Dave Tate's Table Talk

Dave Tate's Table Talk

Are you sick of "fitness influencers," training fads, and crappy advice that barely applies inside the gym or on the field? Then sit down with elitefts CEO Dave Tate as he interviews the strongest & smartest minds across the strength sports community to talk real, hardcore training, business, life, and more. If you're looking for real, applicable information on all things training, join the crew.

Episodes

June 29, 2026 134 mins

You aren't truly learning how to lift until someone forces you to pull the slack out of a stiff bar with an opener that's completely out of your league.

For multi-time world champion Valerie Smith, transitioning from a decade in corporate HR to the elite tiers of Master's powerlifting meant trading worst-case scenario corporate risk models for the cold reality of the platform. Her evolution from a rookie who bombed out of ...

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Your body naturally produces testosterone, but it doesn't make the gallons of coffee you are using to survive a modern, unsustainable lifestyle.

Mike Stratton built a multi-million dollar health optimization empire from the ground up, yet he nearly killed himself in the process by abandoning his own health to keep the business alive. He walked away from a successful company to rebuild his vision from scratch, a high-stakes...

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Most people think discipline is about pushing harder, but Phil Daru argues that real growth begins the moment failure exposes the flaws in your plan.

From coaching UFC champions and elite performers to nearly destroying his body attempting a 150-mile ruck, Phil's most valuable lessons didn't come from victory—they came from painful setbacks, brutal self-audits, and the willingness to start over. As his career evolved...

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The elite coaches dominating the fitness industry aren't out-programming you; they are out-communicating you.

For twenty years, Matt Levine didn't just survive the brutal meat grinder of competitive powerlifting—he used its systemic failures to rewrite the rules of modern strength education. Now, he's lifting the curtain on why chasing "optimal" templates is a death sentence for your business, and how the future of c...

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If you think your current training routine is built for longevity, you are lying to yourself about what decades under a heavy barbell actually does to the human frame.

For over twenty years, Jim Wendler, Matt Rhodes, and Vincent Dizenzo chased the white rabbit of absolute strength through the unforgiving gauntlet of elite powerlifting, accumulating world records, catastrophic injuries, and a mountain of now-obsolete belief...

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The illusion of world-class strength is built on rigid programming—but the truth is that strict protocols are often what cause elite lifters to plateau or break.

Long before he was known as The Swolefessor, Marcellus Williams discovered that textbook biomechanics and conventiona...

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Stop majoring in the minors and trying to fine-tune a physique or training split you haven't even earned the right to optimize yet. Dr. Ian Butcher runs four distinct brick-and-mortar health and fitness businesses in the real world, completely outside the digital echo chamber, because he's too busy actually doing the work. True progression isn't found in flawless, hyper-fixated social media algorith...

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The weight room isn't just a place to build muscle.
It's a battlefield where psychology meets physical adaptation — and most coaches are losing because they're coaching numbers instead of people.

Dr. Justin Lima joins Dave Tate at the elitefts compound to dismantle the myth of "optimal" training and explain why giving athletes a stimulus they aren't prepared for can rob them of long-term development.

From scaling Strength...

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The staged spectacle of the ring and the curated edits of prime time are stripped away to reveal a raw physical reality that cannot be faked. Eric "Bull" Bugenhagen, Jesse "Steel" Godderz, and Michael "Fang" Wardlow endured a month of sensory deprivation and high-stakes violence to resurrect a cultural legend. From the agony of competing with a ruptured bicep to...

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Taming your "dumb strength" is the only way to survive when 900 pounds is trying to crush your spine into the floor.

Jordan Buchla spent a decade as an emergency room trauma nurse while simultaneously becoming the #2 all-time strongest female squatter on the planet. From intubating patients during a pandemic to unracking 855 pounds, she built a high-performance l...

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One heavy squat at 400 pounds was all Kalil Sherrod needed to know the poison hadn't won.

Seven weeks before this recording, Kalil walked into elitefts HQ to hit his first major milestone since a brutal cancer diagnosis. That moment bridged the gap between his life as an elite performance coach and his reality as a survivor. Through two stem cell transplants and ...

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You are likely sacrificing long-term health for short-term gains because you're following a "get bigger" blueprint designed for a body you don't actually want. After 21 years in the trenches—from wrestling on the WWE developmental circuit to coaching at the legendary MI40 gym—Drew Donaldson realized that the massive, 275lb version of himself w...

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    Wealth and muscle follow the same law: if you're terrified of the extreme, you'll never master the baseline.

    From hauling fish on Cape Cod to earning a PhD while competing as a world-class strongman, Dr. Pat Davidson has spent a lifetime proving that obsession is the only path to clarity. He didn't just study exercise science—he weaponized it to survive a t...

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    Stop looking for the magic pill and start fixing the foundation that's actually killing your progress.

    Yale-trained neurovascular physiologist Dr. Dwayne Jackson returns to expose why your high-tech peptide stack and "science-based" training mean nothing if you haven't mastered the internal metrics of auto-regulation.

    From survi...

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    The strongest man in the classroom returns to the table.

    Bob Merkh is back to discuss one of the most unique careers in strength history—highlighted by a sanctioned 1,100 lb squat and 1,100 lb bench press. From the high-stakes platforms of the WPO to a 7th-grade social studies classroom, Merkh has evolved from a "weaponized" athlete into a mentor who unders...

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    Alcohol is a biological detergent that systematically strips away the healthy gut microbiota required for elite performance and recovery. Tim Walsh, famously known as "The Vanilla Gorilla," transitioned from a 338-pound teenager to a national-level bodybuilder before becoming the secret weapon for Canada's strongest powerlifters. He revolutionized his coa...

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