People assume that personal trainers and fitness enthusiasts are dumb. Broscience has been synonymous with trainers who impart fitness advice without a scientific basis. But Alexander Cortes or AJAC has his way of flipping the broscience culture.
As a certified personal trainer, he applies clinical data, hard science, and evidence from study together with practical, real-world applications. He maintains a reputation for educating his clients based on knowledge and intellect. The goal is to make diet simple yet effective so more people can understand it. His interest in fitness made him learn more about its historical context. The connection he found between history, fitness, and nutrition helped him provide better diet recommendations and training for his clients.
Quick guide:
2:21 Guest introduction and flipping bro culture
6:03 Give good effective nutrition information
8:51 From one-on-one personal training to online massive training
11:44 The backbone of his success and credibility
16:50 Historical context of fitness
19:41 What is the useful science? How do we choose what’s not garbage?
26:27 The replication crisis in science
28:43 Which comes first, fitness or nutrition?
32:09 Change of diet in a obesogenic society
35:15 Right amounts of diet and exercise
40:40 The pain experience
51:14 Living in Thailand and how it has affected his approach to fitness
57:35 Injury in squatting
1:01:10 What to look forward to
Get to know our guest:
Alexander JA Cortes works as a personal trainer, something he has been doing since he was 20. He did not expect that he would be doing this professionally. He started his career with the traditional training model in the gym, but he now reaches more people through his online programs.
“If there are certain practices that have been done for decades, centuries, hundreds of years, thousands of years. And we can see these training traditions, or these eating practices even, they have been done for very, very, very long periods of time. They routinely produce exceptional health outcomes, we should study those things, we should weigh that as like, okay, that's significant. Something in there is right. It is correct. It's truthful, it's good information, it’s good practices. It's reflective of our biology." - AJAC
Episode snippets
2:56 - 4:10 - Making science workable for people
7:57 - 8:51 - What men look for are actual routine
12:24 - 13:29 - Reputation based on knowledge and intellect, not in physique
17:24 - 18:09 - The quality of your practice depends on you being a good thinker
28:47 - 29:32 - Exercise tells your body what to do with the food you consume
31:04 - 31:51 - We live in an obesogenic society
32:55 - 34:20 - Good diet meets your caloric, macronutrient and micronutrient needs
36:07 - 37:33 - Ingesting healthy amounts of carbs, protein and fats
47:38 - 48:29 - The reliable way to
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Written & Performed by Logan Gritton & Colin Gailey
(c) 2016 Mercury Retro Recordings
S2E29: Alexander JA Cortes