Issue #26

How to fix your knees, avoid fitness burnout, rules to set you free, and the optimization rabbit hole.

Read time: 3.4 minutes

Hey Warriors,

The point of any form of physical training is to improve your life and well-being.

It shouldn’t leave you feeling broken, chronically tired, and relying on kinesiology tape wrapped around every one of your joints.

Strength training can fix some types of pain.
But if you have fragile joints, weak connective tissue, and lack flexibility, you can’t keep beating up your body and expect things to get better.

This is why prehab work, like conditioning and mobility exercises, is so important.

And you must complete that work before you increase resistance in your training.

If you missed that step, it’s never too late to take a break and go back to the basics for a while.

You can only come back stronger.

If you need any help with your training, please let me know by replying to this email and I’ll share my answer with everyone.

Now let’s start! 💪

1. Knees Prehab/Rehab.

Cracking knees, painful squats, lack of mobility and saying goodbye to running…

These are all sad consequences of fragile and deconditioned knees.

Apart from the discomfort, it is stopping you from practicing most forms of cardio, as well as strength training of the biggest muscles in your body.

This means you’re missing out on 2 great opportunities to increase your healthspan and longevity.

Fortunately, a simple 5-minute routine can help you fix this over the weeks, and will allow you to run, cycle, squat, and jump pain-free again.

Here’s the routine I’ve been using for years and which has improved the life of every client I’ve tried it with.

Click this link for the full YouTube video and instructions.

2. Fitness burnout is real.

Don’t work out on every day off or you’ll burn out and quit.

Training is work and it’s often better to keep it for working days.

It surely feels like a good idea to schedule your workouts on weekends.
Lack of time becomes a less valid excuse on days off and you might believe you’ll have more energy too.

But your body sees it in a different way.
For it, it’s like not getting a single day off.
And so it goes for your brain by the way.

Always remember you’re in this for the long term.
It may seem hard at first to get up early and work out before you go to the office, but you’ll quickly get used to it.

Dividing your week between days where you work and train hard, and days where you rest fully and are 100% present for your family will be much more sustainable, and therefore more efficient.

Your work days just got harder, but your life just got better.

3. Rules give you freedom.

Rules make life easier, rules make you free.

This is an old paradox.
To those who rather go with the flow, people who have a lot of rules for themselves may look stiff and imprisoned.
As if all the fun in life had been taken away from them.

I just see it as another short term vs long term way of thinking.

In fact, people with rules have more free time, achieve more every day, reach their goals faster, enjoy more freedom to think or act spontaneously, and finish their work earlier.

This is why you need to plan your workouts, your nutrition, your sleep schedule and everything else well ahead of time.
Then stick to these rules as if they’d been set by your superior or the law.

That’s how you find time to work out, but also time to rest.
That’s how you can sustain your efforts and reach your goals, while others keep taking one step forward and 2 steps back.

Rules can make you save the next 10 years, and help you live longer and healthier.
Rules make you fit.

4. Watch out for this rabbit hole.

Beware of the overcomplication from experts.

All the studies, thousands of articles about nutrients you don’t know, the latest sleep hack or recovery method.

All this information overload.

It’s easy to get sucked into a never-ending thread of “optimization” tips.

This is how you keep learning and never start.

Planning is the mother of procrastinating.

You know the best optimization tip? Simplify.

Reduce fitness to its essence and start.

Is your brain not busy enough with work?

Why would you add to it by learning a thousand tips which, all combined, would make a 1% difference?

It is time to put this phone down and go take care of the other 99%.

It’s simple, just move.

I hope you found some useful tips and motivation in today's edition.

Please share your feedback and help me improve my content for everyone!

A great way to do this is by replying to this email with a personal question you have about fitness.

Thanks for reading and see you next week!

- Nico

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