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Self-Optimized, 19 Marion St, Bankstown (2026)

14/04/2022

Big congratulations to Luqman Mansha for his big achievement.

In 10 weeks he was able to drop over 8kg of bodyfat, pack on some muscle, get a whole lot stronger and kick some old dysfunctional movement patterns that were causing pain and limiting his potential.

This is just the beginning for Luqman.

04/04/2022

My client came to me with pain at his AC joint that travelled down into his lateral deltoid muscle, which was worsened by pressing movements (bench press, OHP etc).

His physio treatment consisted of massage the lateral deltoid. I'm not sure why. Ultimately, it wasnt helpful.

With kinesiological testing i found that his latissimus dorsi underactive and his biceps overworking.

We released the biceps, activated the underactive at, taught him how to brace his shoulder in a bench press and immediately he was pain free. After a week of practice he was bench pressing more than he had done in a very long time.

The lats depress the upper arm in the shoulder joint. This allows it to glide within the joint without bumping into any other bony structures. When underactive, they're unable to prevent wearing and impingement inside the joint, leading to these sorts of painful dysfunctions.

Conventional treatment is usually a series of unsuccessful physio appointments followed by a cortisone injection, which provides short term relief but further weakens soft tissue surrounding the joint. The pain always comes back.

If you want more than guesswork and unsuccessful last-ditch efforts for your pain and dysfunction, send me a DM.

28/01/2022

No shots fired at the cardio-crew, it just isn't your magic bullet for fat-loss.

Neither is any individual training modality, really.

Great for cardiovascular health
Great for becoming more goal-driven.
Great for increasing your performance in the weight-room.
..providing that challenging yourself with performance goals, not just plodding about to hit an arbitrary calorie goal...

But not so great for fat-loss. For that, you'll want to upgrade your nutrition.

And it works, every single time, no exceptions.

So you can safely do away with countless hours travelling to the gym at ungodly hours trudging through your daily cardio sessions, staying the same weight and feeling disheartened (unless you like this).

And instead, make a few easy changes to your eating habits, spend more time doing what you love and stress less about being in the gym all the time.

Oh and about shed 1-3kg per week

Just in case you needed another reason to start tracking and prepping your meals.

13/07/2021

If you have uneven hips or shoulders, you will like likely have some degree of lateral curvature to the spine.

Often, but not always, this is paired with a history of nerve/disc issues. Disc bulges and herniations usually result in compression of lumbar root nerves, which can be debilitating at worst and uncomfortable at best.

You will shift your body away from the site of pain, resulting in a lateral lumbar curvature. Attempting to keep the head balanced in space, the upper back may form a secondary curvature. Although, not all cases of scoliosis look like this.

There tends to be layers of dysfunction at play. First, many back injuries will form, or result from, a dysfunction in the intrinsic core, resulting in loss of abdominal stability, lumbar spine compression and further irritation of the discs and nerves.

Secondary compensations will include actively removing pressure from the affected structures, involving muscles of lateral flexion and hip hiking - psoas, quadratus lumborum and the obliques. Multifidus, while not (or, barely) fitting the above description is also often involved.

There may be one primary dysfunction that gives rise to the others. In many cases, an inhibited multifidus or psoas unilaterally. Often, when the root dysfunction is addressed, downstream dysfunctions glide into place. With older and more complex dysfunctions, there may be multiple relationships to address.

The typical approach is to manually release to the shortened structures. In a lumbar curvature this will mean lateral flexors - psoas, QL, obliques, plus whatever else your therapist feels like.

⚡Without identifying, activating and strengthening the dormant structures, the release will not last long before the structures tighten back up.

⚡This is good thing. With those structures no longer protecting the spine, it is now unstable. Picture the mast of a ship being supported by two wires in opposite directions. Stable, right?

Now, cut one of the wires. Still stable?

Couple this with a lack of intrinsic stability and your asking for further injury. Not fun, dont go there.

Book in an assessment with an NKT practitioner, DM for more.

11/07/2021

Todays case study is yours truly.

🔹I was recently injured by a chiropractor and unable to walk for 3 days or exercise properly in almost a month. Blindly removing the spines stability with dry needling and joint decompressions without manual muscle testing involving spinal compression and decompression as testing variables is negligent and potentially injurious.

🔸Your therapist must prove that their intervention is warranted by testing you first. That being said, it requires special training which isn't a part of their formal education, so its not exactly a failure on their behalf. You don't know what you don't know.

🔹Acute injuries drive compensation patterns to avoid further damage and pain to the affected area. For that reason, these compensations are a good thing. Unfortunately they hang around and become a nuisance themselves.

🔸Dysfunctions are usually muscle-to muscle. In my case it was my right external abdominal oblique shutting off my lumbosacral multifidus. With my spine compressed however, all muscles were testing strong giving the impression that the spine was indeed stable. Remove compression and everything goes weak.

🔹As you can see, there is a lot of nuance to determining the nature of dysfunction and it requires manual muscle testing with a specific protocol to determine what is actually inhibited and what is actually overworking. Otherwise you're just guessing.

🔸When i test my clients, most of the time the look on their faces when i find something weak and make it strong by pairing it with something else just screams "WTF". The lights go off in their heads and even if it doesn't make sense to them, they believe in what we've uncovered.

⚡If you're not getting this from your therapist, if you're just getting everything needled and massaged and cracked and popped - bail. You're not getting anything resolved and you'll be back next week.

12/06/2021

If moving towards your goals ever seems complicated just reduced it down to this simple framework.

First, start. I think a lot of people get frozen in pre-contemplation which can last for longer than expected. Regardless of your intention, your first step is signing up at the gym if you haven't already.

Next pick your goal. This ones easy, you probably already know which direction you want to go in. If you're overweight - weight loss. If you're underweight - weight gain. If nothing else, look better naked.

Own your goal and don't settle for less. Know full that you can easily have anything you want. Nothing is working against you except your own limiting beliefs.

If you could lose 30kg of bodyfat, why aim at 5kg? Why 'tone up' when you'd rather be jacked?

Write down exactly where you are now - this is your starting point. This will mean your weight at the least. Its worthwhile to add in your activity level - how often you're training, and a simple food diary.

Track again one week later.

Nothing changed? Take that food diary again and change something. Eating a lot of fat? Cut some out. Not a lot of protein? Bump it up.

Review your gym performance.

How many sets did you do? Didn't track them? Okay start there. Were you challenging yourself or going through the motions? Step it up a notch.

Track again one week later. Nothing changed? Re-read the above. Something changed? You're on to something, keep going.

You should see measurable changes on a weekly basis. 0.5kg changes in bodyweight are the minimum you should be accepting. Most of my weight-loss clients will hit 1-2kg in their first week once they get the ball rolling, with 0.5-1kg changes per week ongoing afterwards.

Not because I'm smashing them with training. If i did that, they wouldn't come back. Not because I'm starving them with my meal plans, because they're eating more than they expected to.

Small. Consistent. Actions.

DM For more info on planning a reasonable, sustainable and effective eating and training plan to smash your goals without smashing yourself.

11/06/2021

There are 3 main pillars to energy expenditure, or burning calories.

You'll probably come across a bunch of confusing acronyms on the internet, BMR, RMR, TDEE, EEE, NEAT, C3PO etc., but its fairly straight-forward.

🔹Resting metabolism
The amount of energy that you need to simply stay alive.

🔹Activity related expenditure
This includes energy burned from every activity from working to walking to working out. It all costs calories.

🔹Thermic effect of food
The energy burned to metabolise each nurtrient. As you can see, protein tops the list while the other two are far less significant. At a thermogenic rate of 25%, it burns 25 calories for every 100 it provides.

Its even better when you consider that protein will rarely be burned for energy - its too useful to the body.

The take-home message is to tip the energy balance in your favour based on your goal.

⚡How to take advantage of each pillar⚡

Resting metabolism
🔸Increasing your muscle mass will increase the energy you burn at rest
🔸Increasing your fitness will increase your energy burning efficiency
🔸Eating a metabolically supportive (carb, protein and mineral rich) diet will increase your resting temperature - the most readily available metric of your metabolic rate.

Activity related expenditure
🔸Workout. Often.
🔸Up your step-count.
🔸Take the stairs
🔸Find creative ways to simply do more.

Thermic effect of food
🔸You can kill a bunch of birds with one stone if you take 30g of fat per day and swap it for the same amount of protein.
🔸Eat for heat - whatever foods make you feel warmer are stimulating your metabolism.

DM for more info on how to structure your eating and exercising regimes to maximise results and retain a sense of balance.

10/06/2021

The easiest thing you can do right now to increase your fat-loss is to cut out the excess fat content.

As you can see, it takes one solid junk meal to take you way over your daily fat allowance

The worst part is, its all oil. Its not even solid food. You cant even see it.

The 3 biggest reasons macro-based weight loss attempts produce average results are:

🔸Way too much fat allowance
🔸Not enough protein, by a long shot
🔸Fear of carbohydrates

Not only is it impossible to store fat from high protein amounts, it also increases the rate of energy burned.

More-over it increases your muscle mass significantly.

The more muscle you carry, the more carbs you can store inside them, and therefore enjoy eating.

As stated on the third slide, it takes more carbs than most people can actually eat in a day in order to store it as fat. Plus, it boosts your metabolism - the reason you feel warmer after a high carb meal.

On a gram per gram basis, fat contains more than twice the calories of protein and carbs.

So think of it like this - you have a bucket you can fill with large rocks (fat) or small rocks (protein and carbs). Want to eat more and get better results? Swap the big rocks for small ones.

DM for more info on nutrition coaching and how to structure your eating for best results.

03/06/2021

Another big milestone for Syed who has just finished his 2nd 12-week transformation program.

To date, Syed has lost almost 22kg and a huge 70cm off his body.

He was able to achieve this result despite dealing with a minor injury. Anyone who has experienced this can tell you how much it can hold back your progress but Syed took it all in his stride and kept doing his best.

Very proud of all your hard work mate!

29/05/2021

Third pic is deliberately excessive, but we all know someone like this (tag him).

There is no correct posture, but plenty of incorrect ones.

Check the spine. Your lower back is designed to have a slight arch with the upper back designed to round over. It isn't meant to be straight.

During lifting is an exception - this is activity specific to maximise force production while avoiding defaulting into a dangerous position. For non-weightbearing activities (i.e. the rest of life) its not necessary.

While a rounded upper back, shoulders and a forward head can create aches, pains and dysfunction, overcompensating by pinning the shoulders back and lifting the chest is no less dysfunctional.

Try jamming your chest up into the air for day and notice how it affects your ability to rotate the spine while walking, or co-ordinate movement in general.

Notice how much your back hurts afterwards.

If you have a legitimate postural issue, its understandable to want to correct it this way. We've been told forever to sit and stand up straight, but its misguided. Health professionals often advocate this out of dogma or personal interest (authority, selling the cure) but no creature in nature operates this way.

🔸The most powerful animals are usually the most nimble.

🔸Children wont do it unless its drilled into them by authority figures.

🔸Athletes almost never do it - its counter-productive to sporting performance (outside of strength sports).

Many (male) bipedal animals will routinely raise their chests in the air in an attempt to:
🔹Assert dominance
🔹Intimidate
🔹Stand their ground
🔹Appear unafraid
🔹Attract the opposite s*x.

Its not uncommon in gyms either. But the strongest guy in the gym is usually sitting in a nice relaxed slump, while the best fighter in the gym probably doesnt look like he lifts to begin with. Neither of these guys are fazed by peacocking, and women are pretty smart when it comes to determining a mans genuine confidence.

A few solid reasons to relax your shoulders.

28/05/2021

I've treated three cases of this in the last week or so. So its worth reading if you:

🔸Cant feel your abs during training

🔸Can only feel the top portion of the abs

🔸Have no abdominal tone/definition (besides the top portion)

🔸Hold your breath when training your abs (or training in general)

🔸Have neck pain at rest or during training

🔸Compress the neck or poke the chin forward during training

Abdominal muscles are currently inhibited, or "shut off" neurologically. You should be able to feel the entire abdominal wall, including upper and lower portions. Most people only feel the upper abs and diaphragm working during training.

When something as important as your abs aren't working properly, you get global pains, compensations and functional deficits, which can include:

🔹Lower back pain/compression
🔹Neck pain/ compression
🔹Hamstring tightness
🔹Hip flexor tightness
🔹Glute weakness
🔹Quad weakness
🔹Knee pain
🔹Poor ankle mobility
🔹Lat weakness
🔹Tight traps
🔹Chest breathing

Your squats and deadlifts will also suck.

3 clients have came to me recently with just about all of these issues. Manual muscle testing revealed an inhibition of the Re**us Abdominis (6-pack). When one muscle is inhibited, there's an overactive muscle, fascia or scar that's responsible. One switches on, the other switches off.

In these cases it was the sub-occipitals at the base of the skull that had become overactive from a compensation strategy of using the neck instead of the abs.

Released the sub-occipitals and re-activated the abs. It will take time and diligence to return to normal function and tone.

Self-Optimized

14/04/2022

04/04/2022

28/01/2022

13/07/2021

11/07/2021

12/06/2021

11/06/2021

10/06/2021

03/06/2021

29/05/2021

28/05/2021

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Monday	6am - 5pm
Tuesday	6am - 5pm
Wednesday	6am - 5pm
Thursday	6am - 5pm
Friday	6am - 5pm
Saturday	6am - 5pm