I’m too smart for placebos.

The key to thinking quickly. And staying sharp.

Is sleeping. Eating correctly and drinking ALOT of water.

I play chess at least an hour every single day.

Literally pizza instead of real food, or slightly dehydrated and it falls apart.

While we’re on the subject of diet. I’ll tell you a story.

I was training for my third world title fight. 4 hours a day. And I was also on strong antibiotics for an infection I’d picked up in India.

I was a mess. Only 26. I never felt so terrible.

I woke up at 10am. Trained till 12:30. Ate. Went back to sleep at 2pm. Woke up at 5. Trained till 7. Ate. Then ran at 9pm till 10pm and went to sleep.

Eat sleep train. That’s it. And I was constantly exhausted.

I thought it was the meds. Probably was. But I couldn’t pull out of this fight.

Kickboxing isn’t boxing. There is no even rescheduling.

You just miss the chance.

I was asking my dad what to do and he sent me a link about Chinese special forces.

Saying how they eat copious amounts of onion and garlic while in special forces training.

They sleep 2 hours a night and tread water for days on end.

The only food they eat is onion.

So I decided to try it.

Started chopping up a raw onion putting some salt on it and just eating the entire thing.

Drinking a litre of water straight afterwards.

Also found pickled garlic cloves, tasted like olives. Ate 10 of them every time.

This made a HUGE different to my energy levels

I’m too smart for placebos.

And in such a competitive environment results are super measurable.

Besides worrying about the bad breath - you need to eat onion. And garlic. ALOT of it.