Meraki Performance

Hill I Would Die On: 4/8

Stretching isn’t fixing your tight hips.

Tight hips aren’t “short muscles.”
They’re overworked muscles covering for weak ones.

You do 20 mins of pigeon pose to feel loose for 10 min.
Then it pulls again. Because stretching didn’t solve anything.

Yoga gives you range.
Strength lets you control that range.

Most “tight hip” issues come down to this: Your muscles aren’t doing their job to the best of their ability, so your body compensates and grips harder to compensate and protect you.

Perhaps your pelvic doesn't move how it could or your core transferring force in the most efficient way, so your lower back takes the load.

You don’t have a flexibility problem. You have a strength problem.

Stop painting cracks. Build the pillar.
That looks like:
- Glute bridges, hip thrusts, split squats in your program 2-3x/week
- Hinging without your lower back firing first
- Training rotation and lateral motions
- Standing on one leg without your pelvis dropping

Stretching gives temporary slack.
Strength gives long-term control.

If your hips are always tight, stop stretching more.
Start loading the muscles that should be working for you, not against you.

Your hips will thank you.

From "The 8 Hills I’ll Die On": No. 4/8

Travel is about being collected by a place.

Cultural awareness isn’t a checklist. It’s a practice of unlearning your own center.
It starts when start asking: how does life actually work here?

1. Learn the language, even badly.
Say “selamat pagi” with the wrong tone. Mispronounce “terima kasih” and get corrected.
Language isn’t just words. It’s a way of seeing. When you learn someone’s words, you borrow their lens.

2. Eat what the land gives, not what the algorithm recommends.
The warung with plastic stools where no one speaks English. Babi guling at 7am. Lawar made by a grandmother who doesn’t measure.
Food is memory and when you eat locally, you’re not just tasting flavor. You’re tasting history, ritual, and sacrifice. That’s intimacy.

3. Spend money where the money stays.
The family-run homestay. The weaver whose hands know patterns older than your passport.
Shopping locally is respect with a receipt. You stop extracting experiences and start circulating care.

4. Talk to people without an agenda.
Ask the satay vendor about his day, not just his menu. Let a conversation go nowhere.
We’re so used to transactional interaction: I need something, you provide it. But connection happens in the spaces between needs.

All of this changes you more than it changes them.

The land starts to feel less like scenery and more like a living thing you’re accountable to. The community stops being “friendly locals” and becomes your neighbors, your teachers, your mirrors.
And you? You stop performing the version of yourself that only exists in your home country. You meet the parts of you that only come out when you’re a little uncomfortable, lost, and humble.

Cultural awareness isn’t about being “woke” or “respectful traveler of the year”.
It’s about dissolving the illusion that you’re separate.
That your way is the default.

Travel doesn’t broaden your mind. Paying attention does.
And attention is the purest form of love.

So learn 10 words. Eat at the warung. Buy from the maker. Ask the question. Stay for the answer.
Let the place teach you how to be a better guest.
Then let it teach you how to be more human.

Running Hills I Would Die On: 3/8
Your wrist is not your coach.

5:12/km won’t teach you how 5:12/km feels. Turn the watch around. Let your lungs keep time.

We outsourced the skill of feeling to a gadget too early. Now we can’t tell the difference between “hard” and “too hard” without a red number flashing at us.

We don’t know what our body feels like. We only know what the data says it should feel like.

That’s not training.
That’s delegation.

You don’t build intuition by staring at splits. You build it by paying attention.
To breath.
To footstrike.
To that tightness in your calves 3km in.

The watch measures output. It doesn’t teach input.

The problem: Tech is incredible for tracking progress. It’s terrible for developing feel. If every run is GPS + playlist + metrics, you never learn your own pace. You learn Apple’s pace. Garmin’s pace. Strava’s pace.

Skill looks like this:
- You can run a 10k without looking at your wrist once and still land in the right effort zone.
-You know you’re in Zone 2 because you can speak in sentences, not because the watch says 142 bpm.
- You can adjust mid-run when your legs feel dead, even if the plan says “5:12 today.”
- You notice the difference between tired from training and tired from life, because you were actually present to feel it.

The unpopular truth: Most runners are collecting data instead of collecting experience.
Less data early = more awareness later.
Less music sometimes = more signal from your body.
More feeling now = less injuries, less burnout, less “why does racing feel nothing like training?” later.

The watch is a tool. Not a brain. Not a body. Learn to coach yourself before you let an algorithm do it for you.

If this annoys you, good. Check your wrist right now. How many times today?

That’s the problem.
From "The 8 Hills I’ll Die On": No. 3/8

Running Hills I Would Die On: 2/8
You can’t out-run a life on fire.

We treat Zone 2 like a life raft.

Sleep 4 hours. Stress 20 hours. Coffee for breakfast. Arguments for lunch. Doomscroll for dinner. Then lace up and wonder why your “easy run” feels like a panic attack.

That’s not training. That’s denial.

You don’t have a cardio problem. You have a cortisol problem.

You don’t need more volume. You need better sleep.

You don’t need a new training plan. You need a life that isn’t wearing you down

The unpopular truth: Most runners are trying to fitness their way out of a lifestyle that’s broken. Zone 2 doesn’t work when your baseline is survival mode. Your heart rate is 90 before you tie your shoes.

Skill looks like this:
- You wake up feeling rested from sleep and your easy run actually feels easy.
- You can handle stress without needing a 10k to regulate your mood.
- You know the difference between fatigue from training and fatigue from life, and you fix life first.

Fix the house before you decorate the garage.
Fix your sleep before you flex your splits.
Fix your stress before you film your strides.

Volume without recovery is just socially accepted self harm. And calling it “discipline” doesn’t make it healthy.

This take pi**es off hustle bros and runners who wear exhaustion like a badge (I include myself in this at times)

Good. If it stings, it’s probably for you.

From "The 8 Hills I’ll Die On": No. 2/8

Frequently Asked Questions: Meraki Performance Online Coaching

I often get the same questions before anyone signs up. So I put the real answers in one place so that the first message you have to send me isn't about communication methods or whats included, instead it can be "how soon can we start!"

Swipe through if you’ve ever wondered:
- What you actually get with 1:1 coaching.
- How often plans update.
- What happens when life blows up your week.
- If I can coach you without a gym.
- How fast I reply to messages.
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- What I do and don’t help with for nutrition.
- And who coaching is actually for.

No fluff. No “it depends” without explaining. Just straight answers so you know what you’re signing up for.

This is for runners who are done guessing with PDFs and want a coach who adapts with them. Strength + running that work together. Direct access to me, not an assistant.

If you read these and thought “that’s exactly what I need”, we should talk.

Spots for 1:1 will remain open until the end of this month.

Now with all these questions out of the way, use the link in my bio to book in your free discovery call and lets get down to business

Save this post for when you’re ready or send it to a running friend who’s been burned by cookie cutter plans 🔥

Running Hills I Would Die On: 1/8
Distance is a drug. Skill is the cure.

We treat running distances like a scoreboard. 5k becomes 10k. 10k becomes a half. Then we wonder why our knees hurt, our lungs burn, and running still feels like a fight.

More distance won’t fix bad form. Another long run won’t fix pacing that’s all ego. You can’t outrun breath control you never learned.

The unpopular truth: Most runners are addicted to longer before they’re competent at shorter. Long feels like progress because it’s measurable. You can post it. But it numbs you. It hides the fact that you can’t run 30 minutes easy without gasping. It hides that your cadence is sloppy, your easy days are too hard, and you have no gears.

Skill looks like this: You can run 30 minutes and hold a conversation the whole time.

You can speed up and slow down on command, not by accident.

You can finish a workout and feel like you owned it, not like it owned you.

Own the lap before you worship the marathon. Own your breath before you chase a bib. Volume without skill is just louder suffering.

This take pi**es off beginners and coaches selling their 10 week Marathon training plans.

Good. If it stings, it’s probably for you.

From "The 8 Hills I’ll Die On": No. 1/8

Things I've learnt (again) recently: Doing good isn’t a reaction. It’s a direction

Not because the world earned it.

Because you decided who you want to be when nobody’s watching.

We think goodness shows up in the big moments. The crisis. The call at 2am. The viral act of charity. But that’s the exception. The real work is quiet. It’s repetitive. It’s choosing the small thing when the small thing won’t get applause.

It’s letting the car merge. It’s answering the email with patience you don’t feel. It’s noticing the cashier’s name and using it. It’s shutting your mouth when being right would cost someone their dignity.

Kindness isn’t soft. It’s disciplined.

The world trains you to look for threats. For inconvenience. For reasons to harden.

Looking for opportunities to do good is counter training. It rewires your eyes. Suddenly you see the gaps. The door that needs holding. The friend who’s been quiet for three days. The teammate who needs credit, not critique.

You find goodness by planting it. Every time you choose presence over scrolling. Every time you choose generosity over keeping score.

That’s how the good gets instilled in you. Built. Rep by rep.

You don’t do good to earn peace.
You do good and realise peace was the byproduct.

Your days stop feeling like something you’re surviving. Because you’re not just passing through the world. You’re tending to it.

To walk into every room and ask, silently: What does this moment need from me Sometimes it’s action. Sometimes it’s restraint. Sometimes it’s just your full attention.

But you ask. Every day.

Before the inbox. Before the news. Before your own agenda gets to vote.

You stop waiting for life to be good to you. You become the evidence that it already is.

So hunt for it. The chance to be decent. The chance to be early with encouragement. The chance to be the person you needed five years ago.

One day you’ll look up and realise the good life wasn’t something you found. It was something you practiced into existence.

And it started because you decided to face the day like that.
On purpose.
Again.
Today.