- Monarx Weekly Newsletter
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- Chefs vs Cooks.
Chefs vs Cooks.
What's in Store
Quote of the Week
“Let your actions make the noise. We’re a group that is all bite no bark.”
Community Spotlight
Congratulations to the winners of the 5k!
1st Place
Lester Crocket from Bowie, Maryland with 17:45
2nd Place
Jonathan Rodriguez from LA, California with 17:52
3rd Place
Brandon Deuch from Broadview Heights, Ohio with 18:34
Communication and delivery for prizes will be sent out via Strava.
Workout of the Week

For what’s in bold repeat 3-4 times and rest 2 mins in between sets
Exercise | Distance |
---|---|
Warmup | 1 mile |
Run | 400m |
Bear Crawl | 50m |
Sprint | 200m |
Bear Crawl | 50m |
Cool Down | 1 mile |
Something We Learned this Week
A question we got on our instagram came from @dpham017 on how to build an aerobic base.
In order to build a solid foundation and aerobic base. Zone 2 training should account for ~80% of your exercise.
Now what exactly is zone 2? Zone 2 is 60-70% of your max heart rate. A rough estimate for max heart rate can be calculated by taking 220 and subtracting your age from it. So if you’re 25 your max heart rate would be 195 and zone 2 would be 117 to 137.
Zone 2 training is great for building your aerobic base because it is extremely low impact and exertion which reduces the amount of time your body needs to recover post exercise. It also adapts your body to burn fat for energy over carbs which can increase your physiological energy efficiency.
I personally like to mix it up when it comes to aerobic training. From running to cycling, to rowing, there are few ways to keep aerobic training exciting.
One of my favorite resources for zone 2 and aerobic training is Peter Attia. He is avid cyclist and also a practicing physician.
Recommendation of the Week
A long read on how to pick the right career but well worth it, especially if you in high school, college, or early career.
Here is a snippet below.
“The star isn’t about a particular skill level—e.g. coding ability or acting skills or business savvy—it’s about the entire game. In traditional careers, the games tend to be more straightforward—if you want to be a top surgeon, and you get incredibly good at surgery, you’ve probably hit your star and you’ll have your career. But the game boards in less traditional careers often involve many more factors. Reaching the “I want to be a famous actor” star doesn’t simply mean getting as good at acting as Morgan Freeman, it means getting as good at the entire actor game as most movie stars get by the time they break through. Acting ability is only one piece of that puzzle—you also need a knack for getting yourself in front of people with power, a shrewdness for personal branding, an insane amount of optimism, a ridiculous amount of hustle and persistence, etc. If you get good enough at that whole game—every component of it—your chances of becoming an A-list movie star are actually pretty high. That’s what hitting the star means.
But conventional wisdom doesn’t get how non-traditional careers work—it only thinks in terms of a narrow aspect of success: talent and hard work. When career paths have game boards with much more going on, conventional wisdom just throws its hands up and calls it “luck.” To conventional wisdom, becoming a movie star requires some talent, but mostly, hitting a rare scratch ticket jackpot.”
The best in any field possess a deep knowledge and understanding that sets them apart.
Drawing from Tim Urban's insights and this week’s recommendation, there's a distinct difference between chefs and cooks. A chef can take a set of ingredients and, using imagination and ingenuity, create a dish that is uniquely their own. A cook, on the other hand, follows a recipe. While there are moments when the mindset of a cook suffices, it’s undeniable that the chef exemplifies greater expertise and talent.
In everything we do, we face a choice: follow someone else’s advice and be a cook, or approach the challenge from first principles and tailor our actions to best suit our unique needs. Sometimes, both paths might lead to the same destination, but more often, they do not.
Simply put, the cook seeks to replicate someone else’s success, while the chef strives to create their own. In the things that truly matter, be a chef.
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