There are four reasons I write: And more than popularity or recognition, it is for personal profit, clarity and sanity that I write. In that order. My three reasons to be on this forum: To rant There is a degree of activism in some of the things i post about. About Madras, living conditions, beaches, the sense of hopelessness in living...

When you're born you get a ticket to the freak show. When you're born in America, you get a front row seat. George Carlin Replace USA with India and it works even better. My general policy is if I really like some stand up, art or music, I’ll share it with 3-4 people. And we generally enjoy a good chuckle over a drink. I’ve generally s...

There are stressors in your daily life that you control and can avoid : neighbours, family members, friends, social events, family gatherings, unpleasant holidays, pointless meals. The list is long and you generally know when you can avoid something that stresses you out with nothing useful to show for it. Then there is your everyday e...

The Miranda Priestly’s who ‘push’ protein on the Andrea’s of the world start with the Rajavel Elango and Lyle McDonald’s of the world. They’re scientists and practitioner’s who are objectively studying what can kids eat to ensure they’re as smart as can be given the right environment. Or what factors lead to kids getting taller than th...

My greatest nightmare is of being forced to run my business in 1980-90’s India. The one with a negligible industrial base. As a thought experiment, what kind of fitness industry existed back then? How would people spend their leisure time? I know it was not all bad. Nothing ever is. Air was cleaner. There was a lot less garbage because...

If my current client base paid me what the average gym in India makes, almost half the revenue would be funneled into rent. 10-15 percent would cover maintenance. I would then be able to pay one of five coaches and take home just as much as I pay a coach. Mind you, I have no air conditioning bill. I spend extravagantly on fans, equipme...

I refuse to offer quarterly, half yearly or annual memberships. And I definitely won’t discount my monthly fee. I know coaches and gym memberships are not accorded the gravitas of lawyers, doctors or accountants. And we shoot ourselves in the foot with discounts, a lack of seriousness about the work, poor communication and basement pri...

This is not by design. All the marketing we do is the words you are reading on this forum. And of course the actual coaching service online and at the gym. Word of mouth has been the only way we have gotten our clients. We assume the moment anyone walks in that door, proverbial and literal, they want to get as strong as they possibly c...

I get into a healthy number of fights over this stuff. But having gone through a similar ordeal not so long ago, I am going to say it: Most of our rituals are outdated, pointless and absolutely dumb. I am sure some antediluvian a**hat will throw some esoteric number arguing that Indians calculated the distance to the sun before Christ ...

Even if I wind up spending months studying existing designs, sketching out and thinking through my own designs, there is absolutely no substitute for repetitions done on a prototype or final product. However you think or simulate that it will feel, the feedback will be unlike anything you could imagine. Here I am playing with our new b...

In 2015, when I badly needed more clients, I attended book launches, weddings, horrific self-aggrandising 50th birthdays and all kinds of bullshit events in the hope that one person would ask me what I did and fingers crossed come and sign up. It took me two events to realise two things: 1. I hate social gatherings. I hate it with all ...

This isn’t going to be the last self proclaimed natty exposed as not being a natty. Bodybuilding is a sport. It’s not an endeavour that seeks to maximise longevity or improve health. There are competitions and arbitrary targets of an ‘ideal’ aesthetic. And like in every other sport, competitors will do insane things to win or have a sh...

This is a simplistic fairy tale. Not everyone who start their own business have aspirations to change the world or build a giant business. Some of us just do our thing because it drained my soul to work in an organization with meetings, bosses and fixed timings. Being a cog didn’t cut it for me. Not because of raw ambitions to change t...

I don’t doubt for one moment the confidence that strength training and improved body composition give a person. But other than confidence, is lifting as transformative as it appears? Put another way, is all the motivation and ‘hype’ around lifting being life-changing overblown? There’s a famous line in the TV show House about the titul...

The back extension is a simple move. You are bending and straightening your spine by consciously articulating every joint that makes up the spine. You are making an effort to engage the muscles around the back to get the job done. Think of it as a flipping a squat or hinge. Ordinarily your hips and knees are bending and straightening. ...

How is that guy squatting so much? How is he dead lifting 4 times his body weight? How is she doing a muscle up so easily ? How does he make his shoulder muscles pop so much? How does she have quads that look like that? Gym envy is a common affliction. Watching someone stronger, more skilled or more jacked than you doing their thing, m...

Think about all the things one can do for fitness: Running, yoga, cycling, parkour, bodybuilding, powerlifting, strength training, hiking. It boggles the mind all the options one has. And every one of those options competes for the rational you. The one that weighs the utility, pros and cons of each of those endeavours. And has to deci...

I don’t get too many comments on my posts. I like it that way. If folks do engage in a useful way, that’s neat. If they want to troll or fight, I’ll have some fun with that too. But my least favourite engagement is the type where someone takes your post shoves it in an AI app and asks AI to say something pithy, adversarial or supportiv...

It’s a weighty choice at that. One of the most complex ones that factors for our personal world-view, privilege, education, priorities and even time. I’ve seen intensely polarising views on this. One view argues this is as a personal a choice as can be. And we don’t owe society, our country, our religion and our ‘tribe’ continuity. And...

The popularisation of the phrase it’s business not personal is one I despise. What can be more personal than the thing you dedicate a third or up to half your day to. I spend more time working than with my daughter. Or my wife. My work defines me. So it’s quite personal. I don’t have a contract with my client to read up, be on time or ...

Dress codes, etiquette and rules exist for a reason. Why should every institution bend backward to accommodate every silly request or bit of behaviour. Every institution is allowed to have its rules, style and values. Expecting them to accommodate your idiosyncrasies is narcissistic and lazy. I don’t own a single pair of trousers. It i...

The best marketing unironically seems to be to shit on traditional marketing. And who better to roast marketing or subvert it than a standup comedian. I am allergic to marketing. But even I know that stuff does influence me to buy things or want to buy something. Or think of something as having more thought or effort going into the mak...

Here is a recap of the topics I have written about since 2022: 1. New equipment and why I think it is valuable from a biomechanical and user perspective. 2. Calorie deficits or surpluses. Why energy balance matters and how it can be harder for some to sustain or achieve a calorie deficit. 3. Hunger. Satiety vs satiation. Why hunger is ...

When I critically look at our gym and online coaching service, I try to understand how we are faring against a few qualitative yardsticks: 1 How long can we keep a good streak of training going by factoring for ups and downs of life? 2 When a client does need a break, how quickly can we help them bounce back? Can training and eating we...

Being able say the right thing at the right time when you feel wronged or differ strongly with someone. It was October 2013. Someone I did not enjoy interacting with who enjoyed passive aggressively yelling at me had been doing that over the phone for 22 minutes. I only knew how long. I did not know the content. Simply because when sai...

When we make equipment or even dole out exercise recommendations, one thing we have to critically examine is the why we do things differently. Is what we are doing genuinely a well thought out pattern that produces useful outcomes and strength that translates well into everyday life and/or other lifts. This matters for many reasons: Tr...