If you are asked to stretch between working sets of heavy lifting, punch them in the face.

Not only will that stunt your performance, it is actually highly dangerous as it promotes muscle injury.

Imagine this. You have done all your build-up sets to warm up for the bench press.
1 set of 60kgs for 8
1 set of 80kgs for 5
1 set of 90kgs for 2
1 set of 100kgs for 1

for a Top Work-Set of 110kgs for 3 reps of 3 sets (3×3).
You do your first set, and then you are told to rest 3 minutes. During your resting period, you try to do a stretch because some gym bro tells you it’s good for the blood to flow to the area where you are doing your sets on. You listen to Mr. Gymbro and stretch out your pectoral muscles.

Next set arrives, and you find yourself not being able to get the second rep of the second set up. You wonder why. You can’t figure it out. Your nutrition is on point, and your sleep and all other factors are also on point.

Here’s why. When you do your build-up sets, you’re actually progressively loading your muscles with more and more weight, and your body will react by “recruiting” more muscle fibers in that muscle group to push/pull more weight. Once your warm-up sets are done, your body will have optimal muscle fiber volume to push your Top Set. When you stretch, you are “cooling down” your muscles, resulting in the “de-cruitment” of your muscle fibers. So you are defeating the purpose of your warm-ups, and if you’re unlucky, you might even tear the muscle itself.

So please don’t just listen to advice without doing some research, or simply putting some sense into it. And don’t be that Gymbro. Know your stuff first before going around to give advice. A life may be at stake due to your sub-par information.

As we know, sugar is a simple carbohydrate. It is then broken down into glucose and then passed in the bloodstream, making our blood sugar levels high. To balance this out, insulin will be produced from the pancreas to shuttle the glucose out from the bloodstream and into the body cells.

Imagine a car, using up the gas to be able to drive itself. When our body needs a lot of energy to function according to our activity levels, the glucose gets translated into energy for the working cells in our body.

The problem happens when you are sending too much glucose from the sugar, to your bloodstream, when your body doesn’t need it. Your pancreas will go into overdrive, and produce too much insulin to overcompensate.

The excess glucose will then go to muscle, fat and liver cells and stored as an energy storage in the form on glycogen. Thing is, your cells have a limited space of storage for glycogen, so excess glycogen will be translated into fat as the final stage of energy storage.

But is sugar truly bad for you? Well this is the gist of it all-consuming too much sugar, fructose primarily, may cause a resistance to leptin. Leptin is a hormone that “tells your body when to stop eating”. Hence, consuming too much sugar might confuse your body into eating more; the worst in general, are sugar-high drinks and super starchy foods like desserts, your friend’s birthday cake. They will stimulate you to consume more of those, resulting in a definite surplus that is comprised of carbs, more than any other macro-nutrient.

Pair the theory above with how excess glucose from broken down sugar gets stored as fat, and you got yourself a golden ticket to Fat Country.

10pm – 2am, our body secretes this hormone called Human Growth Hormone.

Also known as growth hormone (GH), it plays a key role in growth, body composition, cell repair and metabolism.

HGH also boosts muscle growth, strength and exercise performance, while helping you recover from injury and disease.

Lower HGH levels may negatively impact your quality of life, increase your risk of disease and make you gain fat.

Optimal levels are especially important during weight loss, injury recovery and athletic training.

Interestingly, your diet and lifestyle choices can have a huge effect on your HGH levels.

So sleep earlier, so HGH levels are always produced at a HIGH.

One study found that three days into a fast, HGH levels increased by over 300%. After one week of fasting, they had increased by a massive 1,250%.

Other studies have found similar effects, with double or triple HGH levels after just 2–3 days of fasting.

If you are still experimenting, don’t go around throwing it to people as advice.

— Seriously. Do yourself a favor, and don’t get others injured.

-Nicholas Chen

You may or may not have known me already. But hello anyways.

Nope. I’m not some “fitness-is-my-entire-life” guru, nor am I some professional athlete. I’m just a regular guy like you.

Fine. I’ll tell you a little bit of myself.

I used to struggle with my own set of insecurities. I’m not that tall (I’m around 5’6 1/2) and I used to be pretty darn fat. Not obese-fat, but fat enough to avoid any mirror-reflection of me, everywhere I go. I had one problem;

I LOVED EATING. Healthy food? You must be kidding me. I more of a-

• Pizza
• Burgers
• Ice-cream, yogurt, pastries (you name it, I love any one of them)
• Big, big buffets
• Chocolate
• Subway sandwiches
• Sushi
• All kinds of oily, hawker food

I don’t have the best genetics. And I what made it worse was that I was probably, in the WORST ever shape of my life back then.

Then due to my citizenship obligations, I was enlisted into the military for 2 years.

I simply died within the first few weeks. I remember, we had to complete an entire circuit of a maximum-effort push-up in 1 minute, a maximum-effort sit-up in 1 minute, and a timed 1 mile (2.4 km) run. Upon finishing, I had puked countless times, and it started just a few hundred meter before the finish line-so I was puking, while running for my life. All that for just a PASS. I barely passed the scoring benchmark. I got 63 points, and the passing mark was 61. I virtually died, only to attain such a poor score.

Long story short, that gave me an epiphany. I realized what a bum I had been. Looking across the distance were officers, and sergeants, standing tall and looking good, with their abs glistening against the rays of the sun. I was immediately inspired.

I worked hard. I learnt many things through the hard way. I’ve tried almost all kinds of workouts (except Olympic Weightlifting and Advanced Calisthenics), tried all sorts of diet programs. They gave me results, but none were sustainable. I either grew tired of doing them (diet was usually bland, tasteless, or hard to get), felt like I was pushing away my social life to compensate with my workout schedules, and some workouts were too taxing for me to recover well the following day, since my activities in the military were a physically demanding as well.

That’s where I grew a passion for fitness and wellness, in a search for the perfect antidote. The perfect serum. One that could balance any kind of lifestyle while making gains effortlessly. One that wouldn’t restrict your diet to a certain fashion.

After numerous years of trial and error, learning from bodybuilding professionals, endurance athletes, powerlifting strongmen and through my own research, it didn’t all go to vain-I finally found the serum.

So this is me now. A regular guy with a moderate amount of years under his belt, with shortcuts and fitness/wellness hacks for you to last a lifetime.

I don’t see why you’re not interested. I personally wished I knew all this earlier-it would’ve saved me so much time, injury, money and effort.

Rest is up to you!