We just recently finished 1 year in Melbourne, Australia where we made multiple breakthroughs in our approach to fitness.

In Australia, we focused more on the softer styles of training such as Yoga, Pilates, Ballroom dance, Ballet and Tai Chi but without neglecting the harder styles of training.

The reason why we do this is that we not only want to test ourselves in different forms of movement but we also use them to fuel our own training methodology with new ideas and perspectives.

Although experimenting with new things is important, we would say that actually the number 1 thing that makes us different is the fact that we are more precise in our approach to fitness. 

We try to define exactly what we want to achieve and then go and achieve exactly that. We try to leave as little as possible to pure chance.

How most people train is different: they do an exercise and HOPE for results. This is simply because they lack a good teacher or aren't teachers themselves.

On the macro scale, the purpose of our training is to improve our health, posture and performance (and movement ability). More info about this here.

These 3 can be considered our North Star because in the long run, they will make the biggest impact on your sense of well-being, appearance and the results you will get out of fitness.

We surely want strength, power, muscular development and different skills but we don't want them to negatively affect our health, posture or life in general. 

We are also very precise on the micro scale: we set clear goals in our workouts and we are very precise in the execution of our exercises. 

The purpose of the exercise form is to give you the results you are looking for from the exercise. That's the primary purpose. The right form is the form that produces the best results.

When we want to build mobility, we try to focus on just building mobility. When we focus on conditioning, everything has been refined to maximize that area.

When we want a certain muscle or area to get stronger and bigger, we try to eliminate the involvement of all the other muscles so that the target area gets the 100% stimulus and thus 100% of the results.

How we used to train and how almost everyone trains these days is that they are using very general approach to fitness. They only adjust the resistance, the exercise selection and the number of repetitions and sets.

These things matter but they matter the least. Moreover, there is never any clearly defined targets. They may do a bicep exercise but use their hips, lower back and shoulder joint to lift the weight up.

With this approach, everything is luck because the training is not precise. Some people may or may not get good results and often the luck runs out after a year or two.

Hope is not a good strategy in anything in life. Without clearly defined objectives, the body will become imbalanced and undeveloped in numerous of different areas because no one paid attention to the balance.

When we go to the gym, we consider it an investment and when you make an investment, you want it to pay as much dividends as possible. 

The better you can define what you want, the more likely you are going to get what you want. Your target will evolve over time which is why it needs to be readjusted every now and then. 

This is how we train and how our training programs are structured. In Athlete 20XX, we have entire phases for different physical attributes alone (for example, Phase 3 is solely for speed and power).

BREAK THE LIMITS

In the video, you see lots of different ways of training but at the deepest level it's all the same.

The superficial layers (exercises, programming, tools) are changing but everything is profoundly integrated with universal principles.

You see, there are layers to fitness and physical movement. The top layers are superficial ones and can change as fast as someone changes his or her clothes.

In the graph below, you see the different aspects of our VAHVA method from the least important (top) to the most important (bottom)

In reality, the exercises can be almost anything and anything can work as long as it is used right. What matters is HOW you do everything - what principles and methodology you are using in your training.

When you have finely polished training principles, you can use anything to develop your body - you are truly limitless.

You can effectively use weights, bodyweight, rings or any other tool. You are also free to jump from one fitness discipline to another.

The entire discussion about weights vs. bodyweight becomes meaningless and pointless.

Why? Because the tools and the exercises are superficial - they don’t matter as much as HOW you do everything (the principles).

Any tool will work as long as you use it right. Different tools have different strengths and weaknesses which is why it's useful to try different tools.

The best results are in the training principles - not in the superficial layers.

We use training principles such as body stabilization, mind-muscle connection, precision training, tempo training, full body locomotion, standing meditation, flow and other principles to develop the body. 

The reason why most methods fail is that they don’t use any universal principles. Instead, they try to mix different training styles with different methodologies together and the result is a big mess.

In fact, this often isn't even thought through at all. Instead, all the refinement happens only at the most superficial levels.

In order to become limitless, everything has to be integrated into one system - otherwise everything is in conflict with each other (which is often the case). 

WHAT'S NEXT ON THE HORIZON

Something special is about to come out soon.

We have been traveling a lot recently and we just spent an immersive week in Taiwan with one of the best kung fu masters in the world.

We filmed the entire week and a lot of the content is something special that the world hasn’t seen before.

We practiced internal kung fu, external kung fu and learned some practical Chinese medicine.

The world of kung fu is a lot different than most people would think. It's richer, deeper and more refined than you would expect.

After that, we moved to Japan where we visited the Shrine and birthplace of the legendary Samurai Miyamoto Musashi.

We also documented this part of our journey and it should be very interesting to see because the place was deep in the countryside of Japan where barely any tourists ever visit!

The first video of our Taiwan journey should come out next week. Stay tuned. This will be something extraordinary.

Stay strong.