Pat Flynn
Episode 240
4 SEP 2023
He got into martial arts in high school and competed in Tae Kwon Do in college, along with a little Brazilian Jiu Jitsu. That got him heavily into fitness and especially kettlebells, which led to him starting various fitness platforms and writing books related to minimalist methods of strength and conditioning. On the faith side, he has an amazing reversion story and next month will mark the release of his fifth book, this one to be titled, “The Best Argument For God.” He also has his own podcast that teaches listeners why it’s better to be better at many things, not best at just one, covering everything from fitness and mental health to business and writing to philosophy and theology.
Notable guest quotes:
“I wanted to start trying to get in shape. I wanted to try to start losing weight and trying to get stronger. But I didn’t really want to go to the weight room. Why? Because all the friends that picked on me were there.”
“I, like, begged the instructor to just let me clean toilets and work for him just for lessons and tuition and he graciously accepted. And he was a wonderful coach… So, I was very blessed to be set on a proper path.”
“I remember thinking… ‘Hey this seems sort of in conflict with whatever sort of theology I received in kindergarten. Where’s Adam and Eve? Where’s the snake in all this’?”
“You just kind of follow the example of what your parents do in all sorts of ways. It wasn’t like I had the ability to drive myself to church anyways… at that (age).”
“One of the major turning points for me was when I really stumbled upon St. Thomas Aquinas.”
“I really did feel like I had found a philosophical system that was extremely robust in terms of its explanatory power of making sense of questions of being and meaning and morality and identity and destiny and all these questions that are important to all of us.”
“I went to the Mass, and it was a profound experience for me, especially once the Eucharistic Prayer and the Eucharist was confected, at that point I just knew I was right where I was supposed to be.”
“It’s… not a good thing to completely neglect your health. That would be a sin against prudence and possibly issues of intemperance and gluttony and all that.”
“God gave us this body and that is a very good thing, and we have real obligations to care for our body and to be healthy and try to be prudent in the types of decisions we make with the activities we do with our body and the things that we eat.”
“What’s going to perfect you is union with God Himself and friendship with God Himself.”
“Fitness should be somewhere on your value scale, but it should not be at the top of it.”
“Now I can see fitness as something that hopefully, with God’s grace, is facilitating other virtues.”
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