Save this 13-drill core sequence inspired by Russian gymnastics
This isn’t just abs it builds real strength, control, and coordination by connecting core, spine, and hips. Improve mobility, compression, and full-body stability.
Train your core as a system, not in isolation.
Front planks where you only feel it in your shoulders and lower back aren't working your abs — they're just working the wrong muscles.
Contact the full wrist base and thumb into the ground. Then take the longest inhale you can. Even pressure. Organs move back. Abs activate.
Two adjustments and the plank becomes a completely different exercise
60 flexiones,
60 sentadillas,
60 zancadas,
60 segundos de sentadilla en pared,
60 segundos de plancha.
Resultado = 💪💪🔥
Reto diario de 60 para ponerte en forma.
Why do immigrant Somali entrepreneurs thrive in South Africa while local SMMEs struggle? I saw a study that found the secret. It’s a great study, but then it suffers a major academic malfunction.
The 2023 research paper titled “An Exploration of the Traits Responsible for the Success of Somali Small-Scale Entrepreneurs in South Africa” set out to solve a persistent puzzle: why do local South African Small and Medium Enterprises struggle to stay afloat while immigrant Somali entrepreneurs consistently thrive in the very same socio-economic environments?
The empirical findings of the study are compelling and grounded in the lived experiences of two dozen entrepreneurs in Pretoria West. The authors brilliantly document an ecosystem powered by deep social capital.
According to the authors’ data, the primary drivers of Somali business success are rooted in an Afrocentric, collectivist worldview of “collaborative ventures”, including pooling resources for bulk purchases, “informal networks” like sharing pricing information and trends, and a profound “sense of community”.
Crucially, the authors observe that this Somali strategy “promotes partnership as opposed to competition”. So, when a new Somali entrepreneur arrives, the community does not view them as a rival to be defeated; instead, they actively raise startup capital or gift assets to ensure the newcomer succeeds. The economic engine here is fundamentally ANTI-COMPETITIVE in spirit. It relies on shared risk, pooled resources, mutual aid, and collective survival.
Yet, and this is the major flaw of the paper, when it‘s time to provide solutions, a very fascinating academic glitch occurs. In the recommendations section, the empirical research findings collide head-on with standard individualist market ideology. The authors write:
“Based on the findings, it is recommended that there is a need to enhance the competitiveness of South African SMEs.” They go on to suggest that adopting these cooperative traits will make local businesses “more adept at navigating global competition”.
Hopefully, you can see the problem here. The paper explicitly suggests that South African businesses should adopt a philosophy of non-competition or collaboration for the ultimate purpose of becoming better competitors.
Here’s the thing, language matters, and I don’t believe this is a minor semantic slip. To me, it reveals how deeply academic training and policy paradigms are trapped within a dictionary that equates economic success solely with competitive advantage.
So, even when the evidence staring the researchers in the face proves that cooperation is what keeps people alive, they lack the vocabulary, or perhaps the institutional permission, to recommend anything other than “enhanced competitiveness”.
To achieve this competition-centric objective, the paper’s authors are forced to contort themselves to and recommend that South Africans need to weaponise collective solidarity to win in individualistic market competition.
This is simply incoherent. True cooperation requires trust, shared identity, and mutual vulnerability, and these are elements that are fundamentally flattened when translated into metrics like market share and profit margins.
If we are to take the findings of this research seriously, the policy implication cannot be to force South African SMMEs into the same hyper-competitive meat-grinder and then pretend to call it “collaboration”. Instead, we must change the objective function of economic policy itself.
So, rather than aiming for “competitiveness”, policy frameworks should focus on first creating support structures like cooperative buying syndicates, shared logistics, and community-based retail trusts.
Second, South African needs to move away from individualistic “entrepreneurship training” and instead support organic, localised business networks and collective mentorship models.
Lastly, the viability of local SMMEs cannot continue to be measured only by individual profit or aggressive market scaling (that whole idea that one should thrive to open several more shops or progress towards opening a large supermarket), but by community resilience, long-term survival rates, and the capacity for mutual aid. This is, after all, what the researchers found made Somali entrepreneurs more successful.
In the end, the problem with mainstream economic thinking is that it looks at a highly successful, collectivist survival strategy and can only see it as a tool to sharpen the knives of competition. Until the economic language catches up with the cooperative realities of grassroots survival, the recommendations will continue to undermine the very solutions the intellectuals claim to seek.
Anyway, if you liked this read, I would greatly appreciate if you subscribed to my Patreon blog, link in bio.
I married an illegal foreigner who became a permanent resident in South Africa. We sold SA IDs to over 10 for Somalis, Pakistanis, Bangladeshis, and Ethiopians.
She is simply stating that all those who arrived in South Africa are illegal.