Kinsei-Do Health & Performance

STOP LOOKING FOR THE OPTIMAL ANSWER

I recently caught up on a Hintsa Performance webinar recording, a conversation between Annastiina Hintsa, Riina Komonen and Dr Tommy Wood on health span. One point Tommy made has stuck with me since.

It sounds almost too simple, but I think it's exactly what a lot of you need to hear: it doesn't actually matter what the "best" thing to change is, if you're not going to actually do it.

Guys like you, former athletes, high performers, used to chasing marginal gains at work and once chasing them in sport too, tend to gravitate straight toward optimization.

🏃 What's the ideal training split?
🥗 The perfect macros?
💊 The single best supplement?

You want the answer that maximizes the outcome, because that's how you've operated your whole career.

But here's the catch. The "optimal" plan that you never actually follow is worth exactly nothing. A "good enough" habit that you do consistently for the next two years will beat it every single time.

So the real question isn't what's the best thing you could be doing. It's what's the one thing you're actually motivated to do, and can realistically keep doing, for the long haul. Then just do that, properly, before you even think about optimizing anything else.

For some guys that's a short walk after lunch. For others it's one strength session a week they never skip, or a fixed bedtime they actually stick to. It doesn't need to be impressive. It needs to be sustainable.

Fundamentals done consistently beat perfect plans done occasionally, every time.

If you've been stuck chasing the "optimal" answer instead of just starting with something real, that's exactly the kind of thing I help clients work through. Go take a look at kinseido.fit.

WHY ARE YOU EVEN TRYING TO LIVE LONGER?


I finally got around to a Hintsa Performance webinar recording I'd missed a few weeks back, a conversation between Annastiina Hintsa, Riina Komonen and Dr Tommy Wood on health span. I've been very interested in this topic since reading Peter Attia's Outlive a few years ago, so I half expected to have heard it all before.

I hadn't.

One thing I first learned formally back in my Hintsa studies in 2021 is that a sense of purpose and meaning is foundational to health and performance, not a nice-to-have on top of it. It's actually why purpose and connection is one of the five pillars of my own coaching philosophy at Kinsei-Do.

So what does that have to do with a webinar on health span?

Most of the time, when I speak to clients and people I meet about extending their health span, they go straight to the obvious levers: movement, nutrition, sleep. Then they spend all their energy trying to figure out which one matters most, how to optimize each one, how to squeeze out marginal gains.


But here's the question Tommy Wood raised that actually stuck with me: before you optimize any of that, do you know why you're doing it in the first place?

What's the actual reason you want more healthy years? It's probably not so you can spend more of them in meetings.

Once that's genuinely clear, everything downstream, eating differently, moving more, prioritizing sleep, gets a lot easier to actually stick with long-term. The "why" isn't a soft add-on, it's the thing that makes the "how" sustainable at all.

Back when you were training or competing seriously, chances are that "why" was obvious, you knew exactly what you were chasing and what it was all for. If that clarity has quietly gone missing since your athletic days ended, that's worth sitting with.

Come take a look at kinseido.fit, or drop a comment below, I'd like to hear your why, past or present.

There's a stat that's been doing the rounds lately: your grip strength is one of the better predictors of how long you'll live.

A large study published in The Lancet, following over 140,000 people, found that for every small decrease in grip strength, the risk of dying went up, and not by a trivial amount.

Naturally, once this made the rounds online, a lot of guys did the obvious thing. They bought a grip trainer and started "training their grip."

I get the logic. I also think it's missing the point almost entirely.

Grip strength isn't some magic lever that extends your life on its own. Squeezing a hand trainer at your desk or in your car for a few minutes a day isn't going to move the needle in any meaningful way.
What the research actually shows is that grip strength is a marker, a proxy for something bigger: overall strength, functional and well-balanced muscle across your whole body, and enough lean muscle mass to go with it.

In other words, guys with a strong grip usually also deadlift, carry, climb, push and pull real loads regularly. The grip is a byproduct of that, not the cause of the longevity benefit.

So if you want the actual outcome the headlines are promising, skip the hand trainer and go train like the athlete you once were again: real strength work, real compound movements, consistently, over time. Your grip will get strong along the way, as a side effect, not as the main event.

Ever caught yourself chasing a headline stat instead of the thing that actually causes it?

Drop a comment or send me a DM, happy to chat about it.

Right now, I've got tendonitis in my right shoulder. It's annoying, it's limiting how I can train, and if I'm honest, it's a little humbling too.

Here's the thing though, this isn't the first time. About two years ago, I had almost the exact same issue in my left shoulder. - big shoutout! - helped me work through that one. We didn’t just work around it or calm it down, but actually fixed the underlying cause. And now, right shoulder acting up, I'm back working with him again.

Two shoulders, two years apart, same root problem.

Because that's really what this is. It's not bad luck, and it's not just "getting older." It's the accumulated cost of decades of training and moving hard without always giving my joints the preparation and care they actually needed along the way. For years I have pushed my body, but I didn't always maintain it properly while I was doing it.

I’ve heard similar stories from clients I have worked with, as well as of course from heaps of guys I have met in gyms and CrossFit boxes around the world. We love training and we’re used to going at it, until one day a shoulder, or a knee, or a back, taps you on the shoulder (no pun intended) and reminds you it's still keeping score.

If you used to train or compete at a serious level, chances are you're carrying some version of this too. An old joint issue, a movement you've quietly stopped doing, a "thing" you've just learned to live with.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. That's exactly what I've redesigned my website around: helping guys actually fix stuff like this properly, instead of just managing around it forever.

Go take a look, especially if you've got your own version of my shoulder story. Questions, send me a DM.

www.kinseido.fit

IT'S LIVE!

For the past few weeks, I’ve been mentioning that something is about to change. Today is that day!

My website has undergone a complete revamp, and more importantly, a much sharper focus.

I'm no longer trying to be the coach for everyone. I'm going all in on one specific guy: over 35, used to be genuinely athletic or competitive, now running a high-pressure career that takes as much out of him mentally as it does physically.

If that's you, here's what you'll find when you go check it out:

A clear picture of exactly how and why the quiet decline has happened, the one where your body and mind just slowly stop feeling like your own.

The reframe I've been talking about, that you never lost your discipline, it just got pointed somewhere else for a decade or two.
And a system built around getting your edge back without blowing up the career you've spent years building.

This isn't about chasing who you were at 22. It's about building a system for your health with the same intention you've already brought to everything else in your life.

Go take a look, I'd love to know what you think.

www.kinseido.fit

Many people treat the scale as an indicator for their health and fitness.

↗️ Number's up, you've let yourself go.

↘️ Number's down, good job.

It becomes the go-to proof point for whether you're gaining weight, losing fitness, or just generally drifting further from the shape you used to be in.

But the scale doesn't actually tell you much on its own. It won't tell you how you move, how you recover, or how far you've drifted from what your body used to be capable of.

So here's a better test, especially if you used to be genuinely athletic.

Next time the elevator's out, or you walk past a stairwell instead of waiting for it, jog up three flights without stopping.

How did that feel?

There was a version of you, maybe a decade or two ago, where three flights of stairs wouldn't have registered as anything at all. You'd have barely noticed you'd done it.

But now, if your legs were burning and your lungs were working overtime by flight two, that's not just "getting older."

That's your body telling you something you've probably been ignoring for a while, especially when you spend most of your day in meetings instead of on your feet.

I like this test because there's no app for it, no number on a screen, nothing to overthink. Just you, some stairs, and an honest comparison to the guy you used to be.

For many guys I work with, this is the moment it becomes real. Not a number on a scale, not a comment from a doctor, just three flights of stairs that used to be nothing, and now leave them a bit wrecked.

The good news is, this isn't a hard problem to fix, and it definitely doesn't mean going back to training like you're 22. It takes a handful of consistent habits, done properly, over a few weeks, to get that ease back.

Try it today or tomorrow if you get the chance. No elevator, no excuses.

How'd it go? Drop a comment or send me a DM, I'd like to hear.

The 2026 Asia Hyrox season is officially underway! 💥

With Hyrox Bangkok in the books and major races coming up across the continent—culminating for many of us with Singapore and Malaysia later this year—now is the time to start sharpening your strategy.

To help you get race-ready, here is a quick throwback to the episode I recorded with Wita back in June right before the Jakarta race.

With 9 Hyrox races under her belt, Wita is an absolute goldmine of experience. From managing pre-race jitters and locking in your taper protocol to executing smart doubles strategy so you don't blow your partner up, this conversation is packed with battle-tested wisdom you need for your upcoming training block.

If you missed it the first time—or need a refresher before your next race—give this a listen today!

📺 YouTube: https://youtu.be/PUkVcPRZByE
🎧 Spotify: https://spotifycreators-web.app.link/e/ttG1ylc5J5b

SLEEP IS THE ONE THING YOU CAN'T OUTWORK

You can out-discipline a bad diet. You can out-plan a chaotic schedule. But you cannot outwork bad quality sleep. It doesn't matter how much you try to power through, it'll undermine everything else you're doing.

Here's something I only fully understood once I started actually tracking it with an Oura Ring. Before that, I would have told you I was getting around 8 hours of sleep most nights, because that's roughly how long I was in bed for.

Turns out that's not remotely the same thing.

Sleep efficiency, the actual time spent asleep versus the time spent lying in bed, rarely goes above 85-90%, even for people who sleep well. So if you think you clocked 8 hours because that's how long the lights were off, you probably actually got closer to 7. Toss in a rougher night, and that gap gets even bigger.

That number mattered to me, and it should matter to you too, because in your work, you'd never accept a metric you were tracking incorrectly. You wouldn't run a project off a number you knew was inflated. Yet most guys go their entire lives estimating their sleep instead of actually measuring it, and then wonder why they still feel wrecked despite "getting 8 hours."

This is a blind spot that's easy to miss when you're relying on how you feel instead of on data, and it's a big part of why sleep quietly undermines performance in guys who are doing most else right.

I actually gave a talk on how sleep is the foundation of wellbeing two years back, digging deeper into sleep and how to actually improve it, not just track it. Check it out if you want to go deeper.

🎥 https://youtu.be/sTpNm17OXnM

Any questions on this, drop a comment or send me a DM.

THE "I'LL START MONDAY" TRAP

It's Friday, and for a lot of us, it's also the tail end of summer break. Kids going back to school, or just the general return from a few weeks that looked nothing like your normal routine.

If you're anything like most of the guys I work with, some version of this thought has already crossed your mind:

I'll get back on track Monday. New week, new routine, fresh start.

Makes sense on paper, especially after a few weeks where the extra glass of wine, the bigger dinners, the workouts you skipped because you were "on holiday," all felt completely justified.

And to be clear, they were. Summer's meant to be enjoyed, not white-knuckled through with perfect discipline.

But here's the thing: you're one of the most decisive people in your world. You make calls under pressure at work constantly, and you don't wait for the "perfect moment" to start a project or tackle a big task, right?

So why does your own health get a different set of rules, especially now, with the "back to normal" excuse sitting right there waiting to be used?

Because deep down, "I'll start Monday" doesn't actually mean Monday. It means later. It's a way of avoiding the decision today, without having to admit that's what you're doing.

The truth is, nothing about Monday makes it a better day to start than today, or tomorrow, or this weekend.
There's no reset button hiding in the calendar.
The best time to make one small move, a walk, an earlier night, skipping the second helping, is whenever you actually think of it.

So here's a small challenge heading into the weekend, and heading back into routine: don't wait for Monday. Do one small thing today, right after you finish reading this.

What's the one thing you keep pushing to "start Monday"? Drop a comment or send me a DM, I'd like to hear it.

SOMETHING’S COMING

I want to be honest with you about something I've been sitting with for a while.

For years, I tried to be the coach for everyone. Anyone who wanted to get fitter, healthier, stronger, I'd take them on and do my best to help. And I don't regret that, I've learned a lot and worked with some genuinely great people along the way.

But somewhere along the line, I started noticing a pattern. The clients I could help the most and best kept looking a lot like me.

🙋🏻‍♂️ Men over 35.
🏋 Used to be athletic or competitive in their twenties.
👨🏻‍💻 Now running high-pressure careers that demand as much mental energy as physical energy, if not more.

Trying to be everything to everyone was actually working against the people I'm best positioned to help.

So I've made a decision. I'm going all in on this one specific guy. The former athlete who's now a manager, a director, an exec, or running his own business, who still remembers what it felt like to be sharp and strong, and who wants that back without blowing up the career he's spent years building.

It's a narrower focus than I've had before. It's also the right one.

I've got something concrete coming out of this shift, and I'll be sharing more very soon.

If this sounds like you, or like someone you know, stick around. Or drop a comment, I'd love to hear from you.