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    Training Hard

    We all love to train hard. We love the feeling of working our asses off, yet I think training hard, truly training hard, is greatly misunderstood. Hours of media featuring Energy Drinks, Athletic Shoes, and awesome-sports-movies-action-montages has lead us to confuse training hard with intensity. We have this image in our head that training hard is finishing a workout sweaty and gassed, lying on the floor looking up at the ceiling like somebody just punched us in the face and stole all our money while quoting Jame Joyce. That outcome turns out to be  fairly easily achieved: just do 50 burpees as fast as you can without stopping... it will take you less than 5 minutes and if you really commit to not stopping you will finish on the ground regretting life.

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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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    Fitness and Money

    Last week I had a fantastic opportunity. I was invited to talk to a bunch of 8th graders about fitness and lifestyle habits. It is COVID times so I did not get to speak to them directly as I would have preferred, but I still loved every minute of it. I always thought they taught us a lot of good stuff in school, but very little of the most basic: money, fitness, nutrition, emotional intelligence, and interpersonal relationships. The fact I had the chance to change that for a bunch of kids, even if in a tiny way, felt great!

    Two great things came out of that talk. One of them is the post today. I usually feel ambivalent about my writings. I feel confident about this one. So much in fact that if you don't like it a lot and get something out of it, I will buy you a six-pack of your drink of choice. I am that bold!

    The second thing is I got a new nickname. The 8th graders call me Dr. Muscles. I worked hard for my Ph.D. I worked hard for my muscles. I liked Obi Juan, but this one is not magic. I e

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    Compassion, Autonomic Nervous Systems, HRV, Stress, Breathing and How to Win in Life

    This week's video is very useful. It is about all those things on the title and more. The main goal is to give you a framework and some tools on how to analyze your own behaviors. Understanding compassion as a physiological state and how to better use your fitness trackers is half the point.

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