws chaos your way. You’ll learn how to turn setbacks into fuel, stay in the fight when others quit, and build the savage discipli...

Modern masculinity is under siege — sedated, softened, and stripped of its sacred path. In this primal and unapologetic episode of the Growth Through Adversity Podcast, we confront the lies of the self-love era and reclaim the ancient blueprint of manhood: trial, pain, brotherhood, and rebirth.

Here’s what Dr. Cody Crockett  (https://www.youtube.com/@codycrockett) and I cover in this episode:

🔥 Why testosterone alone doesn’t make a man — but ordeal does
🔥 The lost rites of passage: from the Hero’s Journey to ancient warrior cults
🔥 How pain, sacrifice, and symbo...

Welcome to Growth Through Adversity — where men are forged, not coddled. In this powerhouse episode, we expose the hard truth about declining testosterone, poor metabolic health, and the softening of modern men.

Join Ragnar and Dr. Cody Crockett (.https://www.instagram.com/cody.crockett/) as they reveal cutting-edge hormone optimization protocols, game-changing peptides for recovery and muscle growth, and the real path to building an anti-fragile, Hard to Kill body that dominates physically, mentally, and spiritually.

Topics Covered:

Tired of overcomplicated diet advice that never works long-term?

In this episode of Growth Through Adversity, I break down the real science of fat loss in the most brutally simple way possible — no fluff, no fads, just facts.

You’ll learn:

In this no-bullshit episode of Growth Through Adversity, I pull back the curtain on how I scaled my online coaching business from $400/month to over $140K/year — without selling out, without faking it, and without losing my soul.

This podcast is about more than macros and gym routines — it's about transformation in every arena: physical, mental, spiritual, and financial.

I share:

Injecting testosterone changes everything — but most guys have no idea what’s really happening under the hood.

In this episode of Growth Through Adversity, we break down the science of exogenous testosterone and its impact on your body, hormones, brain, fertility, aggression, strength, and health.

You’ll learn: