Forget the weight loss for a second. Look at the GLOW UP✨ This is my mentee Gurdeep. In a year, he went from 122 kg to 88 kg. 34 kg drop but see the change in his skin! A visible sign of deep metabolic healing. A thread on how we rebuilt his metabolism from the ground up🧵

Some movements don't let you fake strength. A heavy leg press is strength. But it's not the whole definition of it. There's being strong in one fixed direction. And then there's being strong when you have to balance, shift, control the load, and still move well through a position you don't normally train. At some point, strength has to exist outside the most supported, predictable patterns too. That's where you get exposed. And I think that's the part people avoid. Once you're strong in one direction, it's easy to assume that's the whole of what you've got. But the body isn't one-dimensional. We get good at one version of ourselves and settle there, because anything new makes us a beginner again.

One of our clients came to us recovering from necrotizing pancreatitis. If you know what that is, you know just how much his body had already been through. He was insulin dependent now, but he wasn't looking to just get by. He wanted to get properly fit again, to feel strong in his body and get his quality of life back, condition and all. And coaching someone who's injecting insulin while they train takes real understanding. There's a lot going on between his insulin, his food and his training that you have to get right. So we were careful in a way most people never see. His insulin peaked a few hours after his dose, and if that peak hit during his workout, his muscles pulling sugar plus the insulin in him could send his blood sugar too low. So we built his training around his insulin, not the other way round. For the first month we did nothing fancy, just checked his blood sugar before, straight after, and an hour later, until we really understood how his body responded. Anything to do with his doses, we left to his doctor. Months later we looked at his progress photos and it was hard to believe it was the same person. The weight around his middle gone, his back and shoulders filled out, blood sugar steadier than the day he started. His was an extreme case. But this is how we work with anyone training around something medical. Down to the smallest detail.

This is the fitness industry's whole problem in 75 seconds. Training for the room's reaction is a trap. The audience is never satisfied and never permanent. Build an internal anchor or you're chasing approval forever. You can always tell someone's maturity in a field by what they choose to talk about.

A client of ours had her baby last week. She got through the whole labour on just breathing and movement. But the part I keep thinking about happened 8 months before that. When she came to us for her pregnancy, she didn't come alone. Her husband signed up the same week. Both of them training, both taking it seriously, before the baby ever arrived. People treat pregnancy like it's only the mother's job to prepare. She changes her food, does the classes, carries all of it, and he mostly watches from the side. But a newborn is physical for both of you. The carrying, the broken sleep, the months on your feet. Through her pregnancy, he was the one giving her counter pressure when her pelvis and lower back were aching late on. And it doesn't stop at the birth. The food on the table, whether the parents move or sit still, all of it becomes the child's normal long before he/she gets a say in it. So if you're planning a baby, both of you should be getting strong for it. Not just her. It's the first thing your child inherits.

Adding the part that actually explains why a "normal" LDL can be so misleading here. The LDL-C on a standard blood panel only shows you the cholesterol mass, i.e. the cholesterol packed inside your LDL particles. It does not count how many particles you have. Those are two different things. When your triglycerides run high, your LDL is more likely to shift into smaller, denser particles that each carry less cholesterol. Some studies show this pattern beginning around 133 mg/dL, while most clinical labs flag triglycerides at 150 fasting or 175 non-fasting. Either way, the point is the same: your LDL-C can come back looking normal while the actual number of atherogenic particles in your blood is higher than you'd think. And it's the number of those particles getting into your artery walls that drives plaque, not how much cholesterol each one carries. ApoB counts the particles directly. When ApoB and LDL-C disagree, the particle count usually tracks your risk better. ApoB usually isn't on a standard panel. Ask for it.

We don't sell devices or blood panels. We don't partner with anyone who does. So we can be honest about the science of health.

Almost every other health company has a built-in conflict of interest. When your revenue comes from a device or a blood test, you have a direct incentive to make the science say whatever sells the product - to insist that sensor's data, or that panel's markers, truly matter. We carry no such conflict of interest. We don't sell devices or blood tests. And we maintain FreeGym-Wiki - an open-source, extremely rigorous repository on the science of health, where every claim is cited and every edit is tracked, open for anyone to audit or correct. And there's a second reason, just as structural: we coach. A coach is judged by one thing - whether you actually get better. Distort the science and your client doesn't improve; a coach who can't deliver results has nothing. So we don't merely lack an incentive to bend the science - we have every incentive to get it exactly right. That's why we can tell you a marker doesn't matter, a test isn't worth it, or a device won't help, because no sale rides on the answer, and our only real product is your progress. This is one of our biggest strengths: no conflict of interest pulling us to distort the science, and a coaching relationship that forces us to be honest about it - an honesty the others structurally can't match.

Can't believe I have to write this, but I've heard it from more than one doctor now. "Nothing to worry about high triglycerides" And if you're one of those people who's indifferent about high triglycerides, listen. Worry about it. High triglycerides can be one of the earliest warning signs of cardiometabolic dysfunction - higher risk of heart disease, type 2 diabetes, fatty liver. They tend to travel with belly fat, high blood sugar, and high blood pressure too. And your LDL-C can read completely normal while the number of harmful particles in your blood is actually high. So a normal LDL-C doesn't automatically clear you. If your triglycerides are up, especially more than once, ask for ApoB and look at your non-HDL-C. Don't just relax because the LDL-C looked fine.

What happened with Fable today is something I wrote about in a Facebook post back on July 7, 2020. Here's the post: In a world where every country with some resources is growing linearly, a handful will grow exponentially because they have made very wise decisions at precisely the right time. In the era of AI and quantum computing, missing the mark by even a small margin means you're out of the race forever - you’ll never get another chance to catch up. Welcome to the single-elimination tournament era of tech and science! In that case, you're left with only one option: since you're too weak to do anything, just watch as they walk into uncharted territory with a blindfold on, make a massive mistake, and end up hurting themselves badly in the process. That’s a very sadistic way to look at it. And yet, you can never be sure that their mistake won’t hurt you just as much as it hurt them. Take this pandemic, for example! When it comes to science and technological development, it's not too late yet - but it will be soon. Priorities need to be fixed. Religious countries and their citizens are going to suffer the most.

Why get strong at all, if you're not an athlete or chasing a certain look? Because strength is one of the biggest reserves your body has. In medicine we call this Physiologic reserve. Meaning - how much your body can lose and still keep working. A fall, an illness, surgery, aging, trauma none of them ask how you looked. They ask how much your body can withstand and still recover from. And that reserve is built years before you need it, by people who chose to get strong while they still had the choice. Most people treat strength as optional, right up until their body makes it urgent. So if you don't train at all, at least stop assuming the body you have today is the one that carries you through what's ahead

When someone says they're going to make your biomarkers and wearable data talk to each other, run. They don't know shit about health and fitness.

A beginner sees many separate facts. An expert sees fewer, deeper patterns.

New section, same standard. I've started writing Biomarkers for FreeGym Wiki. What a standard lipid panel actually tells you. Whether LDL is really causal. ApoB vs LDL-C. Why fasting glucose misses early insulin resistance. Why fasting insulin still isn't a standard test. Open-source, every claim linked to its source. No takes, no vibes. Just what the papers show. 712 citations. Every one earned.

A normal fasting glucose on labs can fool a lot of people. They see that number, assume their blood sugar is sorted, and move on. But you can be insulin resistant with a perfectly normal glucose. Thanks to your pancreas, it's working overtime, making more and more insulin to keep it looking fine. Until one day it can't keep up, and the glucose finally climbs. And this can go on for 10 years before it ever shows up on a test.

Some people defend wearable scores the same way others defend homeopathy. It feels like a new-age form of pseudoscience.

My man cave is essentially a lab, a gym, and a workstation rolled into one. Stopped buying hard-copy books after 2009.

Polymaths don't memorize fields. They model them. The trick isn't remembering more. It's forgetting well.

Dips build a kind of pressing strength most machines can't touch. You're pressing your full bodyweight through a deep range and holding it stable the whole way. That's functional pressing strength you can actually use. But dips can also trash your shoulders if you do them wrong, and a lot of people do. The problem is almost always the bottom, where the shoulder is most exposed, loaded deep and stretched in a position. If you lack active shoulder extension, gravity is just going to tear through your connective tissue at the bottom of the rep. You don't have to avoid the movement, but you do have to respect it. Keep your shoulders down and packed. Only go as deep as you can actually control, and earn that depth over time. And if your shoulder stability and mobility aren't there yet, build those first. Get it right and few things build pressing strength like a clean dip. Just don't let your ego pick the depth.