Continuing from our last blog on building successful habits that support your purpose, we now get into the the essence of achieving great things. To achieve great things or even just personal goals usually require some time, energy and skill in performing some task. Let’s get into the specifics a bit. Time is a funny thing. One perspective is that time is the common denominator for everyone. It is the one currency that remains a

Read more804

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 more1

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

I’m just going to say it: if you’re not targeting to sleep at least 7 hours every night, then you don’t know how to prioritize your health. Although, our main focus at Olive Branch is fitness, nutrition, and psychology; the over-arching theme has always been wellness performance; and you simply cannot talk about wellness if you don’t get enough sleep. If you have been following my blog, then you know the importance of exercise, nutrition,

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

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

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

Less than a week remains as Olive Branchers make final preparations before this Saturday morning’s Spartan Race! Some of us may be feeling super excited, especially those who have done long distance sports or obstacle courses before, but others with much less experience in these settings may be feeling a bit nervous - anxious even! For a lot of us who are trying a new event for the first time, it can feel daunting and

Read more0