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Always Growing with Kelsey Heenan

Kelsey Heenan

Always Growing with Kelsey Heenan goes behind the curtain with the trainers, comedians, athletes, doctors, and quiet experts you’d assume have arrived — to share the habits, the hurdles, and the never-before-told stories of what it actually took to get here. Each week, Kelsey sits down with someone she admires for a warm, unguarded conversation about the messy, ongoing work of growth — the part nobody puts on the highlight reel. Because growth has no finish line — and if we’re being honest, none of us ever fully arrives.

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11 episodes
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Avg 56 min
English

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Yesterday · 1 hr 2 min
The Mental Game of Elite Athletes | Ed Estavan
Kelsey hadn't played real basketball in 16 years when Drew Hanlen told her, "Go see Ed. He's the guy." Ed Estavan is a basketball coach who walks us through what it takes to have the mindset of an elite athlete to keep growing in our everyday lives. He has coached high school basketball for 16 years, the last three at Harvard-Westlake. He coaches an eighth-grade LABC team and a club program that runs third through eighth grade, runs a Sunday skills academy, and coaches Paul George Elite on the Nike EYBL circuit. Before that he spent years with Strive for Greatness, coaching Bronny James from eighth grade through graduation, and he was on the Sierra Canyon staff when Scotty Pippen Jr. arrived as a transfer nobody was watching. This is a conversation about the mental side of getting good at anything. If you've ever let one mistake wreck the rest of your day, this is your episode. You're not competing against anybody else. You're competing with yourself. Follow Ed on Instagram @teamsr. Thank you to our sponsors Tmrw: drinktmrw.com Code: KELSEYHEENAN for $10 off your first order — subscribe and save 25% plus a free welcome kit Orange Toucan: orangetoucan.com Code: KELSEY25 for 25% off Chapters (00:00) Sixteen Years Off the Court (03:18) What Sports Teach You About Life (04:22) Harvard-Westlake, LABC, and the Skills Academy (06:52) Nike EYBL and Coaching Bronny (08:01) A Dad Who Never Played (09:28) The Coach Who Became a Mentor (11:30) Discipline, Passion, and 30 Minutes a Day (13:00) Can Passion Be Developed? (14:52) Competing With Yourself (16:21) A Word From TMRW (17:22) Sideline Parents and the WWE Match (19:15) "Your Kid Is Only a Teenager for So Long" (21:44) It's Okay to Make a Mistake (23:10) Miss Three, Make the Next Five (24:42) Has Social Media Changed Kids? (25:59) Confidence: Earned or Given? (27:20) "Nobody Cares About Your Feelings" (28:57) How the Game Has Changed (30:45) Nobody Is Bigger Than the Team (32:59) Chip Engelland and Learning to Train (34:12) The Junior College Regret (37:07) Scotty Pippen Jr.: The Kid Nobody Saw Coming (39:38) Bronny Under the Microscope (41:47) Brandon Boston Jr. and Mental Coaching (43:19) Coming Back From Injury (47:37) A Word From Orange Toucan (48:38) Unlearning Bad Habits (50:27) "Up and Over" (52:16) Communicating So Every Athlete Gets It (55:53) Being Efficient With Your Words (56:32) Just Trying to Be the Best Ed (60:36) Where to Find Ed (61:35) Farewell
#9
September 9 · 1 hr 10 min
Feeling Seen: The Reality of Coming Out as Trans | Tousi R.
Tousi R. has been doing Kelsey's hair for five years. This year, she came out to the world as a trans woman. "If you do say, 'You're beautiful,' it will change a trans person's life, trust me. 'Cause our entire life has been like, 'You're not good enough.' So do that, and it's free." Tousi is a celebrity hairstylist with a salon in West Hollywood and co-host of the Having A Moment podcast. She grew up the child of Persian immigrants in a conservative, Catholic-school suburb where, as she puts i
#8
September 2 · 53 min
What Your Pain Is Actually Telling You | Dr. Joey Mattina
Kelsey calls Dr. Joey Mattina her healer. He calls himself a body worker. Joey has a chiropractic degree, but does a whole lot more than that to help his patients feel and move their best. He works out of Peak Wellness, a practice in Beverly Hills full of professional athletes, the Clippers, the LA Kings, a long list of people whose bodies are their careers. A simple adjustment was never going to be enough for him. Over a decade he's folded in Rolfing, fascial work, and pieces of half a dozen o
#7
August 26 · 1 hr 7 min
A Fighter’s Secret Battle with Eating Disorders | Danny O'Connor
In this episode of Always Growing, host Kelsey Heenan sits down with professional boxer and former Olympian Danny O’Connor for an honest conversation on identity, discipline, and overcoming a silent, decades-long battle with eating disorders in combat sports. From earning a spot on the 2008 U.S. Olympic team to reaching the brink of a world title, Danny appeared to have it all under control. Beneath the surface, years of extreme weight cutting evolved into a life-threatening battle with binge ea
August 19 · 48 min
Finding Strength and Joy in Hard Times with Lacee Green
Lacee Green is a BODi Super trainer, mom, and an absolute ray of sunshine. Lacee has a phrase she's been saying for years. Find the joy and drop the judgment. Last December, that phrase was put to the ultimate test. In May 2025, Lacee, a super trainer at the peak of her fitness, knew something was wrong with her body and pushed for answers. An MRI found a pituitary tumor that had been quietly growing for almost a decade, hiding behind signs that doctors had waved off for years. That December, she had brain surgery, followed by a full month in the ICU. In this episode, Lacee goes into detail about her physical and mental health through the most challenging time in her life and how she got through it. She teaches us the power of perseverance, positivity, and how to be real through it all. In a full-circle twist she never saw coming, the 10-minute beginner workouts she designed on BODi for others were the only thing she could do during her own recovery. Lacee is a BODi Super Trainer (the first curvy Black female Super Trainer in the company's history), creator of For Beginners Only. She is a behavior change specialist, a fitness and mindset voice on the Today Show, and known as The Curvy Girl Trainer to women around the world. She hands over the whole toolbox: feeling everything all the way through instead of forcing positive vibes only, giving yourself something concrete to look forward to, and tapping through ten specific grateful memories when the mirror gets mean. And underneath it all, the stat that drives her work: 91% of women are unhappy with their bodies, chasing a body type only about 5% actually have. Lacee's answer… Fitness isfor every body and everybody, at every chapter. If this year has handed you a diagnosis, a setback, or a season you didn't choose, this is your episode. Your current situation is not your final destination. Woot woot! Follow Lacee on Instagram @thecurvygirltrainer, train with her on the BODi app, and keep an eye out for her book: December 2026. Thank you to our sponsors Orange Toucan: orangetoucan.com Code: KELSEY25 for 25% off Tmrw: drinktmrw.com Code: KELSEYHEENAN for $10 off your first order — subscribe and save 25% plus a free welcome kit Chapters (00:00) Sunshine Herself (00:33) Super Trainer, Mom, Author (01:17) A Life-Changing Year (02:20) "I Had Brain Surgery" (02:50) Trusting Her Body (03:50) The MRI (04:30) The Saturday Night Call (05:01) A Decade of Missed Signs (06:03) "I Know I'm Gonna Be Okay" (07:11) Football Season First (07:50) A Month in the ICU (08:10) Feel It All the Way Through (09:00) Something to Look Forward To (09:50) Full Circle: For Beginners Only (10:35) Where the Mindset Comes From (11:46) Not Your Final Destination (13:25) Showing Up When It's Hard (14:28) The Joy Spectrum (14:40) The 3 A.M. Path (16:20) Positive Relationships (18:31) Split Pants, Live Stream (20:10) The Pressure to Get It Right (22:40) The Power of Pause (23:01) Ten Grateful Memories (24:14) Borrowing Belief (24:40) Motherhood and the Balance Myth (27:19) Becoming the Curvy Girl Trainer (28:00) The 91% Problem (28:53) A First at Beachbody (30:10) Little Lacee in the Mirror (33:14) The Audition With No Callback (38:06) The Second Yes (39:20) The Modifier Becomes the Star (40:20) Keep Going (43:44) Love Who You Are Right Now (44:40) Celebrate Every Step (47:30) Where to Find Lacee
#6
August 12 · 1 hr
How to Gain More Confidence (and Be Funny) with Leah Lamarr
Leah Lamarr is an actress and comedian who goes on stage without a plan. Sometimes the difference between a joke working and not working is your confidence. It took her years to be able to say that sentence. This conversation is about what she built on the way there. Three weeks after her first 20-minute set on the road, the pandemic shut down live comedy, so Leah became the Clubhouse Queen, running her comedy club Hot on the Mic for thousands of listeners around the world. When live comedy
#4
August 5 · 1 hr 17 min
Eating Disorder Recovery with Family Based Treatment and Hope for the Future
Dennis Heenan holds a title no other guest on this show will ever have. For those of you who don't know, Dennis is Kelsey’s husband. He's also the person who said the sentence that saved Kelsey’s life. They met as college basketball players. Three months into dating, they knew they'd get married. Then, the summer before the engagement, Kelsey opened a pizza box on the 4th of July and burst into tears, and a 21-year-old who didn’t know anything about "anorexia" started noticing things he didn't h
#3
July 29 · 58 min
Biochemist, Ninja, Speaker, Author | Angela Gargano
Angela Gargano has a name for the place nobody talks about. When one door closes, another one opens — but no one talks about the hallway in between. Angela knows the hallway. She was a biochemist working twelve-hour overnight shifts in a hazmat suit when a friend asked her to help film an American Ninja Warrior audition tape. The videographer told her to submit her own. She got cast — with two weeks to learn how to be a ninja. Then, on her comeback season, in front of a national television audie
#2
July 22 · 56 min
30 Years of Fitness | Jeanette Jenkins
Jeanette Jenkins has a line she's built thirty years on. You can't be blessed to the next level until you just start from day one. Day one, for her, was a pool deck in Ottawa — a lifeguard and swim instructor working forty hours a week while carrying a full course load on an academic scholarship. Then it was a Greyhound bus to New York with almost no money, standing in the back of a 500-person step aerobics ballroom, running up to the presenters afterward to say: I want to do this for a living.
#1
July 15 · 1 hr 5 min
Addict, Champion, Father, Friend | Ken Rideout
Ken Rideout has a line he tells his kids when they look scared at sports. *Just learn how to do this scared.* It's the truest sentence he says in this episode. Because Ken has spent his whole life doing things that, by his own admission, half of him was sure would crush him. The fifty-five-year-old man across the chair from me has won a marathon world championship in his age group. He finished Ironmans, ran across the Gobi Desert, won HYROX, and finished sixth overall at Ironman Wisconsin. He ru
July 8 · 1 min
Always Growing with Kelsey Heenan
Always Growing with Kelsey Heenan goes behind the curtain with people you'd assume have arrived — to hear the habits, the hurdles, and the never-before-told stories of how they're still growing.

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