There’s outrage over 10 minute deliveries. There’s snapshots of Japanese fast food with boiled egg sandwiches and fresh sushi on the 7/11 store shelves. Why can’t we have the same options? The fault lies not on our store shelves, but in our food preferences. Zepto sells the same sugary beverages, stale sandwiches, cream puffs, samosas ...

When I visit gyms outside of mine, I see clients treat their coaches with disregard and for the lack of better word contempt. I still cringe at the one time I saw a man snap his fingers beckoning his trainer to fetch his towel. Our attitude to vocational jobs is not dissimilar. Welders, cooks, cleaners, tailors, cobblers, farmers, carp...

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...

Lifting heavy, unwieldy things is not the same as lifting symmetric objects with friendly load distribution. The gym is designed to help you lift as much as possible. Be it repetitions, weight or sets. It is designed to be the most efficient path to packing on muscle and making a muscle or joint work. This framework for producing a pre...

Seeing posts about collapsing food poisoning, tourism numbers, poor air quality, water pollution, noise pollution and increasing urban density paints a picture of growth at the price of quality of life. My friends abroad admire the bustle, energy and dynamicism of urban India. But they can’t wait to catch a flight back home. And I can’...

‘One day man will have to fight noise as fiercely as cholera and pest’. Robert Koch in 1910 Both observational and experimental studies indicate that in particular night-time noise can cause disruptions of sleep structure, vegetative arousals (e.g. increases of blood pressure and heart rate) and increases in stress hormone levels and o...

Taking nothing away from the years of practice it probably takes to be able to hold difficult positions, comparing different modes of training with strength training is disingenuous. First off, all movement takes control and contractions. Some are simpler to learn. Others take more time, energy and effort. Doesn’t matter what anyone ca...

*Yoga makes you flexible *Strength training makes your muscles stronger *Cardio makes your heart stronger The body really does not care how you categorise movement or activity. It gets the job done. And if the job is strenuous, it adapts and becomes better suited to getting the job done. My basic grouse is compartmentalising specific a...

Things coaches hear on daily basis: *You know how we South Indians love our white rice. *Punjabis are foodies. *Telugu folks love our avvaka rice. *All my weight gain is due to (insert phase of life you think it the catch all reason here). These statements are not imagined. I am straight up quoting clients. People will stereotype their...

Precision guided habits and skill versus generic goals and resolutions I am going to workout everyday Versus I will do 10 push ups everyday at 7 am ———————- I am going to eat more protein Versus I will have 2 eggs and a 250 mL serving of Skyr or Greek yoghurt everyday ———————- I am going to eat salads or juice everyday Versus I will ha...

It baffles me if anyone is shocked by this. What won’t baffle me is the continued consumption of this crap. Most of us don’t care. It really comes down to that. The general disregard is not just for food. It’s our consumption standard in general. We always settle for a sub-par finish on and in furniture, cars, homes, bikes, airports (m...

Why accomplishment, accolades in one sphere of life does not translate into common sense and sound judgement in another. I’ve seen professionals spout nonsense with the confidence of godmen. And smart people not do squat or not literally squat for their health since they believe they don’t need it. Here are few things people conflate o...

Number one client request: I don’t want to count calories, I don’t want to measure my food: neither with a measuring cup nor with a weighing scale. How can I lose weight? Answer: Since you’ve decided to tie your hands behind your back for a boxing match, the next best strategy is to just run away from certain categories of food. This i...

I am fine as I am You live only once, eat some more I’ll start tomorrow I’ll start next week New year, new me is 10 days away What will they think of us if we don’t eat at the reception It’s how my ancestors ate, so I am going to eat like this You’ve paid 1500 for this, eat and drink some more to get value for money There are shootings...

I remember there was a time you’d have to hunt down the timing for when a movie would telecast on a channel. And you’d set aside time to watch it. It was on top of your mind. And you couldn’t watch it as and when you pleased. Inconvenience and anticipation forced you to set aside time and energy for it. Here is a simple overlooked aspe...

Here’s another absurd belief that needs to be vanquished. Muscles exist to contract and produce force. Activity is the reason muscle exists. And strength training is activity designed to maximise the muscles capacity to get work done. Muscle does not just disappear the moment you stop training. Like a parked Porsche, muscle lays in lim...

This common misconception is possibly the most absurd concern. It’s the equivalent of wondering if revving your WagonR too hard will turn it into a Porsche. Hard truth Muscle is made out of very different looking cells than fat. The fundamental parts that make up a muscle cell be it actin, myosin, titin among many components are very d...

It’s easy to forget who your customer is and what they want from you. Especially when you are compelled to compete for attention. The easiest cop-out? Telling your client they are fine as they are and the route they take to become fitter does not matter. Or that you can be healthy at any body fat level. Details matter. It matters what ...

Copying and pasting designs is a recipe for fabricating uncomfortable lifting implements. Dip stands, squat racks, pull up bars, safety squat bars, hack squats. The proportions that work for larger frames does not cut it here. They’re either too tall or too wide for most, not all, Indian lifters. There is an interesting lifting impleme...

People hate diets or the idea of it. So much so, that they think there’s a culture to it. And all the science behind it is also a sham that doesn’t work. I didn’t enjoy going to school or college very much. You don’t see me calling civics, moral science, history or a second language like Hindi or French a waste of time or denounce educ...

https://calpaterson.com/porter.html This is such a terrific essay about what makes for a good business. The author argues that it is harder to build a lucrative business when a service or product is very fungible and fosters no real loyalty in the client base. While he dwells a fair bit on AI businesses, I don’t understand how those bu...

You don’t strength train to burn calories. You do burn a few calories to strength train. But it’s not primary metric to measure progress or value for what is being achieved. But measuring calories burnt while strength training is akin to enjoying silence in a library. You primarily went there to read a book, not for silence. Here are t...

Is there any advantage to replacing your white rice or wheat or oats with more exotic or less delicious grain? Short answer: No. If you are eating enough ragi, quinoa, oats or any other grain to get a notable amount of protein, iron or any other micronutrients from it, you are probably consuming far too many calories overall. If you ar...

It’s not funny how far our understanding of how muscles work and grow has progressed in the last 20 years. Few do a better job than Chris Beardsley at making the science of how muscles work accessible. He digs into new studies, older studies, puts them in context with the basic biology and presents them in simple infographics, short wr...

There is such a thing as the right amount of crazy right amount of intensity right amount of conviction right amount of intensity right amount of obsession right amount of skepticism And a degree of self awareness It’s not quantifiable. It’s for the lack of a better word: a vibe. I am all for living a long and healthy life. When your t...

The fewer moving parts, the better.' Exactly. No truer words were ever spoken in the context of engineering. Chris Cantrell I loved the squatmax MD by Brian Henessy. But we don’t get the amazing device in India. The basic idea is to take the load off the spine when you squat and put it entirely on the legs. The device does this by usin...

As the table in the slide shows, cheese contains different proportions of salt, fat and protein. Using this to illustrate two points: ** Grams of protein per 100 grams is a misleading metric. If you pack a food with enough fat and carbohydrates, you can drown out impressive protein content. This applies to all foods not just cheese. **...

Holidays, shopping, work, travel, friendships, gym equipment, clothes, books, bags, watches, hobbies, exercise and food. A few of the things we consume every single day. There is of course more to add to the list. But let’s start there. You can judge consumption on some simple parameters. Excess, like porn, is easy to call out. You’ll ...

Walking is good for you. And there are very few people who disagree with that assessment. Doctors, therapists, coaches, governments all encourage you to walk. But it’s not enough. Far from it. Walking is a low intensity, low impact activity that has many benefits that includes cognitive ones. And 4000-5000 steps a day is a terrific way...

1 Force produced is not solely dependent on the size of the muscle. This is self evident if you watch sports, athletics or martial arts. Pudgy cricketers smashing the ball 100’s of meters away, lanky tennis players socking the ball, Thai teenagers punching harder than bodybuilders more than twice their weight. Force and size don’t go h...