About Me
I'm Jonathan Zhao, a software product leader from Shopify expressing my views on work and life via fitness content for professional men on my YouTube Channel.
I believe the #1 product to invest in is yourself: your mind, body, and spirit.
The highest form of any craft, like Bruce Lee said, is self expression. When you have soul in the game in an endeavour, styles and techniques fade. What you do is formless, shapeless. Work, life, they're just channels. World-class software, mind, and body, they're just guarenteed byproducts.
Life is truly short and we only have one here on Earth.
I can sell you shortcuts but I choose not to.
I grow tired of people who lie.
I don't have time to waste your time.
These are words I'll leave behind for my son as I counter every negative experience in my life with 10X the positivity back.
I never used Twitter or IG. Too old to understand Snapchat and TikTok. If you want to connect, here's my LinkedIn.
What Is Binary Strength
Dec 2020
Written just a couple months before the most difficult trial of my life where literally my entire future was on the line. I remember feeling zero stress or anxiety. I remember experiencing a peace that surpassed all understanding, a peace that guarded my heart and mind.
A couple months later, I was delivered from that trial and justice was served that day.
Jan 2022
Written when I felt very alone, when the weight was heavy, when I continued to face intentional negativity beyond belief.
I wrote this as a promise to my son and to myself, to survive, to thrive, to always fight the negative forces at play. I will always forgive but I will never forget.
What I'm Doing
I make Free High Quality Workout and Nutrition Guides for friends and coworkers, or anyone who wants to reach their fitness goals in the fastest way possible. We're all busy professionals.
Why?
Because I enjoy making a positive difference in the world as I express myself in the creative process.
This is my art.
It's also part of the knowledge I'll leave behind for my son for when he's old enough to understand.
All content needs to be good enough for my son, otherwise I won't be producing it.
My Favorite Equipment
Save Money and Space - No Fancy Gym Equipment Needed to Become Shredded
If you’re interested in supporting content I produce and you want to get the same home workout equipment I use myself, you can use my affiliate links for products you’re already going to buy anyways.
Make Amazon fund a real camera better than my iPhone so I can film crisper videos with.
Personal goal and principle: YouTube channel self-funds its own expenses (filming and editing tools etc).
Thanks in advance.
I Consider This Critical and Foundational:
1) Dip bars (my fav, more versatile than dip station, used for key push + pull + ab exercises): Amazon Canada link (Canada) | Amazon USA link (USA)
Enhancements:
2) Push up bars (increase full range of motion for push exercises): Amazon link
3) Pull up (king of all pull exercises) bar: Amazon link
4) Resistance band set (super versatile for stretches, assist exercises to progress further, and resistance band exercises): Amazon link
5) Wristguards (prevent injury in push exercises): Amazon link
6) Timer (the most versatile workout timer): Amazon link
7) Foam Roller (speed up recovery, generally good for health): Amazon link
End Game Gear (use when ready for MAX ROI when working out):
8) Olympic rings: Amazon link
9) Weight vest: Amazon link
My Mission
After dropping 40lbs of fat and gaining a crap ton of lean muscle mass in just 4 months as an endomorph who gains fat easily and was highly sensitive to carbs (what I mostly eat now), I realized the reason why people aren’t in shape easily isn’t because of genetics or because they’re not trying (I’ve tried hard before). It’s because the fitness industry and social media business models are purposely holding us back.
They sprinkle truths here and there, but the entire business model incentivizes misinformation and too much information. It does not incentivize the simple truths from being revealed, otherwise there will be nothing to sell you or get your attention to monetize with ads.
In this world, I can tolerate ignorance, greed, selfishness, but I will not tolerate lies.
Countering lies in the fitness industry is an expression of the continuous fight against lies in my own personal life.
Obtain True Freedom
If you recall your happiest memories, they are most likely from your childhood. Why is this? If this applies to you, it's a sign that you're not at your true potential yet. When you are, as an adult, you can willingly experience pure bliss matching the same feeling of your happiest childhood memories.
I will show my son and you how to become an integrated being, to experience true freedom, to live happily and carefree as the child we once were with the maturity and wisdom of our adult experiences. To become who we were mean't to be.
Your body will naturally change almost effortlessly. When you look in the mirror, you will feel like it represents who you really are. Everyone's true self is different, some will look like warriors because that's who they truly are.
You will tap into a source of creativity that helps you with multiple dimensions in life. You will just simply know what to do by instinct. You will be able to learn and truly understand people and systems exceptionally fast because you will see things for what they truly are with clarity.
True freedom isn't about doing whatever TF you want. True freedom is the ability to have many choices (food, career, money making opportunities, romantic partners) while choosing consciously with mastery and self-control that only the truly strong possess.
"The mind governed by the flesh is death, but the mind governed by the Spirit is life and peace." ~ Romans 8:6
If you follow the herd, you will never know the truth
“Enter through the narrow gate. For wide is the gate and broad is the road that leads to destruction, and many enter through it." ~ Matthew 7:13
This quote can also be found in one of the greatest books on creating software businesses: The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank.
If you follow the herd, you will be played. I don’t like seeing friends and colleagues being played by the fitness industry, just like how I was without knowing it.
I don’t want my son to grow up without this knowledge, wasting time following popular methods of exercise and eating that are highly inefficient, and often harmful, in his own journey towards reaching his true potential.
I don't want my son to be influenced by the negative forces that plague our world without having the armor, shield, and sword to fight against them.
I don't want my son to grow up believing a false narrative about his father.
Before I'm gone, I want to see him master critical thinking and obtain clear vision to see through the surface. I want to see him become strong, happy, and free. I want him to know the truth of the world and forces that govern it. I will endure anything to achieve this.
Final Word
Life is not about waiting for the storm to pass, it's about learning to dance in the rain.
I will dance, even if alone, until the very end.
"Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me." ~ Proverbs 23:4
My strength comes from my weakness. It comes when I fall down and cry for help. It comes when He picks me up.
From experiences too terrifying to ever tell, I've locked eyes with both the true source of evil and the true source of good. Finally, I know for a fact that there is a God. This fact is more real to me than anything else. I saw Him not with my physical eyes. Like Daniel Kahneman said in Thinking Fast and Slow, most of reality is unseen but humans have a fundamental flaw to trust our physical eyes. This logically makes no sense because even optical illusions and magic such as slight of hands can easily fool our physical eyes. Let that sink in for a moment.
I document my life privately in great detail. One day I intend to publish part of it in some form. When that time comes, it will reveal definitively that chance and randomness are simply illusions. There are forces that transcend time, space, and laws of the physical world. If you knew the details and chronology of events in my story, it will be obvious that a higher power does exist. But for now, the time isn't right for me to disclose everything I want to.
I'm not unique. Many people have already shared their own stories that are completely abnormal and should not be possible if the physical world is all there is. Their stories reveal that there are forces that clearly are not bound by time and space. If you approached things with a child-like wonder and innocence, without ego and biases that cloud your judgement, you will begin to see. What you see can never be unseen.
Nowadays, I know that God is with me. As I acknowledge Him, I have 100% faith that He will make my path straight in supernatural ways as He has been doing everyday starting from the moment when I decided to let go, submit, and obey. This I cannot deny. Since then, I'm often led by something inside that bypasses all logic. Things I do, including work, fitness, fatherhood, dating, they often feel like I'm being pulled by something powerful to act in ways that expresses love from some higher source.
It's difficult to explain using human rationale but I believe that God wants to show humans how much He loves us via those of us who have summitted our lives to serving eachother as I did. The ultimate form of life is selfless service, a perfection worth striving towards.
"You can’t ever reach perfection, but you can believe in an asymptote toward which you are ceaselessly striving.” ~ Paul Kalanithi, When Breath Becomes Air
In modern times, God expresses love not through words because He knows we do not truly feel loved when it's said. After studying scriptures from multiple faiths, I believe that this is why at some point in humanity's history, God decided to no longer speak to humans directly. I believe this is because that even as humans, we know that lips can lie but actions always reveal the truth. This is why in our history, even when God spoke directly, not all humans actually believed Him. Many heard but did not listen. Sounds crazy but not really because this phenomeon can still be observed today.
This phenomenon is a byproduct of our fallen world where lies and egos exist. It's incredible that God decided to still communicate with us in the fairest and most optimal way possible despite our flaws, rebelious nature, and rejection of Him.
Andes, let me show you, not by my words, but by my actions, who I really am. In this way, I hope you will be inspired to discover who He really is.
“Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you." ~ Matthew 7:7
Andes, seek and you will eventually discover the truth of this world and obtain true freedom. This is God's promise to all humans. I know this for a fact.
“And you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free.” ~ John 8:32
Baba will always tell you the truth.
My son Andes, be strong, be happy, be free.
Never Let Me Down by Kanye West, J. Ivy, Jay-Z
Listen carefully to the lyrics in this song.