Health and Fitness

Feb 19, 2024

Welcome to the Health and Fitness section of the Guardian Academy knowledge center.

We will be updating this soon. Subscribe if you the updates directly to your inbox.

FIRST…

If you want to learn about fitness, nutrition, health, and longevity…it’s helpful to know what learning is and how to increase your intelligence.

This article breaks down the most useful and practical definitions of both we’ve ever seen.

Reading the article above has increased results for anyone we’ve ever talked to that has adopted the definitions/frame presented.

Core Contributors and Guardians that apply TGA principles or have aligned principles in their fitness, health and wellness practice(s):

You can follow Nic Peterson’s journey to apply TGA principles to fitness here.

This list will grow, this is just a great place to start. Dan and Gabrielle both have GREAT books to get started if you like to read.

Below is a post from Nic Peterson breaking down how he is thinking about fitness and starting a new journey:

The Guardian Academy¹ is a principle-based program.

The focus is on understanding fundamental principles, recognizing the patterns as they appear in your life and mastering the skill of applying them to remove constraints.

In business, relationships, fitness endeavors, investing, etc it’s really the same few things over and over again - but they present themselves differently.

Which brings us here - to this newsletter.

Last night I posted this in the Guardian Academy group:

Principles: it’s the same stuff over and over if you learn to see the patterns

I’m thinking about rebuilding and entirely new fitness methodology - reasoning from principle all the way to application

And testing it on…. Myself of course

If you know my history you know I’ve done this in the past to:

- go pro in strongman in 2013

- total elite at 242 and 220 in2014 (was top five all all time for like three days lol)

- build companies in multiple different industries

I spent five years developing a methodology for fitness from 2015 until 2020 already, but I’m going to rebuild it from the ground up - re-reason through each aspect of the training, nutrition, recovery etc.

If there’s interest I’ll share the process (the reasoning, reasons and conclusions) and results as an example of pulling principles down to practical.

Last time around everyone said and thought was crazy because the methodology ended up being so different than what anyone was talking about, but it worked okay (photos below)

I have a feeling this time around will be even weirder.

Ps. The tentative plan will require less than 90 minutes a week in the gym. That may change as data changes

Some important things to know:

I am not a fitness professional - so I am not going to try and sell you anything nor am I going to waste energy arguing. If something works for you, it works for you. Your real world proof is always better than someone else’s theory.
I will not update this frequently because… see #1. Life is busy, I am just sharing so that the people that are interested can see how I think about applying principles and the results.

When I have time, I’ll lay down the foundation or the base reasoning about where I am starting and why.

In the meantime, I’m just copying and pasting some comments from the original post and my responses plus a general concept or principle that might be useful. Again, I m not making an argument that I am right or this is correct, I am just showing how I choose to think about this stuff.

1. ANGLES

It's those delts that make no sense.... like how?

honestly, it’s just about understanding what lengthened and shortened delta actually look like

And with delts, in particular, understanding and paying attention to the distance from the axis.

Most people think they’re working delts and they’re… not lol

I just did a lot of kettlebell presses like Pavel told me to. I mean, it kinda worked.

which angle changes the most in a kettlebell press?

Hint: the angle of your elbow

Which muscle changes the angle of the elbow?

Hint: not the delts.

Triceps make the angle more obtuse, biceps shortening makes the angle more acute.

Most overhead pressing is more tricep than delt. Again, the triceps shortening straighten the elbow.

Super basic once you learn to see it as levers and pulleys instead of moving weight through space

Concept: Muscles basically do one thing: shorten or contract. If you move something, a muscle (or muscles) is shortening. When you curl, you will see your bicep shorten. If you extend your arm, the bicep is lengthening because the tricep is shortening. The bicep or tricep shortening changes the angle of the elbow.

You can learn 8-10 angles to pay attention to that will inform you of what’s really going on. Here’s how to figure it out on your own:

Learn what it looks like to lengthen and shorten a muscle (it’s insertion points will tell you where to start)
Shorten it and see what angle changes.

The way MOST people do overhead presses has very little shoulder activation at all - which is one of the reasons people are blown away by big shoulders - they never learned what a felt actually does.

Learn more about angles in the footnotes (video and audio)1

2. STRENGTH, MUSCLE, MOBILITY

There were a few comments on this, so I’m just gonna share my opinion.

Lifting heavier weights is not necessarily a function of being stronger. I think that’s where the confusion is.

If you want to bench press more, I can fix your mechanics to give you a mechanical advantage (leverage) and you will bench press more - but you didn’t get any stronger in the five minutes it took to teach you.

Testing well and building are two different things.

To test well, like in a powerlifting meet, you want the biggest mechanical advantage, as much leverage, as possible.

To build muscle like a body building, you want the exact opposite.

The former is about getting as much work done as possible without fatiguing your muscles.

The latter is about fatiguing your muscles as much as possible. You will get the best results by creating a mechanical DISADVANTAGE

See the difference?

This is another bi-modal structure by the way. Avoid the middle.

So..

Whether your a running, a dancer, a powerlifter, a body building or martial artists the same principles applies:

Strength requires mobility and stability.

They should be trained simultaneously.

How much mobility?

It depends on what you’re trying to accomplish. A gymnast needs a different levels of mobility than a powerlifter does. BUT, they both need stability through their entire range of their mobility or they will not have strength through the entire range and are, therefore, not strong.

3. NUTRITION

Years ago I built a nutrition company that triggered EVERYONE because it was so counterintuitive. Since, it has become Trevor Kashey Nutrition (I exited the company around 2018) - Dr. Kashey has been one of my best friends and knows more about nutrition than anyone I’ve ever met. (He got his PhD in metabolic Chemistry when he was like 23).

My foundation beliefs about complex systems, adaptive systems, human behavior and nutrition are heavily influenced by Trevor. So you can also check out his stuff if you’re interested.