Good morning!
The 3 things for you today are:
Swimming upstream. Salmon swim upstream to spawn. You need to swim upstream to keep your health and fitness and sanity.
Relaxed concentration. While finding Flow is hard, there are other similar methods to start at.
Have difficulty falling asleep? You hit the bed but the zzz’s just won’t come? Well, this is the post for you.
Before we begin, I would appreciate you spreading the word about my blog to ONE friend. While I love writing for the five of you, I’d like to reach a larger audience. It will enable me to write better and create a larger impact.
And if you don’t think I am share-worthy, I would LOVE to know what you think I need to do to get there. Really. Seriously. Just respond to this email with your thoughts.
Swimming Upstream
Everyone is selling you something
What are you looking for? In your health and fitness journey, you are under constant threat. Corporations with a lot of money and power control what you see on TV and in the movies, with their blatant advertisements and subtle ones. They flood your physical surroundings with their products as well.
You start thinking "the other side" is the nice guys. The gyms and the supplement companies and then whoever else. Because they provide you with relief and hope.
Everyone is selling you something. Including me.
You have to buy something. But the choice of what you buy into is still yours. For that, you need to understand why you are buying into it.
Unfortunately, you do need to buy
You have to take care of your health and fitness. There is no way around it. You allow the river to take you downstream, it will not end in a good place.
The truth is all around you.
We are all more unhealthy than we've ever been.
The incidence of lifestyle diseases is ridiculous.
The lack of movement freedom in an adult human is alarming.
Even the kids are unhealthy. But of course, they are. Their idea of normal is even more skewed than ours.
And everyone is looking to make money off of you.
You need to start swimming against the current. You need to arm yourself for that swim by curating the barrage of information and snake oil around you.
They are interested in themselves
But you are the golden egg-laying goose.
If you are "cured", then you won't continue laying golden eggs.
That's the harsh reality of it. This is why there are no permanent cures but temporary relief.
You need to keep coming to the gym. Or else!
You need to buy supplements every month.
You need to buy the latest wearable because it will be the answer to what you are looking for.
You need 17 different wearables so that you can track every blip of every sneeze.
Or, to put it bluntly, you need to keep opening up your wallet with alarming regularity.
Do your own thinking
Unfortunately, you are swamped. You want to outsource your thinking here. And of course, there are legitimate resources to outsource your fitness to * hint hint *.
But you have to be aware of what's going on. You cannot put your hand up and leave it to someone else.
My philosophy is to guide and educate you. In a year or five, you will
learn to fall in love with movement
learn the fundamental skills of strength training
learn to call bullshit
build a foundation of fitness
integrate fitness and movement into your life
But to do all this, you need to be an active participant. You need to know if absolute strength and deadlifting 3 times your body weight is necessary, or unnecessary for you. There’s no right or wrong here. Does that add value? Or are you aimlessly picking some action to do?
You need to be able to explore and add new facets to your movement - playing badminton, running a 10k - and whatever else strikes your fancy. You need to know what the price for an activity is - strength work demands stretching. Modern life demands mobility and movement.
You need to be part of this conversation of making all of these work for you and fit into the larger fabric of your life.
Overwhelming. But rewarding.
I understand this sounds overwhelming.
But if I can become an expert in kettlebell training, strength training, in health and fitness, I know anyone can. I cannot time-travel and show my college self to you but suffice to say I was completely inadequate in my health, in my fitness. Both knowledge and behaviour were completely lacking.
Finding the right direction, getting on the right part of the map, and plodding along and discovering is all I've done.
Ultimately, it is simple. And rewarding.
I know, it still sounds daunting. Maybe you sucked at biology (no, you didn't. Your teacher did.) or physics>mechanics instigated nightmares (again, your teacher sucked.)
You have figured out complex situations and subjects. You are probably thinking "Yet another?!?" but think about this. Your body is amongst your most important possessions. Even if you pay top dollar to the best coach in the world, it is still important enough for you to learn and understand.
Become independent. Once you get there, the rewards of an interdependent relationship with a coach become even better. Because it HAS to be a two-way conversation.
My mentors in strength, philosophy, and life - Dan John and Pavel - have written everything that I will ever need to know. The great thing is that they continue writing their ideas to keep explaining the same stuff in different ways. Without my current level of understanding and involvement and commitment, none of what they say will strike home.
The point of all this is not a fitter body or a sharper mind.
It is (yet another) expression of you and your values.
Relaxed Concentration
Finding Flow, or being in the zone is a heady feeling. Not while it is actually happening but later, when you reflect on it. Was that really you? And how do you do that again?!?
When your instructive, authoritarian self takes a backseat. Instead, you are somehow intrinsically connected with the activity.
But it is often elusive.
What I have learned to do in my physical training is to arrive at a state of relaxed concentration. Not 100% of the time. Not even close. But in this place of relaxed concentration, the instructive self does quiet down and instead, there seems to be a much deeper connection with the body.
Stretching and Original Strength resets are when I arrive at this mental state often. With kettlebell work, I am often too amped.
Like everything, I think this is a skill that I can continue to work on.
You hit the bed but have trouble falling asleep?
Question
Are you sleeping (at least) for 7 hours?
Are you feeling well-rested and energised?
An increasing number of people report the negative to both questions. Sleep has become elusive to many of us before we even get into its quality. There are umpteen factors, from our work-life balance to our stress, to our evening routines, to our time management and what-not. One factor that plays a huge role is environment design.
Cleaning out your pantry is environment design. You are making it harder to slip up in your kitchen by ensuring there is no junk food around. Designing the environment and your behaviour in the bedroom will lead to an improved standard of sleep.
Now, let's get some basics out of the way.
Sleep is important.
Everyone needs 7-9 hours of sleep.
The probability of you needing only 6 hours of sleep and thriving is lower than the probability of a lightning strike on your head.
If you want to deep dive into sleep, look up Matthew Walker.
But ....
And yet, you are not sleeping enough. Quality or quantity or both are insufficient. You "catch up" on sleep over the weekends. You wake up groggy and bleary-eyed when the alarm goes.
You take too long to fall asleep. You get anxious about falling asleep. You have difficulty staying asleep. If you wake up in the middle of the night, it is near impossible to go back to sleep.
Sheesh!
If you are unable to fall asleep immediately, this is for you. And yes, falling asleep immediately is a skill you can learn and cultivate. And yes, it is important.
Let's start small
To change the outcome, you need to change your behaviour. Instead of giving you 10 tips or whatever, I am going to have you focus on one.
Go to bed ONLY when you need to sleep.
Why? When you lie down in bed and engage in other activities - doom scrolling on your phone, answering your emails, talking on the phone, watching YouTube on your laptop, eating your meals (WTF!) etc - you are confusing things.
Let's take a detour and learn about Pavlovian conditioning. You know the story. This brilliant Russian scientist associated a neutral stimulus (ringing a bell) with a positive stimulus (getting food.) He'd ring a bell and then feed the dog. After conditioning the dog with this stimuli, the dog would respond to the bell as if it had gotten the food i.e. it would start salivating.
Bell = food.
Likewise, what you need to condition your mind and body is simple. Bed = sleep.
When you end up doing a plethora of activities, you are reducing this association. Today, a significant problem is lying down in bed and being unable to sleep. Coz of this!
Without even going into blue light and electronics and all that jazz, you are setting yourself up for failure.
What do you do?
Bell = Food.
Bed = Sleep.
Use the power of classical conditioning aka Pavlovian conditioning to your benefit. Dissociate the other activities from your bed. Do all your time-wasting and doom scrolling elsewhere. Bed = sleep.
And once you are in bed, you can use my simple breathing drill to help you sleep.
Stay consistent. Do quality reps.
Your sleep woes will reduce by a significant factor. While there are many things you can work on to improve sleep, I hope this gave you a clear, simple reason and path forward to work on one aspect.
Sleep is important. More important than the importance you are giving it today.
That’s it for today. Thank you for spending a valuable few minutes of your Sunday with me. I truly appreciate it.
May 1, 2022