I work 60 hour weeks. Not all of it spent coaching. Some of it is on admin stuff and a chunk of it on equipment etc. I like hanging out with my wife and my daughter. I find my work meaningful. And the 60 hour weeks while taxing have something useful to show for it. My clients are stronger, healthier and enjoy their exercise sessions by...

For some it’s about a perfect selfie. For some it is about dealing with pain. For some it is looking good in an outfit. For others the strength they feel is empowering. For others it’s a sport. A perfect bicep peak or perfect squat is like a perfect forehand or cover drive. But for most of us, if life is a sport with walking, hanging, ...

I hated quotes like that in school. But as I get older, the general wisdom makes sense. Some of the leaner, protein-dense ingredient options that can help you hit 80-100 grams of protein consumption a day are not readily available on every store shelf. Let’s take my staples: 3 eggs 80 grams of low fat paneer 250 grams of Skyr 25 grams ...

When constraints are useful Your hands are tools. They can perform surgery, handle a knife or scissors with skill, swing a racket, punch hard and everything in between. This capacity to produce plenty of force as well as the most delicate movement is a function of having muscles that are small and delicate like in the fingers or big an...

Far too often medical professionals recommend rest and inactivity as tools for recovery from non-traumatic injuries. This approach is clearly counterproductive. And the opposite camp that espouses movement as part of the solution is fast emerging. In a nutshell: rare is the injury that requires you to lie still and do absolutely nothin...

Ghee lubricates your joints. What is a lubricated joint? A rather commonly cited advantage of consuming ghee is that your joints can move more freely. Much like spraying WD40 on a squeaky hinge will get a door or metal joint moving freely. WD40 does this by loosening up rust, and reducing the friction and allowing two surfaces to move ...

Our cities are uniquely corrupt, polluted and dirty. Even by developing world standards. One of the terrific advantages we have as we build our mega cities is to learn from all those who have come before. We get to see the choices made by London, New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing, Shenzhen, Shanghai, Singapore and...

A business that pays its own bills, funds its own dreams, and builds loyal customers. That’s freedom. That’s success. Dilip Kumar Such a terrific line! I wish I had come up with it. For the longest time, I’ve been looking for a way articulate why we are happy running one gym in a quiet corner by the beach in Madras and a large online s...

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...