aviation – Serenity Through Sweat

MEL

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week, I want to introduce a concept from aviation that I think has great crossover into the health and wellness space.

Things fall apart. Things break. Murphy’s law says, “whatever can go wrong, will”. The correllary, is that murphy was an optimist.

This is something we deal with in aviation all the time. Parts break. It is then up to us as pilots to decide what is an acceptable level of breakage.

Christmas half marathon and roanoke layover run (i know I’m a little behind on the blog schedule)

That might sound scary, but we all make similar decisons everyday. The check engine light or tire pressure light in our cars. A toilet that doesnt quite work right you just have to jiggle the handle.

Things that aren’t operating quite as they should but we find work arounds to complete the task with a not pefectly functioning piece of equipment.

Whenever something is broken on and airplane we consult a Minimum Equipment List or MEL. The MEL, in its simplest form, is a list of all the stuff that can be broken and we will still be safe to fly.

Enjoying the local layover hotel

Again this might sound scary, but think about all of the non-essential functions in your car. Would you drive if the automatic windows didnt work? What about cruise control? The middle seat belt in the back seat?

The answer is probably a yes, but… Or maybe the answer is, it depends on where we were driving, how many people, what the weather was, etc…

Now you are thinking like a pilot. Our MEL gives us the same type of information. Depending on what is broken, the type of operations we are allowed to conduct may be limited, and the type of maintenance that must be performed is prescribed.

You wouldnt want to drive with bad winshield wipers if the forecast called for rain, but maybe thise wipers can be replaced another day if there isn’t a cloud in the sky.

This isnt about ignoring malfunctions, but rather acknowledging them and taking appropriate risk mitigation strategies when considering both the likelihood and severity of the malfunctioning equipment having an adverse effect on the operation that day.

The aviation MEL has M and O procedures. M for maintenance, and O for operational.

The maintenance section lists actions that must be performed on the broken equipment or system prior to the flight commencing. It also specifies when a final long term repair must be completed by for the priginal broken equipment.

The operations section places any limits on the types of operations you can conduct while the equipment is broken and remains unrepaired.

I think that same idea can play really well into the health and welness space, but I have never really heard it explicitly described in that way.

Back to Murphy again, there is no such thing as a perfect training day. There are too many variables and something will always be a little bit off. Sleep, nutrition, training volume, weather, equipment, lack of motivation, something is going to try and throw a wrench in your training plan and your day in general.

But, you definitely don’t need to feel perfect in order to train, or even just to function. And, even if you do have some sort of legitimate issue, (known injury or illness, bad weather, fragmented sleep, missing or broken equipment) you can still use the idea of an MEL to protect your plan.

Maybe you didnt sleep well last night. Consulting the health and wellness MEL might say your operational limits are to reduce volume by 20%. It might also say to avoid high intensity or heavy weights for that session to reduce injury risk.

The maintenance procedure might be to take an extended warm up and stretching prior to getting into your main set.

Trip to port canaveral launch pads and museum

Maybe you’re stressed out from work/family/relationship/etc that day. The operational section of the MEL might say zone 2 cardio or a shorter HIIT session is ok, but make sure it is an activity you enjoy. Stay away from something grueling or unappealing.

The maintenance procedure might have you try to gamify your warmup rather than something monotonous. It might also require you to have a pre workout energy drink or special playlist.

Maybe you are dealing with a knee injury. The MEL might say you have to wear a brace and do specific warmups prior to starting your activity.

Your operations might be limited to low intensity, lower miles, or lower impact activites only.

You might give yourself a week or two under those limits and then reevaluate the MEL for the knee injury to see if it still applies.

I think this type of framework is extremely useful to maintain activity levels as we age and deal with the inevitable hurdles to activity like, stress, illness, and injury.

Having an idea of, I can still do something as long as I take the right precautions, is way better than doing nothing because there is a problem.

Using the MEL framework, recognizes the problem, mitigates the risk, and tries to push forward on the path towards serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Mental muscles

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I’m fresh out of the simulator for my recuurent pilot training and wanted to reflect on the experience.

“Laser beam focus”. “Like moving a toothpick inside a cheerio”. “Just put the thing in the thing and keep it there”.

These are things the instructors say when talking through a single engine ILS (instrument landing system) approach flown without the autopilot. They are referring to the small yellow box in the middle of the photo, and keeping the yellow box centered on the green crosshair.

Even the slightest deviation from the flight directors commanded position can result in an aircraft state that is no longer in a safe position to land.

Flying at 145 knots on approach means moving through the air at 245 feet per second. ILS minimums typically allow you to land at 1800′ RVR (runway visual range). That means you can only see about 1800 feet in front of you.

You need to transition from that laser beam focus on the dual cue flight director, to pick out the runway environment through the fog and haze. At those speeds, you have 7.5 seconds until the ground comes to greet you.

Let’s rewind about ten or fifteen minutes, before your laser beam focus on the yellow box and green cross hair.

You have flown to a safe altitude on a single engine, combating the asymmetric thrust that wanted to roll and yaw the airplane out of control and upside down. You start the process of securing the failed engine in order to prevent any further damage.

Now you have to expand your thinking and start looking at the big picture. What systems were running off that engine that I lost? Which systems were essential? Which were redundant? What operations can I still conduct with downgraded systems? Does the weather permit those operations with down graded systems? How much fuel do I have? Is it balanced?

The list of questions could go on and on, but you are in a pressurized tube moving through space with a finite amount of fuel. Add on to all that managing communications with the rest of the crew behind your locked cockpit door, air traffic control, and your company counterparts on the ground. There is a lot of data input and management at a higher level.

This represents a significant contrast from the task we previously discussed. A singular lazer beam focus on a very small window.

Singular lazer beam focus and birds eye view big picture situation analysis. Both tasks are critical to getting back on the ground safely, and training and preparing for those tasks are two very different operations.

This reminded me somewhat of the physical training that I do. Training for a five minute Jiu Jitsu match is much different than training for a five hour half ironman.

A single rep max deadlift requires a different training modality and approach than a 100+ mile bike ride through the mountains.

And unlike in sport, where you can specialize and focus on only one type of activity if you so choose, that type of specialization and omission is not an option im aviation.

I’ve never been a big fan of that in my training anyway. “Specialization is for insects” I once read. I want to be able to sprint fast and hike for a whole day. I want to be able to lift heavy things and not have my muscles give out at the end of long climb on my bike.

Similarly, I want to be able to have that lazer beam focus for as long as I need to, in order to land safely. I want to be able to calm my heart rate and nerves and look at the big picture analytically. I want to be able to ground my thoughts and be present in the moment without ruminating or fixating.

I want to train and strengthen all the muscles. Type I fast twitch fibers. Type II slow twitch fibers. The heart, the lungs, and all of those different mental muscles.

I’m not sure what the equivalent of deadlifts for focus, or bench press for big picture thinking looks like. But just like you shouldn’t skip leg day, you have to train all of those mental muscles, not just the showy ones.

I’m sure there are plenty of podcasts and researchers much smarter than myself, that can tell you how to train these different mental muscles. Sometimes, the best training is just repetition.

Have a few tasks that require short, intense bursts of lazer beam focus. Have some planning or brainstorming sessions where you can think big picture. Carve out some time to be creative. Engage in tasks that require longer bouts of repetitive motion but also dynamic motor control. (I helped my neice and nephew place individual perler beads in specific patterns)

All of these mental muscles need to be trained, and need to be continually engaged in order to prevent atrophy.

Just like any other training we talk about here, the joy is often found in the journey more so than the destination. And, there is plenty of serenity to be found along the way.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.

Recalibrate

Sometimes, ego gets in the way.

My heart rate strap, the large puddle of sweat underneath me, and my own intuition after thousands of hours on the bike were telling me one story.

My power meter was telling a very different one.

The same course and roughly the same intensity, with a recalibrated power meter.

I knew something wasn’t quite right, but I didn’t know how to fix it. As much as I tried to ignore it, the numbers on the display are there to be used, and when they are not right, it can be disheartening and distracting.

The whole experience reminded me a little bit of my days as a college flight instructor.

I can remember the flight instructor meeting vividly. Sitting in the conference room, a bunch of type A personalities in our matching flight instuctor polo shirts.

Having just sat through a training presentation on the new avionics suite that would be installed in our new Piper Warriors, one of my friends asked what our students would be expected to know and be tested on.

“So, air data goes in, and pretty colors come out?”

This was almost all of our first experience with a “glass cockpit”. All of us had learned and instructed on mechanical flight instruments.

A knowledge of how those mechanical instruments were built and how they functioned was critical to understanding the data they were giving you.

It was also important to understand the limitations of the mechanical systems. To learn any potential fail points or errors. How or why might the instrument give you bad data? What could you do about it?

So when those instruments are transtioned from mechanical devices to data computers, the fundamental knowledge of how those instruments were doing their respectively similar job went down.

Back to my sweaty bike trainer on the back deck, I knew something wasn’t right. I suspected my power meter, but my understanding of the decice was similar to that of the new air data computer. I push on the pedals, and pretty colors and numbers show up on the screen.

Why was I getting bad data? Was it bad data? How does the tool even work? Is it something I can fix? Am I just being a wimp? (The power data being shown was tragically low compared to what i was expecting/used to seeing)

Taking all the jerseys and bumping up the FTP numbers

These were all the questions going throughy my head. I decided to phone a friend and found that my pedals just needed a simple recalibration.

By recalibrating the pedals to a new zero set point, they immediately started showing the correct (and much more reassuring for my delicate ego) power numbers.

But I still didn’t really understand what I was measuring, or more accurately, how I was measuring it.

God bless the internet. What a time to be alive.

A power meter, measures torque using an electricity sensitive strain gauge. Basically, an electrical mesh is placed inside of whatever surface or tool is being strained. A small computer measures the electrical resiatance in the mesh. When torque (twisting force) is put on the surface or tool, the electrical mesh feels some of that force and the electrical resistance changes. The computer measures those changes and then transmits them to another device for display.

I had a basic understanding of pedal harder more power. Push on the power meter and pretty colorful numbers show up on my bike computer. Only the numbers were less pretty and more disheartening.

Even the idea of recalibrating, while it made sense, left me with an unfinished feeling. That went away once I researched how the power meter worked.

I think that’s an important part of the recalibration process that gets overlooked. Something is broken, or something isn’t working right. We recalibrate, and the issue is resolved, but we don’t know enough about why it was giving us bad data in the first place.

Without that knowledge, without that insight into the why and the how, we are left with input->computer->pretty color display. When things break down, that becomes painfully insufficient.

I try to remind myself of this silly lesson whenever I need to recalibrate. We all need a reset sometimes. Underatanding the why and the how, and getting back to baseline can help on the path to serenity.

Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.