Recall, from the last post that you have spent some time to consider what you find most meaningful to you being on this planet. This single point of focus is your purpose and you’ve whittled it down to a succinct idea that you came up with yourself. Now we need to turn that purpose into something more actionable. And that next step is goal-setting. With goal-setting, what milestones are you going to set that works

Read more0

As we begin a new year, people often like to set New Year’s resolutions or review their past year and set goals for the next. I, personally, don’t set New Year’s resolutions but rather I will start a new habit or adjust my goals whenever I feel I need to grow in a certain direction - in other words, the beginning of a calendar year to make a change is arbitrary to me. However, the

Read more0

Happy holidays, if you’re celebrating them. You’re probably going to a lot of social gatherings and eating foods that are high in sugar and fat and some boozy drinks alongside with that. I’m not here to give you a lecture on what you should and shouldn’t do over the holidays but I do want you to realize the holiday season for a lot of us began in November with Thanksgiving, continues through December and January

Read more0

ACT is a tough 45-minute bodyweight-only high intensity (HIT) workout. I designed it to be hard not because I wanted it to be the toughest class in Shanghai, but because of all the physiological effects that I discussed about in my last blog and what needs to be done to reverse metabolic syndrome. If you recall from the last blog on sugar, one of the main issues we have in society is an over-consumption of

Read more0

This blog title may come as a surprise to you since you may not know me as someone who partakes in low-intensity, steady-state activities. I also did not mention this to many people leading up to the race, and even some of my closer friends were surprised to learn that I’ve signed up for an Ironman competition, albeit only half Ironman, and also a relay. If you have always wanted to do one but have

Read more6

So a study has been recently published and has concluded that one of the best indicators for cardiovascular health for adult men is by doing a max set of push-ups. This is a pretty big deal as this is the first study that shows push-up capacity being associated to chances of getting cardiovascular disease. This push-up test has been shown to be an even better indicator than the traditional running on a treadmill test which

Read more0

When you’re training HIT, especially in a group where others seem fitter than you (‘seem’ is the operative word), it’s kinda like browsing your WeChat Moments. All you see is people posting how great they are. They may be at a new restaurant or hotel grand opening, or they may be on vacation to somewhere exotic, or how amazing their food tastes. Everyone’s amazing except you! Hopefully you know that not everyone’s amazing except for

Read more0

We are not all that different - you and I. Pushing yourself to go to the gym and exercise is a miserable experience and I don’t even mean the activity of exercising! Just trying to convince yourself to go is an experience so unpleasant, it’s enough to derail any focused and disciplined individual - yes, even me. I am also not always at my peak performance. I almost always drop in strength and gain fat

Read more0

So you’ve been working out pretty consistently now for at least 6 weeks and you’ve seen some progress in your strength, fitness and maybe your body composition has even improved slightly - nice. But recently, you’ve shown little to no progress and so your motivation begins to wane. Your workout routine which you were so keen on before is getting bland and even boring. Time to change the workout routine and inject some new stimuli to

Read more0