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...

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. **...

Every time I run into a former client, a few thoughts run through my head. Are they still training? If they are not training, what’s the trigger for the switch that can get them going again. These thoughts get especially amplified when I meet a client who got really strong, mobile, well conditioned and had a consistent, long stint befo...

People draw a clear line in their minds about cardio and strength. Cardio: running, walking, cycling, swimming, jump rope, stepper, elliptical, rowing, burpees, stairmasters. Strength: dumbbells, barbells, push ups, squats, pull ups, pulleys, cam-based machines. The thinking goes as follows: I warm up with cardio Or My doctor wants me ...

Superme is yet another entrant in the crowded protein bar space. It gets 10/10 for slickness. But how about actual content. Not the marketing content. But the actual macro content. You need to eat 180-ish calories to get 10 grams of protein. That compared with 50 calories for a scoop of whey isolate, 70 calories for a scoop of decent w...

Why do I keep arguing for increased protein intake and improving awareness of protein intake. * It’s not because I don’t think Omega 3’s, fiber and other micronutrients are important. They absolutely are. * It’s not because of the thermic effect of protein rich foods. That up to 10 percent of protein intake is used as fuel to digest pr...

Here’s a stupidly simple hack to be able to grapple with the problem of how much are you eating in a day. Just know the volume of the cup you are serving yourself with. A standard cup is 240 ml. Volume is measured in milliliters or ml. Knowing how much ML of rice, curd, vegetables, dal and anything that can be put in a cup whose volume...

But how successfully you grapple with hunger will determine how successful you are at sustaining any effort to reduce your calorie intake. The context here is most of us are eating too much. And we have no clue what the right amount of food to maintain status quo or achieve a more optimal body composition looks like. When you moderate ...

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...

Trends in fitness swing violently. Call it a compulsive need for consensus or just a need for a one size fits all solution, but we need to be label something as ‘works’, ‘pointless’, ‘that will destroy you’ or ‘how are you not doing this’. Bending and straightening your spine is one such topic. Is it safe to bend and straighten your sp...

No one wants to die an untimely death. And our perception of what is untimely has been extended in the last 100 years thanks to basic advances in medicine, society, sanitation and food science. But there are limits to what biohacking can achieve. And the two terrific quotes below capture the current conundrum. A good chunk of affluent ...

Our training facility isn’t open all day. This is a choice I made since Day 1. And I credit my former employers The Quad in shaping this choice. We are open for what I call peak demand hours. Much like pubs and restaurants, we are open for business for a few hours in the morning, an hour in the afternoon and a couple of hours in the ev...

I don't like words that hide the truth. I don't words that conceal reality. I don't like euphemisms, or euphemistic language. And American English is loaded with euphemisms. Cause Americans have a lot of trouble dealing with reality. Americans have trouble facing the truth, so they invent the kind of a soft language to protect themselv...

Children watch you everyday and they learn. They learn how to eat, how to move, how to talk and what constitutes normal behaviour, attitudes, expectations and habits. By the age of 18, the average child has had 20000 meals (closer to 35000 if they eat like they do while they holiday) with their family, friends and/or loved ones. These ...

Walk for 15 mins a day Do 10 mins of breathing and yoga Do whatever activity you enjoy for 2 hours a week Play a sport once a week to stay fit If a coach, physiotherapist or doctor tells you do whatever activity you enjoy and can sustain, they are doing you a disservice. I am not sure if it’s a marketing ploy or they really believe tha...

What makes us fragile is that institutions cannot have the same virtues (honor, truthfulness, courage, loyalty, tenacity) as individuals. Taleb We depend on governments to : 1. Tax food. Some foods more than others. Protein is taxed more than carbohydrates and fat. 2. Support farmers cause it’s a difficult and often thankless job for t...

Apple doesn’t care about you personally in the least tiny bit, and if you were in their way somehow, they would do whatever their might — effectively infinite compared to your own — enables them to deal with you. Brent Simmons https://lnkd.in/gAgsjaZr Atleast your favourite athletes and celebrities pretend to care about you by feeding ...