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
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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
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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
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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
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So you have aspirations to get fit this year. Maybe you have written down some new year’s resolutions to go back to the gym. You may have been a regular gym-goer in the not-to-distant past or maybe you were even an athlete at one point. But you aren’t exercising now and you can’t seem to get started. You know you should because you constantly hear your friends mentioning how they run 10K every morning; or
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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
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If you’ve come to one of our classes before, then you would have probably heard me say “PUSH TO FAILURE”. This is ingrained in our training philosophy because of one main ideology - stimulus equals adaptation. If you’re trying to make your body stronger (ie. adapt), then you need to apply a stimulus (ie. training) that is strong enough so that the body can hear it and then make the necessary improvements to build up.
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It’s not easy kicking ass in Shanghai. There are so many challenges to overcome in this megalopolis like dealing with the heavy traffic, food safety, pollution, the highly competitive environment, the transient nature of the city, the temptations of all the indulgences that has made Shanghai infamous! That’s why we all need a social support network to back us up and to keep us going! I’ve written about how powerful a community can be for
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Entering China, lululemon style You may be surprised to hear that lululemon’s Unroll China event is their main event to showcase to the world that they’ve officially entered the China market. That’s because they’ve been very slowly, but deliberately planting the seeds of their core values in Shanghai and Beijing for the last four years! I remember that early beginning very distinctly because they reached out to me before they even had a store, a
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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
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