HeyJaredThe Macro Lounge Podcast
🎙️ Welcome to The Macro Lounge PodcastYour backstage pass to the world of bodybuilding and bikini competition.
- Indexed episodes, last 90 days
- 12
- Latest publication
- Sep 20, 2026
- Audience
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- Earliest in this view
- Jul 5, 2026
Latest episodes
How Many Pro Cards Is Too Many? Episode 34 (opens the original)
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A big weekend of shows across New Zealand and Australia leads Chris and Rachel into the conversation nobody in the industry really wants to have out loud: how many pro cards should one show actually hand out? They open with the FMG New Zealand Pro Am at the Dame Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre and the INBA PNBA Pan Pacific Pro Am in Papakura, plus the Kiwi girls holding their own on US pro stages. Then it turns into the bigger question. When a show has around 50 athletes and around 30 pro cards, what hap
Regionals to Nationals: What Judges' Feedback Actually Means - Ep 33 (opens the original)
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The season is heading into its thick end, and a lot of athletes are sitting with a scoresheet and a decision to make. This week Chris and Rachel work through the move from regionals to nationals: how to ask for feedback in a way you can actually use, why a judge's comment and a coach's plan are two different things, and why the same package can be read differently depending on the day, the lineup and the federation. They also get into the small stuff that shifts a result more than people expect.
Ep 32: Pro Card in a Year - Kelly Hofmeester on Turning Pro Before You Feel Ready (opens the original)
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Kelly Hofmeester decided at 40 that she wanted to see what she was capable of on stage. Within a year she had won an IFBB Natural Figure Pro Card, signed the contract, and was on a plane to Toronto to make her pro debut. This week Chris and Rachel sit down with Kelly for our first ever athlete interview, and it turns out the medal is the easy part. Kelly talks openly about the self doubt that came with winning a pro card at her second show, what it feels like when accepting the card means you ca
Ep 31: ICN South Island Champs Recap (opens the original)
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Chris and Rachel are back from Christchurch and they have got some things to say. The ICN South Island Champs brought close to ninety individual athletes and somewhere north of three hundred crossovers to the Aurora Centre, and Chris and Rachel spent most of it backstage on stage mum and dad duty with three first timers who had never set foot on a bodybuilding stage before. In this episode they run the classes division by division, and for the first time this season they go past "I could have ha
Prep Panic: What's Actually Going Wrong (And What Isn't) - Ep 30 (opens the original)
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We're deep in the season now, which means the messages have started. I've blown up. I've lost all my muscle. I can't get a pump. My weight hasn't moved in a week. Rachel and Chris go through what is actually going wrong in prep versus what just feels like it is, because there's a big difference and most of you are panicking about the wrong things. They cover why the scale is one data point and not the whole story, why you look flat and feel weak right now, why small changes look enormous the lea
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