The Ready State – Serenity Through Sweat

Exposure

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This week I’m reflecting on my 35th birthday. How I feel. How I’ve grown. What type of man I have become and what type of man I want to be.

Listening to Zach Bitter and Aaron Alexander on the Human Performance Outliers podcast, Aaron said something that made me reflect on my last decade.

Zach is very literally a human performance outlier as an ultra marathoner, and Aaron is a movement coach and author of the Align Method. Their conversation covered wellness topic such as mobility, training, breathing, and mindset.

Whenever you wade into the world of endurance sports, the somewhat unanswered, elephant in the room question, is that of longevity and vitality. What are the long term costs of pushing performance? What is the cost of being an outlier? Specifically on your long-term health and wellness.

Looking back, I have pushed myself pretty hard in the last decade. And not just physically. The volume of miles from triathlon training alone is staggering. Jiu jitsu, despite being the gentle art, takes it’s toll on the body. I’ve finished a graduate degree. Changed jobs twice. Found a partner and started a family. Just in the past few years I’ve cultivated new hobbies and habits.

I feel better now than I did at 25. I walk around at a lower weight than I did at the starting line of IronMan FL in 2013. (Which I hope is the lifetime peak of my training volume). I prioritize sleep and nutrition in a way that I was uneducated about a decade ago. I have more balls in the air now and struggle with balance, but find myself better equipped for that struggle.

Despite all of that, the question remains, am I burning the candle at both ends? Will this impact my longevity and vitality? My healthspan?

Aaron said something that I found incredibly reassuring. “your body adapts to what it is exposed to, even if that is nothing”

If you are exposed to nothing, your body will adapt to that as it’s default. The smallest offset can then be momentous. On the other end of the spectrum, if you vary and amplify your exposure, your body adapts. Your level of resilience is directly correlated to your level of exposure.

There are some obvious caveats. My days of thinking “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” are long gone. Lower intensity work, mobility, and less “demanding” practices like meditation and breath work are a critical part of my routine now. Not every session can be a grip it and rip it sweat fest.

El Duderino and Speedy playing in the water

Beyond what I expose my body to in search of positive adaptation, my boys become exposed to fair portion of it is well. They are always watching and listening. Being exposed to someone pushing themself. To someone who struggles, falters, and ultimately grows. I can only surmise what lens they see me through but I hope that the exposure is beneficial.

I’m grateful for all of the beauty, challenge, pain, and struggle that I have been exposed to. I’m grateful for all the ways my body has adapted over the last decade. I hope for continued exposure to push my adaptation. I hope that I find the appropriate level of exposure for my boys as well. In some dynamic interplay of exposure and adaptation, I hope to find serenity.

Zwift, peleton, treadmill, and some mobility work from a birthday week spent mostly on the road

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

Expression

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. This past weekend my wife and I celebrated our collective birthdays attending a concert. The opening act reminded me of the beauty of expression.

Not to be confused with the post by the same name from last Christmas, which discussed the variety in expression of beers following the German purity law or Reinheitsgebot. This is all about the beauty of self expression. (To be fair if you express yourself by creating beer that is beautiful and I salute you)

Alan Chapell sat alone on the stage, with nothing but a small electronic keyboard in front of him. He felt accessible. Maybe too accessible. It was a great thing for the audience to feel that close to the artist. But I’ve seen it go wrong with redesigned kiosks, gate agents, and flustered passengers, too many times that I had a sense of unease on his behalf.

El Duderino playing with his pecker (his name for the toy parrot, get your mind out of the gutter)

Before each song Chapell gave a quick four or five sentence introduction. What his inspiration was. Who the song was for. Some small story or anecdote from his life at the time of the song’s creation.

Chapell’s fingers danced across the keys as he sang his stories. Each offering was a small piece of his life. A moment in time. The thoughts and feelings, the interactions with a lover or a friend. Each song a work of art, not necessarily because it was a great music (it was), but because he did such a masterful job of distilling the moment. Taking the complexities of life events and presenting them in clear three minute chunks, with melodies to boot.

Building a dog house for his valentine’s day present

To be honest I’m not sure how much I was enamored with the music, so much as I was captivated by him as a storyteller. I was definitely tapping me feet, clapping, and swaying along. In the end his ability to express his innermost self was far more impactful than his musical stylings.

I recently heard Jordan Peterson on the Joe Rogan podcast say “the pathway to success for virtually everyone, is facilitation of their capacity to communicate” I had to go back and play the quote three or four times to make sure I got it right. Those fourteen words pack a punch.

Jordan Peterson also discussed how music matches the rhythm of our humanity. How moving along with music is instinctual. It is in our DNA.

I couldn’t help but think about the music I listen to. Why I like it, and what it says or means to me. What the artists were trying to express through their chosen medium. How this blog is largely a vehicle for my own personal expression. A facilitation of my own capacity to communicate.

One of the most gut wrenching things I do as a father is watch my boys struggle to express themself. At 4 and 2 respectively, El Duderino and Speedy fight an uphill battle based purely on limited vocabulary and phonetic acumen.

Some mobility work and a 5k in the new kicks while home

But beyond that, all words are inherently abstract. The way we describe our inner feelings are approximations at best. Now we are taking about shared approximations described with abstract symbols to try to convey some sense of meaning. Throw in a societal predisposition (especially based on gender) to close off certain feelings, and it’s a wonder any young man can express himself at all.

I’m appreciative of the opportunity this platform has provided. I hope that someday my boys can look back on it. I hope that they can see the growth of their father. See my mistakes and shortcomings. My desire towards self improvement. When viewed on a long enough timeline, hopefully, an increased capacity to communicate.

Post concert spin bike and some layover miles in CAE.

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

Interconnected

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I’m wrapping up the last day of the 14 day mobility challenge from The Ready State working on the splits.

This is the fourth 14 day mobility challenge I have completed since last march. Each two week challenge focused on mobilizing the body into a specific archetypal position or working on an individual system. Prior challenges included squatting, arms overhead, feet and ankles, and the latest one, the splits.

Brute force 12 days off Christmas sandbag workout

I’m grateful for the well of knowledge that is available at the ready state and it seems like each position I try to mobilize, I find an interconnectedness that I didn’t know existed.

Having trouble getting in to a deep squat, it could be your ankles, or your low calf, or your hip capsule. Can’t get your arm overhead, check your lats, or your shoulder, or your oblique. Multiple muscle groups work together in complex movements, which means any of the several groups (or all of them) could be limiting factors.

The point is all of these body systems are interconnected and designed to work together. Dr. Kelly Starrett often says something to the effect of “let’s appreciate how these systems all work together for human function”

As someone who is constantly trying to improve my overall health and well-being, I’m always impressed when I find an interconnectedness I didn’t know about, and I can continue to make progress. It got me thinking about interconnectedness in other areas of my life.

The past year has brought on its own unique challenges and stressors. I know I am, and I would venture most of you are, quick to pick out the challenge or stressor that once removed would greatly improve life. Once the kids are in school, once I get that promotion, once I’m earning more money, once I have more free time. These are pretty common stressors and challenges that could be considered limiting factors to our mood.

Speedy helping out with my hamstring lockouts

More than anything the past year has taught me about the interconnectedness of my stress and emotions. The kids being at home, uncertainty on the job front, social isolation, these are all interconnected in affecting mental and emotional state of being.

Just like ankle dorsiflexion or impaired hip capsules, the stresses we encounter in everyday life are interconnected and limit our ability to get into healthy mental and emotional positions.

I try to spend a few minutes each morning and evening working on these limiting positions and systems, so that I can continue to move with a normal range of motion. As we move into a new year, I’m going to try to spend more time working on the mental and emotional limiting factors that are inhibitors to happiness.

El Duderino feeding his favorite animal at the zoo

Dr. Starrett is also fond of saying, “no one ever wins fitness”, it is a constant journey forward. I think our mental well-being and happiness are very similar. It isn’t a destination so much as a journey, and one that requires constant maintenance and attention. Just like those natural human movements, happiness is ours to regain and maintain if we are will to put in the work.

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

Routine

Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. Today I want to talk about the value of routine, and the power that it holds especially in these uncertain times.

Three months ago I purchased a membership to The Ready State for myself as a birthday gift. I had already started to read Becoming a Supple Leopard, and I was starting to develop a morning mobility/yoga routine, and the 14 day mobility challenge they offered drew me in as a perfect evening wind down routine.

Some of the first 14 day mobility challenge, working on the bottom of the squat position

I started waking up about 10 minutes earlier in hotel rooms to make sure I could do some breath work and mobilize first thing in the morning. I made the mobility challenge part of my night time down regulation to help me get better sleep in those same hotels. (With the exception of some mobility work after particularly long runs instead of before bed)

When I was at home I would mobilize at night after El Duderino was down and my wife and I were watching TV before bed. First thing after waking up I would do my morning flow routine and drink a liter of water before anything else.

Overhead mobilization with banded shoulder distraction

I did most of the first 14 day mobility challenge in hotels since I was trying to fly a lot at the beginning of March. At ist completion, I am incredibly grateful for the improved squat position, not only for it’s impact on my running, cycling and Jiu Jitsu, but especially since it puts me at eye level with El Duderino. (A place I’m spending more and more time as the terrible twos progress)

As a pilot my schedule changes day to day and month to month. Bedtime, wake time, what city I’m in, what time I workout, what food I have access to, the only constant is change. So, controlling variables that I can, in order to make some semblance of a routine helps me maintain good habits and keep my sanity.

Simple and sinister followed by some overhead mobilization with the lacrosse ball

What a difference three months makes. The second 14 day mobility challenge from The Ready State started a few days ago on June 1. I haven’t flown an airplane, been to a hotel, or for the most part even left the house since completing the first mobility challenge. My sleep is wrecked, (although that’s mostly due to newborn Speedy and stress, rather than hotels and travel).

I’m pleased that I put in some of the upfront legwork to develop a mobility routine before the pandemic wreaked havock on everyone’s plans and schedules. I’m grateful to The Ready State for providing a platform and motivation to further my routine. I’m indebted to my routine for the stability, sanity, and serenity it provides.

Deputy Dad, laying down the laws of the sandbox

Without a mission around which to set a schedule, it is easy for routine to devolve into disarray. While establishing and maintaining a routine takes dedication and commitment, I believe a good routine breaks the laws of physics, in that it gives back more than what is put in. There is no better time than now to start your own routine, and as an added bonus, it’s hard to be stressed about Covid-19 with a toddler on your chest and a lacrosse ball in your back.

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

This week in SerenityThroughSweat, a couple of rainy runs, some S&S kettlebell work, the 14 day mobility challenge working on overhead position, and grandma comes to visit Speedy and El Duderino.