Powerlifting innovator Louis Simmons adopted sled dragging after learning that dominant Finnish lifters attributed their squatting strength to their jobs dragging trees. This shows how effective training methods are often reverse-engineered from real-world, functional strength applications rather than invented in a lab.

Instead of obsessing over "fixing" issues like fatigue or bloating, reframe them as signals from your body. Listening to these cues allows you to understand and address underlying root causes, rather than just masking the symptoms with temporary solutions.

Focusing on building muscle is crucial for long-term health, particularly for women entering perimenopause. Muscle helps regulate blood sugar, reduces inflammation, and protects against osteoporosis, dementia, and heart disease, making it a vital health indicator.

For injury recovery, the initial focus should be on clearing congestion and improving lymphatic drainage. This "clears the highway" for more productive healing and strength work like BFR (Blood Flow Restriction) training to follow, accelerating the overall process.

Most pain during intense exertion isn't a direct measure of physiological damage, but the brain's predictive mechanism to prevent harm. You can manage this by resetting the brain's expectations with small sensory changes, like how runner Elliot Kipchoge smiles when he's hurting to trick his brain into feeling okay.

Training methods leverage the brain's predictive nature. Repetitive practice makes the brain efficient at predicting movements, leading to mastery and lower energy use ('muscle memory'). In contrast, unpredictable training creates constant prediction errors, forcing adaptation and burning more calories, which drives growth and resilience.

Elevating the heels reduces the ankle mobility required for a deep squat. Holding a weight out front acts as a counterbalance, allowing the user to sit back into the squat, reducing direct pressure on the knees and making the full range of motion more accessible and pain-free.

Unlike barbell squats where lower back rounding ('butt wink') is a common risk, the front-foot-elevated split squat makes this dangerous movement much harder to perform. It promotes deep knee flexion and single-leg strength, building mobility and stability with a significantly lower risk of spinal injury.

A major pitfall of intermittent fasting is the loss of lean muscle tissue. To counteract this, it must be combined with dedicated resistance training. This combination allows for the metabolic benefits of fasting while signaling the body to retain and even build muscle, which can be tracked through strength gains.