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Michael Stone | Men’s Performance Coach

@coachmichaelstone

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Coaching for men who know they’re capable of more.
Break the patterns holding back your body, habits & relationships.
DM “PATTERN” Limited spots.

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You can be disciplined in one area of your life and completely stuck in another.

You might train consistently for a few weeks, maybe even months, only to fall back into old habits when life gets stressful.

You might be successful at work but struggle to switch off, slow down or feel like you’ve done enough.

You might be a great bloke to everyone around you but struggle to set boundaries, express what you need or have difficult conversations.

Different situations. Similar underlying patterns.

And the frustrating part?

You often KNOW what you should be doing.

But knowing and doing are two different things.

Many of our behaviours are learned responses to stress, discomfort and the environments we’ve adapted to.

They can become so familiar that we repeat them without recognising what’s driving them.

That’s why simply trying harder isn’t always the answer.

The work is learning to:
1. SEE IT: Recognise the pattern.
2. REGULATE IT: Create space between the trigger and your response.
3. CHANGE IT: Choose a more constructive behaviour.
4. PROVE IT: Build consistency through repeated action.

This is the foundation of The Pattern, my approach to helping men develop physically, mentally, emotionally and relationally.

If you’re tired of ending up back where you started, I’ve put together a free training to help you understand why.

DM me “PATTERN” and I’ll send you the link. by @coachmichaelstone

For over 10 years, I’ve helped men improve their health, fitness and physical performance through training and nutrition.

And for a long time, I believed the answer was pretty simple.

Have the right plan. Be disciplined. Stay consistent. Work harder.

For some men, that approach worked incredibly well.

But for many others, treating ourselves like robots and ignoring everything happening beneath the surface only got us so far.

I was one of those men.

Despite knowing how to train and eat well, I found myself caught in cycles of restrictive eating, binge eating, excessive training and isolation.

And I started noticing similar patterns in the men I coached.

They’d make progress, fall back into old habits, blame themselves for lacking discipline and promise to try harder next time.

More often than not, the response was another training plan, another diet or another attempt to get their shit together.

But we weren’t asking WHY these behaviours kept happening.

What were we avoiding? What were we trying to cope with? What beliefs were driving our need to achieve? How was chronic stress influencing our decisions?

We were focusing on the behaviours without understanding what was driving them.

That’s what led me deeper into nervous system regulation, breathwork, behaviour change and men’s work.

I began to understand that our ability to perform, recover, connect and make decisions is influenced by far more than willpower.

And that sometimes, the answer isn’t to push harder. It’s to develop the awareness and capacity to respond differently.

Today, training and nutrition are still fundamental parts of my coaching.

But so is helping men understand their nervous systems, recognise their patterns and develop greater self-leadership.

Because becoming a high-performing man isn’t just about what you can achieve physically.

It’s also about how you show up for yourself, your health, your work and the people around you.

I’m Michael Stone, and this is the work.

Follow along if you’re ready to look beyond the surface. by @coachmichaelstone

Breathwork is often framed as a way to “calm” the nervous system and drop into rest-and-digest.

The issue?
That advice usually comes from regulated people telling dysregulated people to slow down.

At the other extreme, you’re told to smash Wim Hof every day.

Neither end of the spectrum worked for me.

I struggled with slow breathing at first—and honestly, that made sense.

I was conditioned for intensity: running a business, training hard, constantly switched on, mind always moving.

Slow breathing felt boring.

Fast, intense breathing.

Challenge. Effort. “Do more.”

And for a while, I got hooked on that too.

But here’s the thing: constant intensity, especially through the breath, was just reinforcing the same stress patterns I was trying to escape.

What I eventually learned is this:

The goal isn’t slow breathing or fast breathing.

The goal is regulatory range.

Your nervous system needs to learn how to move through states - parasympathetic to sympathetic and back again.

That’s why I don’t recommend:
• Only box breathing
• Only Wim Hof
• Only “calm down” techniques

What I do recommend is a breath flow—a sequence that integrates multiple techniques with the intention of returning to a slow, nasal, baseline by the end.

Here’s a simple example:

1. Set the baseline:

4s inhale / 4s exhale through the nose
5–10 rounds

2. Build:

Triangle breathing: 4s inhale / 4s exhale / 4s hold
5–10 rounds

3. Introduce intensity:

2–3 rounds of:
• 30 breaths (2s inhale, 2s exhale)
• Breath hold 30–60s
• Recovery breath + 15s hold

4. Downshift:

4s inhale / 8s exhale through pursed lips
10 rounds

5. Stabilise:

Coherent breathing: 5s inhale / 5s exhale
2–5 minutes

You’ve just moved through 4–5 techniques.

For someone with a busy mind, you’ve:
• Given yourself something to focus on
• Challenged the nervous system safely
• Practiced transitioning between states
• Landed back in regulation

The end result?

Just try it and notice what changes.

🎥 @softfocus.media by @coachmichaelstone

You can spend years building an impressive physique and still feel like you’re not enough.

I know because I’ve been there.

Training gives us something tangible to work towards. We can control our effort, track our progress and see the results of our discipline.

And there’s nothing inherently wrong with that.

But sometimes the gym becomes the one place where we feel in control while everything outside it feels uncomfortable, uncertain or overwhelming.

So we train harder.

We chase another PB, another kilogram of muscle, another percentage of body fat.

Believing that once we finally look a certain way, we’ll feel confident, respected, attractive or worthy.

But what happens when you achieve the physique and that feeling of inadequacy is still there?

What happens when you’re physically strong but struggle to communicate with your partner, take responsibility for your behaviour or sit with uncomfortable emotions?

You realise that the skills you’ve developed in the gym don’t automatically translate into every other area of your life.

And sometimes, the very thing you’ve used to build yourself up has also become a way of avoiding the work you need to do.

The problem isn’t wanting an impressive physique. It’s expecting your physique to solve problems that require something more than physical development.

Keep training. Keep challenging yourself. Keep building a body you’re proud of.

But give the same attention to your emotional maturity, relationships, integrity and ability to take responsibility. by @coachmichaelstone

You will run around in circles trying the same approach and expecting a different outcome.

Bad” habits often operate as a bandaid for unmet needs.

For me, it was always food, watching tv or smoking 🍁 in the past.

I carried a lot of shame for my “cruxes”.

For the men out there, it’s not something to be ashamed about nor alienated.

Its the way you learned to adapt, but it’s time to deal with it and understand what’s underneath.

Until you recognise the pattern, that is, the coping mechanism that plays out when the pressure gets “too much”, you will stay stuck in the pattern. by @coachmichaelstone

Training is a self-selected stressor. You choose the challenge, the intensity and, to some extent, how far you’re willing to push yourself.

Life doesn’t always give you that luxury.

And that’s the beauty of training. It provides an environment where you can practise sitting with discomfort, regulating your response to stress and resisting the urge to quit when things get difficult.

But there’s a limitation we often overlook.

Just because you’ve developed the capacity to endure physical discomfort doesn’t mean you’ve developed the capacity to navigate emotional, relational or psychological discomfort.

You might be able to push through the final kilometres of a marathon, yet struggle to have a difficult conversation without becoming defensive.

You might have the discipline to train every morning, yet struggle to adapt when your career, business or financial circumstances change.

You might be incredibly resilient in the gym, yet become overwhelmed when life presents a challenge you can’t control, outwork or simply push through.

Because life doesn’t always require you to endure more.

Sometimes it requires you to slow down, listen, adapt, communicate, surrender control or recognise when the very behaviour that makes you successful in one environment is holding you back in another.

Physical resilience is valuable, but it doesn’t automatically translate into emotional maturity, relational intelligence or psychological flexibility.

The goal isn’t simply to become someone who can tolerate more discomfort.

It’s to become someone who can recognise what a situation requires and respond accordingly.

Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is push harder. Other times, it’s knowing when not to.

Train your body, absolutely. But don’t neglect the other dimensions of being a man. by @coachmichaelstone

There’s a difference between making a conscious decision to support other people vs. doing it because you feel like you’ll be disliked otherwise OR because you want something in return.

Maturation from boys (or nice guys) to matured men occurs when we start meeting our own needs, setting boundaries, communicating honestly and living authentically.

Easier to sit and talk about, harder to do when you’re in those moments where the old patterns emerge. by @coachmichaelstone

Happy Halloween 🎃

Grandma and grandpa stayed up past midnight, spooky. by @coachmichaelstone

One of our deepest wounds as men is that we “are not enough”.

The report card was never good enough.

The medals were never enough.

We were never “enough’”.

That’s why so many men chase approval through fitness, success, money and status.

They chase a dragon that they will never catch up to.

Seeking external validation for an internal wound that you can only see through their behaviour.

To be honest, it’s making what men can achieve in these endeavours.

Imagine that power aligned with purpose and in the service of something greater than himself.

And with the knowledge that nothing was ever going to make him more adequate or worthy to other people. by @coachmichaelstone

Crunch, crunch, crunch….

The change up in @dailydiscomfortau sessions has been epic.

Being in the great outdoors makes for a MUCH richer experience.

We are OF nature, we are meant to be in NATURE.

It’s called Mother Nature for a reason.

Not because we were merely born from her WOMB.

We are still in it! But a lot of it has been demolished but civilisation and it has messed with our biology.

If you’re a man who’s lost his passion, his wildness and his zest for life, get outdoors.

Beach, river, forest, mountain… go there. by @coachmichaelstone

Do you find it hard to stay “motivated”?

The problem with motivation is that it’s both reflective and automatic.

Meaning, you can REFLECT on the values and goals that drive the behaviour OR AUTOMATICALLY react with the least challenging option, the one that is less aligned.

When we know our values and set goals relevant to the bigger picture, and who we are becoming, the boyish motivations of “get there quick” or trying to cut corners diminishes.

If the training plan, diet or lifestyle goal hadn’t worked yet, this might be a reason why. by @coachmichaelstone

Another man’s success doesn’t diminish your own.

You can compete fiercely, lose gracefully and still celebrate the man who beat you.

Surround yourself with men who challenge you to become better, not men you need to feel better than. by @coachmichaelstone