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
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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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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
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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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I’ve blogged a lot about mental toughness (you can read about them here, here, here, here, here, and here), but I’m going to start the new year with a Member Spotlight blog on a Olive Branch member, a mentor and a friend, Cary Cheung. A story on real mental toughness put into practice. Although Cary doesn’t regularly attend ACT class here in the Shanghai Olive Branch studio, he does train ACT regularly at his home
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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 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
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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
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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
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