For some, health is a goal in itself. For Mads Tærsbøl, it's the means to everything else in life. Meet one of Cue's Experts, who sees the body as one connected system, and who is passionate about optimizing it.
Who is Mads?
Mads Tærsbøl competed in taekwondo at the top level for many years and later moved into the fitness world, where he represented Denmark on the national team across various distances all over the world. He's a physiologist and, in his own words, a huge optimization nerd.
Everything is connected
In the Western world, we tend to look at things in silos: training separately, nutrition separately, mentality separately, and the social side separately. From martial arts, Mads took something else with him, namely that it all hangs together. We are one large, complex organism, and the different parts of life influence one another.
Oxygen uptake: a key marker for a long life
One of the things Mads finds most fascinating is that the marker most closely linked to a good and long life is actually the body's ability to take up and use oxygen. It declines steadily through life, already from the mid-30s, if we don't do something about it.
But through physical training, we can minimize that decline for a long time. In fact, people who train a lot in their 40s can be better off than they were in their 20s.
Health as the means, not the goal
For Mads, energy is what it takes to thrive, to be a good friend, a good father, and a good person. Being healthy and energetic is the foundation for everything else in life. As he puts it: health isn't the goal, health is the means to do what you want to do.
What you can learn from Mads
At Cue, Mads shares his knowledge of training, performance, and optimization. In his other articles, he goes in depth on how to build your fitness on a solid foundation, so you gain more energy and a stronger platform for everything you want to do in life.
