Parenting – Page 2 – Serenity Through Sweat

Galanin to the Rescue

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I want to talk about galanin, what it is and some of the many ways it helps us.

Galanin is a neuropeptide, which is fancy word for a protein produced by neurons. (don’t worry I had to look it up because it sounded more like one of king arthur’s knights to me). Galanin is found in many different parts of our brain as well as our GI tract.

A recent article in the Journal of Neuroscience, shows an increased galanin level (derived from unfettered access to cardiovascular exercise) was correlated with a conferred resilience to stress in mice.

Two groups of mice were observed after a stressful event (foot shock). The respective galanin levels were measured in each group, with the experimental group having access to a running wheel in their cage and the control group having none. After three weeks there was a correlation between the elevated galanin levels, the amount of time exercising, and the degree of stress resilience, in the group of mice who used the running wheel. (After building in the first week they were averaging 10-16km per day, if you needed some motivation for your own running)

The test then went on to elevate galanin levels in otherwise sedentary mice and the observed the same stress resilience effects. It is obvious but worth stating that people are not mice, but we do have very similar galanin receptors. This experiment shows that repeated cardiovascular exercise increases galanin, and increased galanin helps us deal with stress.

Doing further research on galanin, I found this article in Nature, which shows that increased galanin levels are responsible for regulating aggression toward pups in male mice, and increasing their tendency towards parental behavior.

I’ve always felt that I’m a better father, husband, and overall person after a good sweat session. There are obviously multiple chemicals in play there, but galanin has a big role to play. This is especially true as stress levels have been elevated these past few months, as has time with my sons without daycare.

Increasing galanin levels seems like a great thing to do no matter what, but an especially great thing with all the stresses of Covid life, and the best way to do that is some good old fashioned SerenityThroughSweat.

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

How Far We’ve Come

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I’m sitting post run in Greenville, SC where I wrote the first edition of the blog back in mid November, and thinking of how far we’ve come.

I have an eclectic taste in music, especially for different types of workouts. There is a special dopamine rush when that perfect 90’s alt rock song comes on unexpectedly in a workout. Energy seems to materialize from the ether, and I can go from boarding the struggle bus, back to a spring in my step. Matchbox twenty’s how far we’ve come has always been one of those songs for me.

Sleepy sloth hugs art project from El Duderino

A drum solo start, a punchy guitar line, up tempo beats, Rob Thomas talking about the end of days, it’s got everything I need to sprint out the last few miles home. The lyrics seem deceptively appropriate for where we find ourselves six months into a pandemic and an election year.

“I’m waking up at the start of the end of the world, but it’s feeling just like every other morning before,” “I believe the world is burning to the ground, oh well I guess we’re gonna find out, let’s see how far we’ve come”

El Duderino taking the wheel on the walk with Speedy, while mommy gets in some bike miles

On their own and out of context, the lyrics make it sound like a sad song, one of desperation and defeat. It never struck me that way listening to it, and the music video (I don’t know if those are still a thing anymore, but they were in the 90’s and the 00’s) paints a different picture. It shows scenes of human triumph and progress like the moon landing, Muhammad Ali winning the world heavy weight title, and the Berlin Wall coming down.

There is no denying the pain and suffering that has occurred in the last six months, but look how far we’ve come. Public health and well being is now a priority on a level I’ve certainly never seen before in this country. As a nation we are having productive discussions on race, justice, and policing that are well overdue.

First time cooking in the new Z grills pellet grill. Smoked picanaha and veggies were awesome

On a personal level, I started this blog ten months ago to talk about fitness and parenting. It was as much of a personal indulgence (writing about my own endeavors) as it was a meaningful platform with a message I hope to share with my boys. I can look back over that short time and see how far I’ve come, as a parent, an athlete, and a writer.

I’ve become focused at a level I haven’t been since I was writing my thesis, not just on producing content, but also consuming it. The amount I read, fiction and non fiction, and listen to podcasts has increased tremendously. My intake of instructional posts, blogs, and videos for grappling, fitness, nutrition, and mobility has skyrocketed. Speedy, being born early on in all of this craziness, was a blessing helping me to take stock of things that really matter in my life. It also forced me to evaluate and evolve my parenting with two boys at home with no daycare.

First time on the bike since father’s day. New shoes, new cleats, and a whole lot of dropping the hammer on the last 5 miles

I’ve written before about Serenity as a journey or a series of fleeting moments, more so than a destination. I’m grateful for these post run moments of clarity where even though I’m not there yet, and I may never get there, I can reflect on how far we’ve come.

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

Layover miles on the swamp rabbit trail is Greenville

Adaptation

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the serenity through sweat blog. My wife and I are wrapping up our first weekend with El Duderino out of town and just Speedy in the house. I’m struck by the difference two years has made in our parenting and our personalities.

As a new father, even with a significant break from work, I struggled to find a rhythm. I was unsure of myself and the needs of my wife and new baby. I was behind the curve when it came to meeting those needs much less anticipating and proactively fulfilling them.

Two years later, with El Duderino visiting his grandparents for the weekend, was the first time for me to really compare apples to apples as it were. How would my wife and I handle our now 4 month old having already been through it once?

The difference was staggering. We were both amazed at the efficiency at which we could care for Speedy and complete tasks around the house. We were both able to anticipate each other’s as well as Speedy’s needs, and then fulfill them quickly, efficiently, and with a a general sense of normalcy.

Things that would have left us frustrated and exhausted two years ago, seemed like commonplace daily routine, and even a reprieve, when compared to the demands of two children. The repetitive tasks that are required to care for a child led to a change in both my wife and I. The difference is the beauty of human adaptation.

As is often the case taxonomy is important and adaptation (in a biological sense) is an organisms ability to change to become better suited to it’s environment.

My wife and I are not the same people we were two and a half years ago when El Duderino was born. In addition to a familiarity and gained confidence as parents, we adapted to be better suited to our new lives as parents.

Raising children clearly involves a lot repetitive tasks. With repetition comes habit formation, and with habit formation comes adaptation. A good training plan will force you to do the same thing. Your body will adapt to the stresses (running, biking, lifting heavy things, grappling) you put it through if it senses that they are an environmental factor, and not just a singular event. Repetitive stresses will lead to adaptation, and a better suited person for the whatever challenge lies ahead.

We are starting to see this now with COVID as well. There have been repetitive stresses on businesses, services, and events. Some of those organizations have maintained their routine in a “tough it out” approach, and some have adapted. Like a fun uncle who watches the kids now and again, they can get the job done when they need to, but their efficiency and effectiveness will be lacking. The parents who change to better fit their new roles, will ultimately do a better job and be more efficient and effective. It doesn’t take long to see which organizations are adapting, and which are struggling to tough it out.

This run was a special treat. Some early morning miles over the causeway in my old stomping grounds. A lot of sweat, tears, and memories in the pavement here.

Humans have adapted to survive and thrive in every environment they have come across. It requires some trial and error, some repetitive stress, and a whole lot of serenity, but the results are pretty incredible.

When you can’t change your situation, you change yourself. That’s what adaptation is. It’s just a fun coincidence that parenting, fitness, getting through COVID, and finding serenity all require adaptation too.

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

TLAR

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. As I get back to flying after a long layoff for paternity, I find myself falling back into a work routine and relying on my years of training. One of the cornerstone lessons all the way back from my private pilot’s license is TLAR.

TLAR is an acronym for “That Looks About Right”. The idea is with any situation in aviation we have target metrics but we also have a sight picture of what we should be seeing. So you might have a target airspeed +/- 10 knots, a target altitude +/- 100 feet, and a target heading +/- 5 degrees. To go along with those metrics you have an idea in your head of what the situation should look like, again with a +/-.

Tuesday morning causeway miles before work

TLAR gives you the ability to say even with the metrics within limits, if it doesn’t look about right, let’s reset and try it again because something might be off. Let’s get to a safe altitude and configuration, and assess what happened and even if there isn’t a problem that can be identified, safety was prioritized, and the only cost was a few minutes and some jet fuel.

In fact most of the procedures written in to our policy manual include verbiage something along the lines of “pitch or power settings not consistent with situation” as a criteria to discontinue the maneuver. Basically, if it doesn’t look right stop, and then, assess and re-establish.

What makes TLAR work is repetition and training. If you see the same picture over and over again, and you know what adjustments to make to change the picture, you can make decisions about when something looks right and when it doesn’t.

TLAR is a fantastic tool with low cost, and quick utilization time, for all sorts of social, work project, and family scenarios, if you can have the presence of mind to employ it.

I grew up telling everyone I would have a wrestling mat in my living room, and that glorious day has arrived

From a fitness standpoint, I can look at pace, heart rate, and percieved effort level, and adjust for variables such as sleep, nutrition, prior workload and weather, in order to get a picture of my workout. If say my pace or heart rate is way off normal, and one of the variables can’t explain it, (I ate well, slept well, not over worked, and weather is normal) maybe there is something wrong, and I can use that picture to adjust my training accordingly.

I can use the same sort of assessments looking at El Duderino’s behavior. Not that it is perfect or always within our expectations as parents, but rather is it about right given he is a toddler, stuck at home during Covid-19, who just became a big brother and is now sharing attention. Adjusting for variables and conditions, you can look at the vast majority of his behavior and say that looks about right, and quickly point out when behaviors no longer line up with the expected picture.

When a behavior doesn’t pass the TLAR test, I start out giving him the benefit of the doubt, examining variables and conditions first, and then asking him about. More often than not, he knows the established rules and when he has violated them. He knows when is behavior looks about right and when it doesn’t, but being 2 ½ years old, he doesn’t yet have to presence of mind to stop and correct in the moment.

Having the training and knowledge to understand what “looks about right” for a given situation, and the presence of mind to stop the operation and reset as necessary is what TLAR is all about. TLAR is a skill, and like most valuable skills, it requires repetition and dedication. It is also another valuable tool in the tool belt of Serenity.

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

COVID-19 Engineering

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. I can’t remember where I heard (a good chance it was a JRE podcast) that engineering is finding a way to do what you want with what you have. At the time, I thought about ways to stay in shape with the things I have at home (before the pandemic, but knowing how hard it is to get out of the house with a newborn) COVID-19 is showing us how deep that idea really goes.

One month side by side of El Duderino and Speedy

From a fitness standpoint, most people’s routine has been turned upside down. Grapplers, crossfitters, gym goers have all had to adjust. But garage gym athletes, folks who favor the kettlebell or sandbag, and bodyweight or calisthenic practitioners have already found a way to stay fit when what they have. Running, biking, hiking, jumping rope, are all great ways to get outside and engineer your fitness with things you probably already have.

El Duderino approves of the shrimp and grits, grilled broccoli, and Amish friendship bread.

With restaurants closed and some grocery store staples picked clean, I know I have certainly gotten more creative in the kitchen. From modifying recipes to make meat last longer, scratch baking, and catering to the sensitive, yet discerning, palette of a toddler, the kitchen has become a laboratory of experimentation and family fun with COVID-19 changing our eating and shopping patterns. Finding new and different ways to keep the family eating a healthy diet has been an interesting challenge in doing what I want with what is available.

Parenting and family activities sure look a lot different when you can’t touch public surfaces. Keeping a toddler interested in anything for more than fifteen minutes is a challenge, but removing some of our usual routine activities (library, playground, science center, pool/splash pad) has made us dig deep as parents to provide entertainment and education. The resources made available from organizations as well as individuals helping each other provide a nurturing environment for their children is heart warming and incredible.

I think one of the biggest silver linings to this pandemic is our collective ability to adapt and overcome. To engineer our way through a problem. A lot of us have become teachers, IT managers, personal trainers, and chefs, in addition to any other hats we might have already worn beforehand. All of those skills have been there all along, they just needed a little nudge to find their way to the surface. With a little ingenuity, and a can do attitude, we can still do most of the things we want with what we already have, and engineer our way towards Serenity.

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

This week’s SerenityThroughSweat, some solo miles in the midday Florida sun and my phone shut down from over temp mid workout with the sandbag and the training mask.

Happy Easter

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Easter means a lot of different things to different people. It is beyond the scope or intention of this blog to really hammer out religious theology, but one of the over bearing themes of the holiday is new life.

The last two weeks have been crazy for everyone. COVID-19 has us living a new life that I think it’s safe to say most of us, weren’t prepared for. I’ve been very blessed to be home with my family, not working, (by choice for the most part). We have just been living, and adjusting to what life looks like with four of us instead of three of us.

Outside of some wierd grocery sterilization practices, the last two weeks wouldn’t have been that different for us had there been no virus. Which got me thinking about Easter, and our new life.

This virus has already, and will continue to cause an untold amout of suffering. From the direct impact of human loss, to the economic damage, to the psychological stress placed on everyone, no one is untouched by this. However, many of us will emerge from this relatively unscathed. Businesses can be rebuilt, events can be rescheduled, and we will be able to get back to a new life after all of this. The blessing, the silver lining, is in choosing that new life.

There’s a new sheriff in town. Daddy’s sunglasses, and great grandpa’s hat

Right now my days are filled with wrangling a toddler, juggling the needs of a wife who isn’t supposed to lift anything, and trying to keep a two week old alive. There isn’t much room for anything else. Am I worried about keeping my family healthy? Absolutely. Do I think about my friends and family that are outside my little quarantine bubble? Of course. Am I concerned about the state of the airline industry or the broader economy? Sure. But the pressing need, the top priority, is just living. Being a husband, being a father, raising strong, smart, healthy boys.

I don’t know what the world looks like after all of this, and I can’t fathom the suffering that has and will be caused. In my own circumstance though, I’m thankful for the ability to reset, to reevaluate, and to begin a new life with a fresh perspective.

Thanks for joining me, and stay sweaty my friends.

Today’s Serenity through Sweat, an extra sweaty and windy 10k. The Florida weather has been a blessing allowing us to be outside as opposed to our northern neighbors, but the midday temps when both kids and my wife are napping, makes sure I earn my moniker.

Providing as a Father

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. The continually changing situation we find ourselves in with COVID-19 has got me thinking more about an eventual conversation I will undoubtedly have with my son.

I’ve day dreamt about this since my wife first told me she was pregnant. My child comes home from school and is tasked with asking his father what it means to be a man, and report back to the class. That’s a doozy of question and I don’t think it has a clear cut answer. Gender norms and 2020 politics and posturing aside, a large aspect of the answer for me always comes down to being a provider.

Being a provider can mean different things to different people, and it certainly meant something different to me just a few months ago. With uncertainty in my career and my ability to bring home a paycheck, what does being a provider mean?

I had already planned to be out of work for April, awaiting our second child, so this coming month at least isn’t a total shock. During this time, I’m trying to keep my focus on being a man, and being a provider within that capacity. While I may not be able to provide a paycheck (I do have some PTO to go with my FMLA) there are a lot of things I can provide regardless of the circumstances.

I can provide a loving and caring atmosphere. At two and change years old my son doesn’t really have any concept of what’s going on. He just knows daddy is spending a lot more time with him reading books, coloring, riding bikes, and chasing the garbage truck around the neighborhood. He doesn’t understand the weight of the world situation, and I can control the vibe he does feel and provide that positive environment.

I can provide a positive example. It is easy to start a self pity party with all the negative effects of this pandemic, but self pity is a wasted emotion. Lord knows I’ve spent more than my fair share of time at my own pity party, and every day is a struggle, but RSVP’ING NO is a choice I can make for my little guy. It does make it easier that he has no context for the situation and thus no empathy. If daddy is being sullen and sulky, he will pick up on that in a heartbeat. So soldiering on with a smile for the little guy is the only way forward.

I can provide household relief. Even when working a full schedule I do the lions share of cooking and a decent amount of cleaning, laundry, landscaping, and other household tasks. It means a lot to me that I can have some control over the food we put in our bodies and that I can provide healthy and nutritious meals for our family. With additional time home I can expand upon those tasks to help my family.

A few posts ago I talked about changing our world view to adapt to new demands. This is a change in world view for me, about being the best father and husband I can be, in a dynamic and uncertain world.

I’m grateful for a great many things in this life, and being able to maintain some semblance of calm in the chaos, and provide some positivity as a father and a husband in these turbulent times is one of them.

Thanks for joining me, and stay sweaty my friends.

This week’s SerenityThroughSweat in quarantine, bike rides with the family finding “stinky dirty” the orange digger. A solo ride with Layla. Throwing some arrows down range at 20yds. A quick sweaty run, and last but not least, working on my artistic skills to keep the little guy interested in things to color.

What Gets Measured, Gets Managed.

This quote normally attributed to management guru Peter Drucker had me thinking about some of my fitness metrics. But after doing some research it seems that there is some controversy on whether he ever said it and/or what the overall context was. However the similar quote below applies even better.

“not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted.”

This quote from William Bruce Cameron in his paper A Casual Introduction to Sociological Thinking has been on my mind as it relates to fitness, Parenthood and our lives in general.

After spending years of my life cutting weight for both wrestling and rowing, I realized that I had been living in a perpetual state of dehydration. So starting to count my water intake was a natural step to help make sure I developed healthy habits.

During my Ironman training program one of my most useful metrics was heart rate and heart rate zone. For all my rides and runs I payed attention to this metric to help me train smarter and longer, especially if I was on a two a day schedule. My resting heart rate also gives me some insight into the quality of my sleep and the amount I’ve recovered from training.

Heart rate and water consumption are two easy metrics to both measure and manage, and provide some real insight into your health and well-being. There are countless other fitness and wellness metrics that can be measured and managed and lots of them are useful, but it is easy to get overwhelmed in the data.

If you have been a reader of this blog for a while you might remember the episode on Zach Bitter (Mastery of the Aircraft) Zach is a world record holder for both the 100 mile and 12 hour distance runs, who trains primarily based on level of perceived effort. Now obviously he is doing something right and level of perceived effort “counts”, but it’s probably a little more difficult to formally measure.

As a parent it is super easy to get caught up in developmental milestones for our children, and that can lead down a dangerous rabbit hole. They are relatively easy to measure (is your child walking, taking, counting, potty trained, etc…) By a certain age. But how much do they really “count”?

I think most parents would agree that their top priority is to make their children feel loved, but how do you measure that?

So, how can we evaluate what is worth counting, and what we should focus on that maybe can’t be counted, in all the various aspects of our life?

I think there are some obvious no-brainers out there, do everything you can to make sure your kids know you love them. After that, I’ll refer you to the wisdom of another quote from one of the songs I listened to on every long bike ride I did preparing for Ironman. In her own immortal words Sheryl Crowe says “if it makes you happy it can’t be that bad”. If it makes you happy to track it, and it helps you be a better version of yourself, then rock on, and manage what you measure.

Thanks for joining me, and stay sweaty my friends.

Internal Dialogue

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the Serenity Through Sweat blog. Today I want to talk about our internal dialogue, or the types of messages we tell ourselves repeatedly.

I remember as a really young kid the toy that almost everyone had, or had used, was the Fisher Price See n Say. You pull the handle, the farmer spins around eventually landing on an animal, and says “the cow says… moo” or whatever animal it lands on.

This is a great toy for children’s early development. They can associate sights and sounds that go together, and there is some randomness as well as repetition.

Eventually children can remember the sounds that various animals make and reproduce them on command. After a few months my 2 year old son was able to list off the sounds of most common barnyard animals and that is pretty age appropriate and common.

As someone who works on the road, my family and I spend a lot of time on the phone. While this isn’t ideal it is far easier to have a relationship with your family while being away through things like cell phones and FaceTime than it was even a decade ago. Young children tend to model the behavior they see, and even before cell phones were around children have been pretending to answer the phone.

My son pretending the remote is a phone and answering it

To my son anything with buttons is a phone and can be held against his ear and he can have a conversation. I asked who he was talking to and he replied “Daddy”. It was now my picture up on the proverbial See N Say and I was curious what he would come up with when I asked, “what is daddy saying”. His response was “I love you”.

Now besides melting my heart a little bit and being absolutely adorable, this isn’t really a surprise. One of the most important things we can tell those close to us and especially our children is “I love you”. There are no guarantees in life and we only get one time around so I try to use the phrase early and often.

Now in his slightly more than two years on this planet, and slightly more than one of them being verbal, he has figured out that mommy and daddy’s message is “I love you”. That’s what he hears the most (despite the many repetions of “we get down feet first” and “we put our pee-pee on the potty”.

If you had to spin the See n Say and it landed on your picture, what would it say. What is the message that you tell yourself the most, your internal dialogue. For most of us, especially as we get older, I think it is easier and easier for that message to slip away from something positive.

Part of the journey towards Serenity is how we talk to ourselves. Are you encouraging yourself through one more set, one more roll, one last interval? Are you making yourself and your well being a priority? Or are you telling yourself that your diet isn’t important, your sleep isn’t important, your feelings aren’t important, or your time isn’t important.

This internal dialogue can be obvious and loud, even audible (if your a little zany and talk to yourself like me). But it can also be insidious and hide behind the scenes. Our internal dialogue reinforces the habits in our lives whether they are positive or negative.

Next time you spin the wheel and it lands on your picture, what are you going to tell yourself?

Thanks for joining me and stay sweaty my friends.