You use dopamine to your advantage by stopping the stacking of easy hits onto things you love — like layering loud music, pre-workout, and substances onto a workout — and instead letting your system reward you for friction and effort, which rewires you to seek hard things everywhere.
In part two of our dopamine series on Physical Friday, wellness coach Zach Fagerberg shares how stacking dopamine onto his workouts in his twenties led him to apathy — and how removing those add-ons, even for two weeks, lets your baseline recover and teaches your brain to find reward in the work itself.
Listen now: press play in the player above and follow along.
Zach Fagerberg's core point is to stop stacking easy dopamine onto the things you already enjoy and instead let your system reward you for friction and effort. When he stripped pre-workout, loud music, and other add-ons off his training, his baseline recovered and his brain started giving him a dopamine hit from the hard work itself — getting deep into a tough workout with nothing extra and thinking, this is freaking hard, and that is why there is a reward. That rewiring does not stay in the gym; it carries over so you seek friction in every area of life.
Zach Fagerberg describes layering loud music, strong pre-workout, and even THC onto his workouts six days a week in his twenties. Yes, he loved the workout that day, but because dopamine is finite and each peak is followed by a crash, he never let his baseline reset between sessions. Over seven or eight months his peaks trended down, his overall baseline dropped, and he landed in what he calls apathy — no oomph, no zap. He was not surprised, because he had been abusing something he genuinely loved rather than something bad for him.
Not necessarily forever, but Zach Fagerberg recommends a short removal — about two weeks — to let your baseline make a real recovery, then keeping any of those things intermittently rather than every single time. He only listens to music when training solo, maybe 50 to 70 percent of the time, and skips it in a group unless it is already in the room. The danger is the guaranteed, effortless hit every session; randomizing it keeps the dopamine system from wiring itself to need it.
Because your dopamine system adapts to whatever you train it on. If you keep reaching for the easy hit, it learns ease and stops wanting to work for anything, but Zach Fagerberg explains you can rewire it to reward effort — when you push through a hard workout with no music, no pre-workout, nothing extra, you start getting the dopamine release from the friction and challenge itself, and that rewiring is global: teach your system to find reward in hard training and it will look for the reward in friction across your whole life.
It cuts both ways. Someone deep into their fitness journey, who already has the habit and the results, often starts stacking music, pre-workout, and more out of boredom and slides toward apathy. A beginner faces the opposite question: Zach Fagerberg says if you are in your first month, getting big dopamine hits just from showing up and finding the friction — no add-ons — you are building a foundation that carries you for years. The key question for anyone is how easy it is to get your dopamine release, and whether there is real friction involved.
Yes — it can be the carrot that pulls you from unhealthy toward healthy. I have long told people to start with something they enjoy, like riding a bike outside with fresh air and a group, so the dopamine makes a new habit stick. That same pull can also be overused until you go overboard and crash, and it applies far beyond fitness — golf, fishing, even pottery. If you stack drinks and loud music onto a hobby, the luster eventually wears off and you are chasing a hit you no longer get. Awareness is what keeps dopamine working for you.
What Zach Fagerberg describes sounds exactly like a lot of CrossFit gyms — pre-workout before you arrive, loud music, a great community, and people calling it the best hour and a half of their day while feeling flat the rest of it. I have seen it in people way down their fitness journey and in folks just starting out, and it lines up with the advice I have always given about beginning with something you enjoy. We connect all of it in the episode, so press play in the player above.
Here is the approach Zach Fagerberg lays out in part two. We go deeper in the episode.
I unpack each of these in the episode. Press play in the player above.
Zach Fagerberg's story is the one that stuck with me. In his twenties, work and a rocky relationship made training the best 90 minutes of his day — so he kept stacking music, pre-workout, and THC to make the peak even higher. It worked, for a day. Six days a week with no baseline reset sent his peaks and his whole baseline downward until life became apathy. The scary part: it came from abusing something he loved, not something bad for him. He unpacks the whole arc in the episode, so press play in the player above.
This idea connects straight to fishing. The fish that bite everything and fight hard and come easy are the least popular. The ones we obsess over are the ones we work for, where everything has to go right and occasionally does. That intermittent, friction-earned reward is exactly what Zach Fagerberg is describing — and it is why a hard-won fish lights you up like a hole in one. We tie the dopamine science back to the water in the episode, so press play in the player above.
The things you stack onto what you love can quietly steal the very enjoyment you were chasing. Strip them back and let the work itself become the reward.
Take the two-week challenge — pull the add-ons off your training and watch your focus and enjoyment climb. Then come back next week as we finish the dopamine series. Press play in the player above.
Physical Friday is my weekly fitness series for fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen — the training, nutrition, and mindset to stay in the game for life. Watch and listen to every Physical Friday episode from Tom Rowland.
dopamine · friction · baseline dopamine · Zach Fagerberg · pre-workout · CrossFit · intermittent reward · apathy · habit building · Physical Friday · Tom Rowland Podcast
I'm Tom Rowland, a professional fishing guide based in the Florida Keys, host of the Tom Rowland Podcast, and the longtime host of the Saltwater Experience television show. On the podcast's Physical Friday series I share the training, nutrition, and mindset that keep fishing guides, anglers, hunters, and outdoorsmen strong enough to do the things they love — hunting, fishing, hiking, and more — for life.
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