The Body Mass Index (BMI) has long been used by doctors and health professionals as the main screening tool to determine your health risk of metabolic disease. Even to this date, your physical check-up examination will tell you your BMI results. Unfortunately, studies have shown it to be highly unreliable and that there are better screens out there for you to check if you are at risk. Firstly, why is the BMI screen unreliable? The
Read more0
It is inevitable that we will all encounter some hardships in our lives. Even Buddhist philosophy claims that life is suffering in the Four Noble Truths. Sometimes, life gets a little harder and other times life can get a lot harder. What is certain is that you will undoubtedly experience many more hardships to come. And they come in many different forms. It can come from voluntary means like choosing to eat the healthier meal
Read more0
Welcome back from Chinese New Year holidays! We continue from our last blog about the powers of mindfulness. Hopefully, you are now convinced of its usefulness in your life. I’m sure spending Chinese New Years with your family has given you plenty of opportunities to practice mindfulness; especially when handling provocative questions from family members on the status of your love life! So, let’s get started. The training tool we will use to become more
Read more0
Are you mindful? Recently, there has been a huge focus on the word mindfulness. Why is it such a big deal? Is it really that useful or is it just another one of those hippie, healthy fads from California that will come and go? Here’s Olive Branch’s take on mindfulness. It’s a superpower. Except that it isn’t a modern thing. It’s been around for ages as described in the earliest literatures of Buddhism, which existed
Read more1
In a previous blog, I wrote about how to motivate yourself to train during the winter months. This time, I’d like to share a few points why I actually prefer to train in the winter! 1. There are less distractions during the winter! Because it’s so cold outside, there are less events held outdoors - less barbecues, less, outdoor concerts, less beach volleyball days! People organize less social outings so that gives you more
Read more0
I’ve blogged a lot about the power of the community, and why it’s so important to have a social support network. There’s even a study that says improving your social support network is valued up to £85,000, and your health worth a whopping £300,000! Okay! You’re ready for a change in lifestyle, you’re motivated and ready to kick some ass in life! But how do you go about building one up so you and your
Read more0
With less than a week to go before the the debut of Tough Mudder in China, Team Olive Branch is ready to take to the obstacle course and test what they’re made of. It’s only fitting that this week’s blog post be centered around being ‘tough’. So what does it mean to be tough anyways? From Merriam-Webster Dictionary: physically and emotionally strong : able to do hard work, to deal with harsh conditions, etc. Sounds
Read more0
Don't want to build muscle? This is a very common question that I get asked especially by women when I suggest that they add some strength training into their routine. From my experience, it’s very hard to convince many women to build muscle. This may be related to a mild stigma in society against women building muscle for fear of looking “butch”. But another reason many women hesitate
Read more0
Hey guys, I’ll be writing a new line of blog posts called: “Misconceptions in Exercise & Nutrition”. They will be shorter in nature and are aimed at debunking the misconceptions about fitness and nutrition that are widespread in the media and society. The first one in this series is the common belief that you have to sweat a lot to get a superior workout. Now if you are
Read more1
The Psychology of High Intensity Training Following my previous blog entry on Attitude, I am continuing on this theme of the mental aspect of training by writing this blog post on the psychology of high intensity training. Notice, I am specific here in that I’m only talking about high intensity training and not other forms of training as the psychology involved in high intensity training is different than say doing a 100km trail hike
Read more0