I don’t understand the hype around this snack. Let’s break this down. Is it high in protein? You need to consume 350 calories of makhana to get 10 grams of protein. The same protein can be had for fewer than half the calories from the following sources: You need to consume around 130 calories of eggs. Around 100 calories of skim milk. ...

I enjoy eating ice cream with my daughter. We do it once a month. We go to a place around the corner and she has her scoop of strawberry icecream with sprinkles. And I’ll get a salted caramel. And Ibaco does something cool. They give me this tiny portion of 30 grams. Just 3 spoons of icecream. I drag it out into 6 spoons and take my ti...

Carries are a criminally underrated category of exercise. They engage your upper back, forearms, arms and mid section. Basically your entire upper body contracts isometrically as you cover distance. You could do them with dumbbells, barbells, trap bars, kettlebells or any implement. But at our gym, we have one whacky implement that let...

Not a day goes by when I don’t wonder why do we get taught to use centimetres instead of millimetres in school. No one in the real world uses centimetres! And millimetres neatly scales to inches and feet. And it teaches you about the scale of things. Milli means one thousandth. Millimetres is used by carpenters, plumbers, electricans, ...

You know it’s hard work. The fact that lifts and escalators exist means we are avoiding the physical work of taking the stairs. If you are short on time, are injured or have to lug something heavy up, avoiding the stairs make sense. In other scenarios, why not take on the extra dose of activity? But in the era of step counters and runn...

Posture is framed as sub-optimal, optimal or perfect. Pain resulting from posture is framed as an outcome of bad posture. But one person’s bad posture can seem perfectly tolerable to someone else. Another person’s good posture can be painful for some. So what’s happening ? ** Tolerance for an adaptation and different positions. ** You ...

Here are the variety of ways I have gotten conned or screwed up in the last 12 years: 1. Paid for 304 steel and gotten 202 grade steel. I lost a lot on this. 2. Incorporated as a private limited company with no necessity for it. 3. Wasted lakhs on building a nutrition website that no one asked for. 4. Did not think through equipment de...

We have 2 coaches handle groups of 10-20 people. Multiple times a day for an hour each time. A common question: How do we create an individualised program for each and every client? We don’t. We have goals for every client. 12-16 quality sets of squatting. 12-14 quality sets of pushing. 12-14 quality sets of pulling. 12 sets glute ham/...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...