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Vicki Connor has been through... well, honestly, I'm not sure how to describe it without sounding like I'm making sh*t up. A serious head injury that changed her personality. Type 1 diabetes from the age of seven. Major surgery at 15. Elite sport. Abusive relationships. Severe depression. A complicated pregnancy. A massive postpartum haemorrhage. Early menopause. Cancer. Losing both her parents. And then, just last year, a haemorrhagic stroke that left her having to learn to walk and talk again. And yet, the thing that has probably shaped her most isn't any one of those things. It's the identity she built around being 'strong'. Vicki talks about how being the strong one became something she was praised for from a very young age. She became the person who could handle anything, push through anything and never need anyone. And for a long time, that looked like resilience. Until it didn't. Because when being strong becomes who you are, asking for help starts to feel like failure. This is such a bloody good conversation about resilience, identity, recovery, trauma, asking for help and what happens when the thing that got you through life starts getting in the way of actually living it.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  VICKI CONNOR Website: linkedin.com/in/vicki-connor TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Katrina lost her husband Scott to a heart attack when he was just 42. He was fit, active, an exercise physiologist, didn't smoke, didn't have high cholesterol and had normal blood pressure. He'd even been to the doctor about chest pain. And yet, he still died. That experience, as you can imagine, completely changed the trajectory of Katrina's life. She's now a heart health advocate, working with researchers to improve early detection and access to heart health checks, particularly in rural Australia. We get into why being fit and healthy doesn't necessarily mean you're low risk, what family history can tell us, the limitations of current heart health screening, why rural Australians face another layer of risk, and why Katrina thinks we're putting far too much responsibility on patients to 'advocate for themselves'. And then there's the other side of this conversation. Grief. Raising two boys after losing their dad. Learning to live with the waves rather than trying to outrun them. And the decision to keep having a crack at life, even when life has dealt you a pretty effing brutal hand. This one got me in the feels... Now get out there and get ya bloody heart checked! SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Two ADHD-ers walk into a podcast studio... what could possibly go wrong? Well, once we got past flamethrowers and weed killing, eventually we went down the rabbit hole of what happens when you finally understand how your brain actually works. Patrick was recently diagnosed with ADHD, and the diagnosis has given him a completely different lens on a whole bunch of things he's done throughout his life. The distractions... hyperfocus... inability to sit still... endless interests... the ridiculous number of things he manages to cram into a weekend... and the fact that when something genuinely grabs him, he'll move heaven and earth to do it. We compared notes on being the 'disruptive' kid at school, being labelled lazy or difficult, and what can happen when you're simply in the wrong environment or being asked to learn in a way that doesn't work for you. We also talked about medication, executive function, motivation, finding the right career fit, taking risks, trying shit just because you're interested in it, and why I reckon we can do ourselves a fair bit of damage when we start believing someone else's story about who we're supposed to be. Patrick has had one hell of an eclectic life, from journalism and radio to Tai Chi, technology, paragliding and community radio. If that kind of feels relatable for you... maybe you're not flaky. Maybe you're curious. Maybe you're not incapable of sticking at something. Maybe you just haven't found the thing that keeps you interested. And maybe... just maybe, being a little bit different isn't something that needs fixing at all.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  PATRICK BONELLO Website: taichiathome.com.au/ TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Narcissism gets thrown around so much these days that I was really bloody interested to get underneath the label and actually talk about what we know, what we don't know, and where we've potentially got it very wrong. Dr Peter Salerno has worked clinically with people who meet the criteria for severe personality disorders and now works predominantly with survivors of pathological relationships. We got into narcissism, psychopathy, manipulation, why highly intelligent and successful people can still get completely caught in these dynamics, and why telling someone to 'just leave' massively oversimplifies what can actually be happening to their brain and nervous system. We also got into the nature versus nurture debate, genetics, trauma, empathy, confirmation bias, why some people actively target others, and whether you can actually break these patterns and future proof yourself from ending up in another toxic relationship. There's a LOT in this one. And some of Peter's explanations completely challenge the way we usually talk about narcissism and abusive relationships.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  DR. PETER SALERNO Website: drpetersalerno.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imagine being a rambunctious & ridiculously active weapon one minute, and one who's barely able to walk from the car to the supermarket without your heartrate sky-rocketing the next...Well, welcome to the world of Claire Clark... Claire was a paramedic, PT, yoga teacher, retreat organiser, ridiculously active human and basically someone who just kept doing all the things she could dream up. Until a back injury at work lead to a cascade of events that eventually saw her diagnosed with POTS. She spent years of not being believed and being told her tests were 'normal', losing the career she'd worked so bloody hard for, watching friendships change, and having to completely rethink what her life was actually for. I sure can't imagine the mental gymnastics of waiting so long for a diagnosis on an invisible illness in a body that's capacity to perform and function can change from one day to the next... Chatting with Claire sure holds the mirror up when it comes to how we so often measure our life by how much we can do, how much we earn, or what we achieve. These days it's all about 'finding the glimmers'... which sounds like a pretty bloody good philosophy if you ask me! SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  POTS FOUNDATION Website: https://potsfoundation.org.au/become-a-member/ TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when we stop guessing and actually start paying attention to what our body is telling us? This was one of those conversations where I could've kept talking for another three hours. Dr. Kristen Holmes is the Global Head of Human Performance and Principal Scientist at Whoop, and she works with some of the best athletes and teams in the world, including Ferrari F1 and Paris Saint-Germain. We got into data, HRV, recovery, overtraining, women's health, perimenopause, sleep, fuelling, the menstrual cycle and why being absolutely farkin' exhausted shouldn't be considered normal. We also went deep on the psychology of performance, self-efficacy, trauma and the weird ways the things that once helped us survive can become the things that hold us back. And then I shared with Kristen the slightly uncomfortable realisation for me that a lot of what I thought was toughness in my boxing years may actually have been me being chronically under-recovered and under-fuelled. Kristen is ridiculously knowledgeable, but she's also incredibly open about her own story, including childhood trauma, elite sport, burnout and learning how to move from achievement and fear towards actually living with more joy and agency. Basically, there's a LOT in this one. Data nerds, athletes, women over 40, high performers and anyone who's ever worn exhaustion like a badge of honour, you're going to LOVE this one. SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  DR. KRISTEN HOLMES Website: drkristenholmes.com/ TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What happens when our body starts changing - particularly around 40 and beyond, and why do so many of us keep trying to live like we're still 35 when our biology is screaming, "Yeah, nah, we're not doing that anymore, bro" In this ep with Dr. Cam McDonald, we talked perimenopause, stress, hormones, exercise, food timing, nervous system regulation, emotions, subconscious stories and why sometimes the answer isn't to push harder, but to actually back the fark up and recover. Cam shared some pretty fascinating case studies where tiny changes to training, meal timing, daily rhythm and stress completely changed people's symptoms. We also got into the way we interpret our feelings, why sadness doesn't have to mean something is wrong, and how easily we can create stories about ourselves that simply aren't true. At the end of the day, this is a conversation about how our body isn't our enemy and it's not trying to sabotage us. It's constantly giving us information about what's going on... We just tend to ignore it, smash another coffee and carry on. So yep, there's plenty in this one for the over-40 crowd, but honestly, this is about understanding your body as an individual rather than trying to follow someone else's rulebook. And apparently, we all need more rest. Annoying, right... but there it is.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Buckle up for this one! Since we last spoke, Jason Blyth has thrown himself headfirst into what he believes is the greatest social issue in the nation... protecting children. Jason is Australia's Child First Voice, and he's building the Child First Movement after spending his own childhood being failed by the very systems designed to protect him. He grew up in an incredibly traumatic home, begged to be taken away, reported abuse over and over, saw countless mental health professionals and still wasn't removed. Eventually that trauma followed him into adulthood, taking him to some very dark places before he finally started rebuilding his life. Now he's using that lived experience to awaken the conscience of a nation and call out the systemic failures happening across Australia's child protection system. We got into what happens when children fall through the cracks, why lived experience needs to have a seat at the table, why following procedures and ticking boxes means f*ck all if the child isn't safe, and what needs to change if Australia is serious about protecting its most vulnerable. Jason is building a movement around a pretty bloody simple idea: 5.8 million children. One national promise. You will be safe. And his message is that we are the Child First Generation. The generation that decides we're no longer going to tolerate children being failed, abused, neglected and forgotten by the systems that are supposed to protect them. It's confronting, it's angry, it's incredibly important, and honestly, it's one of those conversations that makes you wonder how the hell we've allowed this to become normal.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  JASON BLYTH Website: jasonblyth.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Imogen Hobbs exclusively coaches men, and she pulls no punches... so it's fair to say we got along like a house on fire. We talked about why she walked away from coaching women, backed herself into a completely different direction, and nearly watched her business die for three months while she waited for the men to find her. We also got into why so many blokes don't want to talk about their shit, why group work can end up being one of the most powerful parts of the process, the difference between personal development and actually developing yourself, along with intuition, self-trust, spirituality, adversity, shame, childhood shit and pretty much all the things I love digging into on a regular basis.  There's a lot in this one about trusting yourself enough to make the uncomfortable call, and what can happen when you stop treating your life like a series of random events and start asking what it's trying to show you. SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: www.testartfamilylawyers.com.au  IMOGEN HOBBS Website: changechannel.com.au TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Aaaah emotions... aren't they a farkin thing to get our heads around (and that's often half the problem). Well, I've dug up an EPIC guest, Hilary Jacobs Hendel, to get right into the guts of emotions with me.  We talked about trauma, dissociation, depression, grief, anxiety, shame, relationships and the difference between actually feeling an emotion and just thinking about it. I gave Hilary some background on the Tiff Cook journey of emotions and how getting punched in the face (in the boxing ring, of course) eventually became the thing that helped me reconnect with what was going on underneath it all.  If you've ever been told to 'just feel your feelings' and thought, 'Yeah, but what the hell does that even mean?', you're going to bloody love this one.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au HILARY JACOBS HENDEL Website: hilaryjacobshendel.com It’s Not Always Depression Book USA:https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/537514/its-not-always-depression-by-hilary-jacobs-hendel-lcsw/ It’s Not Always Depression Book UK:https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/292763/its-not-always-depression-by-hendel-hilary-jacobs/9780241976401 It's Not Always Depression, Sometimes It's Shame: https://www.hilaryjacobshendel.com/post/2015/06/30/its-not-always-depression-sometimes-its-shame TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Look out everybody, the fabulous Lara Briden is back, and this time we went WAY beyond periods. We got into what happens when we stop treating female physiology like a problem to be fixed, why the menstrual cycle is actually a pretty bloody clever system, and whether we've gone a little too far with the whole 'everything is a symptom' approach to perimenopause. Lara and I talked about cycle syncing, period pain, endometriosis, ridiculously heavy periods, hormonal IUDs, progesterone, breast health, HRT and what happens when you start looking at all of this through an evolutionary lens. But the bit I probably loved most was the bigger conversation underneath all of it. How much of what we believe about our bodies is actually true, and how much have we simply been told so many times that we've stopped questioning it? Lara makes a pretty compelling case that perimenopause isn't a disease or a deficiency, that women don't have to feel exactly the same every day, and that feeling fine in your forties doesn't mean something is wrong with you... Wild, I know! SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au LARA BRIDEN Website: larabriden.com TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Jeffrey's story is wild... Abused by ten, homeless by twelve, twenty years in and out of boys' homes and prison, and eventually part of a notorious Australian bank robbery crew, Jeffrey's life could very easily have ended up looking very different to what is does today. But somewhere along the way he started questioning the life he'd normalised, the people around him, his own identity, and the behaviours he'd come to see as just 'how life is.' We got into what it actually takes to change when your old identity keeps pulling you back, why he had to drop his pride and ego and even delete relationships, and how he learned to turn some of the traits that once made him a bloody good criminal into traits that now make him a successful businessman. We also got into culture, emotional regulation, nervous system chaos, the power of having good role models, and his grandmother's question that stuck with him for years: "Do you reckon this is culture?" There's a lot in this one about not accepting your current life just because you've become accustomed to it. Because as Jeffrey says, if you want something different, at some point you've got to stop waiting for someone else to change it and start doing the work yourself.   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au JEFFREY MORGAN Website: jeffreymorgan.com.au TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Scotty's back and since retiring last year from paramedicine after decades of doing work that became a pretty big part of who he was, we got into what happens when you suddenly don't have to work anymore. We covered money, identity, the weirdness of no longer being the provider, and why he's now much more interested in spending his time doing things he actually gives a shit about. Then we got into the (kind of all too recent, if you ask me) period of his life when he was diagnosed with cancer and how rather than sitting around waiting to see what happened, he started making plans for what would happen to his daughter if he died. He kept working as a paramedic, kept cooking, kept living his life and somehow found plenty of humour in a situation that wasn't all too funny at all.  And then, because Scott is Scott, we ended up talking about his obsession with adventure, his ability to somehow get himself into rooms and friendships most people wouldn't, and the fact that he seems to have spent his entire life saying yes when someone says, "You should come." "You get one go on the merry-go-round and you should give it a good crack." Not a bad philosophy, dare I say, Scotty! SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au SCOTT DOUGLAS Website: horatio-jones.com.au TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Di often slides into my Insta DMs in response to gym content, then sent me a photo of her epic guns and I genuinely couldn't believe she was almost 64. So obviously I had to get her on the podcast for a good yarn... Di is not just incredibly strong with a phenomenal physique, she's also got a really interesting story. She was the 'fat kid' at school, got into powerlifting, walked away from training for a long while, then came back at 50 and has basically spent the last 14 years rebuilding herself through the gym. She's had total knee replacements, multiple surgeries, a broken patellar tendon and plenty of reasons she could have decided she was 'too old' or 'too injured' to train. Instead, she kept finding ways to work around what her body could do. We got into ageing, strength, training to failure, knowing when to push and when to stop, food, emotional eating, tracking calories, why all-or-nothing thinking keeps people stuck, and why women really need to stop worrying about everyone else in the gym. And then we got into her lifting numbers, which are frankly ridiculous.122kg deadlifts for reps. Eight pull-ups. Heavy sled work. Nearly 64 years old. She's also a weight loss and nutrition consultant, so of course got into the psychology behind why people eat when they're not actually hungry, and why sometimes food isn't really about food at all. Honestly, Di is exactly the kind of woman I want more women to hear from. And my biggest challenge to her at the end of the episode was this... Di, you need to get better at bragging about yourself, sista!   SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I met Dallas Lane by accident at the gym, and within about five minutes of chatting I knew I needed to get her on the podcast. She’s 50, a boxer, a trainer, a mum, a writer, and someone who has lost around 70 kilos. She’s also living with MS, after spending years knowing something wasn’t right and fighting to finally get a diagnosis. And honestly, the MS is almost the least interesting thing about her. We talk about being told you’re too old, what happens when your body gives you limitations you didn’t ask for, why Dallas refuses to let MS become her identity, and how she’s still getting in the ring and training despite balance issues, foot drop and fatigue. We get into adaptive boxing, therapy, crying, grief, her dad, writing poetry, and why sometimes the thing that changes your life doesn’t actually get to decide what your life looks like. She’s bloody funny, incredibly honest and has one of those personalities where you could talk for hours without noticing the time. I absolutely loved this one. SPONSORED BY TESTART FAMILY LAWYERS Website: testartfamilylawyers.com.au TIFFANEE COOK Linktree:  linktr.ee/rollwiththepunches Website: tiffcook.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.