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    What I have learned from coaching ... so far

    I arrived to coaching after teaching at the college level for fourteen years. I am a voracious learner. I loved (and still do love) universities, and I loved the idea of getting paid to create knowledge and help others learn. However, during all those years in academia, I always felt there was something missing. Despite being surrounded by amazing people, both good students and brilliant colleagues, I always felt lonely. Teaching in a university and academic research are solitary tasks. The whole building -the physical and the institution- is founded on medieval and early modern ideas. Books, authors, and teachers are the main players of the game, and everything revolves around them. It took me years of research to understand that universities by conception are not made for students, universities are made for authors. It was when I started coaching that I understood all this. It was really after spending thousands of hours within the walls of my garage teaching people the basics a human movement literacy that I saw what I felt was missing.

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    Fatigue is Hyperbolic and How to Pace

    In some of the previous posts, I have talked a lot about the idea that a good workout should leave you energized rather than destroyed. Not always, sometimes we have to go to the limits to learn what those limits are. But in general, getting above your threshold more than producing physiological adaptation produces fatigue. And fatigue is really not that cool. The video today presents one of the many ways to look at and understand fatigue. This video is excellent for my endurance athletes out there. Watch it and let me know what you think!

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    What I Learned at The 2019 CrossFit Games

    Last week I got to spend one week in Madison, Wisconsin, attending the CrossFit Health Conference and the CrossFit Games. It was a very rewarding experience from beginning to end. I got some good stories about meeting “famous” people and their weird unexpected quirks. I witnessed amazing athletic performances and got to hear some of...

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    My Two Main Principles in Fitness and Nutrition

    The Strong Story Hypothesis states that the mechanism that enables us to tell, understand, and recombine stories is what separates us, humans, from primates. In other words that storytelling is what makes our thinking brainz special. The exciting thing is that Patrick Winston, its author, was an engineer and a professor at MIT, not an anthropologist or a social sciences guy. For many years he was the head of the Artificial Intelligence Lab. So when he says that storytelling gives us an evolutionary advantage over primates, that is meaningful. He gets to this conclusion by asking the right question. You see, the AI field was always trying to answer the question: can computers reason like humans? Winston made another question, more elegant, more interesting. What makes humans different than primates? Why are we capable of more?

    Touché!

    Nothing like a good question asked at the right time. In the video below, I present to you the principles that guide my practice in fitness and nutrition. I show them in the form of questions too. I believe this is the most effective way to approach such a complex problem. When you feel sluggish and unproductive today, instead of heading to Facebook, get this video a watch and let me know what you think.

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    Slay you should and Slay you must

    There is this feeling you get when you go to the gym and everything goes your way. I call it The Slayer, because it feels as if Beyonce did a Metal Song: fucking EPIC. You get it in one of those days when the warm up feels light and easy. Your technique sets are a display of grace and control. When you hit your workout the weights move as if they were feathers, your breathing matches your movement in perfect harmony, your transitions are smooth and short, and the only time you trip in the whole workout you stay composed AF and correct immediately with a smile on your face. You fucking slay like Queen-B. Heck! Even your hair game is on point! You finish on the ground exhausted but proud: I am so motherfucking fit, you think to yourself.

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