You're Not Broken (But The Fitness Industry Thinks You Are).

12 years ago, I couldn’t exercise without pain.

As of today, I've been pain-free for well over two years, and I’ve helped dozens of other people overcome their injuries and pains too.

Here's the thing, I may be presumptive in sharing my story of how I took myself from feeling broken to feeling indestructible…

Because I believe you can do it, too.

I was 18, and I had just partially torn my left hamstring.

I was training kickboxing with a friend - as any hot blooded teenager would.

It was just a practice session!

It wasn't even a competition... there was no credit or glory to be had.

The injury left me limping on one leg for a whole month, I felt crippled and repeatedly stabbed every time I tried climbing the stairs.

Fun stuff.

This wasn’t even the first injury that I've suffered...

For months leading up to this, I was having shoulder aches and elbow tendonitis, in both arms, from all the old school "no pain, no gain" style of training.

To make the matters worse, I also tore my chest muscle a year later (outside the gym).

Not yours truly, but of a very similar nature and severity as mine.

So, regardless of what exercise or movement I did, something always bothered me.

If it wasn’t one of the problems above, it was something else…

My lower back hurting horribly just from standing still.

My hips feeling chronically ‘tight’ while seated.

My knees and elbows creaking like a 1000 year old rusty hinge.

You get the point.

I was in pain all the time... And I didn’t know what to do.

I felt broken.

The worst thing?

Everywhere I looked, I was told my pains could be solved by {insert fancy or sexy sounding product/training method}.

I spent thousands of hard-earned ringgits trying out these "quick-fix/hack."

One program told me that my issue was that I wasn’t breathing correctly.

Another system told me that my spine and rib was “out of alignment”.

And another told me that my diet was the problem.

A few others claimed that I had a weak {insert muscle name here} and a tight {insert joint name here}.

Sounds familiar?

Either way, nothing worked.

While some of these "quick-fix/hacks" gave me relief, albeit temporary. None of them gave me any lasting positive results.

I was hopping from the newest program or supplement to another, akin to a dog always chasing the next shiny object.

Everywhere on the internet, I was constantly bombarded by fitness gurus who told me that I was broken and they alone had the answers that I don’t.

And then one day, something unexpected happened…

I stumbled across a YouTube video of Chinese Olympic weightlifters doing barbell squats and deadlifts in a way that I hadn’t ever seen before.

Deadlifts had always hurt and scared me, but I decided to give this technique a go…

And bam.

No more back pain. No more hamstring pain.

I was, as the internet these day say, shooketh.

I did the same with other exercises, but with a few minor tweaks that allowed me to stimulate my muscles with zero pain or ache.

My thigh muscles felt jellied - in a good way - and for the first time in a long time, my knees and back did not.

This experience was massively profound.

It sent me spiraling down the rabbit hole of scientific literature, graduate-level courses and textbooks on exercise physiology and anatomy.

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Why, how did those adjustments impact the way that I experienced the movements?

These questions drove me to learn voraciously.

So I started studying everything that I could get my hands on…

Every course, textbook, research paper, and online event that I could access at the time.

Every piece of material that I read taught me something slightly different…

One day, I learnt about the hip joint

The next, I learnt about the muscles that act on the hip.

The next, the ligaments and tendons that affect the hips and knees.

The more I learnt, the more I things I discovered I don't know...

And the more things on the internet I realized were utterly wrong...

It was incredibly cathartic and depressing at the same time.

Why?

The more I applied what I learnt, to myself and my clients, the better the results I experienced.

It prompted me to think…

What if our body wasn’t the problem?

What if we weren’t broken and weak?

What if we've been brain-washed into this narrative?

We are NOT the problem.

The misinformation, the gimmicky-marketing, the clueless fit-fluencers are the problem all along

As I stayed current with science-based training and nutrition principles, I continued getting better results.

After a few more years, I had completely eliminated all my exercise-related pains and was gaining more muscle than I ever had.

The best part?

I started helping others, for real, this time.

People with YEARS of pain could now effectively reduce it by 90% within 2 to 3 months of structured personal training.

People that had experienced the same kinds of pain that I had, except for 5 years or more.

People who were sold a story identical to mine - that they were broken, fragile, and incapable of improving without some "super special, secret, corrective exercises".

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So, how did I do it?

How did I teach others to do the same?

Through an in-depth understanding of anatomy and physics. And how they influence one another.

My academic background of mechanical engineering gave me a huge edge with physics. But the other half, anatomy, took a lot of work still.

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If you’re someone who's fortunate enough to have never experienced the types of injuries and pains that I and many others did, I’m very happy for you.

You’re truly one of the lucky ones.

But let's try to be empathetic and see this from a different perspective:

Imagine that you’re trying to learn to cook, because your food tasted terrible.

And some guy on the internet goes:

“If your food tastes like s***, it’s because you need more Ajinomoto (MSG, basically salt)! Once you add that, you’ll never have to worry about crappy-tasting food again!”

So, you add Ajinomoto to all of your food.

Maybe some food now tastes better, but only marginally.

Because, fundamentally, you don’t learn the basic principles of cooking…

You don’t learn what's MSG. What amount of MSG is appropriate. Which foods require more or less of it. Or what combinations of foods and cooking method makes MSG more or less important.

Inevitably, you encounter a food that still tastes terrible, despite the added MSG.

Eventually, you begin searching for the next special thing, again...

This time, you find another guy that says “F**k MSG! MSG is not the answer! All you REALLY need for your food to taste good FOREVER is organic sea salt. Organic sea salt is the magic!”

The same pattern repeats, again.

This is what it’s like to be a human being who doesn’t understand why they’re always in pain.

So MANY “internet experts” are all selling you a single solution that promises you everything, but delivers nothing.

It’s the good old “teach a man to fish” parable; "give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and you feed him for a lifetime”.

Here are examples where fitness/health gurus gave a fish but did not teach anything:

“Having a pelvic tilt is causing your back pain. Fix your pelvic tilt and fix your back pain.”

“Uneven shoulders is causing your shoulders to get hurt repeatedly. Fix your asymmetrical shoulders and you’ll fix your shoulder pain.”

“Your left glute medius isn’t activating. If you fix your left glute medius activation, you will fix your back pain forever.”

“Your feet is pronated, leading to femur internal rotation, left hip rotated forward, right rib pronated forward, left shoulder elevated, and the whole shebang... And that's why you need to buy this overpriced orthopedic shoes!”

These are all REAL examples of messages that I've encountered and bought into.

When we are desperate for relief, the too-good-to-be-true solutions are the easiest ones we buy into.

This kind of messaging creates a harmful narrative…

A narrative that claims traditional strength training/weight training is not good enough, useless, and wait for it..."dysfunctional".

A narrative that sells us “corrective exercises” as the only thing that can “fix us”.

A narrative that constantly promotes fear and fragility, and disempowers people from critical thinking and science-based knowledge.

These are the stories we encounter on a daily basis to the point it's now ingrained in our mindset and we accept it to be normal, without question.

How did we get here?

People constantly talking about

How they lack “mobility"

How their muscles are “tight”

How weight training make joints "stiff"

How big muscles make us slow or "dysfunctional"

And the list goes on.

Take away the presumptions and all you're left with is just a human being using resistance training to stimulate your muscles, tendons, joints, and bones to get stronger and thus, less prone to injury.

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So, pray tell, how EXACTLY is strength/weight training “dysfunctional”?

How is something that most effectively build STRONGER and TOUGHER muscles, connective tissues, and bones, considered "dysfunctional"?

It is not.

And that’s the thing.

I didn’t have any issues to begin with.

It was just another make-believe marketing gimmick that I've been sold.

Here’s my journey of redemption:

I emptied my cup.

I let go of my old beliefs and "sacred cows".

I learned about each of the “major” joints in the human body.

I learned about each of the “major” muscles in the human body - where they originate, where they attach, what happens when they contract and so on.

Then I learned about the underlying principles and properties of forces and resistance.

Lastly, I applied and integrate all of these elements to formulate a soundly-executed exercise.

There were no fancy tricks.

No gimmicks.

No false promises.

Just a return to the fundamental truths that constitutes human movement.

And what I learnt, contrary to popular belief, is that there are no "bad/dangerous" exercises...

Only movements and exercises that our body aren't accustomed to doing.

Just pause any football or basketball game, and you will see athletes in all manners of insanely contorted positions.

They are capable of the most mind-blowing physical feats imaginable, yet they aren't dropping like flies from aches and pains like the average person does.

The main factors that determine how likely any exercise is detrimental or beneficial to us are load and volume management, recovery, and rarely, individual anthropometrics.

We can perform exercises in a way that's more or less appropriate for an individual.

There are rules that govern which exercises may tend to feel better or worse for individuals on average.

Ultimately, understanding human anatomy, physics, and exercise was the answer for me.

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It’s why I’ve spent years accumulating this knowledge...

To help the old me.

To create a better future me.

To create a more informed world.

To impart to others the knowledge that I wish I had all of those years ago.

To help others like me breakthrough their struggles.

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If there is one main takeaway from this story, this is it:

Quick fixes do not exist. Period.

If you do not address the beliefs and systems which you currently operate on, you will always be addressing a symptom, not the root cause.

And you will wonder why everyone else has “the answer” that you don’t.

The truth?

There is no answer.

There are only better questions, which may only be answered by dedicating ourselves to facing reality as it is.

"You can ignore reality, but reality sure as hell will not ignore you." - Anonymous.

You are not weak.

You are not broken.

You are not hopeless.

You are stronger than the chains that bind you.