How to skyrocket your gym progress: - Train in the afternoon/early evening (3PM-7PM). Core body temp peaks here, and so does strength - Training at night is super satisfying but can easily fuck up your sleep, as the stress hormone spike takes 1-3 hours to come down. Some people are way more sensitive to this than others. Do at your own risk - Warm up properly so that you can start strong in your first set. Long static stretches are trash tho. Ramp-up sets + mobility are the best warm up combo - Stop timing your rest. Rest intuitively instead. Some sets are harder than others, so rest should adapt accordingly - Consume intraworkout carbs + electrolytes. The boost from this is insane - Only go to true failure if volume is low. Aim to leave 1 rep in the tank if volume is higher - Stop egolifting, technique goes first. Egolifting gets you nowhere - Run 3-5 month blocks with the same days and exercises. Get brutally strong at them through progressive overload. Then, change them all and repeat - Track your lifts so that you can see if you're progressing or not. There are tons of phone apps that make this really simple - Aim for the maximum recoverable weekly volume for each muscle - Adapt to your life. Someone unemployed eating and resting all day can lift 5-6x a week effectively. Someone working full time probably can't. Recovery is part of the program, and if your lifts stall and everything aches, you should lower the volume - Start eating a lot more carbs in your diet. They will carry you to the win. And don't be scared, getting fat through carbs is difficult, much more when you're lifting constantly - Protect your sleep with your life. The most crucial part of your recovery

As I dove deeper into health I realized how essential glucose oxidation is Fixing your thyroid, gut, liver, or mitochondria all leads to the same place: Better glucose metabolism (and a shift away from fat metabolism) I just finished writing an article on why glucose is the best fuel, what happens when glucose metabolism breaks, and how to fix it and reap its benefits It's a little long, but it's a great read The link is down below!

Musical talent indicates genetic fitness and cognitive flexibility. Even pursuing or maintaining an artistic craft can boost one's energy and, consequently, IQ (Criscuolo et al., 2019). Peat observed that playing music or singing activates the brain in ways similar to speech, yet without the social inhibitions and defensive tensions that so often paralyze verbal discourse. This absence of social pressure lends music its restorative power. It offers an avenue of expression that bypasses armoring, as Peat pointed out that those who struggle with severe stuttering in speech typically find their fluency restored when they sing. As many of you know by now, birds maintain the highest metabolic rates of any vertebrates, generating the immense energy required for powered flight and migration. This heightened cellular metabolism and fine neural differentiation have equipped them with an efficient respiratory system and a dense brain with an expanded high vocal center (HVC). The HVC is the primary control region responsible for learning and executing complex motor patterns, most notably birdsong. A larger HVC volume directly correlates with a more complex song repertoire. Because producing intricate melody demands developmental success and strong immune health, females favor males with expansive repertoires--treating their song as an unfakable, costly signal of biological fitness (Pfaff et al., 2007). Many bird species amplify their songs with precise physical sounds such as rhythmic foot tapping, wing snaps, and beak rattling. The HVC coordinates these audio-visual spectacles, allowing birds to effectively "dance" to the music they create. Birdsong is inseparable from their high metabolic output, which supports complex courtship rituals and allows females to assess a male's health and, as I argued many times before, the energy needed to maintain a monogamous relationship. In essence, birds are nature's artists and romantics. For similar reasons, women, often colloquially referred to as "birds" in British slang, find musically talented men attractive because their musical ability functions as an "honest signal" of high energy and an unarmored state. In The Descent of Man, Charles Darwin (1871) proposed that musical expression preceded articulate language and evolved primarily through sexual selection. Because genuine artistic expression requires spontaneous motor coordination and intelligence, it cannot be mimicked through superficial calculation. In other words, musical talent cannot be faked, and the average pick-up artist cannot replicate the skills needed to create music or art. Building on his earlier observation that music bypasses physical armoring, Peat further noted that it creates an "enriched environment" driving neuroplasticity. This ability to forge new neural connections allows talented musicians to act as agents of healing, making them naturally magnetic in a world highly reactive to frequencies. This restorative power of sound brings us back to the birds. While their intricate melodies serve as an unfakable metabolic signal for courtship, to me, the most intriguing aspect of birdsong is that it does not function merely for reproduction or territorial defense but it also unifies offspring and signals environmental safety. For nestlings, a parent's steady, melodic song is an acoustic barometer of a predator-free habitat. When the forest falls dead silent, armoring takes hold for the young, and when the melody resumes, their nervous systems relax and spontaneity returns. Beyond loud territorial songs, birds rely on soft "contact calls"--intimate, rhythmic notes that maintain familial cohesion without drawing unwanted attention (Elie et al., 2010). These gentle frequencies calm the nest, signaling that a protective presence is near. The capacity to move freely and sing skillfully is a shared trait among great heroes of the past, who radiated abundant energy and soared to great heights, much like birds. Gérard de Lairesse's (ca. 1675–1680) painting (see below) depicts Achilles in a moment of introspection from Homer's Iliad (ca. 8th century B.C.E./1990, 9.185–191). Deeply alienated by Agamemnon’s authoritarian hubris, he withdraws from the Trojan War. Instead of fighting, he plays a lyre and sings "glories of men" (klea andrōn), recounting the deeds of past heroes while consciously choosing not to create his own legacy on the battlefield. In this moment, Achilles is not just a subject of epic poetry, but also a poet and creator of history himself. Achilles's immortality arises from his own rhythmic self-determination, expressed through action, art, and conscious inaction--for deliberate stillness can serve as a powerful refusal of authoritarianism. While martial violence can be conscripted by Agamemnon, an armored "king who devours his people" (1.231), spontaneous music and creative autonomy remain completely beyond the ruler's grasp. Plato (ca. 375 B.C.E./1991, 435a–441c) partitioned the soul into three parts: the rational head (logistikon), the spirited chest (thymoeides or "thumos"), and the appetitive gut (epithymetikon). Centuries later, Wilhelm Reich (1945) identified the counterpart to this spirited chest in the thoracic armor segment, observing alongside Elsworth Baker (1967) that chronic muscular tension in this area suffocates genuine emotional and artistic expressiveness. The chest cages deep emotions such as heartbreak and rage, and the arms and hands act as direct physical extensions of this segment. In unarmored musicians, energy flows freely from the center of the chest through the shoulders and down into the delicate nerves of each fingertip. When the chest is armored, however, the rhomboids and trapezius pull the shoulders backward in a permanent muscular attitude of "holding back" and spiteful resistance of "I won't" (Reich, 1945, p. 376). The limbs turn rigid and mechanical, losing the natural fluidity and buoyant mobility seen in singing birds. When energy flows unhindered through the chest, it ascends naturally into the cervical (neck) and oral segments, which govern the voice. Chronic spasms in the masseters lock the jaw, producing a flat, monotonous timbre, while constriction in the throat renders the voice high-pitched, strained, or weak. In other words, armoring in the deep cervical muscles acts as a dam, forcing the armored individual to literally "swallow down" tears, sobbing, or intense rage before they can reach the vocal cords (p. 375). Within the Greek camp--a claustrophobic environment dominated by factional posturing and dread--Achilles strikes his lyre, and the vibrational pulse of his unarmored heart cuts through the noise. His companion Patroclus sits across from him in quiet attunement. When Agamemnon’s envoys, Odysseus and Ajax, arrive to plead for his return, they stop short at the perimeter, momentarily disarmed by the presence of living music in a place prepared for slaughter. Much like a bird's contact call, Achilles' song establishes calm amidst a battlefield of frantic destruction. Reich noted that a lack of musicality can be a defense mechanism against feeling. He describes a patient who, appearing completely unmusical, had repressed his senses as a child because the emotional sensations triggered by his abusive mother’s singing were too intense for his armored self to handle. It is telling that Agamemnon sends Odysseus and Ajax in his place to offer material bribes, as he possesses neither a song of his own nor the biological energy required to make a single note of genuine human contact. While Achilles remains perfectly in tune with his body, yielding to his lyre to give voice to grief and living memory, Agamemnon, haunted by his own mother’s sexual betrayal with his uncle Thyestes, cannot even bear to be present for the song, remaining tightly armored and trapped within the camp's discord.

Algae make this compound to survive UV and oxidative stress Inside your body, it protects EVERY cell membrane it touches Astaxanthin is a carotenoid that can't be turned into vitamin A (which is a good thing) It’s mainly made by microalgae (like Haematococcus pluvialis) that produce it to protect themselves from UV and oxidative stress What makes it different from other antioxidants is its shape It’s long enough to span the entire cell membrane, meaning it protects the fats across the whole cell membrane Once there, it neutralizes reactive oxygen species like singlet oxygen, and free radicals like peroxyl and hydroxyl radicals These are the same molecules that would start lipid peroxidation. Astaxanthin doesn't let them Other things astaxanthin does: - Unlike beta-carotene, it doesn’t turn pro-oxidant at higher doses - It builds up, and unlike beta-carotene, that’s a good thing. More protection against lipid peroxidation - It crosses the blood-brain barrier and the blood-retina barrier, so it protects the brain and eyes too Human studies have shown reduced markers of lipid peroxidation, less eye strain, and improvements in skin moisture and elasticity from astaxanthin Common supplementation doses are 4-12 mg. Most of the effective trials used 6-12 mg. Always taken with a fatty meal since it’s fat-soluble

As I dove deeper into health I realized how essential glucose oxidation is Fixing your thyroid, gut, liver, or mitochondria all leads to the same place: Better glucose metabolism (and a shift away from fat metabolism) I just finished writing an article on why glucose is the best fuel, what happens when glucose metabolism breaks, and how to fix it and reap its benefits It's a little long, but it's a great read The link is down below!

As I dove deeper into health I realized how essential glucose oxidation is Fixing your thyroid, gut, liver, or mitochondria all leads to the same place: Better glucose metabolism (and a shift away from fat metabolism) I just finished writing an article on why glucose is the best fuel, what happens when glucose metabolism breaks, and how to fix it and reap its benefits It's a little long, but it's a great read The link is down below!