Why am I doing this exercise ? Why am I doing these many repetitions ? What is fundamentally changing in my body when I do this exercise? Why am I not able to do more of this? How can I work towards doing more of this? Is there anything else I should be doing if I am not comfortable with this? How you spend your time on exercise matter...

Next time someone asks you why: 1. Your plate looks lean 2. You need to crash early instead of going out 3. Carry around a giant gallon of water 4. Carry around a small serving of protein powder 5. Have your workout gear ready to go 6. Why you enjoy talking about your workout 7. Like to sneak in 30 mins even on holiday to get a quick b...

Coaching is most often about making clients grab the lowest hanging fruit 1. Eat less 2. Move more 3. Learn to move well 4. Sleep better 5. Sleep more 6. Don’t eat out 7. Don’t let things get to you But the greatest gains for you and your client are to be had by asking them to get used to doing things that are physically uncomfortable....

I have been glib with the use of the term ‘quality of life’. I do believe training consistently improves it. But what are the different things that constitute ‘quality of life’? I have no expectation of being able to hike along a river or water body in Madras on a daily basis. The water body below is a kilometer from my house. It has t...

I like watching people moving things around. People carrying big bags of rice, sand, cement, pots, metal pipes, pots, logs, giant electrical appliances. Anything really. The hands that lift the most are not always the strongest. They are the most efficient and find the most convenient way to pick up an object. The middle of the pipe. T...

Almost 2 out of 3 people who train with us are women. 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 ...

A stopwatch or watch of some sort to tell you how much time you're taking to get something done. A plan scribbled on a paper, notebook or a notes app to tell you what needs to be done for the day. A smartphone if you'd rather not wear a watch or carry a notebook. If you'd rather be guided on your routine, some device to show a video to...

We have footpaths in our neighbourhood. None are usable. My daughter could technically walk to her school along the beach. But between the weather and the risks to a girl walking along the beach everyday, it’s not going to happen. We can’t just walk down to the local shop to pick up groceries. There are no spaces to walk comfortably or...

Three things someone who has little or no training experience tends to do: 1. Pick too many exercises 2. Do too much too soon 3. Not stick with things long enough It’s worth paying a competent coach to help you: 1. Pick the first 10-12 most useful exercises that you probably should spend the first couple of months getting really good a...

The result is directly proportional to the effort . Not time, not money. But effort. What you do is what you get. If you bend your knees very little, it results in very little development of muscle around the knee. If you bend or rotate your shoulders very little, you get very little muscle around the shoulders. Systematically squattin...

I’ve been wearing barefoot sandals every single day since October 4, 2015. Before which I wore barefoot shoes since 2014. I’ve worn non-barefoot footwear on four occasions since: all weddings including mine. My point is not my fealty to Luna or barefoot footwear. It works for me. My feet feel more comfortable. I feel better training in...

Here’s a common issue with non-nutritive sweeteners. They just taste strange. Either it’s the aftertaste or a flavour that clashes with the primary flavour. I am addressing this simply because the struggle to make non-nutritive sweeteners taste good is real. Here are my preferences and how I use them. *************************** Erythr...

Corporations excel at the art of saying a lot without meaning anything. All their talk will not stop them from taking our money. Nor should it. Apps to see how you use your phone such as Screen Time have existed for a while and most of us simply ignore it. What next ? Will Apple packaging feature a photo of a dinner table with family m...

I like good chocolate. But I also know and understand that no chocolate worth a bite will net less than 55 calories for a 10 gram bite. Between cocoa butter, cocoa, cream, nuts, milk etc, it is going to yield that much. It makes no difference what sweetener you add, cause all the ingredients that make chocolate great tasting contain fa...

Dal contains protein. As does milk. As does paneer. As does oats. But how efficient are those foods at giving you protein. Cars cover distance. How much electricity or petrol do they need to cover that distance determines efficiency. In foods, a simple measure of protein efficiency is how many calories do you ingest to get 10 grams of ...

Start simply by figuring out how far are you from 70 grams of protein a day. If you depend on paneer, dairy and lentils alone, you probably need it. If you depend on paneer, dairy, eggs and lentils alone, you could do without it with a lot of effort. If you depend on paneer, dairy, eggs, lentils and soy, you could do without it with so...

Nostalgia is denial - denial of the painful present... the name for this denial is golden age thinking - the erroneous notion that a different time period is better than the one ones living in - its a flaw in the romantic imagination of those people who find it difficult to cope with the present. from Midnight in Paris by Woody Allen H...

*You can strength train on a field, on a tennis court, in a playground, on the beach. Anywhere really. Producing force or resistance just requires you to fight gravity. It isn’t about how you look. It’s about your willingness to produce force and be strong. *The gym is not just for bodybuilding. The gym is just a place filled with toys...

A recent comment thread discussing low penetration of gym memberships produced some polarising interpretations. This isn’t uncommon given almost every single facet of our life has a xxxxx-wing or ideology attached to it. Predictably gym memberships, protein isolates were labelled imports. As opposed to yoga and our traditional foods as...

Here is an issue that plagues the Indian food and healthcare scene: inconsistent lab results. I’ve personally encountered results from DEXA scans, blood work and food testing that made absolutely no sense. It just didn’t jive with past data or with science. In the case of the DEXA scan, it threw up an absurdly high body fat percentage ...

What is the opposite of cheaper, faster and better ? These are the three core ideas of a modern urban consumer. I don’t think it is more expensive, slow and inferior. Building gym equipment, bags and some furniture over the last ten years has convinced me that the opposite of cheaper, faster and better is more of the sticker price spen...

We eat too much. At home. At parties. At social gatherings. At office. At office gatherings. In public. On the beach. In a park. While we travel. Pretty much every opportunity we get to stuff our faces. We take it. And then we wax eloquent about our relationship with food, stress eating etc without actually doing a single thing to unde...

In our gym and online, we try operate in this nebulous zone between getting out of the clients way when they are training and intervening only when we think we have something truly useful to say or cue. When a client first walks in, we spend a lot more time coaching. Showing them how it looks. Telling them what it is. Finding out if th...

1. People are living longer than ever. They are not exactly training or being very active to achieve this outcome. 2. There are always demands on your time. Exercise doesn’t feel like the most pleasurable way to spend it. 3. It is not the societal norm. Besant Nagar beach does not have the same vibe as a Bondi. Our open air gyms largel...

Did the Lancet estimate of inactive Indians surprise you? If it did surprise you, what did you decide to do? Have a conversation about it? But conversations and knowledge that result in no action is pointless There is ample evidence that we overthink our decision to act. We want the right gym, right coach, right experience, right ambie...

Your tolerance for boredom during long walks, rest between sets and doing exercises you suck at. Your tolerance for challenges when you encounter constraints such as mobility or exercises you are just not good at. Your tolerance for pain when you’re sore, stiff, tired, under-rested, just finished a very hard bout of training or even a ...

I have been coaching for 12 years. My client count is well over 2000 clients. Not every single client who has paid me to coach them is still working with me. The more important question: Did they learn enough from me to make lasting habits that incorporate training consistently and eating mindfully. The honest answer is not enough clie...

Losing fat is a laudable goal. But a big part of the problem is being under-muscled. And we need to ram home this message. Too often the obesity problem is framed as bulging waistlines. The antidote is increased activity and reduced energy intake. But this perspective sets people up to have an undiscerning view of activity and eating. ...

Here is a timeline of when we first introduced different tools in our gym: 2014 Barbells Rings Kettlebell Resistance bands Bumper plates Pull up bars 2015 Trapbars Dumbbells Sleds 2016 Squat racks Benches Push up handles Ab wheel 2017 Centre mass bells Landmines Swiss bars Split squat stands 2018 Peg board Lat pull-down handle Open bac...

We are in the process of spring cleaning at the gym before swapping out the roof and moving some of the equipment around. This photo from 2014 always acts as a guiding star in how we manage our growing arsenal of equipment: how little do we need to get the job done? And do we have enough options for clients, constraints be damned, to f...