Life-Sparring Podcast - Fighting Mediocrity, One Round At A Time

Shadowboxing rounds are solo episodes, where I, Life-Sparring host Fabian Gruber share “what’s On and Poppin” in my life, what current books provide “Food for Thought,” and what else is going on. No interviews, just a bit of solo rambling and occasionally some bad singing.

In this round of Life-Sparring Shadowboxing: truly awful singing and an attempt to explain it, a first review of the Oura Ring health monitor and reviews of Laura Huang’s book “Edge” and the late Clayton M. Christensen’s book “Competing Against Luck.”

More info and all show notes, links, and resources, as usual, at Life-Sparring.com/podcast.

OKRs, Objectives and Key Results - After the Life-Sparring Podcast has been heavy on health and fitness topics recently, it is time for an exciting business and personal productivity round.

Our guest, Simon Klaiber, is not just a successful business agility consultant and coach from Frankfurt, Germany; he also runs two Podcasts (in German) on business and personal agility. In episode 21 of his Personal Agility Podcast, Simon shared his experience using OKRs for personal goal setting.

Introduced initially at Intel in the late 1970s, early 1980s by then legendary CEO Andy Grove, OKRs were later popularized by Intel staffer turned private equity investor John Doerr. Doerr brought OKRs to the young team at Google and several other Silicon Valley start-ups, from where the concept diffused into the broader tech industry.

Today OKRs are a widely used method to set goals for an organization and create alignment, transparency, and accountability across different corporate levels.

Together Simon and Fabian explore the advantages and pitfalls of OKRs and how a tool originally designed for big corporations can be helpful to achieve your personal goals.

For more details check out the show notes at Life-Sparring.com/podcast

Shadowboxing rounds are solo episodes, where I, Life-Sparring host Fabian Gruber share “what’s On and Poppin” in my life, what current books provide “Food for Thought” and what else is going on. No interviews, just a bit of solo rambling and occasionally some bad singing.

In this round of Life-Sparring Shadoboxing: more weather complaints and thoughts on body core temperature as a metric; my first-ever coached session after 30 years of running, two book reviews, and a bit of a teaser of what to expect from the next shows.

More info and all show notes, links, and resources, as usual at Life-Sparring.com/podcast.

Does your bladder really burst if you hold your pee for too long? Will you get kidney stones if you do not drink two liters of water a day? These are just two of many questions that Urologist Dr. Chun Ko Chan (Kiki) answers in our “Re(n)al Talk” Round of the Life-Sparring Podcast.

The urinary system is likely the organ we know the least and have the worst misconceptions about. Reason enough to dedicate an episode to the topic and talk to a re(n)al expert. 

Will Dr. Kiki Chan be able to address Fabian’s Childhood trauma of kidney stones and bursting bladders? Listen in to Round 6 of Life-Sparring.

Show notes and more at Life-Sparring.com/podcast

Shadowboxing rounds are solo episodes, where Life-Sparring host Fabian Gruber shares “What’s On and Poppin” in his life, which current books provide “Food for Thought” and what else is going on. No interviews, just a bit of solo rambling.

The winter in Hong Kong ended rather abruptly and muggy spring weather made it rather unlikely that Fabian still will try to improve on his rater embarrassing record for the Translantau 50k trail race. At least gyms are back open in Hong Kong and the first personal training sessions take their toll.

There is not much that’s “On and Poppin’” in February, at least not in terms of new tools and gadgets. Time to appreciate some old favorites and their new use cases. Food for Thought is all gloom and doom this time, with Dan Carlin’s “The End is Always Near”. This and a bit more in a short and sweet round of Life-Sparring.

After listening to her carrying a few Clubhouse panels on genetics, I somehow tricked the fabulous Dena Goldberg, aka Dena DNA, to jump into the Life-Sparring ring with me to discuss genetic testing for health.

Dena holds a master’s degree in genetic counseling from the University of California, Irvine, and is one of 5,000 board accredited Genetic Counselors. She also made it her mission to increase the public awareness of genetic testing for health and created her personal brand Dena DNA around it.

My discussion with Dena covers many aspects of genetic testing: We talk about the role of a genetic counselor, the fundamental difference between DTC genotyping and targeted sequencing panels, potential pitfalls in interpreting genotyping data, nutrigenomics, critical genetic defects to look for, the future of gene therapy and even CRISPR gene editing.

Dena is exceptionally knowledgeable and has the talent to break complicated scientific topics down so that even people without much background knowledge can easily digest them.

If you are interested in understanding your genetic makeup, I am sure you will find this Life-Sparring Round with Dena DNA as insightful as I do.

The first two rounds of the Life-Sparring Podcast were well received, but a few listeners' feedback was that they wanted to hear more from me, the host, and not just from the guests. Be careful, what you ask for, your wishes might come true. Here we go with the first solo shadowboxing round. Topics covered in this round: Story of Life-Sparring, Clubhouse, Urine Analysis, Keto Diet, and The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.

More details on the episode page: life-sparring.com/podcast/2021/01/26/life-sparring-round-3-shadow-boxing-life-sparring-clubhouse-urineanalysis

For Life-Sparring - Round 2, host Fabian is joined by sales veteran and Managing Director DACH (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) of sports wearable manufacturer Polar Electro, Eva Hilf.

After deciding against running a guest house in the Jordanian desert, joining Procter & Gamble instead, Eva made an impressive career in consumer goods' sales & marketing.
In our conversation, we dig into Eva's "eternal truths of sales" applicable in all circumstances.

With Eva working with Polar Electro for the past 8 years, the wearable industry's massive transformation is another topic we dig in. If you want to hear how Polar navigates this watershed for the industry and how Eva sees the future of wearables listen to the show!

As usual: more info and a lot more content at life-sparring.com/podcast

Don't want to commit to a full episode just yet? Check out our trailer to get an idea of what you can expect from the Life-Sparring Podcast.

More on Life-Sparring.com/Podcast !

Life-Sparring - Round 1 kicks of with trail running heavyweight, Vlad Ixel from Perth, Australia. Vlad has an inspiring story to tell and has three successful careers: a professional trail runner with an insane winning rate, a running coach and fitness influencer with more than 70k followers on Instagram and an entrepreneur who recently started supplement company BIX.

We cover all three of Vlad's careers and what becomes very clear during the interview is that despite Vlad's innate athletic talents, his success is as much a product of his strategic approach.

More info on this episode, including all links mentioned in the show and more inspiring Life-Sparring content, you can find at Life-Sparring.com/podcast.